The Pahoturi River languages are a small
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
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 ...
spoken around the Pahoturi (
Paho River). This family includes eight language varieties including
Agöb (Dabu), Em, Ende, Idan,
Idi, Idzuwe, Kawam, and Taeme, which are spoken in the
Pahoturi River area south of the
Fly River
The Fly River is the third longest river on the island of New Guinea, after the Sepik and Mamberamo, with a total length of . It is the largest by volume of discharge in Oceania, the largest in the world without a single dam in its catchment, an ...
, just west of the
Eastern Trans-Fly languages
The Eastern Trans-Fly (or Oriomo Plateau) languages are a small independent language family, family of Papuan languages spoken in the Oriomo Plateau to the west of the Fly River in New Guinea.
Classification
The languages constituted a branch ...
. Idzuwe is no longer spoken. Ross (2005) tentatively includes them in the proposed
Trans-Fly – Bulaka River family,
though more recent work has classified Pahoturi River as an independent family within the region.
Some Pahoturi River speakers were originally hunter-gatherers, but have recently shifted to becoming gardeners.
Classification
Wurm (1975) and Ross (2005) suggest that the Pahoturi languages may be related to the
Tabo (Waia) language just north of the Fly delta. However, they present no evidence, and the pronouns do not match.
Evans and colleagues (2018) classify the Pahoturi River languages as an independent language family.
Languages
Five of the varieties have traditionally been grouped
into the following two language groups:
#
Agöb (Dabu), Ende, and Kawam
#
Idi and
Taeme
Preliminary work on the language family suggests that these varieties form a
dialect chain. It is assumed that Em is more closely related to
Agob and Ende, while Idan and Idzuwe are more closely related to
Idi and
Taeme.
Pahoturi River languages and respective demographic information listed by Evans (2018) are provided below.
:
Phonemes
Usher (2020) reconstructs the consonant inventory as follows:
:
Pronouns
The pronouns Ross reconstructs for the family are:
Proto-Pahoturi River
:
Lindsey lists the following pronouns for each of the language varieties in the family.
Documentation status
The Pahoturi River languages are all under various states of documentation. The following table lists some general lexical, grammatical, textual, and typological resources that have been identified for each of the currently spoken Pahoturi River languages.
References
External links
* Timothy Usher, New Guinea World
Paho River
{{language families
Trans-Fly languages
Languages of Western Province (Papua New Guinea)