| Pauwasi | |
|---|---|
| Pauwasi River | |
| Geographic distribution | Pauwasi River watershed,West New Guinea,Papua New Guinea |
| Linguistic classification | One of the world's primarylanguage families |
| Subdivisions | |
| Language codes | |
| Glottolog | pauw1244 |
ThePauwasi languages are a likelyfamily ofPapuan languages, mostly in Indonesia. The subfamilies are at best only distantly related. The best described Pauwasi language isKarkar, across the border in Papua New Guinea. They are spoken around the headwaters of thePauwasi River in the Indonesian-PNG border region.
Based on earlier work, the East and West Pauwasi languages of Indonesia were classified together in Wurm (1975), though he (and later researchers) did not recognize thatYuri (Karkar) of Papua New Guinea was also East Pauwasi. That connection was made by Usher, though anthropologists had long known of the connection. Later the South Pauwasi languages were also identified by Usher, and the West Pauwasi family tentatively expanded.[1]Wichmann (2013), Foley (2018) and Pawley & Hammarström (2018), noting the sharp differences among the three groups, are agnostic about whetherWest Pauwasi,East Pauwasi andSouth Pauwasi are related.[2][3][4]
The inclusion ofMolof (Poule) is especially tentative (as of 2020).[5]
The languages are not close: though the Eastern languages are clearly related, Yafi and Emumu are only 25% lexically similar. Pawley and Hammarström (2018) also question whether Eastern Pauwasi and Western Pauwasi are really related. They also note that Tebi and Towei are very different from each other, and may not necessarily group with each other.[3]
Karkar-Yuri, long thought to be an isolate in Papua New Guinea, is clearly related and may actually form a dialect continuum with Emumu in Indonesia. On the other hand, the Western languages are so poorly attested that it is not certain that they are part of the Pauwasi family (or even related to each other), or if the common words are loans and they constitute a separate family or families, though a family connection appears likely.[6]
The proto-forms of the pronouns have not been reconstructed. Attested forms include:
| 1sg | 2sg | 1pl | 2pl | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| West | Dubu (Tebi) | no, nok | fo, fro | numu, nəmu | nimia, nəmia |
| Towei | ŋo, oŋgo | fo, u, ŋgo | nu | yu- | |
| Afra (Usku) | o-, a- | po-, pu- | no | so | |
| Namla | na | wuŋgiknoko | mani | yuka | |
| Tofamna 1 | ne | wo | INCL ŋu EXCL nukwe | dule | |
| Tofamna 2 | niawi | wame | INCL mlo EXCL wone | ||
| East | Yafi (Zorop) | nam | nem, nəm, am | nin | nin-, nəm- |
| Emumu (Emem) | (w)ɔna(o) | mo, mao | ninao, nino | nimao, nəmou | |
| Karkar | ɔnɔ | amɔ | yino, namo | yumo, yimung | |
| South | Yetfa | nawo, nya(wo) | powo, pa | no(wo), nana | so, sef- |
| Kimki | win | (p)ume | name, nar | same | |
| Murkim | nuːk | hak(o) | nakme(-re) | sakme-re | |
| Molof (Poule) | məik, mai | in, ni | ti-PL (INCL also inte) | in-PL | |
Yafi and Emumu are similar, and Dubu and Towei may share 1pl *numu, but there is not apparent connection between them. Dubuno and Yafinam might reflect pTNG *na, and Toweingo pTNG *ga (*nga), and the plural pTNG *nu and *ni.
Stephen Wurm (1975) classified the Western (Indonesian) languages as a branch of theTrans–New Guinea (TNG) phylum, a position whichMalcolm Ross (2005) tentatively retained. Ross's TNG classification is based onpersonal pronouns. Since no pronouns could be reconstructed from the available data on the poorly attested Indonesian Pauwasi languages, which were all that were recognized as Pauwasi at the time, only a tentative assessment could be made, based on a few lexical items. Some of the pronouns of Dubu and Yafi look like they might be TNG. However, Ross counted Karkar, for which the pronouns were known, as an isolate because its pronouns did not pattern as TNG. At this stage its identity as a Pauwasi language was unknown.
Pawley and Hammarström (2018) do not consider there to be sufficient evidence for the Pauwasi languages to be classified as part ofTrans-New Guinea, though they do note the following lexical resemblances between Tebi, Yafi, andproto-Trans-New Guinea.[3]
Foley (2018) notes that Western Pauwasi has more Trans-New Guinea lexical similarities than East Pauwasi does. He notes that Karkar-Yuri shares some typological similarities with the Trans-New Guinea languages, which could be due to chance, contact, or genetic inheritance.[4]
