The Upper Sepik languages are a group of ten to a dozen languages generally classified among the
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 have ...
of 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 ...
.
Languages
The Upper Sepik languages are:
Upper Sepik River
NewGuineaWorld
*Abau–Iwam
**Abau
Abau is a Papuan language spoken in southern Sandaun Province of Papua New Guinea, primarily along the border with Indonesia.
In 2002, there were estimated to be between 4,500 and 5,000 speakers, and this number does not appear to have declined s ...
**Iwam languages
The Iwam languages are a small family of two clearly related languages,
: May River Iwam and Sepik Iwam.
They are generally classified among the Sepik languages of northern Papua New Guinea; Malcolm Ross places them in an Upper Sepik branch of ...
*Yellow and Wanibe Rivers
**Amal–Kalou
***Amal Amal may refer to:
* Amal (given name)
* Åmål, a small town in Sweden
* Amal Movement, a Lebanese political party
** Amal Militia, Amal Movement's defunct militia
* Amal language of Papua New Guinea
* Amal (film), ''Amal'' (film), 2007, directed ...
*** Kalou
**Ram languages
The Ram languages are a small group of 3 languages spoken in Sandaun Province, Papua New Guinea. They are spoken directly to the northeast of the Yellow River languages and directly to the south of the Wapei languages, both of which are also Sepi ...
(see)
**Yellow River languages
The Yellow River languages are a small family of clearly related languages,
: Namia (Namie), Ak, and Awun.
They are classified among the Sepik languages of northern Papua New Guinea.
Namia is the most divergent Yellow River language.
Distr ...
(see)
Although even the pronouns do not appear to be cognate, Foley classifies the Abau–Iwam languages with the Wogamus languages rather than with the Yellow and Wanibe River languages on the basis of a unique noun-class system in the numeral systems (see '' Wogamus languages#Noun classes''). Additionally, Foley considers Sepik Iwam and Wogamusin noun class prefixes to be likely cognate with each other. Abau
Abau is a Papuan language spoken in southern Sandaun Province of Papua New Guinea, primarily along the border with Indonesia.
In 2002, there were estimated to be between 4,500 and 5,000 speakers, and this number does not appear to have declined s ...
is more divergent, but its inclusion by Foley (2018) is based on the similarity of Abau verbal morphology to that of the Iwam languages.
Foley observes that much of the lexicon and pronouns of these languages do not derive from proto-Sepik.
Numerals
Upper Sepik morphological numerals are (Foley 2018):
References
*
{{Sepik languages
Sepik languages