(with Sebastian Fedden) Greater Awyu and Greater Ok: contact or inheritance

2 OCEANIC LINGUISTICS, VOL. 53, NO. 1 2 GREATER AWYU AND GREATER OK

Greater Awyu and Greater Ok: Inheritance or Contact?

Wilco van den Heuvel and Sebastian Fedden

VU UNIVERSITY AMSTERDAM AND UNIVERSITY OF SURREY

This is a study of the relation between the Greater Awyu (Awyu-Dumut, Ndeiram, and Becking-Dawi) and the Greater Ok (Ok and Oksapmin) languages, both considered part of the Trans-New Guinea (TNG) group of languages. The first part of this paper considers an earlier proposal by Voorhoeve, who argues that the Awyu-Dumut languages and the Ok languages form a (genealogical) subgroup within TNG, basing his conclusion on a combination of lexical evidence and a single piece of evidence from shared bound morphology. We review the lexical evidence, and then look for additional cases of bound morphology shared between the two groups. As we do not find any cases of shared bound morphology that convincingly support a genealogical subgrouping, we conclude that the similarities between the Greater Awyu and Greater Ok languages are more likely to be the result of contact, rather than of genealogical ties below the level of TNG. The second part of this study discusses the question of whether contact was old or more recent, and focuses on contact between the two neighboring languages Muyu (Ok) and Mandobo (Awyu-Dumut). Speakers of the two languages share many cultural traits, and contacts between the two groups, through trade and intermarriage, are rather intensive. We show that, despite contact, linguistic similarities are surprisingly few, and we suggest some explanations for this.

1. THE LANGUAGES AND THEIR SPEAKERS.1 This paper compares the

two language families, GreaterAwyu and Greater Ok, both considered to belong to the Trans

New Guinea (TNG) group of languages (see section 3). The languages of the Greater Awyu

family are spoken in southwest New Guinea, on the Indonesian half of the island, from the

upper part of the 525-kilometer long Digul river to its estuary in the Arafura sea, but also

between the Digul and Eilanden rivers, and from the border area near the Fly river east of

Digul all the way to the southwest of the Wildeman river. This vast expanse of lowland cov-

ered with swamps and rainforests is the home of around 35,000 speakers of Greater Awyu

languages. The Greater Ok languages are spoken right in the center of the island of New

Guinea, north and east of the Greater Awyu languages. The area can be seen on map 1,2

1. This study should be seen in the broader framework of the investigation of the Awyu-Dumut languages in their linguistic and cultural context, which is the focus of a research group at the VU University of Amsterdam. This project was funded by NWO (Netherlands) under grant 360-89-020. We thank NWO for their support. Fedden was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), partly under grant AH/H500251/1 and partly (since April 2013) under grant AH/K003194/1. We thank this funding body for its support.

2. We thank Jaap Fokkema (VU University) for this map. The map of Indonesia in the bottom left corner has been copied from http://www.opreis.nl/indonesie/ (accessed June 7, 2013).

Oceanic Linguistics, Volume 53, no. 1 (June 2014)

© by University of Hawai‘i Press. All rights reserved.

http://www.opreis.nl/indonesie/

http://www.opreis.nl/indonesie/


which also shows the neighboring areas, where we find speakers of Asmat-Kamoro and

Marind languages. While almost all of the Mountain Ok languages and Oksapmin are spo-

ken on the Papua New Guinea side of the border, most of the Lowland Ok and Western Ok

languages and Ngalum (also known as Nalum) are spoken on the Indonesian side. The Ok

languages have approximately 60,000 speakers and Oksapmin has about 8,000. To the west

and the south, we find predominantly Asmat-Kamoro and Marind languages, respectively,

while the languages to the north are isolates, or belong to other language groups.3

The Greater Ok and Greater Awyu languages have relatively simple phonologies,

with no languages having more than 15 consonants and seven vowels. The only excep-

tion is Kombai, which is analyzed by de Vries (1993) as having seven simple vowels and

eight complex vowels ending in a glide. While vowel length is contrastive in all Greater

Ok languages except Mian and Oksapmin, the distinction between long and short vow-

els is lacking in Greater Awyu. While Mountain Ok languages are described as tonal

(Telefol, Tifal, Mian), in Lowland Ok and Greater Awyu languages it is not the tone con-

tour but lexical stress that seems to be distinctive.

Turning to morphology, nouns are generally not inflected for plural number, with the

exception of certain kinship terms. Only in Ok languages (not Oksapmin) do nouns

exhibit a gender difference. Again, it is the Ok languages, but now also Oksapmin, that

distinguish gender in the free pronouns. In the free pronoun paradigm (the forms of

which will be discussed in 5.4), Ok makes a gender distinction for 2SG and 3SG, while

Oksapmin makes the distinction only for 3SG. Bound pronominal object and subject

MAP 1. GREATER AWYU, GREATER OK, AND ASMAT-KAMORO

3. A more detailed view of the languages discussed here can be found in maps 5 through 8 below.


affixes (lacking in Oksapmin), on the other hand, generally have a gender distinction only

for 3SG. Considering the number of person-number distinctions that are made in their free

pronouns, both Greater Awyu and Greater Ok distinguish first, second, and third person,

paired with a singular–plural distinction. Bound pronouns, on the other hand, generally

have fewer distinctions: in the paradigm of subject suffixes, discussed in 5.2, Ok basically

has three person distinctions in the singular, but conflates second and third person in the

plural. Greater Awyu languages show this conflation not only in the plural, but also in the

singular. Object affixes are attested only in Greater Ok.

Figure 1 gives (somewhat simplified) verbal templates for Ok and Greater Awyu, the

latter subdivided into Awyu, Dumut, Ndeiram (Kombai), and Becking-Dawi.4 In all tem-

plates, the tense, aspect, and mood affixes follow the stem, as do the pronominal subject

suffixes. The templates differ in that Greater Awyu languages lack any verbal prefixes

and in that only Greater Ok languages have object prefixes. Ok languages generally have

a small set of verbs that (obligatorily) combine with direct object prefixes (indicated by

parentheses in figure 1).5

Turning to the categories that are expressed on the verb, Greater Awyu languages can be

described as mood-driven, while the main distinction in Greater Ok is aspectual or tempo-

ral. In Awyu languages, verbs often have a stem used for realis mood, and another stem

used for irrealis mood. Although this stem difference is not found in Dumut languages, the

distinction between realis and irrealis mood is still central to the system (cf. the chapter on

mood in Wester 2013). In the Ok languages, on the other hand, the basic distinction is one

between perfective and imperfective verb stems, sometimes analyzed as continuative and

punctiliar aspect. In some cases, verb stems are suppletive for aspect. Oksapmin has perfec-

tive and imperfective verb suffixes, some of which also express tense and evidentiality, but

there is no aspect suppletion in the verb stems themselves (Loughnane 2009:244‒47).

The temporal-aspectual distinctions in Greater Awyu differ for the Dumut, Ndeiram,

Awyu, and Becking-Dawi languages. While Dumut languages and Kombai (the only

well-documented language of the Ndeiram group) have only one past tense, Awyu and

Korowai (the only well-documented language of the Becking-Dawi group) distinguish

FIGURE 1. VERBAL TEMPLATES FOR AWYU, DUMUT, AND OK

Ok (DO)-stem.ASP-TAM-SBJ

Awyu stem.MOOD-MOOD-TENSE-SBJ†

Dumut stem-TENSE-MOOD-SBJ

Ndeiram (Kombai) stem.MOOD-MOOD-SBJ-TENSE

Becking-Dawi stem-TAM-SBJ

† Except in Aghu future tense, which has the form STEM.MOOD-MOOD-SBJ-TENSE. This is the same order as found in Kombai, which only has a future tense and lacks a past tense (Wester 2013).

4. Due to the fairly fusional nature of the final verb forms, a single verbal template for Oksapmin cannot be provided, cf. Loughnane (2009:262).

5. Abbreviations used in this paper include: DECL, declarative; DO, direct object; DS, different subject; EMPH, emphatic: F, feminine; GPST, general past; M, masculine; n, not; NEG, negation; PAD, Proto‒Awyu-Dumut; PL, plural; PLO, Proto-Lowland Ok; PMO, Proto-Mountain Ok; POK, Proto-Ok; REAL, realis; PFV, perfective; SBJ, subject; SG, singular; SS, same subject; TAM, tense-aspect-mood; TNG, Trans-New Guinea.


three different past tenses. In this respect, they are similar not only to the Ok languages,

which usually also distinguish different past tenses, but reflect a general tendency of Pap-

uan languages to do so.

Syntactically, word order in verbal clauses in both Greater Awyu and Greater Ok is

verb-final, in line with the general right-headedness of TNG languages (cf. Foley 2000).

The Ok languages generally have rather well-developed switch-reference systems, while

the Greater Awyu languages generally have a more basic and somewhat atypical switch

reference system, with dedicated SS morphology, but no dedicated DS morphology. Dif-

ferent Greater Awyu languages take different positions on a scale from clause conjoining

to clause chaining, which is analyzed by de Vries (2010) as a sign of emergent switch ref-

erence systems, but analyzed by Wester (2013) as a stable state. In the Dumut languages,

all languages have SS nonfinite medial verbs, with Yonggom Wambon and Mandobo

having an emergent switch reference system, and Digul Wambon having a more devel-

oped system (cf. de Vries 2010). While Aghu can also be described as having a rudimen-

tary switch reference system (van den Heuvel n.d.), we have insufficient data about the

other Awyu languages to answer the question.

2. MAIN RESEARCH QUESTION. The main concern in this paper is the rela-

tion between the Greater Awyu and the Greater Ok languages. The structure of the

Greater Awyu family is given in figure 2, while figure 3 gives the structure of the Greater

Ok family. The evidence for the existence of the Awyu-Dumut family was given by

Healey (1970), who was the first to present a Proto‒Awyu-Dumut (PAD) phonology.

While Healey had no data on Digul Wambon and Kombai at that time, Voorhoeve (2001,

2005) includes them in the family, stating that Kombai seems to take a position separate

from both the Awyu and the Dumut languages. The special position of Kombai—argued

to be part of a larger group of Ndeiram languages—is confirmed by de Vries, Wester, and

van den Heuvel (2012), who give further evidence for the structure of the family by the

presentation of its protomorphology. They also discuss the position of Korowai as part of

the so-called Becking-Dawi group, and show that this group is related to the Awyu-

Dumut languages, forming the Greater Awyu family, although the exact relation between

the two groups remains unclear. In figure 2, this is expressed by the use of dotted instead

of solid lines.

