The South Bird's Head or South Doberai languages are three

families Family (from ) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictability, structure, and safety as ...

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 ...

. They form part of the

Trans–New Guinea languages Trans–New Guinea (TNG) is an extensive Language family, family of Papuan languages spoken on the island of New Guinea and neighboring islands, a region corresponding to the country Papua New Guinea as well as Western New Guinea, parts of Indone ...

in the classifications of Malcolm Ross (2005) and Timothy Usher (2020), though Pawley and Hammarström (2018) do not consider them to be part of Trans–New Guinea. However, according to Dryer (2022), based on a preliminary quantitative analysis of data from the

ASJP The Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) is a collaborative project applying computational approaches to comparative linguistics using a database of word lists. The database is open access and consists of 40-item basic-vocabulary lists f ...

database, South Bird's Head languages are likely to be a subgroup of Trans–New Guinea.

Languages

The languages are as follows, * South Bird's Head ** Konda-Yahadian (Yabin): Konda, Yahadian ** Inanwatan (West South Bird's Head): Duriankere, Inanwatan (Suabo) ** South Bird's Head proper (East South Bird's Head): *** Kais (Kampong Baru) *** Iwaro–Kaburi **** Kaburi **** Puragi (Iwaro) *** Kokoda–Arandai ****

Kokoda Kokoda is a station town in the Oro Province of Papua New Guinea. It is famous as the northern end of the Kokoda Track, site of the eponymous Kokoda Track campaign of World War II. In that campaign, it had strategic significance because it had the ...

(Tarof, Kasuweri) **** Arandai ***** Kemberano (Weriagar, Barau) ***** Dombano (Tomu) Noting low cognacy rates, Holton and Klamer (2018) tentatively consider the following three language groups to each be independent language families, pending further evidence. * Konda–Yahadian * Inanwatan–Duriankere * Nuclear South Bird's Head Usher classifies the South Bird's Head languages as part of a wider '' Berau Gulf'' branch of Trans–New Guinea.Usher, Timothy
New Guinea World, North Berau Gulf
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Pronouns

The pronouns are: : *ni is reconstructable for SBH proper. There appears to be both a plural vowel change from *a to *i, as in proto-TNG, and a plural suffix *-ri.

Cognates

Below are cognates in

Nuclear South Bird's Head languages The Nuclear South Bird's Head, Core South Bird's Head or East South Bird's Head languages form a small language family of western New Guinea. They either form part of a wider South Bird's Head language family, or may be an independent language f ...

( Arandai,

, Kemberano, Kaburi, Kais, Puragi) demonstrating their relatedness, as listed by Holton & Klamer (2018): : South Bird's Head basic vocabulary quoted by Holton & Klamer (2018) from de Vries (2004), showing diverse non-cognate vocabulary across different language groups:de Vries, Lourens. 2004. ''A Short Grammar of Inanwatan: An endangered language of the Bird’s Head of Papua, Indonesia''. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. :

Morphology

Except for the outlier languages Konda and Yahadian, all South Bird's Head languages have nouns classified according to masculine and feminine genders, which are determined with final vowel quality.

West Bird's Head languages West Bird's Head languages are a small family of poorly documented Papuan languages spoken on the Bird's Head Peninsula of New Guinea. The West Bird's Head (WBH) family is a well-defined family of six languages spoken at the western end of the B ...

also mark nouns for gender.

Syntax

Unlike many other languages of the

Bird's Head Peninsula The Bird's Head Peninsula ( Indonesian: , , meaning Bird's Head in Indonesian and Dutch) or Doberai Peninsula (''Semenanjung Doberai'') is a large peninsula that makes up the northwest portion of the island of New Guinea, comprising the Indones ...

which display

SVO word order SVO may refer to: * Association football clubs in Germany: ** SVO Germaringen ** SV Oberachern * Silver vanadium oxide battery (SVO battery) * San Jose Chamber of Commerce, a chamber of commerce in San Jose, California, United States, known as th ...

(such as Abun, Mpur, Maibrat, West Bird's Head, and others), the South Bird's Head languages have

SOV word order SOV may refer to: * SOV, a former ticker symbol for Sovereign Bank * SOV, a legal cryptocurrency created by the Sovereign Currency Act of 2018 of the Republic of the Marshall Islands * SOV, the National Rail station code for Southend Victoria rail ...

References

External links

East South Bird's Head
New Guinea World. {{Papuan languages Languages of Papua New Guinea Berau Gulf languages