The Senu River languages are a small

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 ...

spoken in the

Senu River The Senu River is a river in Sandaun Province, Papua New Guinea. Senu Riverin Geonames.org (cc-by) post updated 2011-06-05; database downloaded 2015-06-22 See also *List of rivers of Papua New Guinea *Senu River languages The Senu River la ...

watershed of

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 ...

. They consist at least of the Kwomtari languages, Kwomtari and Nai, with several additional languages more distantly related to them.

Classification

The family consists of at least the two relatively closely related languages Kwomtari and Nai.

Baron (1983)

Baron adds the highly divergent language Guriaso: *Kwomtari stock ** Guriaso **Kwomtari–Nai family (Nuclear Kwomtari) *** Kwomtari *** Nai ( Biaka) Guriaso shares a small number of cognates with Kwomtari–Nai. Baron (1983) considers the evidence to be convincing when a correspondence between and (from ) is established: * Compare Biaka . ** Metathesis of /p/ and /t/.

Usher (2020)

Usher further classifies

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

(Nagatman) with Guriaso, and adds Busa, all under the name "Senu River".NewGuineaWorld Senu River
/ref> ;Senu River (Kwomtari–Busa) * Kwomtari– Nai * Guriaso–

*Odiai ( Busa)

Confusion from Laycock

There has been confusion over the membership of the Kwomtari family, apparently due to a misalignment in the publication (Loving & Bass 1964) of the data used for the initial classification. (See Baron 1983.) Because of this, Laycock classified the Kwomtari languages as part of a spurious Kwomtari–Fas family, which confusingly was also often called "Kwomtari" in the literature. However, Baron sees no evidence that the similarities are due to relationship. Usher likewise discounts the inclusion of the Fas languages. See

Kwomtari–Fas languages The Kwomtari–Fas languages, often referred to ambiguously as Kwomtari, are an apparently spurious language family proposal of six languages spoken by some 4,000 people in the north of Papua New Guinea, near the border with Indonesia. The term "K ...

for details.

References

* * *

External links

Kwomtari languages database at TransNewGuinea.orgWietze Baron, The Kwomtari Phylum
(accessed 2011-4-15) {{language families Language families Languages of Sandaun Province