HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

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)