For the reconstruction of the internal relations within the Ok family of languages, we

follow Healey (1964), who divides the Ok family into two subgroups: Mountain Ok

(Telefol, Tifal, Faiwol, Mian, and Bimin, plus some other languages not considered in the

present paper), and Lowland Ok (Ngalum, Kati [Muyu], Ninggerum, and Yonggom,

plus some languages not further considered here). Healey states, however, that Ngalum

may very well be part of a separate branch (Healey 1964:38, cf. also Voorhoeve

2005:150), which is also the analysis proposed in Loughnane and Fedden (2011), and

followed here. Loughnane and Fedden (2011) come up with partial and tentative proto-

morphology, to show a genealogical link between the Ok languages and Oksapmin.

Analogous to what we saw for Korowai above, there are good arguments for a genealog-

ical relation, while the exact subgrouping remains unclear. Again this is indicated in

figure 3 by the use of dotted lines.


FIGURE 2. THE GREATER AWYU LANGUAGE FAMILY

GREATER AWYU

BECKING-DAWI AWYU-DUMUT

Korowai (...) AWYU DUMUT NDEIRAM

Aghu Pisa Yenimu Shiagha Mandobo Yongom- Wambon

Digul- Wambon

Kombai (...)

FIGURE 3. THE GREATER OK LANGUAGE FAMILY

GREATER OK

OK Oksapmin

LOWLAND OK MOUNTAIN OK

Ngalum Muyu Ninggerum Yonggom Mian Faiwol Tifal Telefol Bimin

The main research question of this paper can be visualized as in figure 4: do Greater

Awyu and Greater Ok together form a subgroup within TNG (scenario 1), or are they inde-

pendent subgroups (scenario 2)? The most recent proponent of scenario 1 is Voorhoeve

(2005), who argues that Awyu-Dumut and Ok languages form a subgroup within TNG, on

the basis of both lexical evidence and minimal evidence from shared bound morphology.

This paper is structured as follows. Following a brief section on the status of Greater

Awyu and Greater Ok as members of the TNG group of languages, section 4 reconsiders

the lexical evidence given by Voorhoeve, while section 5 forms a detailed discussion of

shared bound morphology. Contrary to Voorhoeve, we conclude that scenario 2 is more

FIGURE 4. POSSIBLE SCENARIOS REGARDING THE RELATION

BETWEEN GREATER AWYU AND GREATER OK

Scenario 1 Scenario 2

PTNG PTNG

Greater Awyu-Greater Ok Greater Awyu Greater Ok

Greater Awyu Greater Ok


likely, and that the attested similarities between the two languages groups are due to contact

rather than genealogical ties. Following this conclusion about contact in the past, section 6

focuses on the present contact situation between two adjacent Awyu-Dumut and Ok lan-

guages, and discusses the relation between cultural contact and linguistic change.

3. GREATER OK AND GREATER AWYU AS MEMBERS OF THE

TNG FAMILY. As described in Pawley (2005b), there have been a number of pro-

posals for grouping together quite a few well-established lower level Papuan language

families into one large TNG family. The criteria for this high level genealogical unit are a

matter of constant debate. Pawley (2005b:92) gives four criteria in order to decide whether

a group of languages belongs to TNG, and following these, we tentatively classify the

Awyu-Dumut and Ok families as members of the TNG family, for the following reasons.

(1) At least two of their free pronouns can be traced back to Proto‒Trans-New Guinea

(PTNG). PAD *na 1SG and *ŋga 2SG6 can be traced back to PTNG *na 1SG and

*<ng>ga 2SG (for the PTNG forms, see Ross 2005:29). The same is true for Proto-Ok

(POK) *na- 1SG, *ka-b 2SG. Likewise, POK *ya3SG.M, *yu 3SG.F can be traced back

to PTNG *[y]a,7 *ua 3SG, while POK *nu[b] and *ni[b] reflect PTNG *ni, *nu 1PL.

(2) Both language groups contain a number of basic vocabulary terms reconstructed for

PTNG. To these belong at least the forms in bold in Appendix 2. That appendix lists

37 lexical items that are taken from the 40-item wordlist used in the Automated

Similarity Judgment Program method (ASJP) discussed in 6.3 below. These items

have been chosen because they are known not be easily borrowed, so that similarity

in form between languages is more likely to be interpreted as due to inheritance (or

chance) rather than to borrowing. As can be seen in the appendix, apart from the free

pronouns, seven forms from Proto-Mountain Ok (PMO) and six forms from

PAD—all in boldface—are taken as reflexes of PTNG forms as reconstructed in

Pawley (2005b:85‒88).

(3) Voorhoeve sums up a number of cognates between POK and PAD that exhibit more

or less regular sound correspondences. In this respect, one might say that another of

Pawley’s criteria is met, viz., that there should be a sizable body of cognates exhibit-

ing regular sound correspondences with cognates in another TNG language. There

is the danger of circularity here, however, in the sense that one first has to prove

independently that one of the two language groups (Awyu-Dumut or Ok) is TNG,

before the regular sound correspondences can count as evidence for TNG member-

ship of the other language groups.

With this, three of the four criteria for membership of TNG are met. We will, there-

fore, tentatively assume that the languages under discussion are part of TNG, admitting

that the supporting evidence is still—inevitably—weak.8 Although Pawley states (as a

6. As described in 5.4 below, *na and *ga are actually possessive pronouns, reflecting earlier forms of the free pronouns.

7. Following the practice adopted in Ross (n.d.), square brackets around a form indicate that reflexes both with and without the bracketed material occur (Ross n.d.:15).

8. It is also worth mentioning that Reesink, Singer, and Dunn (2009), who use structural features to discover deep-level relationships between languages, classify both Korowai (which is a Greater Awyu language) and Telefol (which is a Greater Ok language) as TNG languages.


fourth criterion) that a language should, in addition to free pronouns, reflect certain other

grammatical paradigms reconstructible for PTNG, the only paradigm reconstructed for

PTNG so far is a partial and very tentative reconstruction of bound pronominal suffixes

on the verb (Pawley 2005:91), which means that this principle cannot yet be applied.

4. REVIEWING THE LEXICAL EVIDENCE

4.1 VOORHOEVE (2005). As can be seen in map 1 above, the Greater Awyu lan-

guages are bordered by Asmat-Kamoro languages in the west, and by Greater Ok lan-

guages in the north and east. In his 2005 article, Voorhoeve discusses the relation between

these three language groups, using lexical evidence and the comparative method as his

main tool. Voorhoeve did not include Oksapmin in his study because the language was

(erroneously) considered to be an isolate within TNG at the time. He found a significant

number of lexical cognates both between Asmat-Kamoro and Ok, and between Awyu-

Dumut and Ok. Only in the case of Awyu-Dumut and Ok, however, are these similarities

interpreted as due to genealogical ties. This is because, according to Voorhoeve, “the

morpho-syntactic structures of the Awyu-Dumut and the Ok languages offer sufficient

similarities to allow the conclusion that they belong to a single supergroup (Awyu-

Dumut-Ok), [while] this is not the case with the Asmat-Kamoro languages whose mor-

pho-syntax is very different” (Voorhoeve 2005:164). The similarities between Awyu-

Dumut and Ok, then, are interpreted as a reflection of genealogical ties, while the similar-

ities between Ok and Asmat-Kamoro are seen as a reflection of ancient contact. More

specifically, Voorhoeve—whose position is indicated in figure 5—believes that the

shared vocabulary is a reflex of early borrowing during a period in which both groups

still lived together in the mountains, before the speakers of Proto-Asmat moved down to

the Southern Plains (Voorhoeve 2005:164).9

4.2 LEXICAL EVIDENCE REVISITED. In evaluating the lexical evidence, it

is necessary to be aware of the quantity and quality of the lexical data, of the method used,

as well as of the relative weight that should be given to lexical evidence in establishing

genealogical relations. To start with the latter point, it is generally acknowledged that lexi-

cal evidence can only be supportive of genealogical relatedness, and that it cannot be used

as the sole diagnostic tool.10 It should always be paired with other data, with shared bound

morphology as the most solid evidence (see section 5). The essence of the comparative

method is to find regular sound correspondences between languages, and to reconstruct a

protophonology plus a list of protoforms. As indicated above, for Awyu-Dumut, a proto-

phonology has been available since Healey (1970), and the revised protophonology by

9. Voorhoeve finds it likely that the contact was not between Proto‒Asmat-Kamoro (PASK) and POK, but that, at the time of contact, the two groups had already split, and there was contact between PASK and PMO. He remarks that “given the general thrust of the spread of the TNG languages this contact must have taken place in the mountains before the speakers of Proto Asmat moved down to the southern plains, or, to say it in Asmat terms: before their Pig- Ancestor Manufuku descended through a hole in the ground of the sky-world to the upper reaches of the great Sirac River” (Voorhoeve 2005:165).

10. For example, Meillet (1958:97), as cited in Nichols (1996:47): “vocabulary can only orient the research, and proof comes from elsewhere.”


FIGURE 5. OK RELATED TO AWYU-DUMUT

BUT NOT TO ASMAT-KAMORO

Voorhoeve (2001) contains a list of 108 lexical items (including some free pronoun

forms). For Mountain Ok and Lowland Ok, the protoforms in Healey (1964) can be used

as the basis for a (tentative) protophonology, as was done by Voorhoeve (2005:151‒52).

Ideally, in order to establish whether Ok and Awyu-Dumut languages are related,

reconstructed PAD lexical items would have to be compared to reconstructed POK forms.

As mentioned above, however, only forms for Proto-Lowland Ok (PLO) and PMO were

reconstructed for the Ok languages.11 Given this limitation, Voorhoeve attempts to relate

PAD forms to PLO or PMO forms. When PAD forms are lacking, he considers Proto-

Awyu forms or Proto-Dumut forms, and where PLO or PMO forms are lacking, he looks

for possible cognates in individual Ok languages, mainly Telefol, but also Mian.

Given that Voorhoeve also used nonreconstructed forms in his search for cognates, it

is important to take note of the total number of lexical items available to him. For Awyu-

Dumut, Voorhoeve had (in addition to the list of 108 reconstructed forms) a lexical inven-

tory at his disposal of maximally 500 words. For Ok, he could make use of Healey’s 405-

item comparative word list, plus protoforms (405 items for Ok, 156 “proto morphemes”

for Lowland Ok), plus a 200-page Telefol‒English dictionary (Healey and Healey 1977).

Finally, for Asmat-Kamoro (ASK), he had far more data available: a comparative word-

list of 500 words plus 418 reconstructed forms (Voorhoeve 1980), Drabbe’s (1937) 160-

page dictionary of Kamoro, and his own 400-page dictionary of Central Asmat (Voorho-

eve 1999).

