Mailuan languages

The languages, which all share about half of their vocabulary, are,

• Domu, Binahari, Binahari-Ma, Morawa, Mailu (Magi), Laua

Bauwaki-O'oku is closely related to the Mailuan languages.

Dutton (1971) said Bauwaki was a link to the Yareban languages. It has greater lexical similarity with Aneme Wake (Yareban) than the closest Mailuan language, Domu. Usher (2020) classifies Mailuan, Bauwaki and Yareban together.

Magi shows evidence of language shift from an Oceanic language in many Oceanic words.

Usher (2020) reconstructs the proto-Mailuan-Yareban pronouns as:

	sg	du	pl
1excl	*na		*ge
1incl		*gu	*i
2	*ga		*ja
3	*e		*ema

Ross (1995) reconstructs the Mailuan pronouns as:

	sg	du	pl
1	*i	*gu-	*ge
2	*ga	*[j]a	*[j]a, *mee
3		*emu

The following basic vocabulary words are from Thomson (1975) and various SIL field notes, as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database.

The words cited constitute translation equivalents, whether they are cognate (e.g. kuma, uma, tuma for “louse”) or not (e.g. baka, ulim, muruu for “egg”).

Additional word lists can be found in Ray (1938).

Mailuan reflexes of proto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG) etyma are:

Mailu language:

• ama ‘breast’ < *amu
• maa ‘mouth’ < *maŋgat[a]
• kisa ‘bone’ < *kondaC
• tupa ‘short’ < *tu(p,mb)a(C)
• guia ‘cassowary’ < *ku(y)a

Bauwaki language:

• baba ‘father’ < *mbapa
• idi ‘hair’ < *iti[C]
• (ine) ibi ‘name’ < *imbi
• iini- ‘sleep’ < *kin(i,u)-