| Arafundi | |
|---|---|
| Alfendio Arafundi River | |
| Geographic distribution | Arafundi River,East Sepik Province,Papua New Guinea |
| Linguistic classification | Madang – Upper Yuat[1]
|
| Language codes | |
| Glottolog | araf1243 |
| ELP | Alfendio |
TheArafundi languages are a smallfamily of clearly related languages inEast Sepik Province,Papua New Guinea. They are conjectured to be related to thePiawi andMadang languages. They are named after theArafundi River.
Alfendio is an old synonym forArafundi, from when it was still considered a single language.
The Arafundi languages form adialect continuum where language boundaries are blurred.[2]
The Arafundi languages are,[1]
Kassell, et al. (2018) recognize Andai, Nanubae, and Tapei.[3]
Foley (2018) cites Hoenigman (2015) for 'Upper Arafundi' and 'Lower Arafundi', as well as listing Awiakay and 'Imboin'.[2] However, the scope of these names is somewhat confused. Usher notes,
Hoenigman (2015: 46 after Hoenigman and Evans 2013) designates Nanubae as Lower Arafundi and Andai–Meakambut as Upper Arafundi, with what we guess to be Tapei labelled simply Imboin after the name of a village where Tapei (Awim) as well as Andai (Namata) and Awiakay (Karamba) are spoken (Kassell, MacKenzie and Potter 2017: 13.) However, she assigns the Tapei-speaking Awim village to the Lower Arafundi language, which contradicts our data from Haberland (1966: 62-64) and Kassell, MacKenzie and Potter (2017: 48-54).[1]
AnEnga-based pidgin is also used by speakers of Arafundi languages.
Laycock (1973) grouped the Arafundi languages with theRamu languages, although (according to his comments in the introduction) this grouping was apparently impressionistic and not based on either reconstructive work or lexicostatistics. Ross (2005) retains Laycock's grouping without comment. However,Foley (2005) does not include Arafundi within Ramu, andEthnologue (2009) shows them as an independent family. Foley has suggested instead that the Arafundi andPiawi languages may be related (Comrie 1992), a position confirmed by Timothy Usher.[4]
Some lexical reconstructions of Proto-Arafundi River by Usher (2020) are:[1]
| gloss | Proto-Arafundi River |
|---|---|
| head | *kopa |
| hair/feather(s) | *tum[a] |
| ear | *kund[a] |
| nose | *pok |
| tooth | *kandz[a] |
| tongue | *taTumat[a] |
| foot/leg | *panamb[a] |
| blood | *kombet- |
| bone | *jekimb[a] |
| skin | *kumb[a]-; *tut[a] |
| breast | *ji[t/s] |
| louse | *emuŋg |
| dog | *tawa[m/mb] |
| pig | *jat |
| bird | *kenet |
| egg | *mund[a] |
| tree | *jes |
| man | *nuŋgum |
| woman | *nam |
| sun | *kVjom |
| moon | *kepa |
| water | *jomb |
| fire | *jamb |
| stone | *naŋgum |
| name | *membi[a] |
| eat/drink | *nembV- |
| two | *kamin, *kondamin |