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Arai Languages
The Left May or Arai languages are a small language family of half a dozen closely related but not mutually intelligible languages in the centre of New Guinea, in the watershed of the Left May River. There are only about 2,000 speakers in all. Foley (2018) classifies them separately as an independent language family, while Usher (2020) links them with the Amto–Musan languages. The Left May languages are spoken at the extreme western end of East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. Ama is the best documented Left May language. Languages The languages are: : Iteri (Rocky Peak), Nakwi, Ama, Nimo, Owiniga, and (possibly) Bo. Classification Foley (2018) provides the following classification. ;Left May family *western branch: Ama; Nimo; Iteri, Bo *eastern branch: Owiniga Iteri and Bo are closely related to each other. Usher (2020) does not recognize a primary western branch, and distinguishes more languages. ; Arai River family * Ama *Nimo–Nakwi ** Nakwi ** Nimo * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Left May River
The Left May or Arai River is a river in northern Papua New Guinea. Left May Riverin Geonames.org (cc-by) post updated 2011-07-09; database downloaded 2015-06-22 See also *List of rivers of Papua New Guinea *Left May languages The Left May or Arai languages are a small language family of half a dozen closely related but not mutually intelligible languages in the centre of New Guinea, in the watershed of the Left May River. There are only about 2,000 speakers in all. F ... References Rivers of Papua New Guinea {{PapuaNewGuinea-river-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malcolm Ross (linguist)
Malcolm David Ross (born 1942) is an Australian linguist. He is the emeritus professor of linguistics at the Australian National University. Ross is best known among linguists for his work on Austronesian and Papuan languages, historical linguistics, and language contact (especially metatypy). He was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1996. Career Ross served as the Principal of Goroka Teachers College in Papua New Guinea from 1980 to 1982, during which time he self-statedly become interested in local languages, and began to collect data on them. In 1986, he received his PhD from the ANU under the supervision of Stephen Wurm, Bert Voorhoeve and Darrell Tryon. His dissertation was on the genealogy of the Oceanic languages of western Melanesia, and contained an early reconstruction of Proto Oceanic. Malcolm Ross introduced the concept of a linkage, a group of languages that evolves via dialect differentiation rather than by tree-like splits. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Papuan Languages
The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian and non-Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands, by around 4 million people. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply a genetic relationship. The concept of Papuan (non-Austronesian) speaking Melanesians as distinct from Austronesian-speaking Melanesians was first suggested and named by Sidney Herbert Ray in 1892. New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse region in the world. Besides the Austronesian languages, there are some (arguably) 800 languages divided into perhaps sixty small language families, with unclear relationships to each other or to any other languages, plus many language isolates. The majority of the Papuan languages are spoken on the island of New Guinea, with a number spoken in the Bismarck Archipelago, Bougainville Island and the Solomon Islands to the east, and in Halmahera, Timor and the A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SIL International
SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics) is an evangelical Christian non-profit organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy, translate the Christian Bible into local languages, and aid minority language development. Based on its language documentation work, SIL publishes a database, ''Ethnologue'', of its research into the world's languages, and develops and publishes software programs for language documentation, such as FieldWorks Language Explorer (FLEx) and Lexique Pro. Its main offices in the United States are located at the International Linguistics Center in Dallas, Texas. History William Cameron Townsend, a Presbyterian minister, founded the organization in 1934, after undertaking a Christian mission with the Disciples of Christ among the Kaqchikel Maya people in Guatemala in the early 1930s.George Thomas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taiap Language
Tayap (also spelled Taiap; called Gapun in earlier literature, after the name of the village in which it is spoken) is an endangered language, endangered Papuan language spoken by fewer than 50 people in Gapun village of Marienberg Rural LLG in East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea (, located just to the south of the Sepik River mouth near the coast). It is being replaced by the national language and lingua franca Tok Pisin. History The first European to describe Tayap was , a German missionary-linguist, in 1937. Höltker spent three hours in the village and collected a word list of 125 words, which he published in 1938. He wrote that “it will be awhile before any other researcher ‘stumbles across’ Gapun, if only because of the small chances of worthwhile academic yields in this tiny village community, and also because of the inconvenient and arduous route leading to this linguistic island”. Höltker's list was all that was known about Tayap in literature until the early ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ergative Case
