Huon Gulf languages

The Huon Gulf languages are Western Oceanic languages spoken primarily in Morobe Province of Papua New Guinea. They may form a group of the North New Guinea languages, perhaps within the Ngero–Vitiaz branch of that family.

Huon Gulf
Geographic
distribution
Papua New Guinea
Linguistic classificationAustronesian
Proto-languageProto-Huon Gulf
Subdivisions
Glottologhuon1245

Unusually for Oceanic languages, two North Huon Gulf languages, Bukawa and Yabem, are tonal. The only other tonal Oceanic languages are found in New Caledonia.[1]

Classification

According to Lynch, Ross, & Crowley (2002), the structure of the family is as follows:[2]

Proto-Huon Gulf

Proto-Huon Gulf
Reconstruction ofHuon Gulf languages
Reconstructed
ancestors
Lower-order reconstructions

Proto-Huon Gulf was reconstructed by Malcolm Ross in 1988 in Proto-Oceanic and the Austronesian Languages of Western Melanesia. It is reconstructed on the basis of shared phonological, morphosyntactic and lexicosemantic innovations relative to Proto-Oceanic, such as the pervasive lenition of Proto-Oceanic *p to *v, the acquisition of a final *-c in some words, the idiosyncratic change of Proto-Oceanic *boRok 'pig' to Proto-Huon Gulf *boR, and the loss of all verb-deriving prefixes such as *pa- 'causative', *paRi- 'reciprocal', *ma- 'stative', and *ta- 'intransitive'.

Vowels

The vowels of Proto-Huon Gulf, according to Ross, are:

Vowels
Front Central Back
Close *i *u
Close-mid *e *o
Open *a

Consonants

The consonants of Proto-Huon Gulf, according to Ross, are:

Consonants
Labiovelar Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular
Stop voiced *b *d *ɟ *g
voiceless *p *t *c *k
Nasal *mʷ *m *n *ɲ *ŋ
Fricative *v *s *ɣ
Approximant *w *l, *r *j *ʀ

References

  1. Blust, Robert (2013). The Austronesian languages. Vol. A-PL 008 (revised ed.). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. hdl:1885/10191. ISBN 9781922185075.
  2. Lynch, John, Malcolm Ross & Terry Crowley. 2002. The Oceanic languages. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press.
  • Ross, Malcolm (1988). Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian languages of western Melanesia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
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