Kwomtari_languages

Senu River languages

Senu River languages

Language family of Papua New Guinea

For the hypothetical language family also called Kwomtari, see Kwomtari–Fas languages.

The Senu River languages are a small language family spoken in the Senu River watershed of Papua New Guinea. They consist at least of the Kwomtari languages, Kwomtari and Nai, with several additional languages more distantly related to them.

Quick Facts Geographic distribution, Linguistic classification ...

Classification

The family consists of at least the two relatively closely related languages Kwomtari and Nai.

Baron (1983)

Baron adds the highly divergent language Guriaso:

  • Kwomtari stock
    • Guriaso
    • Kwomtari–Nai family (Nuclear Kwomtari)
      • Kwomtari
      • Nai (aka Biaka)

Guriaso shares a small number of cognates with Kwomtari–Nai. Baron (1983) considers the evidence to be convincing when a correspondence between /ɾ~l/ and /n/ (from *ɾ) is established:

More information Gloss, Guriaso ...

* Compare Biaka -ɾo, -mo, -na.

** Metathesis of /p/ and /t/.

Usher (2020)

Usher further classifies Yale (Nagatman) with Guriaso, and adds Busa, all under the name "Senu River".[1]

Senu River (Kwomtari–Busa)

Confusion from Laycock

There has been confusion over the membership of the Kwomtari family, apparently due to a misalignment in the publication (Loving & Bass 1964) of the data used for the initial classification. (See Baron 1983.) Because of this, Laycock classified the Kwomtari languages as part of a spurious Kwomtari–Fas family, which confusingly was also often called "Kwomtari" in the literature. However, Baron sees no evidence that the similarities are due to relationship. Usher likewise discounts the inclusion of the Fas languages. See Kwomtari–Fas languages for details.

References

  1. [1]
    NewGuineaWorld, Senu River
  • Baron, Wietze (1983). "Kwomtari survey" (PDF). {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  • Laycock, Donald C. (1975). "Sko, Kwomtari, and Left May (Arai) phyla". In Stephen A. Wurm (ed.). Papuan languages and the New Guinea linguistic scene: New Guinea area languages and language study 1. Canberra: Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. pp. 849–858. OCLC 37096514.
  • Loving, Richard; Jack Bass (1964). Languages of the Amanab sub-district. Port Moresby: Department of Information and Extension Services. OCLC 17101737.
Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Kwomtari_languages, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.