Nimboran languages


The Nimboran languages are a small family of Papuan languages, spoken by the Nimboran people in the Grime River and Nawa River watershed in Jayapura Regency, that had been part of Stephen Wurm's Trans–New Guinea proposal. However, when proto-Nimboran pronouns are reconstructed , they have little resemblance to the proto-TNG pronouns *na and *ga.'' Usher places them in a North Papuan stock that resembles Cowan's proposal.
Foley classifies the Nimboran languages separately as an independent language family.

Classification

The languages are:
  • Nimboran
  • *East
  • **Mekwei
  • **Gresi–Kemtuik
  • ***Kemtuik
  • ***Gresi
  • *West
  • **Mlap
  • **Namblong

    Proto-language

Pronouns

The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto-Nimboran are,
Below are pronouns in the Nimboran languages as given by Foley :
As in Kaure, pronouns are not specified for number in the Nimboran language.

Basic vocabulary

Some lexical reconstructions by Usher are:

Vocabulary comparison

The following basic vocabulary words are from Voorhoeve, as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database.
The words cited constitute translation equivalents, whether they are cognate or not.