Demta–Sentani languages

The Demta–Sentani languages form a language family of coastal Indonesian Papua near the Papua New Guinea border.

Demta–Sentani
Demta – Lake Sentani
Geographic distribution	Lake Sentani region, Papua
Linguistic classification	Northwest Papuan? East Bird's Head – Sentani? Demta–Sentani
Subdivisions	Demta Sentani
Glottolog	sent1261[1]

Languages

Demta–Sentani[2]

• Demta
• Sentani proper
  • Sentani
  • Nafri
  • Tabla (Tanah Merah)

The term 'Sentani' is ambiguous. It may be used in a wider sense, including Demta, in a narrow sense (Sentani proper) excluding Demta – either as an unrelated language family or as a branch of Demta–Sentani – or for the Sentani language itself. Usher distinguishes these three scopes as 'Demta – Sentani Lake', 'Sentani Lake' and 'Sentani'.

Classification

Demta–Sentani was a branch of Stephen Wurm's proposal for Trans–New Guinea. The languages have lexical similarities with the Asmat–Kamoro languages, though later linguists have not accepted the resemblances as indicative of a genealogical relationship. Pawley and Hammarström (2018) list the following resemblances between the Sentani languages and proto-Trans-New Guinea, though they classify Sentani as a separate language family rather than as part of Trans-New Guinea.[3]

• C. Sentani an- ‘eat’ < *na-
• C. Sentani mikæ ‘vomit’ (n.) < *mVkV[C]
• C. Sentani mu ‘penis’ < *mo
• W. Sentani, Tabla oto ‘leg’ < *k(a,o)ndok
• Tabla miŋ, C. Sentani mi ‘louse’ < *iman
• C. Sentani mi- ‘come’ < *me-

Ross (2005) does not believe these demonstrate a genealogical relationship, and proposes instead that the Demta–Sentani languages are related to the East Bird's Head languages, in a tentative East Bird's Head – Sentani family. Foley (2018) classifies them as an independent language family.[4] Usher (2020) tentatively includes them in a proposed Northwest Papuan family, though as of 2020 it's not clear whether the resemblances are due to inheritance or borrowing.

The connection between Demta and the Sentani languages is not supported by Søren Wichmann (2013)'s automated comparison.[5]

Pronouns

The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto-family are:

I	*də	exclusive we	*me
		inclusive we	*e
thou	*wa	you	?
s/he	*nə	they	?

Comparative pronouns in Sentani languages:[4]

pronoun	Sentani	Tabla	Nafri	Sowari
1s	də(yæ)	də	te(ye)	mini
2s	wə(yæ)	wə	we(ye)	we
3s	nə(yæ)	nə	ne(ye)	ngane
1p.excl	me(yæ)	e	me	ngama
1p.incl	e(yæ)
2p	mə(yæ)	we	mai	me
3p	nə(yæ)	nə	ne(ye)	kumbi

See also

• Papuan languages
• Districts of Papua for a list of districts and villages with respective languages

References

1. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Sentanic". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
2. New Guinea World, Demta – Lake Sentani
3. Pawley, Andrew; Hammarström, Harald (2018). "The Trans New Guinea family". In Palmer, Bill (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide. The World of Linguistics. 4. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 21–196. ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.
4. Foley, William A. (2018). "The languages of Northwest New Guinea". In Palmer, Bill (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide. The World of Linguistics. 4. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 433–568. ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.
5. Wichmann, Søren. 2013. A classification of Papuan languages. In: Hammarström, Harald and Wilco van den Heuvel (eds.), History, contact and classification of Papuan languages (Language and Linguistics in Melanesia, Special Issue 2012), 313-386. Port Moresby: Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea.