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 Mount Bosavi is a mountain in the Southern Highlands province, Papua New Guinea. It is the collapsed cone of an extinct volcano on the Great Papuan Plateau, part of the Kikori River basin.Feld, pp.3–4 The crater is approximately 4 km wid ...

, located east of the

Strickland River The Strickland River is a major river in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea. It is the longest and largest tributary of the Fly River with a total length of including the ''Lagaip River'' the farthest distance river source of the Strickl ...

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 The Kaluli are a clan of indigenous peoples who live in the rain forests of the Great Papuan Plateau in Papua New Guinea. The Kaluli, who numbered approximately 2,000 people in 1987, are the most numerous and well documented by post-contact e ...

and

Sonia Sonia, Sonja or Sonya, a name of Greek origin meaning wisdom, may refer to: People * Sonia (name), a feminine given name (lists people named, Sonia, Sonja and Sonya) :* Sonia (actress), Indian film actress in Malayalam and Tamil films :* Soni ...

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: *

–

, Aimele (Kware), Kasua * Onobasulu *

Mount Sisa Mt. Sisa is a heavily eroded Pleistocene stratovolcano in Hela, 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 Gu ...

Edolo Edolo ( Camunian: ) is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Brescia, Lombardy, northern Italy, located in the upper Camonica valley. Edolo is neighbour to the comuni of Corteno Golgi, Incudine, Lovero, Malonno, Monno, Ponte di Legno, Sav ...

– 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: The words cited constitute translation equivalents, whether they are cognate (e.g. ''aubi'', ''awbi'', ''aube'' for "moon") or not (e.g. ''dɔa'', ''igi'', ''kele'' for "stone").

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. {{authority control Languages of Papua New Guinea Papuan Plateau languages