The Piawi languages are a small
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 ...
spoken in the
Schraeder Range
Schrader Range is a mountain range in central Papua New Guinea. It is a part of the Bismarck Range
The Bismarck Range is a mountain range in the Western Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. The range is named after the German Chancellor, ...
of the Madang Highlands of Papua New Guinea that had been part of
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 ...
's
Trans–New Guinea proposal. They are now connected to the
Arafundi and
Madang languages
The Madang or Madang–Adelbert Range languages are a language family of Papua New Guinea. They were classified as a branch of Trans–New Guinea by Stephen Wurm, followed by Malcolm Ross. William A. Foley concurs that it is "highly likely" t ...
.
The name "Piawi" is an acronym of three language varieties: Pinai (Pinaye), Aramo/Aramaue (Hagahai) and Wiyaw (Harway/Waibuk). Pinai and Hagahai are often classified as a single language.
Classification
Piawi consists of only two languages:
* Piawi family:
Pinai-Hagahai,
Haruai (Waibuk)
Davies and Comrie (1985)
noted some pronominal similarities with the
Engan languages
The Engan, or more precisely Enga – Southern Highland , languages are a small family of Papuan languages of the highlands of Papua New Guinea. The two branches of the family are rather distantly related, but were connected by Franklin and Voorh ...
in
Trans–New Guinea, which Ross took into consideration, but no lexical similarities. Comrie believes the family is as isolate.
William A. Foley suggested that Piawi and
Arafundi may be related (Comrie 1992), and according to Ross a connection with Arafundi or
Ramu appears more promising than Engan. Timothy Usher confirms the link to Arafundi.
Pronouns
Below is a comparison of proto-Piawi, proto-Ramu, Arafundi, and proto-North Engan pronouns, per Ross. Initial nasals are ubiquitous, and indeed are very common throughout New Guinea, so they are in themselves not good evidence of a relationship.
Both Engan and Piawi have a dual suffix ''*li''.
Vocabulary comparison
The following basic vocabulary words are from Davies & Comrie (1985),
[Davies, J. and Comrie, B.]
A linguistic survey of the Upper Yuat
. In Adams, K., Lauck, L., Miedema, J., Welling, F., Stokhof, W., Flassy, D., Oguri, H., Collier, K., Gregerson, K., Phinnemore, T., Scorza, D., Davies, J., Comrie, B. and Abbott, S. editors, ''Papers in New Guinea Linguistics'' No. 22. A-63:275-312. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1985. as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database. The Haruai data is from Tonson (1976).
[Tonson, J. 1976. The languages in the Schraeder ranges. Workpapers in Papua New Guinea Languages 16. Ukarumpa: Summer Institute of Linguistics. Pp. 91-112.]
See also
*
Upper Yuat languages
The Upper Yuat languages consist of two small language families, namely Arafundi and Piawi, spoken in the region of the upper Yuat River of New Guinea. The connection was first suggested by William A. Foley and confirmed by Timothy Usher, who ...
References
External links
Piawi languages database at TransNewGuinea.org
{{language families
Upper Yuat languages
Languages of Madang Province