Grass languages

Grass
Keram
Geographic distribution:	New Guinea
Linguistic classification:	Ramu – Lower Sepik Ramu Lower Ramu? Grass
Glottolog:	None

The Grass AKA Keram languages are a small family of clearly related languages,

• Banaro
• Grass proper: Aion, Adjora (Abu), and Gorovu.

Laycock (1973) noted that Banaro was lexically divergent, and therefore grouped it with the Grass family in a higher-level Grass stock,^[1] a position accepted by Pawley (2005).^[2] The inclusion of Kambot is no longer accepted.

The Grass family is generally classified among the Ramu languages of northern Papua New Guinea. However, Glottolog breaks it up, with only Abu (Adora) and Gorovu kept together (in a "Agoan" branch),^[3] and Banaro left unclassified.

References

• Ross, Malcolm (2005). "Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages". In Andrew Pawley, Robert Attenborough, Robin Hide, Jack Golson, eds. Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. pp. 15–66. ISBN 0858835622. OCLC 67292782.

1. Donald C. Laycock, 1973. 'Sepik languages: checklist and preliminary classification'. Pacific linguistics, Series B, Issue 25. Australian National University, Dept. of Linguistcs.
2. Andrew Pawley, 2005, Papuan pasts
3. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Agoan". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.