Marind-Yaqai languages
Family of Papuan languages
The Marind-Yaqai (Marind-Yakhai) languages are a well established language family of Papuan languages, spoken by the Marind-anim. They form part of the Trans-New Guinea languages in the classifications of Stephen Wurm and Malcolm Ross, and were established as part of the Anim branch of TNG by Timothy Usher.
01Languages
The languages are:
- Marind-Yaqai
02Proto-language
Phonemes
Usher (2020) reconstructs the consonant inventory as follows:
*m *n *p *t *k *b *d *g *mb *nd *ŋg *s *h *w *ɾ *j *ɣ
Vowels are *a *e *i *o *u.
Pronouns
The pronouns are:
sg pl 1 *nok ? 2 *oɣ *eoɣ 3m *anep *anip 3f *anup
03Classification
The Marind languages were partially identified by Sidney Herbert Ray and JHP Murray in 1918; the family was filled out by JHMC Boelaars in 1950. It was incorporated into Trans-New Guinea by Stephen Wurm in 1975.
The Boazi languages were formerly classified as Marind.
04Evolution
Marind reflexes of proto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG) etyma:
- kase ‘saliva’ < pTNG *kasipa ‘spit’
- maŋgat ‘mouth’ < *maŋgat[a]
- mudu-meŋ ‘belly’ < *mundu-maŋgV ‘heart’
- mokom ‘fruit, seed’ < *maŋgV
- saŋga ‘hand, finger, arm’ < *sa(ŋg,k)(a,i)l ‘hand, claw’
- sâ ‘sand’ < *sa(ŋg,k)asiŋ
- de ‘tree’ < *inda
- iwar ‘wind’ < *kumbutu
- kuyu ‘cassowary’ < *ku(y)a
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Marind-Yaqai languages”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Marind languages.svg by Kwamikagami, CC BY-SA 3.0
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