The Teberan languages are a well established
family
Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...
of
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 geogra ...
that
Stephen Wurm
Stephen Adolphe Wurm ( hu, Wurm István Adolf, ; 19 August 1922 – 24 October 2001) was a Hungarian-born Australian linguist.
Early life
Wurm was born in Budapest, the second child to the German-speaking Adolphe Wurm and the Hungarian-sp ...
(1975) grouped with the
Pawaia language
Pawaia, also known as ''Sira, Tudahwe, Yasa'', is a Papuan language that forms a tentative independent branch of the Trans–New Guinea family in the classification of Malcolm Ross (2005).
Distribution
Pawaia is spoken in:
* Chimbu Province: ...
as a branch of the
Trans–New Guinea phylum.
There are two Teberan languages,
Dadibi and
Folopa (Podopa). They are spoken in
Southern Highlands Province
Southern Highlands is a province in Papua New Guinea. Its provincial capital is the town of Mendi. According to Papua New Guinea's national 2011 census, the total population of Southern Highlands (after the separation of Hela Province) is 515,511 ...
and in adjoining provinces.
Classification
Malcolm Ross (2005) tentatively retains both Teberan and Pawaia within TNG, but sees no other connection between them. Noting insufficient evidence, Pawley and Hammarström (2018) tentatively leave Teberan as unclassified rather than as part of Trans-New Guinea.
Pawley and Hammarström (2018) do not consider there to be sufficient evidence for Teberan to be classified as part of
Trans-New Guinea, though they do note the following lexical resemblances between the Teberan languages and
proto-Trans-New Guinea.
:
*''ami'' ‘breast’ < *amu
Folopa:
*''kabu'' ‘stone’ < *ka(mb,m)u
V*''kolemane'' ‘star’ < *kala(a,i)m ‘moon’
*''kile'' ‘eye’ < *(ŋg,k)iti
According to
Dryer (2022), based on a preliminary quantitative analysis of data from the
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 ...
database, Teberan is likely to be a subgroup of Trans–New Guinea.
Proto-language
Some lexical reconstructions by Usher (2020) are:
[Timothy Usher, New Guinea World]
Proto–Dadibi–Folopa
/ref>
:
Vocabulary comparison
The following basic vocabulary words are from Macdonald (1973), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:
References
*
External links
* Timothy Usher, New Guinea World
Proto–Dadibi–Folopa
{{language families
Languages of Papua New Guinea
Teberan–Pawaian languages