East Bird's Head–Sentani languages
Proposed family of Papuan languages / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The East Bird's Head–Sentani languages form a family of Papuan languages proposed by Malcolm Ross which combines the East Bird's Head and Sentani families along with the Burmeso language isolate. Sentani had been a branch of Stephen Wurm's proposal for Trans–New Guinea. It has lexical similarities with the Asmat–Kamoro languages, but Ross does not believe these demonstrate a genealogical relationship.
East Bird's Head–Sentani | |
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Geographic distribution | Papua |
Linguistic classification | Extended West Papuan ?
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Subdivisions |
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Glottolog | None |
Ross also included the unclassified language Tause, but as a stimulus for investigation rather than as a serious proposal.
The East Bird's Head–Sentani languages, together with the West Papuan languages and the Yawa isolate, form part of a tentative proposal for an Extended West Papuan family. They are distinguished from the West Papuan family in having forms like ba or wa for the second-person singular ("thou") pronoun.