Using the method sketched above, Voorhoeve found the following numbers of cog-

nates. Between Awyu-Dumut and Asmat-Kamoro, he found few regular sound corre-

spondences and only 25 cognate forms; between Awyu-Dumut and Ok. he found regular

sound correspondences and 65 cognate forms; between Asmat-Kamoro and Ok, he found

regular sound correspondences and 67 cognate forms, but correction for the larger number

of pairings (because of the larger amount of data) brings this back to 45. All Awyu-Dumut

and Ok correspondences and the regular sound changes can be found in Appendix 1.12

11. While Healey gives a list of 132 PMO-PLO pairs that are probably related, he refrains from

reconstructing POK (Healey 1964:182‒88).


Voorhoeve’s conclusion that Awyu-Dumut and Ok are related is based on the combi-

nation of the lexical evidence presented above, and the fact that Ok and Awyu-Dumut

are, according to Voorhoeve, morphosyntactically more similar than Ok and Asmat-

Kamoro.13 However, Voorhoeve mentions only one single example of shared bound

morphology: infinitives in -Vn. In the following section, we will not only evaluate this

single example, but also point out other possible cases of shared morphology. We will

conclude, however, that these are insufficient proof of genealogical ties, but rather form a

strong indication of contact.

5. A CLOSER LOOK AT SHARED BOUND MORPHOLOGY. Shared

bound morphology is generally taken as the best evidence for genealogical ties (Foley

1986:245, Nichols 1996), especially if shared bound morphology is found in different

places within one and the same paradigm, and if it is found in multiple, independent para-

digms (Ross 2005:50, Foley 2005:141). In this section, we consider several cases of pos-

sibly shared bound morphology, as well as free pronouns.

5.1 INFINITIVES IN -Vn. As the only example of shared bound morphology

between Awyu-Dumut and Ok, Voorhoeve points to the existence of infinitive-like forms

in both language groups. For Ok, he mentions Ngalum with an infinitive in -on and Tele-

fol with an infinitive in -in. Sawuy -on and Korowai -un are presented as related affixes

(note that Voorhoeve at the time considers Korowai as possibly related to Awyu-Dumut).

For the (other) Awyu-Dumut languages, Voorhoeve tentatively proposes to relate the Ok

infinitive forms to Awyu-Dumut future verb stems plus i / i(n) / V (Voorhoeve 2005:164,

note 12, for Kombai, Digul Wambon, and Aghu), admitting, however, that “the existing

descriptions are not clear on this point.”

In the Ok languages, the persistence of this form—in all languages except Ngalum

the form is -in, with ias the vowel—is indeed striking, as is also noticed by Loughnane

and Fedden (2011:27), who give *-Vn as a protomorpheme for verbal nouns in

Proto‒Ok-Oksapmin (that is, what we call Greater Ok), and use the existence of verbal

nouns in –n in Oksapmin as one of the criteria to classify Oksapmin as an Ok language.

In the Greater Awyu languages, however, the evidence for infinitive-like forms in -Vn is

rather weak. It is only in Korowai and Sawuy that we find infinitives in -Vn (-un and-on,

respectively, where it should be noted that the Sawuy data cannot be checked),14 while

12. In many cases, the cognate form is only given for a single language in a group, so Voorhoeve is not comparing protoforms, but compares protoforms with contemporary forms in individual languages. If we disregard these comparisons with contemporary forms, we get much lower numbers of similar forms: ASK‒AD: 21; AD‒OK: 50; ASK‒OK: 29. However, this doesn’t greatly affect Voorhoeve’s basic line of argumentation, as there are still considerably more related forms between Awyu-Dumut and Ok than between the other language groups.

13. Strictly speaking, in order to decide whether Voorhoeve was right in his claim that Ok and Awyu-Dumut share more morphosyntactic traits than Ok and Asmat-Kamoro, we should also investigate the morphosyntax of Asmat-Kamoro. This paper, however, restricts itself to Awyu-Dumut and Ok. Although we would support a deeper comparison of Ok and Asmat- Kamoro languages, we are rather pessimistic about the chances of finding striking similarities. This is partly because Voorhoeve is an expert on Asmat-Kamoro—he wrote his doctoral thesis on Asmat, and later also published about different Asmat-Kamoro varieties (Voorhoeve 1965, 1980)—and must have had good reasons to characterize the Asmat-Kamoro languages as languages “whose morpho-syntax is very different.”


Aghu has infinitives marked by nasalization of the final vowel of the (irrealis) stem

(Drabbe 1959:14‒16, van den Heuvel n.d.). Finally, Voorhoeve’s proposal to relate the

Ok infinitives in -in (or -un, in Ngalum) to the future tense affixes -i and -i(n) in Kombai

and Digul-Wambon is highly questionable. In our view, the future function of these

suffixes in the two Awyu languages—where they are used in combination with person-

inflected forms (de Vries 1993:23, Drabbe 1959:128, also referred to in de Vries and de

Vries-Wiersma 1992:81)—is too different from the infinitival function of -Vn in Ok lan-

guages to be considered as cognate. It is not very surprising, then, that Wester (2013)

finds no evidence for a PAD infinitive in -(V)n. This makes the existence of a genealogi-

cal relation between the POK reflexes of *-Vn and Greater Awyu -n / -on / -un unlikely.

However, we still need to explain the similarities that Voorhoeve alludes to, at least for

the infinitival forms in Korowai, Sawuy, and Aghu. Are they sufficiently similar in form

and function to the Ok infinitives to exclude chance similarities? Further evidence is

needed to find out whether the existence of similar forms is due to independent develop-

ments, or a result of contact. The choice between these two possible explanations, contact

or independent development, can only be made in the context of further evidence of sim-

ilarities, which will be discussed in the remainder of this section.

5.2 PRONOMINAL SUBJECT SUFFIXES. Table 1 compares pronominal

subject suffixes in Ok and Greater Awyu; Oksapmin has no subject inflection on the

verb.15 To illustrate the situation in the Ok family, the table lists subject suffixes in a num-

ber of Ok languages, and gives tentative reconstructed protoforms for PMO and PLO.

For Greater Awyu, only the protoforms are given, while the forms for Korowai are given

as a representative of the Becking-Dawi group.

Even a brief observation of the table makes it clear that any search for similarities

between Greater Ok and Greater Awyu languages is likely to fail. The languages have

both (a) different (proto-)forms and (b) a different organization of the paradigm. While

Awyu-Dumut languages contrast first with nonfirst person in both singular and plural, Ok

languages do so only in the plural, while they have a fourfold distinction in the singular,

distinguishing first person, second person, third person masculine, and third person femi-

nine. As for the forms, we see no plausible way to derive the suffixes in the two languages

from similar protoforms. This means that bound pronominal suffixes do not provide evi-

dence in support of a genealogical link between Greater Ok and Greater Awyu languages

(below the level of TNG).16 At the same time, the lack of evidence cannot be taken to

14. The function of -on in Sawuy cannot be checked, as Voorhoeve (1971: 88‒92) is very limited, and does not discuss infinitives. The author must have used his own field data at this point. Apart from this single remark about Sawuy, Voorhoeve has not included any data about Sawuy, because the necessary preliminary comparative work for this language had not as yet been done (Voorhoeve 2005:149).

15. Strictly speaking, the fact that Oksapmin lacks pronominal subject suffixes makes it very hard to establish a genealogical subgroup link between Greater Ok and Greater Awyu. After all, if Oksapmin lacks subject suffixes, it is impossible to reconstruct Proto-Greater Ok subject suffixes, unless one could come up with a plausible scenario explaining the development from a Proto-Greater Ok phase with pronominal subject suffixes into the loss of these in Proto- Oksapmin or in one or more of its daughter languages.

16. As stated above, a tentative partial paradigm for PTNG pronominal subject suffixes was reconstructed by Pawley (2005b:91). These reconstructed forms are: 1/2SG *-Vn; 3SG *-a,*-i, 1PL *-un, plus two dual forms: *-uL for 1st, and *-iL for 2nd person.


Ngalum (series 2) ir erep

PAD (Wester 2013) *ep

er ur erup erip erip

*en *epan *enan

Korowai le/ nde e/ i / o(l) le/te/-nde/(-un) te / ti

Korowai intentional p m n f-Vn m-Vn

TABLE 1. PRONOMINAL SUBJECT SUFFIXES IN

GREATER AWYU AND GREATER OK

1SG 2SG 3SGM 3SGF 1PL 2PL 3PL

Muyu (Niinati dialect) an ep on un up ip ip

Muyu (Metomka dialect) an ep on un up ip ip

Ninggerum a~i eb a~e u ub~uub ib ib

PLO *an/*en *ep *an *un *up *ip

Telefol (unemphatic stems) i ab a u ub ib ib

Mian i eb e o ob ib

Bimin i eb e u ub ib ib

Faiwol i ab a u ub ib ib

Tifal i ab a u ub ib ib

Mian i eb e o ob ib ib

PMO *i *eb *e/*a *o *ub *ib

Ngalum (series 1) er ep ar or up ip ip

prove that there is no genealogical link; it just means that we have, at present, insufficient

data (from other languages) to link the forms via the principles of “reconstruction via reg-

ular phonological change.” An illustrative case is provided by Korowai, whose subject

suffixes are very different from those of the Awyu-Dumut languages, as can be seen in

table 1. Here, the different form of the subject suffixes of Korowai is not taken as

sufficient evidence against its being part of a Greater Awyu language group (the member-

ship of which is argued for on independent grounds, cf. de Vries, Wester, and van den

Heuvel 2012), but simply as a fact that remains to be explained, and to be taken into con-

sideration once data from other related languages become available.

5.3 KINSHIP TERMS. Consider the reflexes of the plural protosuffix *-Vl, recon-

structed by Loughnane and Fedden (2011:28) for POK, in table 2. The suffix is found in

several Ok languages as a means of plural formation in kinship nouns, and also in a few

irregular formations in Korowai (two instances), and Digul Wambon (one instance).

Although these few examples represent instances of shared bound morphology, they

do not constitute evidence of a shared development of the two language groups. First,

forms similar to Proto-Greater Ok *-Vl are attested only in Digul Wambon and Korowai,

while the other Greater Awyu languages have noncognate forms (-gi / -ngu(i)). If the

forms were inherited, we would expect reflexes in more than just two Awyu-Dumut lan-

guages, and not only in two languages that happen to border Ok languages. Second, we

would expect that, especially in an area where intermarriage between language groups is

quite comon, kinship terms are likely candidates to be borrowed, sometimes inclusive of

their plural suffixes. Gardani (2012) shows that within the rare set of inflectional borrow-

ings most of the attested cases are markers of nominal plural. There are two reasons why

these are in general more amenable to borrowing (Gardani 2012:76‒79). First, they are

inherent rather than contextual inflection, and are therefore independent of the syntactic

context a noun appears in. So it is easier to borrow a segmentable marker than one that


undergoes or triggers morphophonemic changes in combination with the stem. Second,

they are morphosyntactically transparent, that is, straightforwardly segmentable, and

organized according to the principle of “one meaning ‒ one form.” It is easier to borrow a

formative that encodes a single meaning rather than a formative that synthetically

expresses two or more categories.

