East Bird's Head – Sentani languages
| East Bird's Head – Sentani | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
Papua |
| Linguistic classification: |
Extended West Papuan ?
|
| Subdivisions: |
|
| Glottolog: | None |
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.
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.
East Bird's Head – Sentani unifies two groups that Wurm placed at the family level, and one or two isolates.
Mantion (Manikion)
Meax: Meax (Meyah), Meninggo (Moskona)
? Saponi
Burmeso (Taurap)
? Tause (perhaps two languages, Tause and Weirate)
...
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