Kwomtari-Baibai languages

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The Kwomtari-Baibai languages are a hypothetical language family of five languages spoken by some 4000 people in the north of Papua New Guinea, near the border with Indonesia.

[edit] Classification

The Kwomtari and Baibai families were first linked by Loving & Bass (1964). Laycock later added the Pyu language isolate. However, according to Timothy Usher at the Rosetta Project, there is nothing to suggest that Kwomtari, Baibai, and Pyu are actually related, except that the Kwomtari and Baibari families use the same kinship terms.

A severe problem with accounts of the Kwomtari-Baibai hypothesis is that few Papuanists (linguists who study Papuan languages) have encountered the languages first-hand, or have even seen the field notes of the linguists who have. Rather they rely on secondary sources which, according to Usher, perpetuate an early copy error, placing the Baibai language Fas in the Kwomtari family and the Kwomtari language Nai in the Baibai family. This makes the two families look much closer than they actually are, for they now appear to have obvious cognates.

Malcolm Ross linked the Kwomtari-Baibai languages (excluding Pyu) to the small Left May (Arai) family in a Left May-Kwomtari proposal, which is based on common pronouns. However, the link appears less straightforward once the Usher's correction in made. See Left May-Kwomtari for details.

Kwomtari-Baibai (Loving & Bass 1964, Laycock 1973)