The Manubaran languages are a small family of Trans–New Guinea languages spoken in the "Bird's Tail" (southeastern peninsula) of New Guinea. They are sometimes included in a speculative Southeast Papuan branch of Trans–New Guinea (TNG), but the Southeast Papuan families have not been shown to be any more closely related to each other than they are to other TNG families.
| Manubaran | |
|---|---|
| Mount Brown | |
| Geographic distribution | Southeastern peninsula of Papua New Guinea: Central Province |
| Linguistic classification | Trans–New Guinea
|
| Language codes | |
| Glottolog | manu1261 |
Languages
The languages are Doromu and Maria, and are 63% lexically similar.
Pronouns
Pronouns are:
sg pl 1 *na *una 2 *ya *ya[uma] 3 *ina, *-e *ina[uma]
Apart from the pronoun *na "I", they have almost nothing in common with other branches of TNG.
Evolution
Maria reflexes of proto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG) etyma are:[2]
- ama ‘mother’ < *am(a,i)
- baba(e) ‘father’ < *mbapa
- kuyau ‘cassowary’ < *ku(y)a
- ita(isa) ‘tree’ < *inda
References
- ^ New Guinea World, Owen Stanley Range
- ^ 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. Vol. 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.
Further reading
- Ross, Malcolm. 2014. Proto-Manubaran. TransNewGuinea.org.
- Ross, Malcolm. 2014. Proto-Maria. TransNewGuinea.org.
- Ross, Malcolm. 2014. Proto-Doromu. TransNewGuinea.org.