East Bird's Head-Sentani languages

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East Bird's Head-Sentani
Geographic distribution:	Papua
Genetic classification:	Extended West Papuan ?  East Bird's Head-Sentani
Subdivisions:	East Bird's Head Burmeso Tause Sentani

The East Bird's Head-Sentani languages form a family of Papuan languages proposed by Malcolm Ross which combines the East Bird's Head and Sentani families along with the Burmeso and Tause language isolates. Sentani had been a branch of Stephen Würm's proposal for Trans-New Guinea. It has lexical similarities with the Asmat languages, but Ross does not believe these demonstrate a genealogical relationship.

The East Bird's Head-Sentani languages, together with the West Papuan languages and the Yawa isolate, form part of a tentative proposal for an Extended West Papuan family. They are distinguished from the West Papuan family in having forms like ba or wa for the second-person singular ("thou") pronoun.

Contents 1 Classification 2 Pronouns 3 See also 4 Reference

[edit] Classification

• East Bird's Head family
  • Mantion (Manikion) language
  • Meax branch: Meax (Meyah), Meninggo (Moskona)

• Burmeso (Taurap) isolate

• ? Tause isolate (perhaps two languages, Tause and Weirate)

• Sentani family:
  • Demta language
  • Sentani proper: Sentani, Nafri, Tabla (Tanah Merah₂)

Clouse (1997) classified Tause as a Lakes Plain language, but its pronouns are not a good match. Ross included it here partially to spark further investigation.

[edit] Pronouns

These families share no common vocabulary, and are linked only by their pronouns. The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto-families are,

Sentani

I	*də	exclusive we	*me
		inclusive we	*e
thou	*wa	you	?
s/he	*nə	they	?

East Bird's Head

I	*da, *di-	exclusive we	*meme, *me-
		inclusive we	*mimi, *mi-
thou	*ba, *bi-	you	*ia, *i-
s/he	*e, *-	they	*rua, *ri-

Burmeso and Tause correspond in their first and second singular pronouns:

• Burmeso da (de-), ba (be-)
• Tause di, ba

[edit] See also

• Papuan languages

[edit] Reference

• Malcom Ross (2005). "Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages." In: Andrew Pawley, Robert Attenborough, Robin Hide and Jack Golson, eds, Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples, 15-66. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.