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East Strickland languages

The East Strickland or Strickland River languages are a family of Papuan languages.

Languages

The East Strickland languages actually form a language continuum. Shaw (1986) recognizes six languages, which are:

Gobasi, Odoodee and Samo, but especially Gobasi, are also known as "Nomad".

Pronouns

Pronouns are:

Vocabulary comparison

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

The words cited constitute translation equivalents, whether they are cognate (e.g. ulugib, ulukib, ulʌkib for “head”) or not (e.g. dob, helehai, tano for “one”).

Evolution

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

Samo language:

  • (da)subu ‘ashes’ < *sumbu
  • si- ‘burn’ < *nj(a,e,i)-
  • na- ‘eat’ < *na-
  • magara ‘mouth’ < *maŋgat[a]
  • korofu ‘skin’ < *(ŋg,k)a(n,t)apu
  • mere(ma) ‘tongue’ < *me(l,n)e
  • mini ‘nose’ < *mundu

Bibo language:

  • (da)suf ‘ashes’ < *sumbu

Agala language:

  • fulu(ma) ali ‘to fly’ < *pululu-

References