In grammar, the ergative case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that identifies the noun as the agent of a transitive verb in ergative–absolutive languages. Characteristics In such languages, the ergative case is typically marked (most salient), while the absolutive case is unmarked. Recent work in case theory has vigorously supported the idea that the ergative case identifies the agent (the intentful performer of an action) of a verb (Woolford 2004). In Kalaallisut (Greenlandic) for example, the ergative case is used to mark subjects of transitive verbs and possessors of nouns. This syncretism with the genitive is commonly referred to as the ''relative'' case. Nez Perce has a three-way nominal case system with both ergative (''-nim'') and accusative (''-ne'') plus an absolute (unmarked) case for intransitive subjects: ''hipáayna qíiwn'' ‘the old man arrived’; ''hipáayna wewúkiye'' ‘the elk arrived’; ''wewúkiyene péexne qíiwnim'' ‘the old man saw an e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ramu
The Ramu River is a major river in northern Papua New Guinea. The headwaters of the river are formed in the Kratke Range from where it then travels about northwest to the Bismarck Sea. Along the Ramu's course, it receives numerous tributaries from the Bismarck Range to the south and the Finisterre and Adelbert. History For many millennia, people have lived along the river, and the river has formed the basis for food, transport, and culture. German exploration The area encompassed by the Ramu was part of Kaiser-Wilhelmsland when Germany established German New Guinea in 1884. The Germans were quick to explore their territory, and the mouth of the Ramu was discovered in 1886 by Vice-Admiral Freiherr von Schleinitz after returning to Finschhafen from an expedition to the nearby Sepik.Souter (1963) p. 73 Schleinitz called the Ramu, ''Ottilien'' after his ship the ''Ottilie''. The course of the river was first discovered 10 years later in 1896 after Dr Carl Lauterbach, a bot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sepik
The Sepik () is the longest river on the island of New Guinea, and the second largest in Oceania by discharge volume after the Fly River. The majority of the river flows through the Papua New Guinea (PNG) provinces of Sandaun (formerly West Sepik) and East Sepik, with a small section flowing through the Indonesian province of Papua. The Sepik has a large catchment area, and landforms that include swamplands, tropical rainforests and mountains. Biologically, the river system is often said to be possibly the largest uncontaminated freshwater wetland system in the Asia-Pacific region. But, in fact, numerous fish and plant species have been introduced into the Sepik since the mid-20th century. Name In 1884, Germany asserted control over the northeast quadrant of the island of New Guinea, which became part of the German colonial empire. The colony was initially managed by the Deutsche Neuguinea-Kompagnie or German New Guinea Company, a commercial enterprise that christened the ter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pyu Language (Papua New Guinea)
Pyu is a language isolate spoken in Papua New Guinea. As of 2000, the language had about 100 speakers. It is spoken in Biake No. 2 village () of Biake ward, Green River Rural LLG in Sandaun Province. Classification Timothy Usher links the Pyu language to its neighbors, the Left May languages and the Amto–Musan languages, in as Arai–Samaia stock. An automated computational analysis (ASJP The Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) is a collaborative project applying computational approaches to comparative linguistics using a database of word lists. The database is open access and consists of 40-item basic-vocabulary lists ... 4) by Müller et al. (2013)Müller, André, Viveka Velupillai, Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Eric W. Holman, Sebastian Sauppe, Pamela Brown, Harald Hammarström, Oleg Belyaev, Johann-Mattis List, Dik Bakker, Dmitri Egorov, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Matthew S. Dryer, Evgenia Korovina, David Beck, Helen Geyer, Pattie Epps, Anthony G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fas Languages
The Fas languages are a small language family of Papua New Guinea. Classification Despite the fact that the family consists of just two closely related languages, Baibai and Fas (40% cognate), there has been considerable confusion over its membership, apparently due to a misalignment in the publication (Loving & Bass 1964) of the data used for the initial classification. (See Baron 1983.) The initial name of the family was Fas, but Laycock (1975) changed it to Baibai when he mistakenly moved the Fas language to the Kwomtari family, an error perpetuated in much of the literature. Baibai (Baibai and Biaka) is therefore not a synonym for the Fas family (Baibai and Fas). See Kwomtari–Fas languages for details. A few regular sound correspondences are apparent (Baron 1983:21 ''ff):'' The odd change from *nd to /k/ (via *hr) has also occurred in the Bewani languages and some of the Vanimo languages. * metathesis still operates in Fas. and metathesis has been reconstructed. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kwomtari Languages
The Senu River languages are a small language family spoken in the Senu River watershed of Papua New Guinea. They consist at least of the Kwomtari languages, Kwomtari and Nai, with several additional languages more distantly related to them. Classification The family consists of at least the two relatively closely related languages Kwomtari and Nai. Baron (1983) Baron adds the highly divergent language Guriaso: *Kwomtari stock ** Guriaso **Kwomtari–Nai family (Nuclear Kwomtari) *** Kwomtari *** Nai ( Biaka) Guriaso shares a small number of cognates with Kwomtari–Nai. Baron (1983) considers the evidence to be convincing when a correspondence between and (from ) is established: * Compare Biaka . ** Metathesis of /p/ and /t/. Usher (2020) Usher further classifies Yale (Nagatman) with Guriaso, and adds Busa, all under the name "Senu River". ;Senu River (Kwomtari–Busa) * Kwomtari– Nai * Guriaso–Yale *Odiai ( Busa) Confusion from Laycock There has been confusi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
