The Kaure–Kosare or Nawa River 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 ...

spoken along the

Nawa River Nawa may refer to: * Nawa, Rajasthan, a city and Tehsil in Nagaur district in the Indian State of Rajasthan * Nawa District, a district in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan * Nawa, Afghanistan, a town in the central part of Nawa District, in Ghazni Pr ...

in West Papua, near the northern border with Papua New Guinea. The languages are Kaure and Kosare.

Classification

Kaure and Kosare (Kosadle) are clearly related. There is a history of classifying them with the Kapori–Sause languages. However, Kapori and Sause show no particular connection to the Kaure languages, and may be closer to Kwerba.New Guinea World, Nawa River
/ref> Foley (2018) considers a connection with Trans-New Guinea to be promising, but tentatively leaves Kaure-Kosare out as an independent language family pending further evidence.

Proto-language

Phonemes

Usher (2020) reconstructs the consonant inventory as follows: : Coda consonants are stop *C (or more precisely *P) and nasal *N. : Diphthongs are *ɛi, *ɛu, *ai *au.

Pronouns

Usher (2020) reconstructs the pronouns as: :

Basic vocabulary

Some lexical reconstructions by Usher (2020) are: :

Vocabulary comparison

The following basic vocabulary words are from Voorhoeve (1971, 1975) and other sources, as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database: :

References

External links

Kaure languages database at TransNewGuinea.org
* Timothy Usher, New Guinea World
Proto–Nawa River
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kaure-Kapori languages Languages of Indonesia Language families Papuan languages