Huon Gulf languages

The Huon Gulf languages are Western Oceanic languages spoken primarily in Morobe Province of Papua New Guinea. They may form a group of the North New Guinea languages, perhaps within the Ngero–Vitiaz branch of that family.^{[citation needed]}

Unusually for Oceanic languages, two North Huon Gulf languages, Bukawa and Yabem, are tonal. The only other tonal Oceanic languages are found in New Caledonia.^[1]

Classification

According to Lynch, Ross, & Crowley (2002), the structure of the family is as follows:^[2]

• North Huon Gulf linkage
• Markham family
• South Huon Gulf linkage
• Numbami

Proto-Huon Gulf

Proto-Huon Gulf was reconstructed by Malcolm Ross in 1988 in Proto-Oceanic and the Austronesian Languages of Western Melanesia. It is reconstructed on the basis of shared phonological, morphosyntactic and lexicosemantic innovations relative to Proto-Oceanic, such as the pervasive lenition of Proto-Oceanic *p to *v, the acquisition of a final *-c in some words, the idiosyncratic change of Proto-Oceanic *boRok 'pig' to Proto-Huon Gulf *boR, and the loss of all verb-deriving prefixes such as *pa- 'causative', *paRi- 'reciprocal', *ma- 'stative', and *ta- 'intransitive'.

Vowels

The vowels of Proto-Huon Gulf, according to Ross, are:

Consonants

The consonants of Proto-Huon Gulf, according to Ross, are:

Consonants

		Labiovelar	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular
Stop	voiced		*b	*d	*ɟ	*g
	voiceless		*p	*t	*c	*k
Nasal		*mʷ	*m	*n	*ɲ	*ŋ
Fricative		*v		*s		*ɣ
Approximant		*w		*l, *r	*j		*ʀ

References

• Ross, Malcolm (1988). Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian languages of western Melanesia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.

This page was last edited on 2 September 2023, at 20:09