Lakes Plain languages

The Lakes Plain languages are a group of languages spoken by people living in the Lakes Plain area of Indonesian New Guinea. These languages belong to a larger family of Papuan languages, which are unique to this part of the world. One interesting feature of the Lakes Plain languages is that they use tones—a change in the pitch of a sound—to give words different meanings, making them very musical. Another special trait is that these languages do not use certain sounds called nasal consonants, which are found in many other languages around the globe. Studying these languages helps us understand the rich diversity of human speech and how different cultures communicate.

Classification

The Lakes Plain languages are a group of languages spoken in the Lakes Plain of Indonesian New Guinea. They were grouped with the Tor languages by Stephen Wurm in his proposal about the Trans–New Guinea languages. But Clouse (1997) thought they were closer to the Geelvink Bay languages instead.

Malcolm Ross sees them as their own special family, and Timothy Usher agrees. Because they share some sounds and words, like ‘louse’, William A. Foley thinks they might be far away related to the Skou languages, but there isn’t enough proof to say for sure. Foley also thinks the Keuw language might be related, but it is still unsure.

Like some other language families such as the East Cenderawasih Bay, Trans-New Guinea, and South Bougainville, Lakes Plain languages use a special way to show relationships between things called ergative case marking. Most languages in northern Papua New Guinea do this differently.

Clouse (1997) organized the Lakes Plain languages into groups such as Rasawa, Tariku, and East Lakes Plain. He thought the East Geelvink Bay languages were the closest relatives to the Lakes Plain languages.

Usher’s 2018 classification also lists the Lakes Plain languages, noting that some like Kaiy, Kwerisa, Doutai, and Waritai might belong in the Central Lakes Plain group. There are still questions about some languages like Saponi, Kehu, and Tause.

Pronouns

The pronouns used in the proto-Tariku language, which is an early form of the Lakes Plain languages, include specific words for "I" and "thou". For example, in the East Lake Plain group, the word for "I" is *a and for "thou" is *do. In Awera, these are yai for "I" and nai for "thou". Rasawa uses e- for "I" and de- for "thou".

The Saponi language does not share these pronouns with the Lakes Plain family. Its words for "I" and "we" are mamire, and for "thou" it is ba. These words are similar to those in the proto–East Bird's Head language. However, Saponi shares about half of its basic words with Rasawa. Researchers are still studying Saponi to decide where it belongs.

The Tause language was once thought to be part of the Tariku group within the Lakes Plain languages. But because its pronouns look more like those in the East Bird's Head – Sentani languages, it was moved there to encourage more research.

Phonology

Lakes Plain languages have very small sets of sounds, similar to some Polynesian languages. Unlike most Papuan languages, they do not use certain sounds called nasal consonants. Instead, these languages use a small number of sounds called stops to create different words, which makes small changes in sounds very important.

These languages also use special sounds called tones to give meaning to words. Some Lakes Plain languages have just two tones, while others, like Iau, have many more tones, making their sound system very complex.

Morphology

Unlike many other Papuan languages, Lakes Plain languages do not use gender in their words. This means words do not change based on whether they are masculine, feminine, etc. Most Lakes Plain languages are simple in how they form words, with very little extra endings or changes. For example, Iau is mostly simple, while Abawiri has more complex word forms for verbs.

Lexical reconstruction

Clouse, in 1997, worked on figuring out the basic words for the early Lakes Plain language and its lower branches.

Lakes Plain reconstructions by Clouse (1997)

Basic vocabulary

The Lakes Plain languages include Rasawa, Kirikiri, Iau, Duvle, Obokuitai, and Diebroud. These words come from a list made by Foley in 2018. The words in each language may not always have the same roots.