Yareban languages explained

Yareban
Also Known As:	Musa River
Region:	Southeastern peninsula of Papua New Guinea: Oro Province
Familycolor:	Papuan
Fam1:	Trans–New Guinea
Fam2:	Papuan Peninsula
Fam3:	Owen Stanley Range^[1]
Fam4:	Mailu–Yareban
Glotto:	yare1250
Glottorefname:	Yareban

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" (southeastern peninsula) of New Guinea. They are classified within the Southeast Papuan branch of Trans - New Guinea.

Languages

The languages are,

• Moikodi (Doriri)
• Aneme Wake (Abia)
• Barijian: Bariji, Nawaru (Sirio)
• Yareba

Barijian is suggested by lexicostatistics in Dutton (1971).

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 (2020) reconstructs the consonant inventory as follows:^[2]

m	n
pʰ	tʰ	[*s]	kʰ	ʔ
b	d	[*dz]	[*g]
w	ɾ	j

*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 (2020) reconstructs the pronouns as:^[2]

	sg	du	pl
1excl	na		ewa
1incl		uwa	i[j]a
2	a		ja
3	dawa		ema(wa)

Basic vocabulary

Some lexical reconstructions by Usher (2020) are:^[2]

gloss	Proto-Musa River
head	bo-tai
hair/feather	idi
ear	ome
eye	nai-tai
nose	iboʔo
tooth	ni[ʔ]o
tongue	meana
foot/leg	buɾi
blood/salt	iwa
bone	tai
skin/bark	ope
breast	ama
louse	uʔa
dog	kua
pig	boɾo
bird	gasiɾa; *ada
egg	baka; *uɾimi
tree	ana
man/person	e[ʔe]me
woman/wife	aweta
sun	eweaka
moon	maɾabe; *sakaɾa
water	adua
fire	inaʔa
stone	oma; *gebiɾo
path	daʔaba
name	ibi
eat/drink	it-
one	demu

Evolution

Yareban reflexes of proto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG) etyma are:^[3]

Yareba language

• ama ‘breast’ < *amu
• uyau ‘cassowary’ < *ku(y)a
• rarara ‘dry’ < *(ŋg,k)atata
• baba ‘father’ < *mbapa
• iji ‘hair’ < *iti[C]
• ifu ‘name’ < *imbi
• kofiti ‘head’ < *kV(mb,p)(i,u)tu
• ogo ‘water’ < *ok[V]
• eme ‘man’ < *ambi

Abia language

• amai ‘mother’ < *am(a,i)
• sagai ‘sand’ < *sa(ŋg,k)asiŋ

External links

• Timothy Usher, New Guinea World, Owen Stanley Range
• (ibid.) Proto–Musa River

Notes and References

1. https://newguineaworld.linguistik.uzh.ch/families/trans-new-guinea/papuan-peninsula/owen-stanley-range New Guinea World, Owen Stanley Range
2. https://newguineaworld.linguistik.uzh.ch/families/trans-new-guinea/papuan-peninsula/owen-stanley-range/cloudy-bay-musa-river/musa-river New Guinea World, Musa River
3. Book: Pawley . Andrew . Hammarström . Harald . Palmer . Bill . 2018 . The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide . The Trans New Guinea family . The World of Linguistics . 4 . Berlin . De Gruyter Mouton . 21–196 . 978-3-11-028642-7.