In summary, the few scattered examples of shared plural suffixes are probably bor-

rowings, rather than instances of a shared development.

TABLE 2. REFLEXES OF THE SUFFIX *-Vl†

*-Vl

Greater Ok Oksapmin -il

Mian -wal

Telefol -al ~ -il

Tifal -al ~ -il

Muyu -a

Bimin -er

Ngalum lau

Greater Awyu Digul Wambon -ngauye / irregular form in -alile‡

Korowai -el /-alin

Aghu -gi

Pisa -gi

Mandobo -ngu

Yonggom Wambon -ngui

† Source for Oksapmin and Mian: Loughnane and Fedden (2011:29); for Muyu and Bimin: Healey (1964:63); for Muyu confirmed by Drabbe (n.d:§8); for Tifal: Healey and Steinkraus (1972), confirmed by Boush and Boush (1975:5); for Telefol: Healey and Healey (1977); for Ngalum: Hylkema (1996:§134).

‡ De Vries and de Vries-Wiersma (1992:40) give a single example of ‘broth- ers’: na-mbul-alile ‘my-brother.in.law-plural’. De Vries and Van Enk (1997:141) on Korowai give different plural morphemes, two of which might be related to Ok (either by borrowing or through descent): -alin and -el.

5.4 FREE PRONOUNS. Pronoun roots play an important role in the classification

of Papuan languages, as they do in determining language groupings in many areas of the

world. Pronouns are especially suitable for this enterprise because they tend to form sta-

ble paradigms and they are rarely borrowed. Ross (2005) uses evidence from singular

pronoun forms as a preliminary diagnostic to group Papuan languages, which provides a

starting point for the application of the comparative method later on (2005:24). He argues

(2005:53‒58) against borrowing as a plausible explanation for similarity in pronoun sys-

tems, and discounts chance as so poor an explanation that it can be ignored (2005:54).17

Table 3 sets out the pronoun forms for PAD, POK. and PTNG. We add Korowai, a mem-

ber of Greater Awyu, and Oksapmin, a Greater Ok language, since neither of these two lan-

guages was originally part of the reconstructions of the PAD and POK pronoun paradigms.

17. This latter point is criticized by Hammarström (2013), who argues that Ross’s procedure fails to

properly take into account the role of chance. Hammarström shows that if sufficiently many languages are compared in a pairwise fashion, as it was done by Ross, the possibility that the pronouns in some of these language pairs will match by chance cannot be discounted; that is, the probative strength of any language pair with matching pronouns in a large number of comparisons is diminished because of the increased probability that any matches are due to chance.


The reconstructed pronouns of PAD and POK are clearly TNG. This is especially

obvious in the singular. All forms have the characteristic reflexes *n for first person, *g or

*k for second person, and *y for third person. In addition, the present-day reflexes of

Korowai fit nicely into this pattern. It is therefore relatively uncontroversial to say that the

Greater Awyu and the Greater Ok languages are all TNG languages. What is less

straightforward, though, is whether we find evidence of a higher-level Ok-Awyu sub-

grouping within TNG in the data. A plausible indication of such a subgrouping would be

the presence of a shared innovation within the pronoun system.

A possible candidate of such an innovation is the presence of a bilabial stop (*b in

POK, *p in PAD and Korowai) word-finally in some forms of POK and PAD (and also in

Korowai) in contrast to the PTNG forms. Despite this superficial similarity, these are two

different things. In POK, we find an obligatory bilabial stop in the second person singular

and plural and an optional bilabial stop in the first person plural inclusive (indicated by

square brackets). In PAD, on the other hand, a bilabial stop can optionally appear in all

person and number combinations. Wester (2013) analyzes the *p as coming from an

added deictic element *ep ‘there’. Ross (n.d.:72) believes that *p in PAD marked a gram-

matical relation, as it does in Yonggom Wambon (called Wambon South by Ross). He

cautions, however, that the data are not sufficient to know which grammatical relation is

actually marked. In POK, the function of the bilabial stop is very different. It means

‘inclusive’, as in other TNG languages (for example, Chimbu-Wahgi and South Engan),

which have a protosuffix *-p ‘inclusive dual’ (Ross n.d.:72, 93), which was extended to

the second person as a politeness marker (Ross n.d.:72). An alternative suggestion, which

we would like to propose here, is that POK *b in the pronouns could be associated with

the second person; for example, Telefol kab ‘2SG.M’, ib- ‘2PL’. Mian and the Lowland

Ok languages have extended this to the first person plural as well; for example, Mian kēb-

‘2SG.M’, īb- ‘2PL’; nī- ‘1PL with hearer excluded’ vs. nīb- ‘1PL with hearer included’.

Let us briefly consider the plural pronouns. Here, we find disyllabic, augmented

forms containing *kV in all three persons in PAD. Again, Korowai fits the pattern.

Wester (2013) analyzes this element as a plural marker. Note that there is an element xV

PAD (Wester 2013)

PAD, possessive (Wester 2013)

POK

(Ross n.d.)

TABLE 3. PAD AND POK PRONOUN FORMS†

1SG 2SG.M,F 3SG.M,F 1PL 2PL 3PL

*nup *ŋgup *yup *nakup *ŋgakup / *nakip *yakup *na- *ŋga- *ya- /*wa- *nVkV- *ŋgVkV- *yaka-

*na *ka-b, *kub *ya, yu *nu[b] / ni[b] [k]ib [y]i

Korowai nup gup yup noxup gexenep yexenep

Oksapmin nox go ox,ux nuxul/dil gul ixil

PTNG (Pawley n.d.)

*na *ŋga *ya / *ua *nu / *ni *ŋgi / *nja *i

† A comma corresponds to the heading of the column, so that *ka-b, *ku-b for POK 2SG.M,F

should be understood to correspond to the masculine and feminine form of the pronoun, respectively,. A slash, on the other hand, gives alternative forms for the same cell in the paradigm, so that *ya/*wa should be understood as alternative forms for PAD 3SG.M,F possessive pronoun, generalizing over masculine and feminine.


in the first and third person plural in Oksapmin. We currently don’t have a plausible ety-

mology for this element in Oksapmin. There isn’t anything comparable in POK: all POK

pronoun forms are monosyllabic, which means that this innovation is restricted to

Greater Awyu (and possibly Oksapmin).

To sum up our discussion about personal pronouns, there is no evidence that Greater

Awyu and Greater Ok would have formed a higher-level subgrouping within TNG. We

showed that the similarity in the pronouns that end in a bilabial stop is in form only. The

functions and etymologies of these elements are clearly different. The innovation in the

disyllabic plural forms could be shown to not apply to POK. It is therefore no sound diag-

nostic for an Ok-Awyu subgrouping.

5.5 CONCLUSIONS FROM SHARED BOUND MORPHOLOGY. This

section has shown that there are no instances of shared bound morphology or free pro-

nouns that convincingly indicate genealogical ties between the two language groups

(except from their common membership of TNG). Rather, the few attested cases of shared

bound morphology are to be taken as signs of contact between individual Greater Ok lan-

guages and individual Greater Awyu languages. This is most convincingly true for some

plural kinship nouns that were borrowed into Korowai and Digul Wambon, but might also

be true for the infinitives in Sawuy, or possibly Aghu. A visualization of this scenario is

given in map 2, where the lines pointing downward indicate possible borrowings from

MAP 2. POSSIBLE DIFFUSION FROM GREATER OK LANGUAGES

INTO GREATER AWYU LANGUAGES


Greater Ok languages into certain Greater Awyu languages. The two dotted lines stand for

the higher tentativeness of the relation, something to which we will return below.

Note that Sawuy, Korowai, Digul Wambon and Aghu all show traces of contact with

Ok languages, although at present only Korowai and Digul Wambon border the area

where Ok languages are currently spoken. This might be taken to show that the contact

between Sawuy plus Aghu and Ok must have taken place in the past, in a period when

speakers of earlier forms of these languages were neighbors of speakers of (earlier forms

of) Ok. Although this scenario cannot be excluded, we are inclined to believe that the

Sawuy and Aghu infinitives (in -on and -n, respectively) have developed independently

from the Ok infinitives, and are insufficient grounds to posit a historical scenario of earlier

contact and subsequent population movements.

6. INVESTIGATING A SCENARIO OF RECENT CONTACT. There is

no positive evidence for genealogical ties between Greater Awyu and Greater Ok as a sub-

group within TNG, but clear evidence for a contact relationship: both the relatively high

percentage of shared lexical forms (compared to the percentages when comparing to other

groups) and the presence of some shared bound morphology point toward contact. There

is a difference between the two types of evidence, however. While the shared bound mor-

phology can be taken as evidence for contact between individual languages that are cur-

rently spoken, it is not so clear how the shared lexical data should be interpreted. Do these

shared linguistic forms (a) reflect a long history of ongoing contact between all these lan-

guage varieties; (b) reflect a period of (intensive) ancient contact between earlier forms of

the languages, or even between PAD and POK, after which the two languages were not in

contact for a long while; or (c) indicate relatively recent contact?

Related to the question of contact between the groups is the question of population

movements. In the remainder of this section, we will look at one language pair—Mandobo

(Greater Awyu) and Muyu (Greater Ok)—currently located in adjacent areas, and exam-

ine whether this geographical proximity is reflected in a higher linguistic similarity com-

pared to other pairings of a Greater Awyu and a Greater Ok language. Section 6.1 will

show that the two languages occupy the same “cultural area” with intensive contacts. Sec-

tion 6.2 will deal with the question of whether Muyu and Mandobo are typologically more

similar than other Greater Awyu or Greater Ok languages, while 6.3 will do the same for

their vocabularies.

In this exercise, the following principles of interpretation will be applied.

• Greater similarity between languages indicates more intensive or more prolonged

contact, either in the past, or up until the present.

• Insofar as we find a correlation between geographical distance and linguistic distance,

this is taken as a reflection of in situ diffusion. In other words, this correlation reflects

spreading of forms in a period when speakers were already living at more or less the

same locations as they do now.

We will see that there is, indeed, a weak correlation between linguistic distance and

linguistic similarity, and conclude therefore that at least some of the spreading of forms

has taken place rather recently. The investigation will also bring to light, however, the fact

that the average percentage of shared linguistic forms between Greater Awyu and Greater


Ok is remarkably low. We will close with some suggestions as to how this situation might

be explained.

