The Huon languages are a
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 ...
, spoken on the
Huon Peninsula
Huon Peninsula is a large rugged peninsula on the island of New Guinea in Morobe Province, eastern Papua New Guinea. It is named after French explorer Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec. The peninsula is dominated by the steep Saruwaged and Finist ...
of Papua New Guinea, that was classified within the original
Trans–New Guinea (TNG) proposal, and
William A. Foley considers their TNG identity to be established. They share with the
Finisterre languages
The Finisterre languages are a language family, spoken in the Finisterre Range of Papua New Guinea, classified within the original Trans–New Guinea languages, Trans–New Guinea (TNG) proposal, and William A. Foley considers their TNG ident ...
a small closed class of verbs taking pronominal object prefixes some of which are cognate across both families (Suter 2012), strong morphological evidence that they are related.
Internal structure
Huon and Finisterre, and the connection between them, were identified by
Kenneth McElhanon
Kenneth is a given name of Gaelic origin. The name is an Anglicised form of two entirely different Gaelic personal names: ''Cainnech'' and '' Cináed''. The modern Gaelic form of ''Cainnech'' is ''Coinneach''; the name was derived from a byname m ...
(1967, 1970). They are clearly valid language families. Huon contains two clear branches, Eastern and Western. The Western languages allow more consonants in syllable-final position (p, t, k, m, n, ŋ), while the Eastern languages have neutralized those distinctions to two, the glottal stop (written ''c'') and the velar nasal (McElhanon 1974: 17). Beyond that, classification is based on
lexicostatistics
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 ...
, which provides less precise classification results.
* Huon family
** Eastern Huon branch
***Huon Tip
****Southeast Huon:
Kâte,
Mape
****
Sene
****
Masaweng River:
Migabac,
Momare
***
Kovai
***
Tobo-Kube
***
Dedua
** Western Huon branch
***
Burum (Mindik),
Borong (Kosorong)
***
Kinalakna,
Kumokio
***
Mese,
Nabak
***
Komba,
Selepet–
Timbe
***
Nomu
***
Ono
ONO, Ono or Ōno may refer to:
Places Fiji
* Ono Island (Fiji)
Israel
* Kiryat Ono
* Ono, Benjamin, ancient site
Italy
* Ono San Pietro
Ivory Coast
* Ono, Ivory Coast, a village in Comoé District
Japan
* Ōno Castle, Fukuoka
* ...
***
Sialum
Sialum is a Papuan language of Sialum Rural LLG (), Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of ...
Kâte is the local
lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...
.
References
*
* McElhanon, K. A. (1970). Lexicostatistics and the classification of Huon Peninsula languages. ''Oceania'' 40: 215-231.
* McElhanon, K. A. (1974). The glottal stop in Kâte. ''Kivung'' 7: 16-22.
* Suter, Edgar (2012). Verbs with pronominal object prefixes in Finisterre-Huon languages. In: Harald Hammarström and Wilco van den Heuvel (eds.). ''History, contact and classification of Papuan languages.''
pecial Issue 2012 of Language and Linguistics in Melanesia 23-58. Port Moresby: Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea.
{{Trans–New Guinea languages
Languages of Papua New Guinea