The Grass languages are a group of languages in the

Ramu The Ramu River is a major river in northern Papua New Guinea. The headwaters of the river are formed in the Kratke Range from where it then travels about northwest to the Bismarck Sea. Along the Ramu's course, it receives numerous tributaries ...

language family. It is accepted by Foley (2018), but not by

Glottolog ''Glottolog'' is an open-access online bibliographic database of the world's languages. In addition to listing linguistic materials ( grammars, articles, dictionaries) describing individual languages, the database also contains the most up-to-d ...

. They are spoken in

East Sepik Province East Sepik is a province in Papua New Guinea. Its capital is Wewak. East Sepik has an estimated population of 450,530 people (2011 census) and is 43,426 km square in size. Its density is 10.4 people per square kilometer. History Cherubim D ...

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 New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

, with a small number of speakers also located just across the provincial border in

Madang Province Madang is a Provinces of Papua New Guinea, province of Papua New Guinea. The province is on the northern coast of mainland Papua New Guinea and has many of the country's highest peaks, active volcanoes and its biggest mix of languages. The capi ...

External relationships

Foley (2018) notes that Grass languages share very few lexical items with the other Ramu languages, with virtually no lexical cognates Banaro and Ap Ma. However, the Grass languages are still classified as Ramu due to widely shared morphosyntax and typology. Foley (2018: 205) leaves open the possibility of Grass being a third branch of the Lower Sepik-Ramu family, with Lower Sepik and

being sister branches. Like the neighboring Yuat languages, Grass languages distinguish between inclusive and exclusive first person pronouns, a feature not found in most other Papuan languages. This typological feature has diffused from Yuat into the Grass languages.

Classifications

The original Grass language proposal, also known as ''Keram'', included several languages, such as Banaro and Kambot (Ap Ma), that are no longer thought to be closely related to Adjora and Gorovu.

Laycock (1973)

Laycock (1973) rejected Kambot and noted that Banaro was lexically divergent, and therefore grouped it with the Grass ''family'' in a higher-level Grass ''stock'', a position accepted by Pawley (2005). Grass/Keram (Laycock) * Banaro *Grass proper: Aion (Ambakich), Adjora (Abu), and Gorovu.

Usher (2018)

Timothy Usher (as reported in ''

'') broke it up still further, with only Abu (Adora) and Gorovu kept together (in a " Porapora River" or "Agoan" branch), Aion (Ambakich) and Kambot (Ap Ma) grouped with the

Mongol–Langam languages The Mongol–Langam, Koam, or Ulmapo languages are a language group of Keram Rural LLG, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea belonging to the Ramu languages, Ramu language family. Foley (2018) includes them within the Grass languages, but they w ...

, and Banaro left as a primary branch of Ramu proper.

Foley (2018)

Foley (2018) provides the following classification. * Porapora languages: Aion ( Ambakich), Gorovu, Adjora ( Abu) * Koam languages:

Mongol Mongols are an East Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia, China (Inner Mongolia and other 11 autonomous territories), as well as the republics of Buryatia and Kalmykia in Russia. The Mongols are the principal member of the large family of M ...

, Langam, Yaul-Dimiri * Banaro * Ap Ma ( Kambot / Botin) Foley (2005) did not include the Koam languages within Grass, but added them to Grass in 2018.

References

* {{Ramu–Lower Sepik languages Ramu languages Languages of East Sepik Province