The Lakes Plain languages are 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 ...

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 ...

, spoken in the Lakes Plain of Indonesian

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torres ...

. They are notable for being heavily tonal and for their lack of

nasal consonants In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast major ...

Classification

The Lakes Plain languages were tentatively grouped by

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 ...

with the

Tor languages Tor, TOR or ToR may refer to: Places * Tor, Pallars, a village in Spain * Tor, former name of Sloviansk, Ukraine, a city * Mount Tor, Tasmania, Australia, an extinct volcano * Tor Bay, Devon, England * Tor River, Western New Guinea, Indonesia Sc ...

in his Trans–New Guinea proposal. Clouse (1997) rejected this connection to the Tor languages and grouped them with the Geelvink Bay languages. Malcolm Ross classifies the languages as an independent family, a position confirmed by Timothy Usher. Because of the apparent phonological similarities and sharing of stable basic words such as ‘louse’, William A. Foley speculates the potential likelihood of a distant relationship shared between the Skou and Lakes Plain families, but no formal proposals linking the two families have been made due to insufficient evidence. Additionally according to Foley, based on some lexical and phonological similarities, the

Keuw language Keuw (Keu, Kehu) is an unclassified language of New Guinea. Keuw is spoken in a swampy lowland region along the Poronai River in Keuw village (kampung) of Wapoga District, Nabire Regency, Papua province, Indonesia. According to oral folklore, ...

(currently unclassified) may also possibly share a deep relationship with the Lakes Plain languages. Like the East Cenderawasih Bay, Trans-New Guinea, and South Bougainville language families, Lakes Plain languages have ergative case marking systems. In contrast, most languages of northern

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

have accusative case marking systems.

Clouse (1997)

Clouse (1997, p. 155) internally classifies the Lakes Plain family as: ;Lakes Plain superstock *Rasawa stock **Rasawa-Saponi family: Rasawa,

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 ...

** Awera * Tariku stock **Tause family: Tause, Weirate, Deirate **West Tariku family ***Fayu: Fayu, Sehudate ***Kirikiri:

Kirikiri Kirikiri may refer to: * Kirikiri language, a Lakes Plain language * Kirikiri Maximum Security Prison, a Nigerian maximum security prison * Kirikiri Station is a JR East railway station in Ōtsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, Japan. Lines Kirikiri St ...

Faia Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA) is a postnominal title or membership, designating an individual who has been named a fellow of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Fellowship is bestowed by the institute on AIA-memb ...

**Central Tariku family *** Edopi ***Turu: Iau, Foi, Turu **East Tariku family: Doutai, Waritai, Kai, Biritai, Obokuitai, Eritai, Sikaritai, Kwerisa, Papasena ** Duvle **East Lakes Plain family: Foau (Abawiri), Taworta, Dabra Clouse concludes that the

East Geelvink Bay languages The East Geelvink Bay or East Cenderawasih languages are a language family of a dozen Papuan languages along the eastern coast of Geelvink Bay in Indonesian Papua, which is also known as Sarera Bay or Cenderawasih. Languages The East Geelvink ...

are the most closely related to the Lakes Plain languages, forming a wider ''Geelvink Bay phylum'' with it.

Usher (2018)

The Lakes Plain languages as classified by Usher are as follows: Not included in the above classification, Kaiy, Kwerisa, Doutai and Waritai are presumably also Central Lakes Plain; the same for Obokuitai and Biritai. Clouse had placed them closest to Papasena and to Eritai, respectively, and they might form dialect clusters with those languages. There are particular questions about the inclusion of Saponi, Kehu and Tause.