6.1 CULTURAL CONTINUITY, LINGUISTIC DISCONTINUITY?

Mandobo (in earlier sources Kaeti) and Muyu (in earlier sources Kati), as described by

Drabbe (1959) and Drabbe (n.d.), are spoken in the areas labeled by the Ethnologue as

Mandobo Atas and South Muyu, respectively, and can be found in the center of map 2. In

fact, Drabbe describes two varieties of Muyu: the Metomka variety, located at the Kao

river, and the Niinati variety, located more westward at the Muyu river.18

As the first contacts of Mandobo and Muyu speakers with the outside world date

from the first part of the twentieth century, very little is known about the history of these

speaker groups before this period. From sources of the 1950s and later, however, we

know that contact between the two groups has been quite intensive. Schoorl (1988), who

describes the situation of the late 1950s, speaks about intensive contacts through mar-

riage, coresidence, and trade between Mandobo and Muyu speakers. Boelaars, who

wrote an ethnography of the Mandobo, describes Mandobo culture as a kind of hybrid:

“We are inclined to say that the Mandobo live according to Muyu customs in an Awyu

setting” (1970:16‒17).19 The Muyu have a relatively strong tradition of migration, trade,

and building cross-linguistic and cross-cultural networks by marrying off their women to

other people in their region, including the Mandobo (Schoorl 1988:543‒45). Finally, a

very valuable source is Robert Welsch (1994), who describes the role of pig feasts for

establishing extensive socio-economic relations as a regional phenomenon all over the

Upper-Fly Digul Plain. Welsch (1994:90‒94) argues that the great number of cultural

traits shared over the plain (and not outside of it) can only have spread through contact.

As shared cultural traits—typically found in this area and not in adjacent areas—he men-

tions, among others, the importance of shell money, men using flat nuts as phallocrypts, a

typical form of tree house, and the presence of big unfenced banana gardens. Welsch

points out that common descent cannot be evoked as an explanatory factor for these

shared traits, as the similarities extend over three very different languages groups, with—

as he writes (Welsch 1994:93), referring to Healey (1970)—“a common linguistic origin

no more recent than 3,000 years ago.” Moreover, from each of the language groups, only

a subset of languages participate in the network of shared cultural practices, which is not

what we would expect if the cultural practices could be explained from common descent.

As can be seen on map 3, adapted from Welsch (1994:88), the area referred to as “the

Upper Fly and Digul region” by Welsch hosts (i) speakers of most of the Awyu-Dumut

languages (only Awyu and Mandobo are mentioned explicitly, but the area also includes

all Dumut languages); (ii) speakers of the Ok languages Muyu, Ninggerum, and Yong-

gom; and (iii) speakers of Awin and Pare. The latter two languages are termed Aekyom

18. It should be noted that the geographic borders given by the Ethnologue are close to random indications of artificial boundaries between geographic “language areas.” Moreover, the Eth- nologue classification seems to be based on data from fieldwork in the 1990s and the beginning of the twenty-first century, rather than on the data collected by Drabbe. Nevertheless, the maps given by the Ethnologue still provide us with a rough idea of geographical areas where the languages investigated in this article are spoken.

19. In Dutch: “Wij zijn geneigd te zeggen, dat de Mandobo een Muju-adat beleeft in een Awju- setting.”


MAP 3. UPPER FLY AND DIGUL REGION

(Awi) and Pare by the Ethnologue, and together form an isolated branch of TNG. The area

is bordered by the coastal plain in the south, and the central mountain range in the north.

The situation is represented schematically in map 4, where the oval represents the

shared sociocultural practices. In the remainder of this section we will consider the ques-

tion to what extent these shared sociocultural practices include shared linguistic practices.

In other words: is the relatively intensive contact between Muyu and Mandobo reflected

in a closer typological similarity (6.2) or similarity in lexicon (6.3) compared to language

pairings that do not participate in the cultural network described above?

6.2 TYPOLOGY. In this section, we want to briefly examine some typological traits

of Muyu and Mandobo. The more similar Muyu and Mandobo are, especially where

they differ from the general typology of the language groups that they belong to, the

greater is the chance that this similarity is due to convergence between the two languages,

and therefore indicative of contact.

We first consider the phonologies of the two languages. The phoneme inventories of

the two languages are similar to those of many Papuan languages. The only differences

between the two inventories are the presence of two additional high rounded vowels (/y/

and /ø/) in Mandobo, and the presence of /ŋ/ in Muyu (in addition to /ŋɡ/, which is also

found in Mandobo). The high rounded vowel /y/ is also attested in two other Awyu-


MAP 4. SHARED SOCIOLINGUISTIC PRACTICES IN THE

UPPER DIGUL PLAIN

Dumut languages, Kombai and Aghu, while /ŋ/ is very common all over the area. Both

languages have distinctive lexical stress, as is true for all other Awyu-Dumut languages

and some other Ok languages. Finally, Muyu, like other Ok languages, has contrastive

vowel length, while Mandobo does not. Muyu and Mandobo phonologies do not share

any signs of convergence that might be seen as evidence of contact.

As to their nominal and pronominal morphology, both Mandobo and Muyu are typi-

cal members of their respective language families, which means that they reflect all the

systematic differences between the two groups. Neither in the nominal nor in the pro-

nominal systems do we find evidence for the copying of patterns from Muyu to Man-

dobo or vice versa. The nominal and pronominal systems of Muyu and Mandobo give

no evidence of the spreading of linguistic patterns.

Finally, the same story holds for verbal patterning and verbal morphology; here again

Mandobo and Muyu follow the overall system of the families to which they belong. This

means that the differences between the two languages are rather large. As a Dumut lan-

guage, Mandobo does have an emergent switch reference system, whose emergence

might have been facilitated by contact with Muyu, which does exhibit switch reference.

However, while the existence of multiple past tenses in the Awyu languages might be

seen as evidence of contact with Ok, Mandobo, as a Dumut language, has only a single

past tense, which makes the language different from Muyu in this regard. Within the ver-

bal system, it is only the emergence of switch reference systems in Mandobo that might

be seen as a reflection of contact with Muyu, or with speakers of other Ok languages.


Summarizing, when we consider the copying of typological patterns, we find remark-

ably sharp boundaries between the two languages, and find no convincing signs of con-

vergence. Typological comparison therefore fails to provide positive evidence of contact

between Muyu and Mandobo.

6.3 LEXICON. Although the lexicon also was the topic of 4.2 above, this section has

a different focus and requires an alternative perspective on the same data. In 4.2, the aim

was to use the lexicon as supporting evidence for a genealogical relation between Greater

Awyu and Greater Ok. Following the comparative method, lexical data from languages

within each family were compared, and used for the reconstruction of protoforms.

Finally, protoforms of Awyu-Dumut were compared to protoforms of Lowland Ok and

Mountain Ok. Crucially, a comparison was made on the level of the protolanguages, and

not on the level of individual languages. In this section, however, we have a different aim.

Now that it has been shown that there is very little evidence for genealogical ties, we want

to investigate whether the same lexical data couldn’t count as evidence of contact. The

investigation of this question, however, requires that we no longer compare protolan-

guages, at the level of entire language (sub)families, but compare individual languages.

In interpreting the data, a similar principle holds as the one formulated above for the inter-

pretation of typological data: the more similar Muyu and Mandobo are, especially where

they differ from the general lexical similarity between the language groups that they

belong to, the higher the chance that this similarity is due to convergence between the two

languages, and therefore indicative of more prolonged or more intensive contact.

In what follows, two essentially different ways of comparing vocabularies of lan-

guages will be discussed. We compare the comparative method as applied by Healey

(1964) with the results of an automatic calculation of similarity percentages, as used

within the Automated Similarity Judgment Program (Brown et al. 2008).

6.3.1 The two methods compared . The main differences between the two

approaches are summarized in table 4. The most crucial difference between the two

methods is that the comparative method requires, for each word pair with similar mean-

ing, a decision as to whether the two words are “shared” or not. In a strict application of

the method, words can only be considered “shared” when their phonemes can be related

TABLE 4. MAIN DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE TRADITIONAL

COMPARATIVE METHOD AND THE AUTOMATED MEASURING OF

SIMILARITY

Traditional comparative method (as in Healey 1964)

ASJP

Criteria for comparison Regular sound correspondences Levinshtein distances

Reconstruction needed? Yes No

What does the percentage Percentage of probable cognate word Overall phonologicalexpress? pairs out of the total number of investi- similarity between words

gated word pairs with similar meaning of similar meaning

Primary aim See whether two languages are related Calculating linguistic→ subclassification distance → time distance

Automated? Not fully automated (Almost) fully automated

Reproducibility Not fully reproducible Fully reproducible


by regular sound correspondences. These regular sound correspondences in turn can only

be discovered by reconstructing protophonologies of the languages that are compared

(and, if the two languages are related more distantly, by reconstructing a “protoprotopho-

nology” from which the several protophonologies have descended). Comparative work

crucially involves reconstruction and an informed decision for each possibly related word

pair as to whether the two forms are “shared” or not.

In practice, lexical data from the languages investigated in this study and taken into

account by Healey (1964) are often insufficient to do careful reconstructive work, and the

decision as to whether two word forms are shared or not is taken on more or less intuitive

grounds. In his thesis, Healey sums up lexical items for 120 different lexical meanings in

15 Ok languages, and assigns each lexical item to a group of cognate forms. As such,

Healey leaves room for the reader to evaluate his sometimes admittedly tentative recon-

structions and the decision taken on the basis thereof (Healey 1964:77). This also means

that—crucial to the argumentation in this paper—it is not so clear whether the forms that

are classified as shared by Healey are cognates, shared due to a genealogical relationship,

or instead are borrowings. This ambiguity in the interpretation of the data is recognized

by Healey when he states: “since only one-third of the word lists have been checked in

the field in any way, it is neither possible nor reasonable to insist upon the rigorous iden-

tification of regular sound correspondences for each phoneme in a pair of words before

they are reckoned as cognates. For the same reasons, along with the consequently tenta-

tive nature of the sound correspondences that have been isolated, it has not been possible

to identify loan words with any certainty” (Healey 1964:77). In line with what we wrote

at the beginning of section 6, we therefore feel free to interpret a higher lexical similarity

between Muyu and Mandobo (compared to other pairings of a Greater Ok and a Greater

Awyu language) as indicative of contact, rather than of a closer genealogical similarity.

We will come back to this point below.

Turning now to the method used in ASJP, quite a different picture emerges. Here we

have, for each incorporated language, a list of 40 lexical items with similar meanings,

which is publicly available upon request and has been used in this paper as the basis for

Appendix 2. The 40 lexical items are compared for each language with every other lan-

guage on the basis of a fully automated method, where the question whether two words are

cognate or not is totally irrelevant. What counts is simply how similar two forms are pho-

nemically, on purely formal grounds. The main criterion is the Levinshtein distance. The

aim is to calculate the average linguistic distance between word pairs, for the entire list,

rather than to decide for individual word pairs whether the two forms are cognate or not.20

20. It should be noted that this was different in earlier versions of the ASJP method, in that these

earlier versions still required a classification of individual word pairs as lexically similar or not, although this was not (necessarily) equated with plus or minus cognate. For example, in Brown (2008 5, 23‒24), the ASJP instructions for calculating linguistic distance lead to the classification of word pairs as either lexically similar or not lexically similar. Lexical similarity between two words in this version was, in other words, a binary or absolute measure. As described in Wichmann et al. (2010:2), however, the ASJP research team soon favored an approach in which lexical similarity between word pairs is measured by means of Levinshtein distances, for a description of which they refer to Bakker et al. (2009). In this approach, two words can be more similar or less similar; lexical similarity between word pairs is seen, therefore, as a gradual measure.


