Eastern Trans-Fly languages

Infobox Language family
name=Eastern Trans-Fly
region=New Guinea
familycolor=Papuan
family=a primary family of Papuan languagesThe Eastern Trans-Fly languages are a small independent family of Papuan languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross, that inherits much of the Trans Fly-Bulaka River branch of Stephen Würm's Trans-New Guinea proposal. Wurm himself concluded that some of the Trans Fly-Bulaka River languages were not Trans-New Guinea at all but rather heavily influenced by Trans-New Guinea languages. Ross removed the Eastern Trans-Fly and South-Central Papuan languages from Wurm's family.

Eastern Trans-Fly includes Meriam, located within the national borders of Australia. It also includes Bine, Wipii (Gidra) and Gizra.

Pronouns

The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto-Eastern Trans-Fly are,

:

There's a possibility of a connection here to Trans-New Guinea. If the inclusive pronoun is historically a second-person form, then there would appear to be "i-"ablaut for the plural: "*ka~ki, **ma~mi, **tapa~tapi." This is similar to the ablaut reconstructed for TNG "(*na~ni, *ga~gi)." Although the pronouns themselves are dissimilar, ablaut is not likely to be borrowed.

On the other hand, there is some formal resemblance to Austronesian pronouns (*(a)ku I, *(ka)mu you, *kita we inc., *(ka)mi we exc., *ia he.

ee also

*Papuan languages

References