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

[edit] Classification

  • ? 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

[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.