Nor–Pondo languages
| Nor–Pondo | |
|---|---|
| Lower Sepik | |
| Geographic distribution: | New Guinea | 
| Linguistic classification: | 
 | 
| Subdivisions: | |
| Glottolog: | lowe1423[1] | 
The Nor–Pondo aka Lower Sepik languages are a small language family of northern Papua New Guinea. They were identified as a family by K Laumann in 1951 under the name Nor–Pondo, and included in Donald Laycock's now-defunct 1973 Sepik–Ramu family. Malcolm Ross (2005) broke up the Nor branch and thus renamed the family Lower Sepik; he classifies it as one branch of a Ramu–Lower Sepik language family. Ethnologue (2009) keeps Nor together but breaks up Pondo.
Classification
| Lower Sepik (Nor–Pondo) | 
 | |||||||||||||||||||||
|  | 
Ross (2005) notes Murik does not share the /p/s characteristic of the first- and second-person pronouns of Kopar and the Pondo languages, so the latter may form a group: Murik vs Kopar–Pondo. Foley (2005) tentatively proposes that Chambri and Angoram may be primary branches: Nor, Chambari, Karawari–Yimas, Angoram.
Pronouns
The pronouns reconstructed for the proto-language are,
- Proto–Lower Sepik (Ross)
- I - *ama - we two - *ka-i, *ka-pia - we few - *(p)a-ŋk-i-t - we all - *a-i, *a-pia, *i-pi - thou - *nɨmi - you two - *ka-u, *ka-pua - you few - *(p)a-ŋk-u-t - you all - *a-u, *a-pu, *i-pu(a) - s/he - *mɨn - they two - *mɨnɨmp ? (M), 
 *mpɨ ? (F)- they few - *mɨŋkɨ-t - they all - *mump (M), 
 *pum (F)
- Proto-Nor–Pondo (Foley)
- we two - *ka-i, *ka-pa-i - we few - *(pa)ŋk-it - we all - *a-i, *a-pa-i, *(y)i-i, *(y)i-pa-i - you two - *ka-u, *ka-pa-u - you few - *(pa)ŋk-ut - you all - *a-u, *a-pa-u, *(y)i-u, *(y)i-pa-u - they two - ? - they few - *mɨŋkɨ - they all - *mump ? 
Footnotes
- ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Lower Sepik". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
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.
| 
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||