Left May-Kwomtari languages

Infobox Language family
name=Left May-Kwomtari
region=New Guinea
familycolor=Papuan
family=a primary family of Papuan languages
child1=Left May
child2=Kwomtari
child3=Fas
child4="Pyu"

The Left May-Kwomtari languages are a small family of Papuan languages proposed by Malcolm Ross, which links the Left May (Arai) family with the Kwomtari proposal (Loving & Bass 1964).

Classification

* Left May or Arai family: Rocky Peak "(Yinibu)," Nakwi, Iteri, Bo, Ama, Nimo, and Owiniga
*Kwomtari family:
** "Guriaso" language
** Kwomtari-Nai: Kwomtari, Nai "(Biaka)"
*Fas family: Baibai, Fas
*Pyu family-level isolate (included in the Kwomtari languages by Laycock (1973), but not addressed by Ross)

"Note: most classifications, including Ethnologue, mix up the membership of the Kwomtari and Fas families. This has been corrected here."

Timothy Usher at the Rosetta Project states that most classifications, including Ross's, perpetuate an early copy error, placing Fas in the Kwomtari family and Nai in the same family as Baibai. This contradicts the original classification of Loving and Bass, which was confirmed in 1983 by the Dutch field linguist Wietze Baron. (See Kwomtari languages.) Taking this into account weakens the case for both the Left May-Kwomtari and the Kwomtari-Fas proposals. Some relevant pronouns are shown below (Baron 1983):

It appears that for proto-Arai and proto-Fas a pronoun "*atie" might be reconstructed for "I", and a "*wa" for "s/he", while for Arai and Kwomtari only a pronoun "*amwa" might be reconstructed for "they". No pronouns obviously connect Kwomtari and Fas, nor is there enough to connect any of these families to Pyu.

ee also

*Papuan languages

References

*, posted at: [http://www.kwomtari.net/kwomtari_survey.pdf]
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