Table of Contents

Masaweng River

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

Situation

The Masaweng River family cossists of two closely-related languages, Momare and Migabac, spoken in the grasslands just north of the Masaweng river in Papua New Guinea's Morobe province (Hooley and McElhanon 1970: 1070, q.v. p. 1081, Suter 2018: 6, q.v.p.4.)

Subclassification

The internal classification of Masaweng River is as follows:

Masaweng River

Momara

Migabac

Hooley and McElhanon (1970: 1070) give a lexicostatistical figure of 70% between Migabac and Momare.

.

Sources

[under construction]

Dempwolff (1905) … Ago (Miagabac)

Ray (1919) … Ago after Dempwolff (1905)

Pilhofer (1927-1928) comparative morphology for Huon Tip languages

Pilhofer (1928-1929) 290 comparative terms for Momăḷe and Migabac

McElhanon (1968) 1,440 comparative terms for Momara and Migabac

McElhanon (1968) species terms for Momare and Migabac

McElhanon and Voorhoeve (1970) 67 Trans New Guinea comparisons include examples from Migabac and Momare

McEvoy (2002) grammar of Migabac (unobtained)

McEvoy (2003) Migabac serial verbs (unobtained)

McEvoy (2003, 2005) phonology of and (pp. 287-292) 389-term vocabulary for (Southern) Migabac

McEvoy (2004) sketch phonology of Migabac

McEvoy (2008) grammar of Migabac

McEvoy (2012) Migabac dialects

Suter (2018) comparative Huon Tip grammar including (pp. 34-40) Huon Tip object-marking verbs and (pp. 160-173) Huon Tip desinences

History of classification

[under construction]

Historical phonology

[under construction]

Proto-Masaweng River had … consonants and … vowels as follows:














… initial consonants …

…:

Masaweng R.Momare Migabac Migabac
McElhanonMcElhanonMcEvoy
*…
*…

… medial consonants …

…:

Masaweng R.Momare Migabac Migabac
McElhanonMcElhanonMcEvoy
*…
*…

… final consonants …

…:

Masaweng R.Momare Migabac Migabac
McElhanonMcElhanonMcEvoy
*…
*…

… vowels and diphthongs …

…:

Masaweng R.Momare Migabac Migabac
McElhanonMcElhanonMcEvoy
*…
*…

Pronouns

[under construction]


Verbal morphology

[under construction]


Loans to and from neighboring languages

[under construction]