Anim Language

The Anim or Fly River languages are a language family in south-central New Guinea established by Usher & Suter (2015).Timothy Usher and Edgar Suter (2015) "The Anim Languages of Southern New Guinea". ''Oceanic Linguistics'' 54:110–142 The names of the family derive from the Fly River and from the Proto-Anim word *anim 'people'.

Languages

The 17 Anim languages belong to the following four subfamilies:

* Inland Gulf
* Tirio (Lower Fly River)
* Boazi (Lake Murray)
* Marind (Marind–Yaqai)

The moribund Abom language, previously considered a member of the Tirio family, is of uncertain classification, possibly Trans–New Guinea, but does not appear to be Anim. The extinct Karami language, attested only in a short word list and previously assigned to the Inland Gulf family, defies classification (Usher and Suter 2015).

Anim languages and respective demographic information listed by Evans (2018) are provided below.

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Reconstruction

Phonemes

Usher (2020) reconstructs the consonant inventory as follows:Timothy Usher & Edgar Suter
Proto–Fly River
''New Guinea World''.

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Vowels are *a *e *i *o *u.

Pronouns

Proto-Anim pronouns (Usher and Suter 2015):

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By 2020, comparison with the neighboring TNG branch Awyu–Ok had led so some revision of the reconstructions. Here are the nominative and possessive/object forms:

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The demonstrative third-person forms *e-, *u-, *i- are an innovation shared with proto-Awyu–Ok, which has the same vowel ablaut in the second person as well. They reflect a gender ablaut of msg *e, fsg *u, nsg * /o and pl *i, as in *anem 'man', *anum 'woman', *anim 'people', or *we 'father', *wu 'mother', *wi 'parents'.

Lexicon

Proto-Anim lexical reconstructions by Usher & Suter (2015) are:

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Below are selected reconstructions for Proto-Fly River (Proto-Anim) and branches by Usher (2020).

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References

External links

* Timothy Usher & Edgar Suter, New Guinea World
Proto–Fly River
(see also reconstructions of branches)

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Trans–New Guinea languages