The Pahoturi languages are a small
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 ...
spoken around the Pahoturi (
Paho River). This family includes six language varieties including
Agöb (Dabu), Em, Ende, Kawam,
Idi, and Taeme, which are spoken in the
Pahoturi River
The Pahoturi, or Paho River, is a river in southwestern Papua New Guinea. Pahoturi Riverin Geonames.org (cc-by) post updated 2011-07-09; database downloaded 2015-06-22
See also
*List of rivers of Papua New Guinea
*Pahoturi languages
The Pahotu ...
area south of the
Fly River
The Fly River is the third longest river in the island of New Guinea, after the Sepik River and Mamberamo River, with a total length of and the largest by volume of discharge in Oceania, the largest in the world without a single dam in its catc ...
, just west of the
Eastern Trans-Fly languages
The Eastern Trans-Fly (or Oriomo Plateau) languages are a small independent family of Papuan languages spoken in the Oriomo Plateau
The Oriomo Plateau is a plateau in Western Province, Papua New Guinea.Oriomo Plateau
The Oriomo Plateau i ...
. Ross (2005) tentatively includes them in the proposed
Trans-Fly – Bulaka River family.
Some Pahoturi River speakers were originally hunter-gatherers, but had recently shifted to becoming gardeners.
Classification
Wurm (1975) and Ross (2005) suggest that the Pahoturi languages may be related to the
Tabo (Waia) language just north of the Fly delta. However, they present no evidence, and the pronouns do not match.
Evans (2018) classifies the Pahoturi River languages as an independent language family.
Languages
The six varieties have traditionally been grouped into the following two language groups:
#
Agöb (Dabu), Em, Ende, and Kawam
#
Idi and Taeme
Preliminary work on the language family suggests that these varieties form a
dialect chain
A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varie ...
.
Pahoturi River languages and respective demographic information listed by Evans (2018) are provided below.
:
Phonemes
Usher (2020) reconstructs the consonant inventory as follows:
[New Guinea World, Paho River]
/ref>
:
Pronouns
The pronouns Ross reconstructs for the family are:
Proto-Pahoturi
:
Lindsey lists the following pronouns for each of the language varieties in the family.
References
External links
* Timothy Usher, New Guinea World
Paho River
{{language families
Trans-Fly languages
Languages of Western Province (Papua New Guinea)