Mbahaam–Iha languages explained

Mbahaam–Iha
Region:	West New Guinea, Bomberai Peninsula
Familycolor:	Papuan
Fam1:	Trans–New Guinea
Fam2:	Berau Gulf
Fam3:	West Bomberai
Child1:	Mbaham
Child2:	Iha
Glotto:	nucl1641
Glottorefname:	Nuclear West Bomberai

The Mbahaam–Iha languages are a pair of Papuan languages spoken on the Bomberai Peninsula of western New Guinea.The two languages, Baham (Mbaham) and Iha, are closely related to each other.

Proto-language

Phonemes

Usher (2020) reconstructs the consonant and vowel inventories as:^[1]

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	plain	labialized
Nasal		m	n
Stop	plain	p	t		k	kʷ
Stop	prenasalized	mb	nd		ŋg	ŋgʷ
Fricative			s
Liquid		w	r	j

Prenasalized plosives do not occur initially, having merged with the voiceless plosives.

The vowels are *i *u *ɛ *ɔ *a and the diphthongs *iɛ *ɛi.

Pronouns

Usher (2020) reconstructs the free pronouns as:^[1]

	sg	pl
1excl	[a/ɔ]n	[*mbi]
1incl	[a/ɔ]n	in
2	k[a/ɔ]	ki
3	m[a/ɔ]	mi, *wat

Basic vocabulary

Some lexical reconstructions by Usher (2020) are:^[1]

gloss	Proto-Mbahaam-Iha	Mbahaam	Iha
head	kaˈnda	kndaː	kanda
ear	kʷⁱɛr	kpʷujɛr	pɛr
eye		k(i)jɛp	kɛndɛp
blood	wⁱɛk	wijɛk	wɛk
bone	ˈtɔkar	tɔ(ː)qar	tɔqar
skin	pak	paːk	pak
breast	sɔn	sɔːn	hɔn ~ sɔn
louse	mɛⁱn	miːn	mɛin
dog	jaˈmbar	jambaːr	mbiar
pig	[ku]ˈndur	kunduːr	ndur
egg	wun	uːn	wun
tree	wiˈra	wurʲaː ~ wɛrʲaː	wɛrɛ ~ wrɛ
man/male	nami-sar	nami-ha	nɛmɛ-har
woman/female	t[ɔ/u]mb[ɔ/u]r	tumbu-	(tɔ-)tɔmbɔr
sun	kaˈminV	kamiːni	kimina
moon	kaˈpas	kabaːs	kabah
water	kiˈra	krija	kara
stone	war	waːr	war
name	nⁱɛ	nʲiɛ	nɛ
eat	nawa	nɔwa	nɔwa ~ nawa-
one	ɔkʷɔ[nɔ]	ɔqɔnɔ	pɔ

Protoforms of the 20 most-stable items^[2] in the Swadesh list include the following.^[1]

gloss	Proto-Mbahaam–Iha
mɛin	louse
?	two
kiˈra	water
kʷiɛr	ear
kimi	die
[a/ɔ]n	I
?	liver
? (k(i)jɛp / kɛndɛp)	eye
tan	hand
kɔmɛn	hear
wiˈra, aˈtɔkʷ	tree, tree/wood
ˈsɛjir	fish
niɛ	name
war	stone
?	tooth
sɔn	breast
k[a/ɔ]	you
?	path
ˈtɔkar	bone
?	tongue (*mak voice/language)

References

Usher, Timothy and Antoinette Schapper, 2018. "The lexicons of the Papuan languages of the Onin Peninsula and their influences". In Antoinette Schapper, ed. Contact and substrate in the languages of Wallacea part 2. NUSA 64: 3963.

External links

Timothy Usher, New Guinea World, Proto–Mbahaam–Iha

Notes and References

https://sites.google.com/site/newguineaworld/families/trans-new-guinea/berau-gulf/west-bomberai/mbahaam-iha New Guinea World, Mbaham–Iha
Holman, Eric W., Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Viveka Velupillai, André Müller, Dik Bakker (2008). "Explorations in Automated Language Classification". Folia Linguistica, Vol. 42, no. 2, 331–354