Massep language

Massep (Masep, Potafa, Wotaf) is a poorly documented Papuan language spoken by fewer than 50 people in the single village of Masep in , Sarmi Regency, Papua. Despite the small number of speakers, however, language use is vigorous. It is surrounded by the Kwerba languages, namely Airoran and Samarokena.

Classification

Clouse, Donohue, and Ma (2002) did not notice connections to any other language family. Ethnologue, Glottolog, and Foley (2018) list it as a language isolate. Usher classifies it as Greater Kwerbic. The pronouns are not dissimilar from those of Trans–New Guinea languages, but Massep is geographically distant from that family.

Phonology

Consonants:

Some probable consonant leniting sound changes from pre-Massep proposed by Foley (2018):

• *p > ɸ
• *b > β
• *d > r
• *k > É£ (perhaps partially)

Vowels:

Pronouns

Pronouns are:

Morphology

Massep case suffixes as quoted by Foley (2018) from Clouse (2002):

Sentences

Massep sentences as quoted by Foley (2018) from Clouse (2002):

Word order is SOV.

References

External links

• Timothy Usher & Mark Donohue, Masep, New Guinea World