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Eastern Trans-Fly languages
Language family of New Guinea From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Eastern Trans-Fly (or Oriomo) languages are a small independent family of Papuan languages spoken in the Oriomo Plateau to the west of the Fly River in New Guinea.
 | This article's factual accuracy may be compromised due to out-of-date information. The reason given is: needs substantial rewrite from experts in the field. (October 2025) |
 | This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. (October 2025) |
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Classification
The languages constituted a branch of Stephen Wurm's 1970 Trans-Fly proposal, which he later incorporated into his 1975 expansion of the Trans–New Guinea family as part of a Trans-Fly – Bulaka River branch. They are retained as a family but removed from Trans–New Guinea in the classifications of Malcolm Ross and Timothy Usher[who?].
Wurm had determined that some of the languages he classified as Trans-Fly were not actually part of the Trans-New Guinea family but were instead heavily influenced by Trans-New Guinea languages. In 2005, Ross removed most of these languages, including Eastern Trans-Fly, from Wurm's Trans-New Guinea classification.
Timothy Usher[citation needed] links the four languages, which he calls Oriomo Plateau, to the Pahoturi languages and the Tabo language in an expanded Eastern Trans-Fly family[clarification needed].
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Languages
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Oriomo (Eastern Trans-Fly) languages and respective demographic information listed by Evans et al. (2018) are provided below[1]. Geographical coordinates are also provided for each dialect (which are named after villages)[2].
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Pronouns
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The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto–Eastern Trans-Fly are:
I *ka exclusive we *ki inclusive we *mi thou *ma you *we he/she/it *tabV; *e they *tepi
There is a possibility of a connection here to Trans–New Guinea. If the inclusive pronoun is historically a second-person form, then there would appear to be i-ablaut for the plural: *ka~ki, **ma~mi, **tapa~tapi. This is similar to the ablaut reconstructed for TNG (*na~ni, *ga~gi). Although the pronouns themselves are dissimilar, ablaut is not likely to be borrowed. On the other hand, there is some formal resemblance to Austronesian pronouns (*(a)ku I, *(ka)mu you, *kita we inc., *(ka)mi we exc., *ia he/she/it; some archeological, cultural and linguistic evidence of Austronesian contact and settlement in the area exists (David et al., 2011; McNiven et al., 2011; McNiven et al., 2006; McNiven et al., 2004: 67-68; Mitchell 1995).
Vocabulary comparison
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The following basic vocabulary words for Bine (Täti dialect), Bine (Sogal dialect), Gizra (Kupere dialect) and Wipi (Dorogori dialect) are from the Trans-New Guinea database[3]. The equivalent words for Meriam Mir are also included[4].
The words cited constitute translation equivalents, whether they are cognate (e.g. iřeʔu, iřeku, ilkʰəp for “eye”) or not (e.g. dřeŋgo, ume, yɔŋg for “dog”).
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References
External links
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