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Asmat–Kamrau languages

The Asmat – Kamrau Bay languages are a family of a dozen Trans–New Guinea languages spoken by the Asmat and related peoples in southern Western New Guinea. They are believed to be a recent expansion along the south coast, as they are all closely related, and there is little differentiation in their pronouns.

Languages

The languages are:

Proto-language

Phonemes

Usher (2020) reconstructs the consonant inventory as follows:

There is near complementary distribution between *p and *ɸ. *t and *d are marginal, appearing in only a few words. *r does not occur initially. There are no consonant clusters.

Vowels are *a *e *i *o *u.

Pronouns

Ross (2005) reconstructs the proto-Asmat–Kamoro pronouns as:

Usher (2020) reconstructs the free proto–Asmat–Kamrau Bay pronouns as:

Basic vocabulary

Some lexical reconstructions by Usher (2020) are:

Evolution

Proto-Asmat-Kamoro reflexes (Voorhoeve 2005) of proto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG) etyma, as listed in Pawley & Hammarström (2018):

  • *fiti 'fingernail' < pTNG *mb(i,u)t(i,u)C
  • *isi 'mosquito' < *kasin
  • *ese 'blood' < *kenja
  • *masap or *masip 'saliva' < *si(mb,p)atV
  • *yi 'urine' < *[si]si
  • *asa 'excrement' < *asa
  • *manaka 'eye' < *mun(a,e,i)ka
  • *sisi 'tooth' < *(t,s)i(t,s)i
  • *yirama 'night' < *k(i,u)tama
  • *tama 'morning' < *k(i,u)tama
  • *na- 'eat' < *na-

References

Bibliography

  • Drabbe, Piet. 1953. Spraakkunst van de Kamoro-taal. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
  • Drabbe, Piet. 1963. Drie Asmat-dialecten. Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, No. 42. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
  • Voorhoeve, C.L. 1965. The Flamingo Bay Dialect of the Asmat language. Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, No. 46. The Hague.
  • Voorhoeve, C.L. 1968. "The Central and South New Guinea Phylum: a report on the language situation in south New Guinea." Pacific Linguistics, Series A, No. 16: 1–17. Canberra: The Australian National University.
  • Voorhoeve, C.L. 1975. Languages of Irian Jaya: Checklist, Preliminary Classification, Language Maps, Wordlists. Pacific Linguistics, Series B, No. 31. Canberra: The Australian National University.
  • Voorhoeve, C.L. 1980. The Asmat Languages of Irian Jaya. Pacific Linguistics, Series B, No. 64. Canberra: The Australian National University.
  • Wurm, Stephan Adolphe. 1983. The Papuan Languages of Oceania. Ars Linguistica 7. Tübingen: Narr.

External links