East Bird's Head – Sentani languages

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 language isolate. Sentani had been a branch of Stephen Wurm's proposal for Trans–New Guinea. It has lexical similarities with the Asmat–Kamoro languages, but Ross does not believe these demonstrate a genealogical relationship.

Ross also included the unclassified language Tause, but as a stimulus for investigation rather than as a serious proposal.

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.

Classification

East Bird's Head – Sentani unifies two groups that Wurm placed at the family level, and one or two isolates.

Tause is best considered unclassified. Clouse (1997) classified it as a Lakes Plain language, but its pronouns are not a good match. Ross included it here partially to spark further investigation. Saponi shares half of its basic lexical vocabulary with Rasawa, but its pronouns instead resemble those of East Bird's Head.

Pronouns

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

Sentani

	Number
Person	Singular	Plural
		exclusive	inclusive
1st	*də	*me	*e
2nd	*wa	?
3rd	*nə	?

East Bird's Head

	Number
Person	Singular	Plural
		exclusive	inclusive
1st	*da, *di-	*meme, *me-	*mimi, *mi-
2nd	*ba, *bi-	*ia, *i-
3rd	*e, *-	*rua, *ri-

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

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

Saponi corresponds in first person and second singular:

• Saponi mamire "I, we", ba "thou".

References

This page was last edited on 5 January 2024, at 18:06