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The Kwomtari languages are a hypothetical language family of six languages spoken by some 4000 people in the north of Papua New Guinea, near the border with Indonesia. List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family Papua New Guinea (or ˈpæpjuːə in Tok Pisin: Papua Niugini) officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania The Republic of Indonesia ( (Republik Indonesia is a Country in Southeast Asia. The term Kwomtari-Baibai languages sometimes appears, e. g. in Ethnologue, but has not generally been used by linguists. Ethnologue Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics a Christian

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Classification problems

The "Kwomtari phylum" was first proposed by Loving and Bass (1964). The following classification is based on their proposal, with the addition of the Pyu and Guriaso languages, discovered later.

Kwomtari languages

Laycock (1973; 1975) grouped the languages differently, placing Kwomtari and Fas together in the "Kwomtari family", and Baibai and Nai (Biaka) together in the "Baibai family". Nai is a language of Papua New Guinea. It is spoken in Amanab District, Sandaun Province. Dr Donald Laycock was an Australian linguist and anthropologist Most later sources (including Ethnologue) follow Laycock's arrangement, for which he published no evidence. Ethnologue Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics a Christian However there are good reasons for preferring the classification by Loving and Bass. They found Kwomtari to have 30% cognates with Biaka (Nai). Cognates in Linguistics are words that have a common origin They may occur within a language such as shirt and skirt as two English words descended from In contrast they note that "Baibai has only 6% cognates with Biaka", and so cannot be assigned to the same family. The Dutch linguist Wietze Baron confirmed the Loving and Bass arrangement in a 1983 survey, and added a new language, Guriaso, as a divergent branch of the Kwomtari family.

A severe problem with accounts of the Kwomtari languages is that few Papuanists (linguists who study Papuan languages) have encountered the languages first-hand, or have even seen the field notes of the linguists who have. Rather they rely on secondary sources perpetuating Laycock's arrangement, which makes the two families look much closer than they actually are. However even Laycock (1973: 43) admitted, "A great deal more work is required on the Kwomtari Phylum before the classification can be regarded as established. "

Laycock also added the Pyu language isolate. A language isolate, in the absolute sense is a Natural language with no demonstrable genealogical (or "genetic" relationship with other living languages that is However, according to Usher, there is nothing to suggest that the Kwomtari family, Fas family, and Pyu are actually related, except that the Kwomtari and Fas families use the same kinship terms.

Malcolm Ross linked the Kwomtari languages to the small Left May (Arai) family in a Left May-Kwomtari proposal, which is based on common pronouns. Malcolm David Ross (born 1942 is a linguist and professor at the Australian National University. The Left May or Arai languages are a small Language family of half a dozen closely related but not mutually intelligible languages in the centre of New Guinea The Left May-Kwomtari languages are a small family of Papuan languages proposed by Malcolm Ross, which links the Left May (Arai family In Linguistics and Grammar, a pronoun is a Pro-form that substitutes for a (including a noun phrase consisting of a single Noun) with or However, the link appears less straightforward once the correction is made for Loving and Bass' classification. See Left May-Kwomtari for details. The Left May-Kwomtari languages are a small family of Papuan languages proposed by Malcolm Ross, which links the Left May (Arai family

Characteristics of the languages

Practically the only available material on the Kwomtari languages consists of a number of articles on the Fas language. Two papers were published by Wietze Baron (1979, 1983a) on the phonology of this language. Baron argued that the phonological processes of Fas contradict claims by proponents of Natural Generative Phonology that Paul Kiparsky's Opacity Principle allowed no exceptions. Phonology ( Greek φωνή (phōnē voice sound + λόγος (lógos word speech subject of discussion is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning René Paul Viktor Kiparsky (born January 28, 1941, Helsinki, Finland) is a professor of Linguistics at Stanford University See Optimality theory for later developments in phonological theory. Optimality Theory (OT is a linguistic model originally proposed by the linguists Alan Prince and Paul Smolensky in 1993 Further papers are posted on his website. Recently an honours thesis by Fiona Blake (University of Sydney) has also been posted on the web; she refers to Fas as Momu.

The Fas language apparently has a seven-vowel system. It also has a bilabial trill (Baron 1979: 95) - even though Laycock (1975: 854) expressed his doubts about earlier reports of this feature by Capell (1962).

See also

References

External links

Wietze Baron's site for Kwomtari languages [3] Fiona Blake's thesis on Momu (Fas) [4]

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