As stated above, this paper will compare the results of the comparative method with

the results of the method used within ASJP. More specifically: percentages of cognates

yielded by means of the comparative method will be compared to corresponding lexical

similarity percentages yielded by the ASJP-derived method. Although one might ques-

tion this approach, and state that we try to compare apples and oranges, we believe that

the exercise is worthwhile, and we believe so for two reasons.

(1) Both methods lead to a percentage between 0 and 100, where 0 percent means ‘not

related at all’ and 100 percent means ‘fully identical’.

(2) As indicated above, what we get as a result from the comparative method as applied

by Healey is a percentage of shared forms, which may be shared either due to gene-

alogical inheritance or due to borrowing. This makes the results of the comparative

method very much comparable to the results of ASJP, where the percentage that we

get can just as well be the reflection of recent or ancient borrowing as of ancient

genealogical relations.

As described in Petroni and Serva (2010), the ASJP calculation method starts off with

the calculation of the Levinshtein distance between two words, which is simply “the min-

imum number of insertions, deletions or substitutions of a single character needed to

transform one word into the other” (Petroni and Serva 2010:2281). This Levinshtein dis-

tance is then divided by the number of characters of the longer of the two compared

words. The distance between two words can therefore have any value between 0 (fully

identical words) and 1 (maximally distinct words). This normalized Levinshtein distance

(LDN), is then further compensated for the bias that might be due to the overall phono-

logical similarity that two languages have anyway. This is done by dividing the LDN by

the average LDN of all word pairs (from the 40-item lists) with different meaning. The

result, abbreviated LDND, is a measure of the linguistic distance between two languages.

The similarity percentage is defined as 100 * (1–LDND), so that the percentage for two

fully identical wordlists is 100, and close to 0 for two unrelated languages.

In the following section, ASJP similarity percentages will be compared with cogna-

tion percentages from Healey (1964, 1970) and Voorhoeve (1968; 2001).21 It will be

shown that the ASJP percentages match quite well with Healey’s percentages for Ok‒Ok

and Ok‒Awyu-Dumut relations.

6.3.2 Muyu compared to Mandobo plus other Awyu-Dumut languages and

vice versa. As a first perspective on the lexical relations between Mandobo and Muyu

in a wider context, map 5 gives the ASJP similarity percentages between the two varieties

of Muyu on the one hand, and several Awyu-Dumut languages on the other. Each circle

stands for an Awyu-Dumut language variety for which ASJP wordlists were available.

Each of these Awyu-Dumut languages is compared both to the Muyu Niinati variety and

to the Muyu Metomka variety, where the color of the circle indicates which variety is

being compared. The circle is placed within the geographical area where the specific lan-

guage is spoken. Apart from this, the precise location of the circle is of no importance.

The size of the circle is proportional to the number written within the circle. To give an

example of how the map should be read, we see that Yonggom Wambon has an ASJP

similarity percentage with Muyu Metomka of 16 percent, and an ASJP similarity per-

21. The ASJP similarity percentages were kindly provided by Søren Wichmann.


MAP 5. MUYU NIINATI AND MUYU METOMKA COMPARED TO

DIFFERENT AWYU-DUMUT LANGUAGES (ASJP PERCENTAGES)†

† Map from Voorhoeve (2001:363). The numbers, from left to right are (with D standing for dark gray and L for light gray: Sawuy L3,D3; Pisa L5,D6; Shiagha (Syiaxa) L6,D3; Korowai L3, D4; Aghu (Axu) L5, D7; Digul Wambon L16,D12; Mandobo (Kaeti) L8, D8.

centage with Muyu Niinati of 12 percent. To increase the readability and interpretability

of the map, the numbers are also summed up directly below the table.

One of the first things to note is the clear correlation between geographical distance and

linguistic similarity. The languages that are geographically close to Muyu are also the lan-

guages with the highest similarity percentages: the percentages for Yonggom Wambon and

Mandobo (on the map: Kaeti) are clearly higher than those for the geographically more

remote languages Sawuy, Pisa, and Shiagha, as well as Korowai, while Aghu (Axu) can be

said to have a percentage in between. The lexical similarity percentages for Yonggom

Wambon and Mandobo (Kaeti) match quite well with the percentages of possible cognates

in Healey (1964), which have been added in map 6. The circles with a bold dotted line rep-

resent Healey’s percentages, while the other circles represent the ASJP percentages.

While maps 5 and 6 showed the relation between Muyu and several Awyu-Dumut

languages, in map 7 the Dumut language Mandobo (Kaeti) is taken as a starting point.

Again, first map 7 shows the ASJP similarity percentages.

Whereas in map 7 a certain correlation between geographic distance and linguistic

similarity can still be discerned, the picture is less clear than in maps 5 and 6, and is

blurred by Bimin.22 If we add Healey’s (1964) data, however, the relation between geo-

graphical distance and linguistic similarity becomes neater, as shown in map 8. That we

find a correlation between geographical distance and the two types of percentages is most


MAP 6. MUYU NIINATI AND MUYU METOMKA COMPARED TO

DIFFERENT AWYU-DUMUT LANGUAGES†

† Map from Voorhoeve (2001:363).ASJP percentages are expressed by circles with a closed line, while circles with dotted line express cognation percentages from Healey (1964).The numbers within dotted lines are L10 and D9 for Digul Wambon, and L11 and D7 for Mandobo (Kaeti). The other number are the same as in the previous map: Sawuy L3,D3; Pisa L5,D6; Shiagha (Syiaxa) L6,D3; Korowai L3, D4; Aghu (Axu) L5, D7; Digul Wambon L16,D12; Mandobo (Kaeti) L8, D8

likely taken as an indication that the similarities between the languages are, at least partly,

due to in situ contact and borrowing of lexical items.23

The second observation in maps 5 through 8 is that, even though we do find signs of

contact, the percentages are in general remarkably low. This is especially so in light of the

intensive contact or the high level of bilingualism that has been described, for example,

for Muyu with Mandobo (Welsch 1994:111). In Healey (1964:78‒79), for Mandobo and

Muyu Metomka, only 13 out of 117 forms (or 11 percent) are considered related, which

we have summed up in table 5.

If we compare this list to the list of cognate forms between PAD and POK in Voorho-

eve (2005), we see that ten out of the thirteen forms are also found there. The only forms

that are not given in Voorhoeve (2005) are those for ‘foot’, ‘sweet potato’, and ‘to fly’.

This means that it is only these three forms that make Muyu and Mandobo more similar

22. It should be noted that the source for Bimin used in ASJP differs from the source used in

Healey (1964). While the Bimin data in Healey (1964:42) are taken from a word list of 550 items collected by Healey himself, ASJP mentions Thomas Weber from SIL as its source. Although it is important to take this use of different sources in to consideration, it cannot explain the ASJP results, which characterize Bimin as more similar to Mandobo than the geographically closer Faiwol, Tifal, and Telefol languages.


MAP 7. MANDOBO (KAETI) COMPARED TO DIFFERENT OK

LANGUAGES (ASJP PERCENTAGES)†

† Map from Fedden (2007), who based it on a map from the Ethnologue. The numbers within the circles are as follows: Muyu Niinati 8; Muyu Metomka 8; Faiwol 4; Ning- gerum (Ninggirum) 10; Mian 2; Tifal 4; Telefol 6; Bimin 9.

to each other than the general similarity between Ok and Awyu-Dumut. If we take into

account that the alleged similarity between the two forms for ‘to fly’ (waa bedeke and

meberene go) is quite questionable, there is very little lexical material left—only two lex-

ical forms—that accounts for the closer similarity between Mandobo and Muyu, and that

could be taken as indicative of a more intensive contact between the two languages com-

pared to other Awyu-Dumut and Ok language pairs.

Summarizing, we may state that both the data from Healey (1964) and the results of

the application of the ASJP method point to a weak correlation between geographical

distance between languages and their linguistic similarity. As was explained in the last

23. One anonymous reviewer remarked that “geographic proximity almost automatically means closer genealogically (unless of course, unrelated groups come geographically close due to migration).” We would like to clarify our point by making a comparison to situations that we consider more or less analogous to the relation between Mandobo and different Ok languages. First consider a region in Belgium, where regiolects from two different subgroups of the Indo- European family meet: the region where French regiolects meet Flemish regiolects. If we take a specific Flemish regiolect (Flem1), and find a correlation between the geographical proximity of French regiolects with their linguistic distance to Flem1, this is most likely a reflection of contact between the speakers of those regiolects, and has nothing to do with their genealogical closeness. The situation is even clearer if we take totally unrelated languages, for example, Hungarian regiolects meeting Romanian regiolects in the Transylvanian region of Romania. Here it would be fallacious to say that the correlation between geographical proximity and linguistic similarity has to do with genealogy. In the case of Muyu and Mandobo, then, building on the assumption that they belong to different language groups that are at most distantly related, the correlation must be taken as a reflection of contact, rather than of genealogical ties.


paragraph, however, the correlation is based on sparse data, and is therefore of a rather

tentative nature. Coming back to the relation between Mandobo and Muyu, we conclude

that the linguistic data do reflect contact between the two languages, but that—given the

intensive contact among speakers of the upper Digul plain described in 5.1 above—the

number of shared linguistic forms is remarkably low. In the following concluding para-

graph we come up with a number of suggestions that may account for this discrepancy.

MAP 8. MANDOBO (KAETI) COMPARED TO DIFFERENT OK

LANGUAGES (ASJP AND HEALEY’S COGNATION PERCENTAGES)†

† Circles with a closed line express ASJP percentages, those with a dotted line are based on Healey (1964). The numbers in the closed lines are the same as those in the previous map, while those within dotted lines are as follows: Muyu Niinati 7; Muyu Metomka 11; Faiwol 6; Ninggirum 9; Mian 4; Tifal 3; Telefol 5; Bimin 4.

