Mailuan languages

The Mailuan or Cloudy Bay languages are a small family of Trans–New Guinea languages spoken around Cloudy Bay in the "Bird's Tail" (southeastern peninsula) of New Guinea. They are classified within the Southeast Papuan branch of Trans–New Guinea.

Mailuan
Cloudy Bay
Geographic
distribution		Southeastern peninsula of Papua New Guinea:
Central Province
Linguistic classificationTrans–New Guinea
  • Papuan Peninsula
    • Owen Stanley Range[1]
      • Mailu–Yareban
        • Mailuan
Glottologmail1249[2]

Languages

The languages, which all share about half of their vocabulary, are,

Bauwaki–O'oku is closely related to the Mailuan languages.

Pronouns

Usher (2020) reconstructs the proto-Mailuan–Yareban pronouns as:[1]

sgdupl
1excl *na*ge
1incl *gu*i
2 *ga*ja
3 *e*ema

Ross (1995) reconstructs the Mailuan pronouns as:

sgdupl
1 *i*gu-*ge
2 *ga*[j]a*[j]a, *mee
3 *emu

Classification

Dutton (1971) said Bauwaki was a link to the Yareban languages. It has greater lexical similarity with Aneme Wake (Yareban) than the closest Mailuan language, Domu. Usher (2020) classifies Mailuan, Bauwaki and Yareban together.[1]

Magi shows evidence of language shift from an Oceanic language in many Oceanic words.

Evolution

Mailuan reflexes of proto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG) etyma are:[3]

Mailu language:

  • ama ‘breast’ < *amu
  • maa ‘mouth’ < *maŋgat[a]
  • kisa ‘bone’ < *kondaC
  • tupa ‘short’ < *tu(p,mb)a(C)
  • guia ‘cassowary’ < *ku(y)a

Bauwaki language:

  • baba ‘father’ < *mbapa
  • idi ‘hair’ < *iti[C]
  • (ine) ibi ‘name’ < *imbi
  • iini- ‘sleep’ < *kin(i,u)-

References
  1. New Guinea World, Owen Stanley Range
  2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Mailuan". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  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.
  • 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.
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