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Senagi languages

Language family of New Guinea

The Senagi languages are a small family of Papuan languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross, that had been part of Stephen Wurm's Trans-New Guinea proposal. They consist of the two languages Angor and Dera.

The Angor language is unusual in that it distinguishes gender in the second- and third-person dual and plural (you and they), but not in the singular. It is not clear if Dera does the same.

In Papua New Guinea, they are spoken in Amanab Rural LLG of Sandaun Province. They are also spoken across the border in Keerom Regency, Indonesia.

01Classification

The Senagi family consists of only two languages:

The most promising external links are with the Sepik and Torricelli languages. The pronoun for "I" is reconstructed as *wan for both proto-Senagi and proto-Sepik, while the Angor masculine dual and plural pronominal suffixes -fa- and -mu- appear to reflect the proto-Sepik and proto-Torricelli dual and plural pronominal suffixes *-p and *-m.

02Pronouns

Pronouns are:

Senagi pronouns
AngorDera
1incl ro
1excl səhyo
2 sesi
3 aiai

03Grammar

Verbal morphology in Senagi languages is highly complex and irregular.

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Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article Senagi 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.

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