Yareban languages


The Yareban or Musa River languages are a small family of Trans-New Guinea languages spoken near the Musa River in the "Bird's Tail" of New Guinea. They are classified within the Southeast Papuan branch of Trans-New Guinea.

Phonemes

Usher reconstructs the consonant inventory as follows:
*s and *dz were acquired through loans, but may have already been present in the protolanguage. *ʔ and *g may have been allophones.
Vowels are *a *e *i *o *u.

Pronouns

Usher reconstructs the pronouns as:

Languages

The languages are,
Barijian is suggested by lexicostatistics in Dutton.
The only pronouns which are known in enough languages to reconstruct are na 1sg and a 2sg, which are common to all Yareban languages.

Evolution

Yareban reflexes of proto-Trans-New Guinea etyma are:
Yareba language:
Abia language: