The Foja Range languages, or Tor–Kwerba in more limited scope, are a
family
Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...
of about two dozen
Papuan languages
The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands in Indonesia, Solomon Islands, and East Timor. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply ...
. They are named after the
Foja Mountains of
western New Guinea
Western New Guinea, also known as Papua, Indonesian New Guinea, and Indonesian Papua, is the western half of the island of New Guinea, formerly Dutch and granted to Indonesia in 1962. Given the island is alternatively named Papua, the region ...
.
Languages
All the languages had been part of
Stephen Wurm's 1975
Trans–New Guinea proposal, but he did not recognize them as a unit, retaining Kwerba within Capell's 1962
Dani–Kwerba proposal, for example. Foley (2018) classifies the Orya–Tor and Kwerbic languages together, as Tor–Kwerba.
Usher (2020) adds Nimboran and Mawes, naming the expanded family Foja Range, after the
Foja mountain range that passes through all four branches of the family.
*Foja Range
**
Orya–Tor
**
Nimboran
**''
Mawes''
**
West Foja Range (Greater Kwerbic)
***
Isirawa
***
Masep
***
Kapauri–Sause
***Apauwar–Kwerba (Kwerbic)
****
Apauwar Coast
****
Kwerba
Typological overview
Even though
grammatical gender
In linguistics, a grammatical gender system is a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are assigned to gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted by those nouns. In languages wit ...
is present in Tor-Kwerba languages, there is no overt gender marking on nouns.
Pronouns
Reconstructed proto-Tor-Kwerba independent pronouns are:
:
Cognates
Reconstructed proto-Tor-Kwerba words that are widely distributed throughout the family (Foley 2018):
* * 'eye'
* * 'leg'
* * 'louse'
* * 'sky'
* * ~ * 'tree'
References
External links
Tor-Kwerba languages database at TransNewGuinea.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Foja Range languages
Northwest Papuan languages
Language families