Bulaka River languages

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Bulaka River
Yelmek–Maklew
Jabga
EthnicityJab (Yab)
Geographic
distribution
New Guinea
Linguistic classificationprimary language family
Subdivisions
Glottologbula1259[1]
{{{mapalt}}}
Map: The Bulaka River languages of New Guinea
  The Bulaka River languages
  Trans–New Guinea languages
  Other Papuan languages
  Austronesian languages
  Uninhabited

The Bulaka River languages are a pair of closely related Papuan languages, Yelmek and Maklew, on the Bulaka River in Indonesian West Papua. They are ethnically Yab (Jab); their speech is Yabga (Jabga). Ross (2005) tentatively includes them in the proposed Trans-Fly – Bulaka River family, but Usher, who reconstructs the family, retains Bulaka River as a primary language family.[2]

Pronouns[edit]

The pronouns Ross reconstructs for the family are,

Proto–Bulaka River
I *ŋöl we *ŋag
thou *ob you *el
s/he *ib they *im

References[edit]

  1. ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Bulaka River". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  2. ^ [1]
  • Ross, Malcolm (2005). "Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages". In Andrew Pawley; Robert Attenborough; Robin Hide; Jack Golson. Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. pp. 15–66. ISBN 0858835622. OCLC 67292782.