The Senu River languages are a small

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 ...

spoken in the Senu River watershed of

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 ...

. They consist at least of the Kwomtari languages, Kwomtari and Nai, with several additional languages more distantly related to them.

Classification

The family consists of at least the two relatively closely related languages Kwomtari and Nai.

Baron (1983)

Baron adds the highly divergent language Guriaso: *Kwomtari stock ** Guriaso **Kwomtari–Nai family (Nuclear Kwomtari) *** Kwomtari *** Nai ( Biaka) Guriaso shares a small number of cognates with Kwomtari–Nai. Baron (1983) considers the evidence to be convincing when a correspondence between and (from ) is established: * Compare Biaka . ** Metathesis of /p/ and /t/.

Usher (2020)

Usher further classifies

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(Nagatman) with Guriaso, and adds Busa, all under the name "Senu River".NewGuineaWorld, Senu River
/ref> ;Senu River (Kwomtari–Busa) * Kwomtari– Nai * Guriaso–

*Odiai ( Busa)

Confusion from Laycock

There has been confusion over the membership of the Kwomtari family, apparently due to a misalignment in the publication (Loving & Bass 1964) of the data used for the initial classification. (See Baron 1983.) Because of this, Laycock classified the Kwomtari languages as part of a spurious Kwomtari–Fas family, which confusingly was also often called "Kwomtari" in the literature. However, Baron sees no evidence that the similarities are due to relationship. Usher likewise discounts the inclusion of the Fas languages. See Kwomtari–Fas languages for details.

References

* * *

External links

Kwomtari languages database at TransNewGuinea.orgWietze Baron, The Kwomtari Phylum
(accessed 2011-4-15) {{language families Language families Languages of Sandaun Province