Mailuan languages

The languages, which all share about half of their vocabulary, are,

• Domu, Binahari–Binahari-Ma, Morawa, Mailu (Magi), Laua

Bauwaki–O'oku is closely related to the Mailuan languages.

Dutton (1971) said Bauwaki was a link to the Yareban languages. It has greater lexical similarity with Aneme Wake (Yareban) than the closest Mailuan language, Domu. Usher (2020) classifies Mailuan, Bauwaki and Yareban together.^[1]

Magi shows evidence of language shift from an Oceanic language in many Oceanic words.

Usher (2020) reconstructs the proto-Mailuan–Yareban pronouns as:^[1]

Ross (1995) reconstructs the Mailuan pronouns as:

This article should specify the language of its non-English content, using {{langx}}, {{transliteration}} for transliterated languages, and {{IPA}} for phonetic transcriptions, with an appropriate ISO 639 code. Wikipedia's multilingual support templates may also be used. (September 2021)

The following basic vocabulary words are from Thomson (1975)^[2] and various SIL field notes, as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database.^[3]

The words cited constitute translation equivalents, whether they are cognate (e.g. kuma, uma, tuma for “louse”) or not (e.g. baka, ulim, muruu for “egg”).

Additional word lists can be found in Ray (1938).^[5]

Mailuan reflexes of proto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG) etyma are:^[6]

Mailu language:

• ama ‘breast’ < *amu
• maa ‘mouth’ < *maŋgat[a]
• kisa ‘bone’ < *kondaC
• tupa ‘short’ < *tu(p,mb)a(C)
• guia ‘cassowary’ < *ku(y)a

Bauwaki language:

• baba ‘father’ < *mbapa
• idi ‘hair’ < *iti[C]
• (ine) ibi ‘name’ < *imbi
• iini- ‘sleep’ < *kin(i,u)-