Southwest Huon

Timothy Usher, Santa Fe Institute

The Southwest Huon Peninsula family, also known as the Sankwep family, consists of two closely-related languages, Mesem, also known as Momolili, and Nabak, spoken along either side of the Sankwep river, a tributary of the Busu, south of the Saruwaged and Rawlinson ranges in Papua New Guinea's Morobe province (Hooley and McElhanon 1970: 1069, 1071, q.v. p. 1081, Suter 2018: 6, q.v. p. 4.)

The internal classification of Southwest Huon Peninsula is as follows:

Southwest Huon Peninsula

Mesem

Nabak

McElhanon (1967: 6-9) gives a lexicostatistical figure of 45.7% between Nabak and Momoliii (Mesem.) In Hooley and McElhanon (1970: 1071) this figure is given as 60%.

McElhanon (1967: 34-43) 140 comparative terms for Nabak and Momolili (Mesem)

McElhanon (1968) 1,463 comparative terms for Nabak and Momolili

McElhanon and Voorhoeve (1970) 67 Trans New Guinea comparisons include examples from Nabak and Momolili

McElhanon (1979) Nabak morphophonemics

Fabian and Fabian (1971) phonology of Nabak

Fabian, Fabian and Peck (1971) Nabak morphophonemics

Fabian, Fabian and Waters (1998).grammar and dictionary of Nabak

Vanaria and Vanaria (1995) grammar of Mesem (unobtained)

Vanaria and Vanaria (n.d.) dictionary of Mesem (unobtained)

Burns (1990) phonology of Mese: (Mesem) (unobtained)

Suter (2018) comparative Sangkwap grammar including (pp. 52-56) Sankweb object-marking verbs and (pp. 189-194) Sankweb desinences

The Southwest Huon Peninsula family was first established as the Southern Family of the South-West Huon Stock by McElhanon (1967: 6-9, Hooley and McElhanon 1970: 1069, 1071,) the other member of which was said to be the Western Family (i.e. Northwest Huon Peninsula.) Aside from a period in which the Western Huon families were presented as an undifferentiated mass (McElhanon 1975: 531, 1984: 15,) the placement of Masem immediately with Nabak has not been contested.

Suter (2018: 5, 6-7,) rechristening it the Sankwep family after the Sankwep river which runs through its territory, sees it as immediately coordinate to the Pindiu family (i.e. South Huon Peninsula) in a Rawlison subgroup of Western Huon.

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