The Asmat – Kamrau Bay languages are a family of a dozen

Trans–New Guinea languages Trans–New Guinea (TNG) is an extensive family of Papuan languages spoken on the island of New Guinea and neighboring islands ‒ corresponding to the country Papua New Guinea as well as parts of Indonesia. Trans–New Guinea is the third-la ...

spoken by the Asmat and related peoples in southern

Western New Guinea Western New Guinea, also known as Papua, Indonesian New Guinea, or Indonesian Papua, is the western half of the Melanesian island of New Guinea which is administered by Indonesia. Since the island is alternatively named as Papua, the region ...

. They are believed to be a recent expansion along the south coast, as they are all closely related, and there is little differentiation in their pronouns.

Languages

The languages are: * Kamrau Bay (Sabakor): ** Buruwai (Sabakor) **Kamrau *** North Kamberau (Iria) *** South Kamberau (Asienara) *Asmat–Kamoro ** Kamoro ** Sempan **

Asmat languages Asmat is a Papuan language cluster of West New Guinea. Languages The principal varieties, distinct enough to be considered separate languages, are: * Kamrau Bay (Sabakor): *Casuarina Coast (Kaweinag), the most divergent *North and Central Asmat ...

Proto-language

Phonemes

Usher (2020) reconstructs the consonant inventory as follows: : There is near complementary distribution between *p and *ɸ. *t and *d are marginal, appearing in only a few words. *r does not occur initially. There are no consonant clusters. Vowels are *a *e *i *o *u.

Pronouns

Ross (2005) reconstructs the proto-Asmat–Kamoro pronouns as: : Usher (2020) reconstructs the free proto–Asmat–Kamrau Bay pronouns as: :

Basic vocabulary

Some lexical reconstructions by Usher (2020) are: :

Evolution

Proto-Asmat-Kamoro reflexes (Voorhoeve 2005)Voorhoeve, Clemens L. 2005. Asmat-Kamoro, Awyu-Dumut and Ok: An enquiry into their linguistic relationship. In Pawley, Andrew and Robert Attenborough and Golson, Jack and Hide, Robin (eds.), ''Papuan Pasts: Studies in the Cultural, Linguistic and Biological History of the Papuan-speaking Peoples'', 145-166. Canberra: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University. of proto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG) etyma, as listed in Pawley & Hammarström (2018): * *fiti ‘fingernail’ < pTNG *mb(i,u)t(i,u)C * *isi ‘mosquito’ < *kasin * *ese ‘blood’ < *kenja * *masap or *masip ‘saliva’ < *si(mb,p)atV * *yi ‘urine’ < * ii * *asa ‘excrement’ < *asa * *manaka ‘eye’ < *mun(a,e,i)ka * *sisi ‘tooth’ < *(t,s)i(t,s)i * *yirama ‘night’ < *k(i,u)tama * *tama ‘morning’ < *k(i,u)tama * *na- ‘eat’ < *na-

References

Bibliography

* Drabbe, Piet. 1953. ''Spraakkunst van de Kamoro-taal.'' The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. * Drabbe, Piet. 1963. ''Drie Asmat-dialecten.'' Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, No. 42. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. * * Voorhoeve, C.L. 1965. ''The Flamingo Bay Dialect of the Asmat language.'' Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, No. 46. The Hague. * Voorhoeve, C.L. 1968. "The Central and South New Guinea Phylum: a report on the language situation in south New Guinea." Pacific Linguistics, Series A, No. 16: 1–17. Canberra: The Australian National University. * Voorhoeve, C.L. 1975. ''Languages of Irian Jaya: Checklist, Preliminary Classification, Language Maps, Wordlists.'' Pacific Linguistics, Series B, No. 31. Canberra: The Australian National University. * Voorhoeve, C.L. 1980. ''The Asmat Languages of Irian Jaya.'' Pacific Linguistics, Series B, No. 64. Canberra: The Australian National University. * Wurm, Stephan Adolphe. 1983. ''The Papuan Languages of Oceania.'' Ars Linguistica 7. Tübingen: Narr.

External links

* Timothy Usher & Edgar Suter, New Guinea World
Proto–Asmat – Kamrau Bay
{{DEFAULTSORT:Asmat-Kamoro languages Asmat–Mombum languages