Pronouns

The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto-Tariku are, : The corresponding "I" and "thou" pronouns are proto–East Lake Plain ''*a, *do,'' Awera ''yai, nai'' (the latter from ''*dai;'' compare also ''e'' "we"), and Rasawa ''e-, de-.'' Saponi shares no pronouns with the Lakes Plain family; indeed its pronouns ''mamire'' "I, we" and ''ba'' "thou" are remenincent of proto–East Bird's Head ''*meme'' "we" and ''*ba'' "thou". However, Saponi shares half its basic lexical vocabulary with Rasawa, and Ross left it in the Lakes Plain family pending further investigation. The Tause language was also previously grouped amongst the Tariku group of Lakes Plain languages. Ross transferred it to the

East Bird's Head – Sentani languages The East Bird's Head – Sentani languages form a family of Papuan languages 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 ...

on the basis of pronoun similarities in hopes that this would promote further research. Below are pronouns in selected Lakes Plain languages as given by Foley (2018): :

Phonology

Lakes Plain languages have remarkably small phonemic inventories, rivaling even those of

Polynesian languages The Polynesian languages form a genealogical group of languages, itself part of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family. There are 38 Polynesian languages, representing 7 percent of the 522 Oceanic languages, and 3 percent of the Austro ...

Consonants

Clouse and Clouse (1993) note many of the Lakes Plain languages share several unusual phonological features. While Papuan languages typically have at least two nasal phonemes, this is not the case for Lakes Plain languages. Although phonetic nasals do exist in most Lakes Plain languages, they do not contrast with the corresponding voiced stops. Doutai, Sikaritai, Obokuitai and Abawiri (Foau) lack even phonetic nasals. Additionally, no Lakes Plain language has a liquid phoneme. Clouse (1997) reconstructs a typologically remarkable consonant inventory for the ancestor of Lakes Plain, consisting entirely of only five stops: This results in Lakes Plain languages having high functional load, meaning that there are many words with small distinctions in sounds.

Vowels

Many of the languages have very high constricted (fricativised) vowels; in Doutai and Kirikiri these constitute separate phonemes from /i/ and /u/. The fricativised vowels seem to have developed from deletion of a following consonant. Clouse (1997) reconstructs a five-vowel system for proto-Lakes Plain, not unlike Japanese or Spanish:

Tone

Lakes Plain languages are all tonal. (The

Skou languages The Sko or Skou languages are a small language family spoken by about 7000 people, mainly along the Vanimo coast of Sandaun Province in Papua New Guinea, with a few being inland from this area and at least one just across the border in the Indone ...

and Kainantu-Goroka languages are other

possessing contrastive tone.) Clouse and Clouse (1993) reconstruct tone (high level "H" and low level "L") in proto-Lakes Plain. Duvle and Sikaritai have only two tones, high and low, but all other Lakes Plain languages have more than two tones. All West Tariku languages have both rising and falling tones. Abawiri (Foau) has phonological high and low tones as well as a derived mid tone. Iau is the most tonally complex Lakes Plain language. Unlike other Lakes Plain languages which can be disyllabic or trisyllabic, Iau word structure is predominantly monosyllabic. Iau has eight phonemic tones, transcribed by Bateman using numerical Chao tones (usually used with East Asian languages): high (44), mid (33), high-rising (45), low-rising (23), high-to-low-falling (42), high-to-mid-falling (43), mid-to-low-falling (32), and falling-rising (423). Four of the eight Iau tones occur on short vowels, while the remaining four occur on long vowels and often correspond to disyllabic words in other Lakes Plain languages. (See Iau language#Tone.)

Morphology

Unlike most Papuan languages to the east, words in Lakes Plain languages do not have

gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most culture ...

. Bauzi, an East Geelvink Bay language spoken to the northwest of the Lakes Plain family, also does not have gender. Most Lakes Plain languages are primarily analytic and isolating, with little morphology. However, there is some variation in the family. Iau is almost exclusively analytic and isolating, while Abawiri has extensive verbal morphology.

Basic vocabulary

Basic vocabulary of the Lakes Plain languages ( Rasawa,

, Iau, Duvle, Obokuitai, Diebroud) listed in Foley (2018): :

Proto-language

Clouse (1997) reconstructs basic vocabulary for proto-Lakes Plain and other lower branches. ;Lakes Plain reconstructions by Clouse (1997) :

References

* * *

External links

Lakes Plain languages database at TransNewGuinea.org
{{language families Language families Papuan languages Languages of western New Guinea Tonal languages