Huon Gulf
Geographic
distribution		Papua New Guinea
Linguistic classificationAustronesian
Proto-languageProto-Huon Gulf
Subdivisions
Glottologhuon1245

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]

Proto-Huon Gulf

Proto-Huon Gulf
Reconstruction ofHuon Gulf languages
Reconstructed
ancestors
Lower-order reconstructions

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 *boRok 'pig' to Proto-Huon Gulf *boR, and the loss of all verb-deriving prefixes such as *pa- 'causative', *paRi- 'reciprocal', *ma- 'stative', and *ta- 'intransitive'.

Vowels

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

Vowels
Front Central Back
Close *i *u
Close-mid *e *o
Open *a

Consonants

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

Consonants
Labiovelar Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular
Stop voiced *b *d *ɟ *g
voiceless *p *t *c *k
Nasal *mʷ *m *n *ɲ *ŋ
Fricative *v *s *ɣ
Approximant *w *l, *r *j *ʀ

References

  1. ↑ Blust, Robert (2013). The Austronesian languages. Vol. A-PL 008 (revised ed.). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. hdl:1885/10191. ISBN 9781922185075.
  2. ↑ Lynch, John, Malcolm Ross & Terry Crowley. 2002. The Oceanic languages. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press.
  • Ross, Malcolm (1988). Proto Oceanic and the Austronesian languages of western Melanesia. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
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