Skou languages

Tone

Skou languages are unusual among Papuan languages for being tonal; all Skou languages possess contrastive tone.^[1] Vanimo, for example, has three tones, high, mid, low.

Example minimal sets illustrating tonal contrasts in various Skou languages:^[1]

• I’saka: ẽy^H ‘louse’, wey^L ‘butterfly’, wey^LH ‘house’, wey^HL ‘language’
• Barupu: e^H ‘tooth’, e^L ‘garden’, e^HL ‘mosquito’, e^HLH ‘write’
• Wutung: ho^H ‘roof thatch made from sago palm fronds’, ho^L ‘star’, ho^HL ‘grease’
• Skou: ta^H ‘grass’, ta^L ‘hair’, ta^HL ‘arrow’

Lakes Plain languages, spoken in a discontiguous area to the southwest, are also tonal. Because of the apparent phonological similarities and sharing of stable basic words such as ‘louse’, Foley speculates the potential likelihood of a distant relationship shared between the Skou and Lakes Plain families, but no formal proposals linking the two families have been made due to insufficient evidence.^[2] Additionally according to Foley, based on some lexical and phonological similarities, the Keuw language (currently classified as a language isolate) may also possibly share a deep relationship with the Lakes Plain languages. Like the Lakes Plain languages, Keuw also possesses constrative tone.

Lepki, Kaure, and Kembra, spoken in mountainous inland regions of the Indonesia-PNG border to the southwest of the Skou-speaking area, are also tonal.^[2]

Morphology

Skou languages can be isolating or polysynthetic.^[1]

• Isolating structure: Dumo, an Inner Skou language
• Polysynthetic structure: Barupu, a Piore River language

Sko (Laycock 1975)

Laycock posited two branches, Vanimo and Krisa:

Skou (Ross 2005)

However, Krisa is poorly supported and Malcolm Ross abandoned it.

Macro-Skou (Donohue 2002)

Mark Donohue proposed a subclassification based on areal diffusion he called Macro-Skou.

Donohue (2004) notes that is unclear if extinct Nouri is in the Piore River or Serra Hills branch.

Sko (Foley 2018)

Foley (2018) provides the following classification.^[1]

Foley's Inner Sko corresponds to Donohue's Western Skou.

Miller (2017)

The Piore River branch was renamed Lagoon in Miller (2017).^[6] The older names of the Piore River languages were from village names; Miller has since renamed them as Bauni, Uni, Bouni, and Bobe, though it is debatable whether they are all distinct languages.

Usher (2020)

Usher groups the languages as follows, with each node being a reconstructable clade, and giving the family a geographic label rather than naming it after a single language. The Eastern languages are typologically quite distinct from the Western languages and I'saka.^[7]