The Nimboran languages are a small
family
Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...
of
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 ...
, spoken in the
Grime River watershed, that had been part of
Stephen Wurm's
Trans–New Guinea proposal. However, when proto-Nimboran pronouns are reconstructed ''(*genam'' "I" and ''kom'' or ''komot'' "thou"), they have little resemblance to the proto-TNG pronouns ''*na'' and ''*ga.'' Usher places them in a
North Papuan stock that resembles Cowan's proposal.
[
Foley (2018) classifies the Nimboran languages separately as an independent language family.]
Classification
The languages are:[
*Nimboran (Grime River)
**East
*** Mekwei (Moi)
***Gresi–Kemtuik
**** Kemtuik
**** Gresi
**West
*** Mlap (Kuangsu)
*** Namblong (Nimboran)
]
Proto-language
Pronouns
The pronouns Ross (2005) reconstructs for proto-Nimboran are,
:
Below are pronouns in the Nimboran languages as given by Foley (2018):
Basic vocabulary
Some lexical reconstructions by Usher (2020) are:[Grime River]
New Guinea World.
:
Vocabulary comparison
The following basic vocabulary words are from Voorhoeve (1975), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database:
References
External links
Nimboran word lists from Voorhoeve (1975)
(TransNewGuinea.org)
Grime River
New Guinea World.
{{Tor–Kwerba languages
Foja Range languages