The Bosavi or Papuan Plateau languages belong to the
Trans-New Guinea language family according to the classifications made by
Malcolm Ross and Timothy Usher. This
language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics ...
derives its name from Mount Bosavi and the Papuan Plateau.
Geographically, the Bosavi languages are situated to the east and south of the
East Strickland group. They can be found around
Mount Bosavi, located east of the
Strickland River and southwest of the western edge of the central highlands of Papua New Guinea. Although no extensive subgrouping analysis has been conducted, Shaw's
lexicostatistical
Lexicostatistics is a method of comparative linguistics that involves comparing the percentage of lexical cognates between languages to determine their relationship. Lexicostatistics is related to the comparative method but does not reconstruct a ...
study in 1986 provides some insights.
Based on this study, it is indicated that
Kaluli and
Sonia exhibit a significant lexical similarity of 70%, which is higher than any other languages compared. Therefore, it is likely that these two languages form a subgroup. Similarly, Etoro and Bedamini share a subgroup with a lexical similarity of 67%. The languages Aimele, Kasua, Onobasulu, and Kaluli-Sunia exhibit more shared
isogloss
An isogloss, also called a heterogloss, is the geographic boundary of a certain linguistics, linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or the use of some morphological or syntactic feature. Isoglosses are a ...
es among themselves than with the Etoro-Bedamini group. Some of these shared isoglosses are likely to be innovations.
[The Trans New Guinea family]
Andrew Pawley and Harald Hammarström
Languages
The languages, which are closely related, are:
[
* Mount Bosavi: Kaluli– Sonia, Aimele (Kware), Kasua
* Onobasulu
* Mount Sisa: Edolo– Beami
* Dibiyaso (Bainapi)
It is worth noting these languages share at best 70% lexical (vocabulary) similarity, as in the case of Kaluli–Sonia and Edolo–Beami.][ The rest of related languages likely share around 10–15% lexical similarities.
The unity of the Bosavi languages was quantitatively demonstrated by Evans and Greenhill (2017).
Palmer et al. (2018) consider Dibiyaso to be a ]language isolate
A language isolate is a language that has no demonstrable genetic relationship with any other languages. Basque in Europe, Ainu and Burushaski in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, Haida and Zuni in North America, Kanoê in South America, and Tiwi ...
.
Pronouns
Pronouns are:
:
Vocabulary comparison
The following basic vocabulary words are from the Trans-New Guinea database:
References
*
*Shaw, R.D.
The Bosavi language family
. In Laycock, D., Seiler, W., Bruce, L., Chlenov, M., Shaw, R.D., Holzknecht, S., Scott, G., Nekitel, O., Wurm, S.A., Goldman, L. and Fingleton, J. editors, ''Papers in New Guinea Linguistics'' No. 24. A-70:45-76. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1986.
*Shaw, R.D.
A Tentative Classification of the Languages of the Mt Bosavi Region
. In Franklin, K. editor, ''The linguistic situation in the Gulf District and adjacent areas, Papua New Guinea''. C-26:187-215. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1973.
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Languages of Papua New Guinea
Papuan Plateau languages