| Upper Sepik | |
|---|---|
| Upper Sepik River | |
| Geographic distribution | Sandaun Province and westernEast Sepik Province,Papua New Guinea |
| Linguistic classification | Sepik
|
| Subdivisions |
|
| Language codes | |
| Glottolog | None |
 The Sepik languages as classified byFoley (2018) | |
TheUpper Sepik languages are a group of ten to a dozen languages generally classified among theSepik languages of northernPapua New Guinea.[1]
The Upper Sepik languages are:[2]
Although even the pronouns do not appear to be cognate, Foley classifies the Abau–Iwam languages with theWogamus languages rather than with the Yellow and Wanibe River languages on the basis of a unique noun-class system in the numeral systems (seeWogamus languages#Noun classes). Additionally, Foley considersSepik Iwam andWogamusin noun class prefixes to be likely cognate with each other.Abau is more divergent, but its inclusion by Foley (2018) is based on the similarity of Abau verbal morphology to that of the Iwam languages.Foley observes that much of the lexicon and pronouns of these languages do not derive from proto-Sepik.[1]
Upper Sepik morphological numerals are (Foley 2018):[1]
| gloss | Abau | Sepik Iwam | Wogamusin | Chenapian |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ‘one’ | -eyn ~ -mon ~ -ron | -or | -Vd | -rə |
| ‘two’ | -(r)eys | -is | -us | -si |
| ‘three’ | -(r)ompri | -um | -um | -mu |