Proto-Kwalean
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The Kwalean or Humene–Uare languages are a small family of
Trans–New Guinea languages Trans–New Guinea (TNG) is an extensive family of Papuan languages spoken on the island of New Guinea and neighboring islands, a region corresponding to the country Papua New Guinea as well as parts of Indonesia. Trans–New Guinea is perhaps ...
spoken in the "
Bird's Tail The Papuan Peninsula, also known as the Bird's Tail Peninsula, is a large peninsula in Papua New Guinea, southeast of the city of Lae, that makes up the southeastern portion of the island of New Guinea. The peninsula is the easternmost extent of ...
" (southeastern peninsula) of New Guinea. They are classified within the Southeast Papuan branch of Trans–New Guinea. The Kwalean languages are spoken in
Rigo District Rigo District is a district of Central Province in Papua New Guinea. It is one of the five administrative districts that make up the province. Local-level government areas * Rigo Central Rural * Rigo Coastal Rural * Rigo Inland Rural Town ...
, Central Province,
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 ...
.


Languages

The languages are Humene, Uare (Kwale) and recently extinct Mulaha. It is not clear if Mulaha was an outlier, or as close to the others as they are to each other.


Classification

Humene and Uare are quite close (70% basic vocabulary), Mulaha more distant (22% with Uare). The Kwalean family is not accepted by
Søren Wichmann Søren Wichmann (born 1964) is a Danish linguist specializing in historical linguistics, linguistic typology, Mesoamerican languages, and epigraphy. Since June 2016, he has been employed as a University Lecturer at Leiden University Centre for L ...
(2013), who splits it into two separate groups, namely HumeneUare and Mulaha.Wichmann, Søren. 2013
A classification of Papuan languages
. In: Hammarström, Harald and Wilco van den Heuvel (eds.), History, contact and classification of Papuan languages (Language and Linguistics in Melanesia, Special Issue 2012), 313-386. Port Moresby: Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea.


Proto-language


Phonemes

Usher (2020) reconstructs the consonant inventory of Humene and Uare as follows:New Guinea World, Humene–Uare
/ref> : The *k is rare. Vowels are *i *e *ɛ *a *ɔ *o *u.


Pronouns

Usher (2020) reconstructs the pronouns of Humene–Uare as: :


Basic vocabulary

Some lexical reconstructions by Usher (2020) are: :


Vocabulary comparison

The following basic vocabulary words are from Dutton (1970) (with additional data for Uare from 1988 SIL field notes), as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database. Proto-Kwalean reconstructions are from Ross (2014). Note that the words cited constitute translation equivalents, whether they are cognate (e.g. ''nuune'', ''nune'' for “breast”) or not (e.g. ''hadi'', ''aroba'' for “stone”). :


Evolution

Kwale Kwale is a small town in Mombasa and the capital of Kwale County, Kenya. It is located at ; 30 km southwest of Mombasa and 15 km inland. The town had an urban population of 10,063 (2019 census). It is next to the Shimba Hills Nation ...
reflexes of proto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG) etyma are: *''maɣa'' ‘egg’ < *maŋgV *''oda'' ‘leg’ < *k(a,o)ndok *''nomone'' ‘louse’ < *niman *''ire'' ‘tree’ < *inda


References


Further reading

* Ross, Malcolm. 2014
Proto-Kwalean
''TransNewGuinea.org''.


External links

* Timothy Usher, New Guinea World
Owen Stanley Range
* (ibid.
Proto–Humene–Uare
{{Papuan languages Owen Stanley Range languages Languages of Central Province (Papua New Guinea)