The Mairasi languages, also known as Etna Bay are a small independent
family
Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...
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 geogr ...
in the classifications of
Malcolm Ross and Timothy Usher, that had been part of
Stephen Wurm's
Trans–New Guinea proposal. They are named after
Etna Bay
Etna Bay ( id, Teluk Etna, nl, Etna-baai) is a bay in eastern Kaimana Regency, situated in the southeastern corner of West Papua province, Indonesia. Teluk Etnaat GeoNames.Org (cc-by) post updated 2012-01-17; database downloaded on 2015-11-27 T ...
, located in the southeastern corner of
West Papua province, in
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
.
Languages
The Mairasi languages are clearly related to each other.
* Mairasi family:
Semimi,
Mer,
Mairasi,
Northeastern Mairasi
Classification
Mairasi cannot be linked to other families by its pronouns. However, Voorhoeve (1975) links it to the
Sumeri (Tanah Merah) language, either a language isolate or an independent branch of the
Trans–New Guinea family.
Pawley and Hammarström (2018) do not consider there to be sufficient evidence for the Mairasi languages to be classified as part of
Trans-New Guinea, though they do note the following lexical resemblance between Mairasi, Semimi, and
proto-Trans-New Guinea.
:
Mairasi ''ooro'' and
Semimi ''okoranda'' ‘leg’ <
proto-Trans-New Guinea *k(a,o)nd(a,o)C ‘leg’
Phonemes
Usher (2020) reconstructs the consonant inventory as follows:
[New Guinea World, Etna Bay]
/ref>
:
Vowels are *a *e *i *o *u. *ns is uncommon.
Pronouns
Usher (2020) reconstructs the free and possessive pronouns as:[
:
]
Basic vocabulary
Some lexical reconstructions by Usher (2020) are:[
:
]
Cognates
Basic vocabulary of Mairasi languages ( Mairasi, Mer, Semimi) with cognate matches, from Peckham (1991a,b), quoted in Foley (2018):Swadesh list
The Swadesh list ("Swadesh" is pronounced ) is a classic compilation of tentatively universal concepts for the purposes of lexicostatistics. Translations of the Swadesh list into a set of languages allow researchers to quantify the interrelatednes ...
include the following.[
:
]
Vocabulary comparison
The following basic vocabulary words are from Voorhoeve (1975), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:
See also
*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 geogr ...
Further reading
*Peckham, Lloyd. 1982. ''Mairasi verb morphology. Workpapers in Indonesian Linguistics 1: 75–96.
*Peckham, Lloyd. 1991. ''Etna Bay survey report: Irian Jaya Bird’s Neck languages. ''Workpapers in Indonesian Languages and Cultures'' 10: 147–185.
*Peckham, Nancy, Adriana Waryengsi, Esther Fov and Mariana Oniw. 1991. ''Farir Mairas na’atuei = Perbendaharaan kata bahasa Mairasi = Mairasi vocabulary''. SIL.
Notes
References
External links
Mairasi languages database at TransNewGuinea.org
* Timothy Usher, New Guinea World
Proto–Etna Bay
{{language families
New Guinea
Papuan languages
Language families