TABLE 5. RELATED FORMS IN MANDOBO AND MUYU METOMKA

ear

Muyu Metomka

kende

Mandobo

keretop

mouth mo<ng>kot tem ma<ng>got

foot kondo kondok

skin kat kota

child mun mun

sweet potato ombodob tomborop

water ok ok

heart dimyob ndümarop

eat anye- ande

to fly waabedeke- mberene-go

star minoo minap

come mene me

nothing doan nda


7. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION. In this paper, we have argued that a

comparison between Greater Ok and Greater Awyu gives insufficient evidence for a gene-

alogical relation beyond shared TNG ancestry, but that there has been contact between

speakers of the languages. Following this, we focused on the relation between the neigh-

boring languages Muyu and Mandobo, and tried to find linguistic evidence for the inten-

sive cultural contact that exists between the speakers of this group. We concluded that the

linguistic traces of this contact are few. In this final section, we try to account for this scar-

city of linguistic traces by offering two possible, not mutually exclusive, interpretations.

The low percentage might be explained as evidence that the groups have come to live

in closer contact with each other only recently, possibly only several generations ago. We

do know from several sources—for example, Schoorl (1988), referring to Swadling

(1983)—that the movement of Ok speakers from the mountains southward was a pro-

cess that was still going on in the 1950s. The low percentage of borrowings, then, can be

seen as a sign that this process had started only a short period before this, so that contacts

between Ok and Awyu-Dumut speakers are of recent date.

Another, additional, explanation for the lack of shared forms might be found in the

specific conditions of contact between Awyu-Dumut and Ok speakers, which may disfa-

vor extensive borrowing. As can be deduced from Stasch (2009), Welsch (1994), and de

Vries (2008), multilingualism is high, but very much centered around individuals, in that

each individual has his or her own repertory of languages. There is no strong link

between language and group identity, and one cannot speak of, for example, a general

Muyu-Mandobo bilingualism. On the contrary, some Mandobo-speaking individuals

may have contacts with Digul Wambon and with Muyu speakers, others may know

Marind and Shiagha, while again others might have contacts with speakers of Yonggom

Wambon and Aghu. One might claim that this “ego-centered” form of multilingualism

prevents the massive spreading of linguistic forms, as some typical incentives for change

are lacking in such a context. There is no such thing as a group attitude towards the

group’s own language or towards the other group’s language, attitudes that might further

the diffusion of typological patterns or actual forms in one direction or the other.

In order to sustain the claim that the contact conditions disfavor borrowing, one would

need more data on individuals’ histories of contact, combined with individuals’ varieties of

speech. As a highly artificial illustration of contact relations, consider figure 6 below. The

two squares each stand for part of the Awyu-Dumut (left) and part of the Ok area (right),

which meet in the middle. Each dot represents an individual, with the gray dots located in

the Awyu-Dumut area, the black dots in the Ok area. The total number of dots does not

represent reality. The lines stand for contact between speakers: the longer the line, the

greater the distance; the thicker the line, the more intensive is the contact, in terms of lin-

guistic exchange taking place between the two speakers. The figure below shows one indi-

vidual A in the Ok area, close to the border with the Awyu-Dumut area, and the contact

that this speaker has with other speakers. The figure is meant to illustrate the following:

(1) The closer individuals live to the border with another language, the higher the per-

centage of their total contacts will be with speakers of other language groups.

(2) If we consider individuals located more centrally in the Ok area, many of these

would have hardly any contact with individuals from other language groups.


(3) Even for those individuals living in the border area, at least 50 percent of their con-

tacts will still be with members speaking the same language variety. There is a caveat

here, however, as this is not true for children with a mother from the other language

area, who will usually use her own language when communicating with her children.

(4) If we take the axiom that people, in contact with others, will use that variety that

communicates best with least effort, speaker A may adapt to speaker B when com-

municating with B, perhaps by using borrowings from speaker B’s language, or

even by using his/her language. Speaker A will use none of these words, however,

when communicating with C, as (s)he has no knowledge of language variety C.

There is no shared knowledge of variety so that linguistic forms from B would dif-

fuse into the language variety that A uses when communicating with C.

Figure 6 illustrates this, with speaker A in the center, speaker B located in the Awyu-

Dumut area (left) and speaker C located in the Ok area (right, up).

In order to sustain the claim, one would need more data on individuals’ histories of

contact, combined with individuals’ varieties of speech. Although tracing individuals’

histories will definitely contribute to our understanding of language contact and the

spreading of linguistic forms, we still believe that our present data are sufficient to con-

clude that the contact between Muyu and Mandobo speakers is of recent date.

What picture, then, emerges from the multiple perspectives taken in this paper? First,

the evidence for any shared ancestry below the level of TNG is rather weak. There is little

evidence of shared bound morphology between Greater Ok and Greater Awyu, while the

few lexical items shared between all languages of the two groups point toward ancient

contact, not toward lower level groupings. There is therefore insufficient positive evi-

dence to assume genealogical relatedness between Greater Awyu and Greater Ok, apart

from their shared membership of TNG, but sufficient evidence of ancient contact.

While the evidence for genealogical relatedness below the level of TNG is uncon-

vincing, the two languages do exhibit some traces of more recent contact. Whereas the

evidence for the borrowing of patterns is weak, a lexical comparison shows that geo-

graphical closeness correlates positively with the percentage of shared lexical forms. In

other words, geographically closer languages share a higher percentage of lexical forms

FIGURE 6. ONE INDIVIDUAL’S CONTACTS


than geographically remote languages. This phenomenon might be explained as a reflec-

tion of contact between these languages. Whereas the percentages of shared lexical items

are indicative of contact, the percentages are nevertheless lower than we would expect on

the basis of the intensive contacts that exist between speakers of the respective languages

nowadays, and on the basis of the shared cultural traits. To explain this discrepancy

between shared cultural patterns and shared linguistic patterns or matter, we must either

assume that the contacts are of a rather recent date, or seek for an explanation in the

specific nature of the linguistic contacts. In either case, we believe that the period of

ancient contact between earlier forms of Greater Ok and Greater Awyu languages was

followed by a period of separation. And as long as the alternative explanation—which

would link the nature of linguistic dispersal to the nature of contacts in the area—has not

been investigated in more detail, we must assume that the present contacts between Man-

dobo and Muyu date from only several generations ago.24

APPENDIX 1. PAD, PD OR PA FORMS CONSIDERED COGNATE TO PLO OR

PMO FORMS25

PAD PLO PMO 1* armpit *togon + ‘hole’ *taŋkon + ‘hole’ *taŋkan + ‘hole’ 2 blood *gom ≠ *kaim 3 a boil *rün *yin *luin 4 breadfruit *rawot ≠ *yawoot 5* breast *(o,a)m *muuk *muuk 6 buttocks *büm *bim *biim 7* child *(a)mu(n) *mun *miin 8 come *me- *mene ≠ 9* ear *turun *kene- *culun 10 to eat *-en- *-ane- *-wan- 11 excreta *(o,a)r *ot *ool 12* eye *kir(i) *cin *ciin 13 far *k(a,o)man *taman *saman 14 father *ati ≠ *aatim 15 fruit *rop *yob ≠ 16 goura pigeon *kute(m) *kutim ≠ 17* head *kaiban *ambo *gaboom 18 heart *duma-rop *dim-yop ≠ 19 hot *mamün *namin *mamin 20* house *ap(V) *ambip *abip 21 I *nu(p) *ne *na 22 lightning *boba KAT momba *babaa 23 moon *wokot *woot ≠ 24 mouth *bon-ka ≠ *boon-tem 25 name *ipi ≠ *win

24. The idea that Ok and Awyu-Dumut have come into contact only recently matches a tentative scenario in which the lower foothills got (re-)inhabited only after the introduction of the sweet potato in the sixteenth century. There are, we believe, several arguments for this scenario, and we mention two here. First, the idea that population pressure led to the movement of people from the mountains to the south is not new and has been described at several places: for example, Schoorl (1988), who refers specifically to the Muyu. Second, the living conditions in the lower foothills are so bad that it is questionable whether people could have survived there over the centuries.


26 ripe *yomu *yamu *yom 27 river/rain *wadi *wari *waib 28 29* 30

scar shoulder el. sister

*uru *mak -eni

KAT uru *mak *on(i,a)

≠ *maak *een

31 skin *kat *kat *kaal 32 smoke *aruk NIŊ arek *(as)-laek 33 star *mino(p) *mino(p) *mirum 34 tail *wobü(t) NIŊ wum *waim 35 testicles *wabü-rop ? *abu-lob 36 37* 38

tongue urine vein

*paga *y(i,e)t-ok *met

*hooŋ *yu-mun *mekmey

*fooŋ, *falaŋ *ye-maan *metmet

39 40* 41 42*

43

water we you SG

you PL

inside

*ok *nagu(p) *gu(p) *gagu(p) PA *womu

*ok *nu(b) *ku(b), ka(b) *ci(b) PLO *owum

*ok *nu(b) *ku(b) *ki(b) PMO ≠

44 to laugh *abegi- *ambon- *aben- 45 a bow *dyun *tinim *cinim 46 to break s.t. * w a x a r a - KAT baakr-ipe *bakeel-

47

daylight <*wakara-> *sawo

≠

*taab

48

fat, grease PD *tuguy

PLO ≠

PMO *tukul

49* 50

51

ashes wing

to do, make

*kosep *buru PAD *emo

≠ *buru PLO ?

*kutëb *bël PMO TEL kem-

52 53* 54

dry egg to give

*so(k) *m(o,u)go *ede-, adi-

≠ ≠ ≠

TEL tot(an) TEL magap TEL dep-, dup-

55 56*

57

to hear mouth

carry on

*da- *maŋgot PA *kekun-

NIŊ te- moŋkot PLO ≠

MIA ‘sound’ + te- FAI, BIM maŋkat PMO TEL kwek-

58 shoulder liver

*wun

NIŊ woo-ni

BIM wam 59* 60

brains belly

*gün SYI modü

≠ ≠

TEL kuul *muut

61* 62* 63 64* 65*

dog drum kunai grass charcoal tomorrow

SYI se SYI woto PIS seso PIS siwe<*tiwe> SYI sefe<*sepe>

≠ *wot ≠ ? ≠

MIA til *woos *siŋsooŋ *cib sob, sub

25. Asterisks following numerals in the first column refer to Voorhoeve’s endnotes, found at the end of the appendix.Abbreviations used here are: AWN. Awin; BIM, Bimin; CRA. Central Asmat;

FAI. Faiwol; KAT, Muyu (Kati); KOR, Korowai; LOK. Lowland Ok family; MIA, Mianmin; MOK, Mountain Ok family; NGA, (not explained by Voorhoeve but presumably Ngalum); NIŊ, Ninggerum; PA, Proto-Awyu; PAD, Proto‒Awyu-Dumut; PASK, Proto‒Asmat-Kamoro; PD. Proto-Dumut; PIS, Pisa; PTNG, Proto‒ Trans-New Guinea; TEL, Telefol; SYI, Syiagha; PA (not explained by Voorhoeve but presumably Pare [Awin-Pa]).The symbol ≠’ indicates a noncognate form, while a question mark signals lack of data. In certain cases, Voorhoeve has not written an asterisk, in spite of the fact that he refers to protoforms. This is the case for PAD -eni in 30, where the asterisk has probably not been used because it precedes a hyphen. In (41), PLO ka(b) and (54) PAD adi-, the asterisk is missing because the first asterisk has scope over both variants. In (56), PLO moŋgot, the missing asterisk must be explained as a typo.


