East Kutubuan languages
Encyclopedia
The East Kutubuan languages are a small family
of Trans–New Guinea languages (TNG) in the classification of Malcolm Ross
. There are just two languages,
which are not close to the West Kutubuan languages
. They were linked in a "Kutubuan" family by Franklin and Voorhoeve in 1973, but that position has since been abandoned. Although East Kutubuan has proto-TNG vocabulary, Ross considers its inclusion in TNG to be somewhat questionable.
Language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' comes from the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a...
of Trans–New Guinea languages (TNG) in the classification of Malcolm Ross
Malcolm Ross
Malcolm David Ross is a linguist and professor at the Australian National University. He has published work on Austronesian and Papuan languages, historical linguistics, and language contact.-External links:**...
. There are just two languages,
- Fiwaga and FoiFoi languageFoi is a Papuan language of Papua New Guinea. Dialects are Ifigi, Kafa, Kutubu, Mubi....
,
which are not close to the West Kutubuan languages
West Kutubuan languages
The Fasu language of New Guinea is not closely related to other languages, but forms a possible branch of the Trans–New Guinea family. Wurm and Hattori considered its three principal dialects, Fasu, Some, and Namumi, to be three languages, which they called the West Kutubuan family, but...
. They were linked in a "Kutubuan" family by Franklin and Voorhoeve in 1973, but that position has since been abandoned. Although East Kutubuan has proto-TNG vocabulary, Ross considers its inclusion in TNG to be somewhat questionable.