The Lower Mamberamo languages are a recently proposed

language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in h ...

linking two languages spoken along the northern coast of

Papua province Papua is a province of Indonesia, comprising the northern coast of Western New Guinea together with island groups in Cenderawasih Bay to the west. It roughly follows the borders of Papuan customary region of Tabi Saireri. It is bordered by the ...

, Indonesia, near the mouth of the

Mamberamo River The Mamberamo (''Indonesian: Sungai Mamberamo'') is the second longest river on the island of New Guinea, after Sepik River (1,146 km) and third largest in Oceania by discharge (5,500 m3/s) volume after Fly River (7,500 m3/s) and Sepik (7,000 m3/ ...

. They have various been classified either as heavily Papuanized Austronesian languages belonging to the SHWNG branch, or as

Papuan languages The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian and non- Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands, by around 4 million people. It is a strictly geogr ...

that had undergone heavy Austronesian influence. Glottolog 3.4 classifies Lower Mamberamo as Austronesian, while Donohue classifies it as Papuan. Kamholz (2014) classifies Warembori and

Yoke A yoke is a wooden beam sometimes used between a pair of oxen or other animals to enable them to pull together on a load when working in pairs, as oxen usually do; some yokes are fitted to individual animals. There are several types of yoke, u ...

each as coordinate primary subgroups of the

South Halmahera–West New Guinea languages The South Halmahera–West New Guinea (SHWNG) languages are a branch of the Malayo-Polynesian languages, found in the islands and along the shores of the Halmahera Sea in the Indonesian province of North Maluku and of Cenderawasih Bay in the pro ...

Languages

The two languages, Warembori and

, were listed as

isolates {{About, , the linguistics term dealing with languages unrelated to any other language in the world, Language isolate, other uses, Isolate (disambiguation){{!Isolate Isolates is a term used in developmental psychology and family studies, to describ ...

in Stephen Wurm's widely used classification. Donohue (1998) showed them to be related with shared morphological irregularities. Ross (2007) classified Warembori as an Austronesian language based on pronouns; however, Donohue argues that these are borrowed, since the two pronouns most resistant to borrowing, 'I' and 'thou', do not resemble Austronesian or any other language family. The singular prefixes resemble Kwerba languages, but Lower Mamberamo has nothing else in common with that family. (See Warembori language and Yoke language for details.) Donohue argues that they form an independent family, though one perhaps related to another Papuan family, that has been extensively relexified under Austronesian influence, especially in the case of Warembori. Pauwi, now extinct, may have been a Lower Mamberamo language.

'Ambermo'

In 1855, G. J. Fabritius collected numerals from around Geelvink Bay. At the 'Ambermo' (Mamberamo) River at the eastern extent of his coverage, he collected ''tenama'' '1' and ''bisa'' '2' from an unnamed language. However, he notes that the people only 'count' by means of singular and plural, so it's doubtful whether ''tenama'' and ''bisa'' are actually numerals. In any case, these words do not resemble the numerals in any language of the area, so the language Fabritius encountered remains unidentified.

Pronouns

Reconstructed independent pronouns in proto-Lower Mamberamo are: : Foley observes that there are likely similarities with Austronesian languages, likely due to contact. *e ‘I’ and *a ‘you (sg)’ are also shared with neighboring Kwerba languages.

Cognates

Basic vocabulary, mostly cognates, of the Lower Mamberamo languages ( Warembori and

) listed in Foley (2018): :

Vocabulary comparison

The following basic vocabulary words are from Voorhoeve (1975), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database: :

Notes

References

External links

Lower Mamberamo languages database at TransNewGuinea.org
{{Language families Proposed language families Papuan languages Mixed languages