Eastern Trans-Fly languages
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The Eastern Trans-Fly languages are a small independent family of Papuan languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross, that inherits much of the Trans Fly-Bulaka River branch of Stephen Würm's Trans-New Guinea proposal. Wurm himself concluded that some of the Trans Fly-Bulaka River languages were not Trans-New Guinea at all but rather heavily influenced by Trans-New Guinea languages. Ross removed the Eastern Trans-Fly and South-Central Papuan languages from Wurm's family.
Eastern Trans-Fly includes Meriam, located within the national borders of Australia.
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[edit] Classification
Eastern Trans-Fly is obviously valid as a family.
- Eastern Trans-Fly family: Bine, Wipii (Gidra), Gizra, Meriam (in Torres Strait, Australia)
[edit] Pronouns
The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto-Eastern Trans-Fly are,
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I *ka exclusive we *ki inclusive we *mi thou *ma you *we he *tabV they *tepi
There's a possibility of a connection here to Trans-New Guinea. If the inclusive pronoun is historically a second-person form, then there would appear to be i-ablaut for the plural: *ka~ki, **ma~mi, **tapa~tapi. This is similar to the ablaut reconstructed for TNG (*na~ni, *ga~gi). Although the pronouns themselves are dissimilar, ablaut is not likely to be borrowed.
[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.
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