Yareban languages


The Yareban or Musa River languages are a small family of Trans-New Guinea languages spoken near the Musa River in the "Bird's Tail" of New Guinea. They are classified within the Southeast Papuan branch of Trans-New Guinea.

Languages

The languages are,
Barijian is suggested by lexicostatistics in Dutton.
The only pronouns which are known in enough languages to reconstruct are na 1sg and a 2sg, which are common to all Yareban languages.

Proto-language

Phonemes

Usher reconstructs the consonant inventory as follows:
*s and *dz were acquired through loans, but may have already been present in the protolanguage. *ʔ and *g may have been allophones.
Vowels are *a *e *i *o *u.

Pronouns

Usher reconstructs the pronouns as:

Basic vocabulary

Some lexical reconstructions by Usher are:

Evolution

Yareban reflexes of proto-Trans-New Guinea etyma are:
Yareba language:
  • ama ‘breast’ < *amu
  • uyau ‘cassowary’ < *kua
  • rarara ‘dry’ < *atata
  • baba ‘father’ < *mbapa
  • iji ‘hair’ < *iti
  • ifu ‘name’ < *imbi
  • kofiti ‘head’ < *kVtu
  • ogo ‘water’ < *ok
  • eme ‘man’ < *ambi
Abia language:
  • amai ‘mother’ < *am
  • sagai ‘sand’ < *saasiŋ