The Middle Sepik languages comprise diverse groups of
Sepik languages
The Sepik or Sepik River languages are a family of some 50 Papuan languages spoken in the Sepik river basin of northern Papua New Guinea, proposed by Donald Laycock in 1965 in a somewhat more limited form than presented here. They tend to ha ...
spoken in northern
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
. The Middle Sepik grouping is provisionally accepted by Foley (2018) based on shared innovations in pronouns, but is divided by ''Glottolog''. They are spoken in areas surrounding the town of
Ambunti in
East Sepik Province.
Unlike most other Sepik languages, Middle Sepik languages do not overtly mark gender on nouns, although the third-person singular pronoun does distinguish between masculine and feminine genders (e.g., Proto-
Ndu *nd- ‘3sg.m’ and *l- ‘3sg.f’).
Languages
The languages are:
Middle Sepik River
NewGuineaWorld
*Ma–Tama
**Nukuma languages
The Nukuma languages are a small family of three clearly related languages:
* Kwoma
*Kwanga–Mende
** Kwanga
** Seim
They are generally classified among the Sepik languages of northern Papua New Guinea; Malcolm Ross places them in a Middle ...
(see)
**Tama languages
The Tama languages are a small family of three clusters of closely related languages of northern Papua New Guinea, spoken just to the south of Nuku town in eastern Sandaun Province. They are classified as subgroup of the Sepik languages. ''Tama ...
(see)
*Ndu–Yerekai
**Ndu–Nggala
*** Nggala
***Ndu languages
The Ndu languages are the best known family of the Sepik languages of East Sepik Province in northern Papua New Guinea. ''Ndu'' is the word for 'man' in the languages that make up this group. The languages were first identified as a related famil ...
(see)
** Yerakai (Garamambu)
References
*
{{Sepik languages
Sepik languages