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Yellow River
Geographic
distribution
Yellow River, central Sandaun Province, Papua New Guinea
Linguistic classification Sepik
Glottolog yell1247

The Yellow River languages are a small family of clearly related languages, [1]

Namia (Namie), Ak, and Awun.

They are classified among the Sepik languages of northern Papua New Guinea.

Namia is the most divergent Yellow River language. [2]

Distribution

They are spoken along the Yellow River (a tributary of the Sepik) in a mountainous area of central Sandaun Province, located to the north of the Upper Sepik basin. They are located directly to the southwest of the Ram languages, another Sepik group.

Pronouns

The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto–Yellow River are: [3]

I *wan we two *ɨ-t we *ɨ(m, n)
thou *nɨ you two (*kə-, *wə-p) you (*kə-m, *wə-m)
he *[ə]rə they two *tə-p they *tə-m
she

References

  1. ^ Yellow River, New Guinea World
  2. ^ Foley, William A. (2018). "The Languages of the Sepik-Ramu Basin and Environs". In Palmer, Bill (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide. The World of Linguistics. Vol. 4. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 197–432. ISBN  978-3-11-028642-7.
  3. ^ Ross (2005)
  • Ross, Malcolm (2005). "Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages". In Andrew Pawley; Robert Attenborough; Robin Hide; Jack Golson (eds.). Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. pp. 15–66. ISBN  0858835622. OCLC  67292782.