The Eastern Trans-Fly (or Oriomo Plateau) languages are a small independent
family
Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...
of
Papuan languages
The Papuan languages are the non-Austronesian and non- Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands, by around 4 million people. It is a strictly geogra ...
spoken in the
Oriomo Plateau to the west of the
Fly River
The Fly River is the third longest river in the island of New Guinea, after the Sepik River and Mamberamo River, with a total length of and the largest by volume of discharge in Oceania, the largest in the world without a single dam in its ca ...
in New Guinea.
Classification
The languages constituted a branch of
Stephen Wurm
Stephen Adolphe Wurm ( hu, Wurm István Adolf, ; 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- ...
's 1970 Trans-Fly proposal, which he later incorporated into his 1975 expansion of the
Trans–New Guinea family as part of a
Trans-Fly – Bulaka River branch. They are retained as a family but removed from Trans–New Guinea in the classifications of
Malcolm Ross and Timothy Usher.
Wurm had concluded that some of his purported Trans-Fly languages were not in the Trans–New Guinea family but rather heavily influenced by Trans–New Guinea languages. Ross (2005) removed the bulk of the languages, including Eastern Trans-Fly, from Wurm's Trans–New Guinea.
Timothy Usher links the four languages, which he calls ''
Oriomo Plateau'', to the
Pahoturi languages
The Pahoturi languages are a small family of Papuan languages spoken around the Pahoturi (Paho River
The Pahoturi, or Paho River, is a river in southwestern Papua New Guinea.Pahoturi Riverin Geonames.org (cc-by) post updated 2011-07-09; datab ...
and the
Tabo language
Tabo, also known as Waia (Waya), is a Papuan language of Western Province, Papua New Guinea, just north of the Fly River delta. The language has also been known as Hiwi and Hibaradai.
''Tabo'' means ‘word, mouth’ and is the name of the lan ...
in an expanded Eastern Trans-Fly family.
Languages
*
Meriam (within the national borders of
Australia)
*
Bine
*
Wipi
Wipi, also known as Gidra, Jibu or Oriomo, is a Papuan language of New Guinea. It is a member of the Eastern Trans-Fly family, the other languages of this family being Gizrra, Meriam Mir and Bine. The family has influenced the neighbouring Kiw ...
(Gidra)
*
Gizrra
Gizrra, or Toga, is a Papuan language of New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu
Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of Port Moresby (Capit ...
Oriomo (Eastern Trans-Fly) languages and respective demographic information listed by Evans (2018) are provided below.
Geographical coordinates are also provided for each dialect (which are named after villages).
:
Pronouns
The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto–Eastern Trans-Fly are,
:
There is a possibility of a connection here to
Trans–New Guinea. If the inclusive pronoun is historically a second-person form, then there would appear to be ''i-''
ablaut
In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut (, from German '' Ablaut'' ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE).
An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and i ...
for the plural: ''*ka~ki, **ma~mi, **tapa~tapi.'' This is similar to the ablaut reconstructed for TNG ''(*na~ni, *ga~gi).'' Although the pronouns themselves are dissimilar, ablaut is not likely to be borrowed. On the other hand, there is some formal resemblance to Austronesian pronouns (*(a)ku ''I'', *(ka)mu ''you'', *kita ''we inc.'', *(ka)mi ''we exc.'', *ia ''he/she/it''; some archeological, cultural and linguistic evidence of Austronesian contact and settlement in the area exists (David et al., 2011; McNiven et al., 2011; McNiven et al., 2006; McNiven et al., 2004: 67-68; Mitchell 1995).
Vocabulary comparison
The following basic vocabulary words for Bine (Täti dialect), Bine (Sogal dialect), Gizra (Kupere dialect) and Wipi (Dorogori dialect) are from the Trans-New Guinea database.
The equivalent words for Meriam Mir are also included.
:
References
*David, B., McNiven, I.J., Mitchell, R., Orr, M., Haberle, S., Brady, L. & Crouch, J. 2004. Badu 15 and the Papuan-Austronesian settlement of Torres Strait. Archeology in Oceania 39(2): 65-78.
*Fleischmann, L. and Turpeinen, S.
A Dialect Survey of Eastern Trans-Fly Languages. In Reesink, G.P., Fleischmann, L., Turpeinen, S. and Lincoln, P.C. editors, ''Papers in New Guinea Linguistics'' No. 19. A-45:39-76. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1976.
*McNiven, I.J., Dickinson, W.R., David, B., Weisler, M., Von Gnielinski, F., Carter, M., & Zoppi, U. 2006. Mask Cave: red-slipped pottery and the Australian-Papuan settlement of Zenadh Kes (Torres Strait). Archaeology in Oceania 41(2): 49-81.
*McNiven, I.J., David, B., Richards, T., Aplin, K., Asmussen, B., Mialanes, J., Leavesley, M., Faulkner, P., UlmM, S. 2011 New directions in human colonisation of the Pacific: Lapita settlement of south coast New Guinea. Australian Archaeology 72:1-6.
*Mitchell, R. 1995. Linguistic Archeology in Torres Strait. Unpublished MA thesis (James Cook University: Townsville).
External links
Eastern Trans-Fly languages database at TransNewGuinea.org
{{language families
Trans-Fly languages
Languages of Western Province (Papua New Guinea)