The Foja Range languages, or Tor–Kwerba in more limited scope, 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 ...
of about two dozen
Papuan languages. They are named after the
Foja Mountains
The Foja Mountains (Foja Range, Foya Mountains) ( id, Pegunungan Foja) are located just north of the Mamberamo river basin in Papua, Indonesia. The mountains rise to , and have 3,000 square kilometers of old growth tropical rainforest in the in ...
of
western New Guinea
Western New Guinea, also known as Papua, Indonesian New Guinea, or Indonesian Papua, is the western half of the Melanesian island of New Guinea which is administered by Indonesia. Since the island is alternatively named as Papua, the region ...
.
Languages
All the languages 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 1975
Trans–New Guinea proposal, but he did not recognize them as a unit, retaining Kwerba within Capell's 1962
Dani–Kwerba proposal, for example. Foley (2018) classifies the Orya–Tor and Kwerbic languages together, as Tor–Kwerba.
Usher (2020) adds Nimboran and Mawes, naming the expanded family Foja Range, after the
Foja mountain range that passes through all four branches of the family.
New Guinea World
/ref>
* Orya–Tor
* Nimboran
*'' Mawes''
* West Foja Range (Greater Kwerbic)
** Isirawa
** Masep
** Kapauri–Sause
**Apauwar–Kwerba (Kwerbic)
*** Apauwar Coast
*** Kwerba
Typological overview
Even though grammatical gender
In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all noun ...
is present in Tor-Kwerba languages, there is no overt gender marking on nouns.
Pronouns
Reconstructed proto-Tor-Kwerba independent pronouns are:
Cognates
Reconstructed proto-Tor-Kwerba words that are widely distributed throughout the family (Foley 2018):
References
External links
Tor-Kwerba languages database at TransNewGuinea.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Foja Range languages
Northwest Papuan languages
Language families