The East Bird's Head – Sentani languages form a
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 ...
proposed by
Malcolm Ross which combines the
East Bird's Head and
Sentani families along with the
Burmeso language isolate. Sentani had been a branch of
Stephen Wurm's proposal for
Trans–New Guinea. It has lexical similarities with the
Asmat–Kamoro languages, but Ross does not believe these demonstrate a genealogical relationship.
Ross also included the unclassified language
Tause, but as a stimulus for investigation rather than as a serious proposal.
The East Bird's Head – Sentani languages, together with the
West Papuan languages and the
Yawa isolate, form part of a tentative proposal for an
Extended West Papuan family. They are distinguished from the West Papuan family in having forms like ''ba'' or ''wa'' for the second-person singular ("thou")
pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.
Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not c ...
.
Classification
East Bird's Head – Sentani unifies two groups that Wurm placed at the family level, and one or two isolates.
Tause is best considered unclassified. Clouse (1997) classified it as a
Lakes Plain language, but its pronouns are not a good match. Ross included it here partially to spark further investigation.
Saponi
The Saponi or Sappony are a Native American tribe historically based in the Piedmont of North Carolina and Virginia.Raymond D. DeMaillie, "Tutelo and Neighboring Groups," pages 286–87. They spoke a Siouan language, related to the languages of ...
shares half of its basic lexical vocabulary with
Rasawa, but its pronouns instead resemble those of East Bird's Head.
Pronouns
These families share no common vocabulary, and are linked only by their pronouns. The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto-families are,
;Sentani
:
;East Bird's Head
:
Burmeso and Tause correspond in their first and second singular pronouns:
*Burmeso ''da (de-), ba (be-)''
*Tause ''di, ba''
Saponi corresponds in first person and second singular:
*Saponi ''mamire'' "I, we", ''ba'' "thou".
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:East Bird's Head - Sentani languages
Languages of western New Guinea
Proposed language families
West Papuan languages