Lakes Plain languages
| Lakes Plain | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution | New Guinea |
| Linguistic classification | one of the world's primary language families |
| Glottolog | lake1255[1] |
The Lakes Plain languages are a small family of Papuan languages. They are notable for being heavily tonal and for their lack of nasal consonants.
Classification[edit]
The Lakes Plain languages were tentatively grouped by Stephen Wurm with the Tor languages in his Trans–New Guinea proposal. Clouse (1997) rejected this connection to the Tor languages and grouped them with the Geelvink Bay languages. Malcolm Ross classifies the languages as an independent family, a position confirmed by Timothy Usher.
The languages are as follows:[2]
| Lakes Plain |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Not included in the above classification, Kaiy, Kwerisa, Doutai and Waritai are presumably also Central Lakes Plain; the same for Obokuitai and Biritai. Clouse had placed them closest to Papasena and to Eritai, respectively, and they might form dialect clusters with those languages.
There are particular questions about the inclusion of Saponi, Kehu and Tause.
Pronouns[edit]
The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto-Tariku are,
I *a/*i we *a/*ai thou *de you *da s/he *au they ?
The corresponding "I" and "thou" pronouns are proto–East Lake Plain *a, *do, Awera yai, nai (the latter from *dai; compare also e "we"), and Rasawa e-, de-. Saponi shares no pronouns with the Lakes Plain family; indeed its pronouns mamire "I, we" and ba "thou" are remenincent of proto–East Bird's Head *meme "we" and *ba "thou". However, Saponi shares half its basic lexical vocabulary with Rasawa, and Ross left it in the Lakes Plain family pending further investigation. The Tause language was also previously grouped amongst the Tariku group of Lakes Plains languages. Ross transferred it to the East Bird's Head – Sentani languages on the basis of pronoun similarities in hopes that this would promote further research.
Phonology[edit]
Clouse and Clouse (1993) note many of the Lakes Plains languages share several unusual phonological features. While Papuan languages typically have at least two nasal phonemes, this is not the case for Lakes Plains languages. Although phonetic nasals do exist in most Lakes Plains languages, they do not contrast with the corresponding voiced stops. Doutai, Sikaritai, Obokuitai and Foau lack even phonetic nasals. Additionally, no Lakes Plains language has a liquid phoneme. Clouse (1997) reconstructs for the ancestor of Lakes Plains the typologically remarkable consonant inventory, consisting entirely of stops, /p, t, k, b, d/.
Many of the languages have very high constricted (fricativised) vowels; in Doutai and Kirikiri these constitute separate phonemes from /i/ and /u/. The fricativised vowels seem to have developed from deletion of a following consonant.
References[edit]
- ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Lakes Plain". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- ^ New Guinea World - Lakes Plains
- Clouse, Duane A. (1997). Karl Franklin, ed., ed. "Towards a reconstruction and reclassification of the Lakes Plains languages of Irian Jaya". Papers in New Guinea Linguistics. 2: 133–236. ISSN 0078-9135. OCLC 2729642.CS1 maint: Extra text: editors list (link)
- Clouse, Heljä; Duane A. Clouse (1993). "Kirikiri and the western Lakes Plains languages: selected phonological phenomena". Language and Linguistics in Melanesia. 24: 1–18. OCLC 9188672.
- 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.
- Silzer, Peter; Heljä Heikkinen (1991). Index of Irian Jaya languages (Second ed.). Jayapura: University Cenderawasih and Summer Institute of Linguistics. OCLC 26368341.
