Paniai Lakes languages

The Paniai Lakes languages, also known as the Wissel Lakes or Wissel Lakes – Kemandoga River, are a small family of closely related Trans–New Guinea languages spoken in the Paniai Lakes region of the highlands of Western New Guinea in the Paniai Lakes region of Papua. Foley (2003) considers their Trans–New Guinea status to be established.

Languages

The languages are:

• Paniai Lakes languages
• Moni
• Central
• Wolani (Wodani)
• Ekari (Ekari, Mee)
• Auye (incl. Dao)

They are most closely related to the Dani languages, Amung and Dem.

Pronouns

Independent pronouns and possessive prefixes are:

Vocabulary comparison

The following basic vocabulary words are from Larson & Larson (1972) and Voorhoeve (1975), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database.

The words cited constitute translation equivalents, whether they are cognate (e.g. homa, huma for “stone”) or not (e.g. bodiya, usa for “fire”).

Evolution

Paniai Lakes reflexes of proto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG) etyma are:

Ekari language:

• ‘breast’ <
• ‘arm’ <
• ‘belly’ <
• ‘breast’ <
• ‘skin’ <
• ‘louse’ <
• ‘come’ <
• ‘father’ <
• ‘speech, talk’ < ‘instructions’
• ‘sun’ <

Moni language:

• ‘breast’ <
• ‘heart’ < ‘internal organs, belly’
• ‘skin’ <
• ‘woman’ <
• ‘night’ <
• ‘stone’ <
• ‘tree’ <
• ‘come’ <

References