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Mek languages
Trans–New Guinea language branch From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Mek languages are a well established family of Papuan languages spoken by the Mek people and Yali people. They form a branch of the Trans–New Guinea languages (TNG) in the classifications of Stephen Wurm (1975) and of Malcolm Ross (2005).
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Mek, then called Goliath, was identified by M. Bromley in 1967. It was placed in TNG by Wurm (1975).
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Languages
The Mek languages form three dialect chains (Heeschen 1998):
- Eastern: Ketengban (including Okbap, Omban, Bime, Onya), Una (Goliath), Eipomek
- Northern: Kosarek Yale–Nipsan, Nalca
- Western: Korupun-Sela (including Dagi, Sisibna, Deibula)
Proto-language
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Phonemes
Usher (2020) reconstructs the consonant and vowel inventories as 'perhaps' as follows:[2]
*m *n *ŋ *p *t *k *kʷ *(m)b *(n)d *(ŋ)g *(ŋ)gʷ *s *w *l *j
i u e o ɛ ɔ a ɒ
ei ou ɛi ɔu ai au aɛ aɔ
Pronouns
Pronouns are:[2]
The difference between the two 3pl forms is not known. 2pl and 3pl have parallels in Momuna /kun tun/.
Basic vocabulary
Some lexical reconstructions by Usher (2020) are:[2]
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Modern reflexes
Mek reflexes of proto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG) etyma are:[3]
- mun ‘belly’ < *mundun ‘internal organs’
- kuna ‘shadow’ < *k(a,o)nan
- saŋ ‘dancing song’ < *saŋ
- getane ‘sun’ < *kVtane
- mundo ‘belly’ < *mundun ‘internal organs’
- ami ‘louse’ < *niman
- si ‘tooth’ < *(s,t)i(s,t)i
- tomo < *k(i,u)tuma ‘night’
- de ‘to burn’ < *nj(a,e,i)
- mon ‘belly’ < *mundun ‘internal organs’
- xau ‘ashes’ < *kambu
Further reading
- Heeschen, Volker. 1978. The Mek languages of Irian Jaya with special reference to the Eipo language. Irian 7(2): 3–46.
- Heeschen, Volker. 1992. The position of the Mek languages of Irian Jaya among the Papuan languages: History, typology and speech. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 148(3/4): 465–488.
References
External links
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