Huon Gulf languages explained

The Huon Gulf languages are Western Oceanic languages spoken primarily in Morobe Province of Papua New Guinea. They may form a group of the North New Guinea languages, perhaps within the Ngero–Vitiaz branch of that family.

Unusually for Oceanic languages, two North Huon Gulf languages, Bukawa and Yabem, are tonal. The only other tonal Oceanic languages are found in New Caledonia.^[1]

Classification

According to Lynch, Ross, & Crowley (2002), the structure of the family is as follows:^[2]

• North Huon Gulf linkage
• Markham family
• South Huon Gulf linkage
• Numbami

Proto-language

Proto-Huon Gulf was reconstructed by Malcolm Ross in 1988 in Proto-Oceanic and the Austronesian Languages of Western Melanesia. It is reconstructed on the basis of shared phonological, morphosyntactic and lexicosemantic innovations relative to Proto-Oceanic, such as the pervasive lenition of Proto-Oceanic *p to *v, the acquisition of a final *-c in some words, the idiosyncratic change of Proto-Oceanic Uncoded languages: *boRok 'pig' to Proto-Huon Gulf Uncoded languages: *boR, and the loss of all verb-deriving prefixes such as Uncoded languages: *pa- 'causative', Uncoded languages: *paRi- 'reciprocal', Uncoded languages: *ma- 'stative', and Uncoded languages: *ta- 'intransitive'.

Vowels

The vowels of Proto-Huon Gulf, according to Ross, are:

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	pronounced as / i /		pronounced as / u /
Close-mid	pronounced as / e /		pronounced as / o /
Open		pronounced as / a /

Consonants

The consonants of Proto-Huon Gulf, according to Ross, are:

!Labiovelar!Bilabial!Alveolar!Palatal!Velar!Uvular

Stop	voiced		pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/
	voiceless		pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/
Nasal		pronounced as /link/pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/
Fricative		pronounced as /link/		pronounced as /link/		pronounced as /link/
Approximant		pronounced as /link/		pronounced as /link/, *pronounced as /link/	pronounced as /link/		pronounced as /link/

References

• Ross, Malcolm (1988). Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian languages of western Melanesia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.

Notes and References

1. Book: Blust, Robert . Robert Blust

   . Robert Blust . 2013 . The Austronesian languages . A-PL 008 . Canberra . Pacific Linguistics . 1885/10191 . 9781922185075 . revised .

2. [John Lynch (linguist)|Lynch, John]