The Foja Range languages, or Tor–Kwerba in more limited scope, are a

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

of about two dozen

Papuan languages The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands in Indonesia, Solomon Islands, and East Timor. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply ...

. They are named after the

Foja Mountains The Foja Mountains (Foja Range, Foya Mountains) () are located just north of the Mamberamo river basin in Papua, Indonesia. The mountains rise to , and have 3,000 square kilometers of old growth tropical rainforest in the interior part of the r ...

western New Guinea Western New Guinea, also known as Papua, Indonesian New Guinea, and Indonesian Papua, is the western half of the island of New Guinea, formerly Dutch and granted to Indonesia in 1962. Given the island is alternatively named Papua, the region ...

Languages

All the languages had been part of

Stephen Wurm Stephen Adolphe Wurm (, ; 19 August 1922 – 24 October 2001) was a Hungarian-born Australian linguist. Early life Wurm was born in Budapest, the second child to the German-speaking Adolphe Wurm and the Hungarian-speaking Anna Novroczky. ...

's 1975 Trans–New Guinea proposal, but he did not recognize them as a unit, retaining Kwerba within Capell's 1962 Dani–Kwerba proposal, for example. Foley (2018) classifies the Orya–Tor and Kwerbic languages together, as Tor–Kwerba. Usher (2020) adds Nimboran and Mawes, naming the expanded family Foja Range, after the Foja mountain range that passes through all four branches of the family. *Foja Range ** Orya–Tor **

Nimboran Nimboran (Nambrong, Namblong, Namlong) is a Papuan language of Nimboran District, Jayapura Regency, Indonesia spoken by mostly older adults. Younger generations have shifted to Papuan Malay Papuan Malay or Irian Malay is a Malay-based creole, ...

**'' Mawes'' ** West Foja Range (Greater Kwerbic) *** Isirawa *** Masep *** Kapauri–Sause ***Apauwar–Kwerba (Kwerbic) **** Apauwar Coast **** Kwerba

Typological overview

Even though

grammatical gender In linguistics, a grammatical gender system is a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are assigned to gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted by those nouns. In languages wit ...

is present in Tor-Kwerba languages, there is no overt gender marking on nouns.

Pronouns

Reconstructed proto-Tor-Kwerba independent pronouns are: :

Cognates

Reconstructed proto-Tor-Kwerba words that are widely distributed throughout the family (Foley 2018): * * 'eye' * * 'leg' * * 'louse' * * 'sky' * * ~ * 'tree'

References

External links

Tor-Kwerba languages database at TransNewGuinea.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Foja Range languages Northwest Papuan languages Language families