Piore River languages

The Piore River or Lagoon languages form a branch of Skou languages. Historically they have been lumped together as the Warapu language. They are spoken in the Sissano Lagoon area of West Aitape Rural LLG, Sandaun Province, Papua New Guinea. The Piore River runs to the west of all the languages, and so speakers do not find it an acceptable name. However, it is not clear which name would be better, as the name of the lagoon, 'Sissano', is used for different neighboring languages.

Piore River
Lagoon
Warapu
Geographic
distribution		Piore River watershed, West Aitape Rural LLG, Sandaun Province, Papua New Guinea
Linguistic classificationSkou
  • East
    • Piore River
Subdivisions
Glottologlago1243[1]

Languages

The Piore River branch was ambiguously named Lagoon by Miller (2017).[2] The older names of the Piore River languages were from village names; Miller renamed them Bauni, Uni, Bouni, and Bobe. Bouni and Bobe are mutually intelligible.

Lagoon (Piore River)

Convergence area

The Piore River languages have influenced various other languages (other Skou, Kwomtari, Torricelli, and Oceanic) that have arrived relatively recently in the Sissano Lagoon area within the last century or so. Sound changes shared by genealogically unrelated languages in the Sissano Lagoon linguistic convergence area include *s > zero; *t/d, *l > r; and loss of tone, which is a phonological feature typical of Skou languages. The Sissano Lagoon convergence zone is at the northeastern end of what Donohue and Crowther refer to as the "North-Central New Guinea" (NCNG) area, which is a highly linguistically and culturally heterogeneous area marked by the lack of widespread trade and cultural diffusion due to geographical isolation among groups; the "NCNG" area ranges from just east of the Lakes Plain region to the western edge of the Sepik basin.[3]

References
  1. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Barupu Lagoon". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  2. Miller, Steve A. 2017. Skou Languages Near Sissano Lagoon, Papua New Guinea. Language and Linguistics in Melanesia 35: 1-24.
  3. Donohue, Mark; Crowther, Melissa (2005). "Meeting in the middle: interaction in North-Central New Guinea". 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. 167–184. ISBN 0-85883-562-2. OCLC 67292782.
  • Foley, William A. (2018). "The Languages of the Sepik-Ramu Basin and Environs". 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. 197–432. ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.
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