The Sepik or Sepik River languages are a

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

of some 50

Papuan languages The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands in Indonesia, Solomon Islands, and East Timor. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply ...

spoken in the Sepik river basin of northern

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

, proposed by

Donald Laycock Donald Laycock (1936–1988) was an Australian linguist and anthropologist. He is best remembered for his work on the languages of Papua New Guinea. Biography He was a graduate of University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia and later ...

in 1965 in a somewhat more limited form than presented here. They tend to have simple phonologies, with few consonants or vowels and usually no tones. The best-studied Sepik language is Iatmul. The most populous are Iatmul's fellow

Ndu languages The Ndu languages are the best known family of the Sepik languages of East Sepik Province in northern Papua New Guinea. ''Ndu'' is the word for 'man' in the languages that make up this group. The languages were first identified as a related famil ...

Abelam and Boiken, with about 35,000 speakers each. The Sepik languages, like their Ramu neighbors, appear to have three-vowel systems, , that distinguish only

vowel height A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness ...

in a

vertical vowel system A vertical vowel system is the system of vowels in a language that requires only vowel height to phonemically distinguish vowels. Theoretically, rounding, frontness and backness could also be used in one-dimensional vowel systems; however, ''v ...

. Phonetic are a result of palatal and labial assimilation to adjacent consonants. It is suspected that the Ndu languages may reduce this to a two-vowel system, with epenthetic (Foley 1986).

Classification

The Sepik languages consist of two branches of Kandru's Laycock's Sepik–Ramu proposal, the Sepik subphylum and Leonhard Schultze stock. According to Malcolm Ross, the most promising external relationship is not with Ramu, ''pace'' Laycock, but with the Torricelli family. Palmer (2018) classifies the

Leonhard Schultze languages The Leonhard Schultze (Leonard Schultze) or Walio–Papi languages are a proposed family of about 6 Papuan languages spoken in the Sepik river basin of northern Papua New Guinea. They are spoken along the border region of East Sepik Province and ...

as an independent language phylum.

Usher (2020)

In the cladogram below, the small, closely related families in bold at the ends of the branches are covered in separate articles. Sepik_as_classified_by_William_A

Foley (2018)

Foley (2018) provides the following classification, with 6 main branches recognized. * Sepik family **

Middle Sepik languages The Middle Sepik languages comprise diverse groups of Sepik languages spoken in northern Papua New Guinea. The Middle Sepik grouping is provisionally accepted by Foley (2018) based on shared innovations in pronouns, but is divided by ''Glottolog' ...

***

Nukuma languages The Nukuma languages are a small language family, family of three clearly related languages: *Kwoma language, Kwoma *Kwanga–Mende **Kwanga language, Kwanga **Seim language, Seim They are generally classified among the Sepik languages of northe ...

*** Yerakai (Garamambu) ***

Yellow River languages The Yellow River languages are a small family of clearly related languages, : Namia (Namie), Ak, and Awun. They are classified among the Sepik languages of northern Papua New Guinea. Namia is the most divergent Yellow River language. Dist ...

Tama languages The Tama languages are a small family of three clusters of closely related languages of northern Papua New Guinea, spoken just to the south of Nuku town in eastern Sandaun Province. They are classified as subgroup of the Sepik languages. ''Tama ...

** Sepik Hill languages *** Eastern (Alamblak) *** Central (Bahinemo) *** Western: Saniyo-Hiyewe, Paka ( Setiali),

Gabiano Gabiano (Gabian in Piedmontese) is a rural ''comune'' in the northwest of the province of Alessandria, some west of Casale Monferrato. This area straddles the lowland immediately south of the Po and the furthest extension of the Monferrato hil ...

( Niksek), Piame, Bikaru, Umairof, Hewa **

Ram languages The Ram languages are a small group of 3 languages spoken in Sandaun Province, Papua New Guinea. They are spoken directly to the northeast of the Yellow River languages and directly to the south of the Wapei languages, both of which are also Sep ...

** Upper Sepik languages *** Wogamus languages ***

Iwam languages The Iwam languages are a small family of two clearly related languages, May River Iwam and Sepik Iwam are generally classified among the Sepik languages of northern Papua New Guinea; Malcolm Ross places them in an Upper Sepik branch of that fa ...

*** Abau ** Amal Like the neighboring

Torricelli languages The Torricelli languages are a family of about fifty languages of the northern Papua New Guinea coast, spoken by about 80,000 people. They are named after the Torricelli Mountains. The most populous and best known Torricelli language is Arapesh ...

, but unlike the rest of the Sepik languages, the

Ram Ram, ram, or RAM most commonly refers to: * A male sheep * Random-access memory, computer memory * Ram Trucks, US, since 2009 ** List of vehicles named Dodge Ram, trucks and vans ** Ram Pickup, produced by Ram Trucks Ram, ram, or RAM may also ref ...

and

do not have clause chaining constructions (for an example of a clause chaining construction in a Trans-New Guinea language, see '' Kamano language#Clause chaining''). Foley (2018) suggests that many of the Ram and Yellow River-speaking peoples may have in fact been Torricelli speakers who were later assimilated by Sepik-speaking peoples. Foley classifies the

separately as an independent language family.

Pronouns

The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto-Sepik are: : Note the similarities of the dual and plural suffixes with those of the

. Ross reconstructs two sets of pronouns for "proto–Upper Sepik" (actually, Abau–Iwam and Wogamusin (Tama)). These are the default set (Set I), and a set with "certain interpersonal and pragmatic functions" (table 1.27): : : Most Sepik languages have reflexes of proto-Sepik *na ~ *an for 1sg, *no for 1pl, and *ni for 2sg.

Cognates

Proto-Sepik forms reconstructed by Foley (2018) that are widespread across the family: :

Typological overview

Even internally within Sepik subgroups, languages in the Sepik family can have vastly different typological profiles varying from isolating to

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes (word parts), each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglu ...

, with example languages listed below. : In contrast, languages within the Ramu, Lower Sepik, and Yuat families all have relatively uniform typological profiles.

Gender

Like the isolate Taiap, but unlike the Lower Sepik-Ramu, Yuat, and Upper Yuat families, Sepik languages distinguish masculine and feminine

gender Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...

s, with the feminine gender being the more common default unmarked gender. Proto-Sepik gender-marking suffixes are reconstructed by Foley (2018) as: : In Sepik languages, gender-marking suffixes are not always attached to the head noun, and can also be affixed to other roots in the phrase. Typically, the genders of lower animals and inanimate objects are determined according to shape and size: big or long objects are typically classified as masculine (as a result of phallic imagery), while small or short objects are typically classified as feminine. In some languages, objects can be classified as either masculine or feminine, depending on the physical characteristics intended for emphasis. To illustrate, below is an example in Abau, an Upper Sepik language: *''youk se'' ‘paddle ’ focuses on the ''length'' of the paddle *''youk ke'' ‘paddle ’ focuses on the ''flat nature'' of the two-dimensional paddle blade Except for the

, most Sepik languages overtly mark nouns using gender suffixes.

Periodic tense

Many Sepik languages from different branches, including Awtuw, May River Iwam, Abau or Alamblak, encode periodic tense in their verbal morphology, though the markers themselves are not cognate.

References

Notes

Bibliography

* * * * * * * *

External links

Sepik languages database at TransNewGuinea.org
{{language families Language families Languages of Momase Region Papuan languages Vertical vowel systems