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Kutubuan languages

The Kutubuan languages are a small family of neighboring languages families in Papua New Guinea. They are named after Lake Kutubu in Papua New Guinea.

Languages

There has been some debate over whether they are closer to each other than to other languages, but Usher includes them both in the Kikorian branch of the tentative Papuan Gulf stock. Within the two branches, the lexicostatistical figures are 60–70%. Between the two branches, they are 10–20%.

Lexical reconstruction

Some lexical reconstructions by Usher (2020) are:

Modern reflexes

Proposed Kutubu reflexes of proto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG) etyma are:

Foi language:

  • ‘carry on back’ < *
  • ‘die’ < *
  • ‘eat’ < *
  • ‘leg’ < *
  • ‘neck’ < *
  • ‘tree’ < *
  • ‘wind’ < *
  • ‘bird’ < *
  • ‘mother’s sister’ < * ‘older same sex sibling’

Fasu language:

  • ‘die’ < *
  • ‘eat’ < *
  • ‘stand’ <
  • ‘mother’ < *
  • ‘father’ < *
  • ‘heart, stomach’ < *
  • ‘hair’ < *
  • ‘leg’ < *
  • ‘shoulder’ < *
  • ‘skin’ < *
  • ‘hand’ < *
  • ‘urine’ < *
  • ‘make the law’ < * ‘instructions’
  • ‘long’ < *
  • ‘husband’ < *
  • ‘mother’s sister’ < * ‘older same sex sibling’
  • ‘tree’ < *
  • ‘sand’ < *
  • ‘wind’ < *

Vocabulary comparison

The following basic vocabulary words are from Franklin (1975), Franklin & Voorhoeve (1973), McElhanon and Voorhoeve (1970), and Shaw (1986), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:

The words cited constitute translation equivalents, whether they are cognate (e.g. auřu, airu, alu for “tongue”) or not (e.g. weḷia, kakusa, yapi for “blood”).

References

External links