The East Geelvink Bay or East Cenderawasih languages are a language family of a dozen Papuan languages along the eastern coast of Geelvink Bay in Indonesian Papua, which is also known as Sarera Bay or Cenderawasih.
Of these, only Turunggare, Barapasi, and Bauzi are known well enough to demonstrate a relationship, though they are all lexically similar (> 60%). The unclassified Kehu language, spoken between Turunggare and Burate, may turn out to be East Geelvink Bay as well.[1]
Bauzi is the best documented East Geelvink Bay language, but may or may not be representative of the Geelvink Bay family as a whole.[1]
Classification
A relationship between Yawa, spoken on Yapen Island, and the East Geelvink Bay languages was tentatively proposed by C. L. Voorhoeve in 1975[citation needed] in a proposal he called Geelvink Bay. The hypothesis was taken up by Stephen Wurm, who developed it as part of an initial attempt to classify the Papuan languages; however, the relationship would be a distant one, and later linguists such as Mark Donohue considered Yawa to be a language isolate.
Clouse (1997)[2] removed the Lakes Plain languages of the upper Mamberamo River in the interior of Papua from Trans–New Guinea, where Würm had placed them, and by comparison with Bauzi and Demisa proposes them to be a sister family of the East Geelvink Bay languages. Basic vocabulary cognates that Clouse suggests to connect the two stocks include:
meaning
Proto-Lakes Plain
Bauzi
Demisa
'eye'
*kudatiCV
(faxo)
halukwa
'muscle'
*tV
nubu
(betinukwa)
'water'
*deida
vaɔ
wɔte
'fire'
*kudaide
vua
gwa
'tree'
*kuCV
uto
'black'
*kVCa
gihot
giho
'child'
*tau-bri
data
dataβi
'we'
*ai
i
'go, walk'
*kidia
la
'blow'
*pudV
fɛu
'feces'
*pade
haɛ
'arrow'
*poka
fɔ
'bad'
Proto-Tariku: *ɸVra
fait
However, in his 2005 classification based on comparative evidence from pronouns, Malcolm Ross treats all three groups as separate families, with Yawa tentatively placed in an extended West Papuan family.
The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto–East Geelvink Bay are,
I
*e
we
*i
thou
*o
you
*u
s/he
*a
they
?
Basic vocabulary
Basic vocabulary of selected East Cenderawasih languages (Barapasi, Bauzi, Demisa, Tunggare) listed in Foley (2018). These are not necessarily cognate.[1]
Districts of Papua for a list of districts and villages with respective languages
References
^ abcFoley, William A. (2018). "The languages of Northwest New Guinea". In Palmer, Bill (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide. The World of Linguistics. Vol. 4. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 433–568. ISBN978-3-11-028642-7.
^ abClouse, Duane A. (1997). "Towards a reconstruction and reclassification of the Lakes Plain languages of Irian Jaya". In Karl Franklin (ed.). Papers in Papuan linguistics no. 2(PDF). Vol. A-85. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. pp. 133–236. ISBN0858834421.
^Voorhoeve, C.L. Languages of Irian Jaya: Checklist. Preliminary classification, language maps, wordlists. B-31, iv + 133 pages. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1975. doi:10.15144/PL-B31
Ross, Malcolm (2005). "Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages". In Andrew Pawley; Robert Attenborough; Robin Hide; Jack Golson (eds.). Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. pp. 15–66. ISBN0858835622. OCLC67292782.
