The Pauwasi languages are a well established family

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 Papuan languages

Papuan languages

The Papuan languages are those languages of the western Pacific which are neither Austronesian nor Australian. The term does not presuppose a genetic relationship. The concept of Papuan peoples as distinct from Melanesians was first suggested and named by Sidney Herbert Ray in 1892.-The...

. Stephen Wurm

Stephen Wurm

Stephen Adolphe Wurm was a Hungarian-born Australian linguist.- Biography :Wurm was born in Budapest, the second child to the German-speaking Adolphe Wurm and Hungarian-speaking Anna Novroczky, and was christened Istvan Adolphe Wurm...

 (1975) classified them as a branch of the Trans–New Guinea phylum, and position which 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:**...

 (2005) tentatively retains.

• Pauwasi family
  • Eastern Pauwasi branch: Yafi, Emumu; Karkar-Yuri
  • Western Pauwasi branch: Dubu (or tebi), Towei

Ross's TNG classification is based on personal pronouns. The inclusion of the Pauwasi languages is tentative because no pronouns can be reconstructed from the available data.