Notes: 1* The PLO and PMO forms are compounds of ‘arm’ and ‘bone’: PLO *tani + *kono, PMO

*taiŋ + *kun. For PAD, such an analysis is not possible, as cognates of *tani, *taiŋ, and *kono, *kun do not occur in the languages of the Awyu-Dumut family. My guess is that PAD borrowed the form from POK.

5* PTNG *amu.26 See also Duna amu, Gogodala omo. 7* Cf. PA *amu-tu, PD *ami-t ‘son’, and PA (Awin-Pa) mii ‘child’. 9* Healey reconstructs PMO *culuun on the basis of MIA koron, TEL tuluun, FAI, BIM kaluun.

Cognates in the languages to the southeast of the Ok languages all have forms with k: DUN

konona, Awin-Pa family: kedo, kendo, kando; Bosavi family: kælæn, kenane. 12* PTNG *kiti. The Awyu-Dumut and Lowland Ok forms are followed by a morpheme mean-

ing ‘egg’ or ‘fruit’. Irregular is r : n : n, but r, n, nd, d, and t all occur as reflexes of PTNG *t in this field of cognates. Cf. LOK tin, ti, ki, koni; MOK kin, tiin, NGA sir; PA kere, SAW ko:d; Marind kind, ki:t.

17* Cf. AWN kwo, PA keba ‘head’. 20* In the Awyu languages PIS and SYI, ,the descendants of *ap(V) have been compounded with

a forms xaĩ, xeĩ, or xo (< *kaim), which also occurs by itself; PIS xaĩ, afaxaĩ; SYI afoxo, afoxei. Sawuy has a:p ‘house’, aboxaim ‘village’, and KOR: op ‘house on the ground’, xaim ‘tree- house’. NGA has aip ‘house’.

29* In the MOK languages always followed by kun ‘bone’ and meaning ‘shoulder blade’. 37* PAD *ok is ‘water’; PLO *-muun and PMO *-maan, no longer found as separate words,

must have referred to some kind of liquid. Cf. PASK *mu(i) and PTNG *muk ‘water’. 40* PAD *nagu(p) probably from an earlier form of *ni-gu(p). 42* PAD *gagu(p) probably from an earlier form of *gi-gu(p). 49* PD *kosep probably was a loan word, as for PAD the form *sin(a,o)-kwa(t) can be recon-

structed. PMO *kutëb was bimorphemic, consisting of *uku and *tëb or *tüb, going back to much older protoforms whose reflexes are found in many languages, either alone or combined, with the meanings ‘ashes’ or ‘fireplace’: TEL, MIA (u)uk, NGA ik ‘ashes’, Ekagi (Wis- sel Lakes family) ugu ‘fireplace’; AWN tibe, tee, East Strickland family: (fire) + subu; Bosavi family: (fire)+ sobe, sibu; and again combined in Gogodala: uku-ru—all meaning ‘ashes’.

Note that NGA kutep is glossed ‘k.o. blue loam’, ‘fireplace made of blue loam’. This is reminiscent of the Central Asmat term yow-se ‘fireplace’ in which yow originally meant something like ‘hot ashes’, and se is the mud used to make a fireplace. We think it quite possible that CEA se is cognate with forms like NGA -tep.

53* The TEL form means ‘round object, ball, seed, fruit’. 56* Healey did not reconstruct a protoform for PMO; FAI and BIM could have borrowed maŋkat

from their southern neighbor Awin, which has maŋgat- + ‘hole’, but it is a reflex of an old PTNG form *maŋgata, so it may also be a relic form in FAI and BIM.

59* TEL dabaal-kuul ‘head’ + ‘pus; oozing from anything rotten’ > ‘brains’. 61* Cf. SAW si:r, PA tii. 62* Final *s in *woos is tentative; TEL has ŏt, MIA and TIF have was, FAI woos, and NGA wot. 64* PIS siwe is glossed as ‘charcoal’, PMO *cib ‘white ashes’. 65* SYI sefe would be a reflex of PAD *sep(e). Cf. Awin te-sew ‘tomorrow’ (in which te-: PA te

‘tomorrow’).

Sound correspondences:

PAD : PMO

p : b 6x (20, 35, 40, 41, 49, 65) p : w 1x (25) p : f 1x (36) b : b 8x (6, 17, 22, 22, 24, 35, 43, 50)

26. The PTNG reconstructions have been taken from Pawley (1999)


m : m 15x† (2, 5, 6, 7, 13, 19, 19, 26, 29, 33, 38, 53, 56, 60)

w : w 4x (4, 27, 34, 58) w : w 1x (46) w : Ø 1x (35) t : t 4x (1, 4, 14, 48, 56) t : c 1x (9) t : l 1x (31) t : s 1x (62) t : Ø 1x (38) d : t 2x (55, 60) d : d 1x (54) d : c 1x (45) d : Ø 1x (27) n : n 10x (1, 3, 9, 10, 13, 19, 21, 30, 40, 45) n : m 2x (17, 58) n : l 1x (59) s : t 3x (47, 52, 61) s : s 2x (63, 65) r : l 7x (3, 9, 11, 32, 35, 46, 50) r : y 2x (4, 15) r : n 1x (12) y : y 2x (26, 37) y : l 1x (48) k : k 7x (29, 31, 32, 38, 46, 49, 57) k : g 1x (17) k : c 1x (12) k : s 1x (13) g : k 4x (2, 41, 48, 59) g : g 1x (53) g : ŋ 1x (36) g : ŋk 1x (1)

† A typo; should be 14x.

APPENDIX 2. 40 LEXICAL ITEMS AND PRONOUNS THAT ARE NOT EASILY

BORROWED

Reconstructed forms for Proto-Mountain Ok, Proto‒Awyu-Dumut, and Proto-Trans New Guinea. The forms in bold are considered reflexes of PTNG.

PMO (Healey 1964,

unless indicated otherwise)

PAD (Wester 2013)

PTNG (Pawley 2005: 85‒88)

1 I 2 you

*na (Ross n.d.) *ka-b (M, Ross n.d); *kub

*na *ŋgup

*na *ŋga

3 we (F, Ross n.d.) *nu-b / *ni-b (Ross n.d.)

*nakup

*nu 11 one 12 two

*maakub; maakUb *aleeb; äleeb; asU

*omaV (PD) *okum (PA);

no entry *ta(l,t)(a,e)

18 person

*cInum; *cInUm *irumo *xo bVti(n)1

*ambi2

19 fish *aniiŋ *rakai / *rokai / no entry

*rakae / *rokae 21 dog *mAyaan; *mIyaan *aŋgi no entry 22 louse *cim3

*ŋgut *niman


23 tree 25 leaf

*as4

*hooT ( only listed for *enop (PD) *enop ron

*inda; iñja5

*iti (also for: hair);

28 skin PLO) *kaal6

*kat *sasak *(ŋg,k)a(nd,t)apu

30 blood *keim; *Kaim; *cuim; *ŋgom *ke(ñj,s)a

31 bone *ileem; *isak; *asak7

*kun; *kuun8

*bege (PA);

*kondaC

34 horn

not in list *mit (PD) not in list

not in list 39 ear 40 eye

*coluun; *cilooŋ *ciin

*turu(top) *kerop

*ka(nd,t)(i,e,)C *(ŋg,k)iti[maŋgV];

41 nose

*mutuum; *mUtUUm

*si(n) (PD) *ŋg(a,u)mu; *nVpV *mundu

43 tooth * n i ŋ ; *n i i ŋ ; * m a ŋ kat *maga (PA) *maŋgata (also for:

44 tongue (mouth) *fooŋ; *fIlaŋ; *fAlaŋ

*paŋgat mouth) ; *titi *mbilaŋ; *me(l,n)e

47 knee *katuun; *katÜÜn no reconstruc- *(ŋg,k)atuk

48 hand

*siKiil; *siŋkiil9; tion *mbe(ndo)12

*sikal; *sakil

*saKaal; *saŋkaal10

51 breast * Kul; *teiŋ; *taiŋ11

*muuk

*om / *am

*amu 53 liver 54 drink 57 see 58 hear

*in *wan-13

-tëm- no entry

*wu *mi *peta *da (PA);

*[ma]pVn *na-14

*nVŋg-15

*nVŋg-16

61 die

*Caan-; *cwaan *ndat (PD) *kum / *küm

*kumV- 66 come 72 sun 74 star 75 water 77 stone

*tele *ätaan no entry *ook *tuum

*me *tVt *mi(nap) *ok *(eg)iro (PD)

*me- *kamali; *ketane no entry *ok[V]; *nok * k a m b ( a , u ) n a ;

82 fire

*weiŋ

*enop *[na]muna *k(a ,o)n(a ,u)p ;

85 path

*leib

no entry *inda; *kambu no entry

86 mountain 92 night 95 full 96 new 100 name

*amgu17; *tikiin; *tiKiin18

*minlil- no entry no entry *win

*xa(i)b(i)ɛ (PA) *asü (PA) no entry *atu *pi

no entry *k(i,u)tuma *t(o,u)k(I,u)ti- *kVtak *imbi; *wani19

Notes: 1 Listed by Wester under ‘man’; Wester gives no entry for ‘person’. 2 Listed by Pawley (2005) under ‘man, husband’. Pawley gives no entry for ‘person’. 3 Listed by Healey (1964) under ‘head louse’. 4 Listed by Healey (1964) under ‘tree, wood, fire’. 5 Listed by Pawley (2005) under ‘tree, wood’. 6 Listed by Healey (1964) under ‘skin, bark’. 7 *isak and *asak are listed by Healey (1964) under ‘pus, blood’. 8 Listed by Healey (1964) under ‘bone, strong’. 9 Listed by Healey (1964) under ‘hand, arm’. 10 Listed by Healey (1964) under ‘hand, arm’. 11 Both *teiŋ and *taiŋ are listed by Healey (1964) under ‘hand, arm’. 12 Listed by Wester under ‘hand, arm’ .


13 Listed by Healey (1964) under ‘eat, drink’. 14 Listed by Pawley (2005) under ‘drink, eat’. 15 Listed by Pawley (2005) under ‘see, know, perceive’. 16 Cf. the entry ‘see’. Listed by Pawley (2005) under ‘know, hear, see’. 17 *kun and *kuun are listed by Healey (1964) under ‘mountain, hill’. 18 *tikiin and *tiKiin are listed by Healey (1964) under ‘mountain, on top of’.

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(with Sebastian Fedden) Greater Awyu and Greater Ok: contact or inheritance

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