Eastern Trans-Fly languages
The Eastern Trans-Fly (or Oriomo Plateau) languages are a small independent family of Papuan languages spoken in the Oriomo Plateau to the west of the Fly River in New Guinea.
| Eastern Trans-Fly | |
|---|---|
| Oriomo Plateau | |
| Geographic distribution | Oriomo Plateau, Papua New Guinea, Torres Strait Islands (Australia) |
| Linguistic classification | Trans-Fly or independent language family
|
| Glottolog | east2503[1] |
 Map: The Eastern Trans-Fly languages of New Guinea
The Eastern Trans-Fly languages
Trans–New Guinea languages
Other Papuan languages
Austronesian languages
Australian languages
Uninhabited | |
Classification
The languages constituted a branch of Stephen Wurm's 1970 Trans-Fly proposal, which he later incorporated into his 1975 expansion of the Trans–New Guinea family as part of a Trans-Fly – Bulaka River branch. They are retained as a family but removed from Trans–New Guinea in the classifications of Malcolm Ross and Timothy Usher.
Wurm had concluded that some of his purported Trans-Fly languages were not in the Trans–New Guinea family but rather heavily influenced by Trans–New Guinea languages. Ross (2005) removed the bulk of the languages, including Eastern Trans-Fly, from Wurm's Trans–New Guinea.
Timothy Usher links the four languages, which he calls Oriomo Plateau, to the Pahoturi languages and the Tabo language in an expanded Eastern Trans-Fly family.
Languages
Oriomo (Eastern Trans-Fly) languages and respective demographic information listed by Evans (2018) are provided below.[2] Geographical coordinates are also provided for each dialect (which are named after villages).[3]
Pronouns
The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto–Eastern Trans-Fly are,
I *ka exclusive we *ki inclusive we *mi thou *ma you *we he/she/it *tabV; e they *tepi
There is a possibility of a connection here to Trans–New Guinea. If the inclusive pronoun is historically a second-person form, then there would appear to be i-ablaut for the plural: *ka~ki, **ma~mi, **tapa~tapi. This is similar to the ablaut reconstructed for TNG (*na~ni, *ga~gi). Although the pronouns themselves are dissimilar, ablaut is not likely to be borrowed. On the other hand, there is some formal resemblance to Austronesian pronouns (*(a)ku I, *(ka)mu you, *kita we inc., *(ka)mi we exc., *ia he/she/it; some archeological, cultural and linguistic evidence of Austronesian contact and settlement in the area exists (David et al., 2011; McNiven et al., 2011; McNiven et al., 2006; McNiven et al., 2004: 67-68; Mitchell 1995).
References
- Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Eastern Trans-Fly". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- Evans, Nicholas (2018). "The languages of Southern 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. 641–774. ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.
- United Nations in Papua New Guinea (2018). "Papua New Guinea Village Coordinates Lookup". Humanitarian Data Exchange. 1.31.9.
- Ross, Malcolm (2005). "Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages". In Andrew Pawley; Robert Attenborough; Robin Hide; Jack Golson (eds.). Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. pp. 15–66. ISBN 0858835622. OCLC 67292782.
- David, B., McNiven, I.J., Mitchell, R., Orr, M., Haberle, S., Brady, L. & Crouch, J. 2004. Badu 15 and the Papuan-Austronesian settlement of Torres Strait. Archeology in Oceania 39(2): 65-78.
- McNiven, I.J., Dickinson, W.R., David, B., Weisler, M., Von Gnielinski, F., Carter, M., & Zoppi, U. 2006. Mask Cave: red-slipped pottery and the Australian-Papuan settlement of Zenadh Kes (Torres Strait). Archaeology in Oceania 41(2): 49-81.
- McNiven, I.J., David, B., Richards, T., Aplin, K., Asmussen, B., Mialanes, J., Leavesley, M., Faulkner, P., UlmM, S. 2011 New directions in human colonisation of the Pacific: Lapita settlement of south coast New Guinea. Australian Archaeology 72:1-6.
- Mitchell, R. 1995. Linguistic Archeology in Torres Strait. Unpublished MA thesis (James Cook University: Townsville).