The Engan, or more precisely Enga – Southern Highland, languages are a small family of Papuan languages of the highlands of Papua New Guinea.
The two branches of the family are rather distantly related, but were connected by Franklin and Voorhoeve (1973).
Engan | |
---|---|
Enga – Southern Highlands | |
Geographic distribution | New Guinea |
Linguistic classification | Northeast New Guinea and/or Trans–New Guinea?
|
Subdivisions |
|
Glottolog | enga1254 |
Map: The Engan languages of New Guinea The Engan languages Trans–New Guinea languages Other Papuan languages Austronesian languages Uninhabited |
The name "Engan" is often restricted to the northern branch of the family, to those languages transparently related to Enga, but also sometimes to the family as a whole.
The languages fall into three quite distinct branches: Engan proper, Huli, and Southern Highlands:
The Engan family constitutes a branch of the Trans–New Guinea languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross, but the evidence for this is weak.
There are a considerable number of resemblances with Wiru. Borrowing has not been ruled out as the reason for this, though the pronouns are similar as well.
Usher (2020) reconstructs the consonant inventory as follows:
*m | *n | ||
*p | *t | *k | |
*mb | *nd | *ŋg | |
*w | *l | *j |
Vowels are *i *e *a *o *u.
Pronouns are easy to reconstruct for the northern and southern branches, but much more difficult for Engan as a whole. Ross (2005) has the following for the singular, Wiru has been added for comparison:
pEngan | N Engan | S Engan | Wiru | |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | **nə | *na-ba | *ní | no (gen. anu) |
2 | **ne-ke | *ne-ba | *ne-ke | ne (gen. ne-ke) |
3 | ? | *ba | *[n]i-bu | one |
Usher (2020) has not yet published reconstruction of Engan as a whole, but has done Engan proper:
sg | du | pl | |
---|---|---|---|
1 | *na(-mba) | *nali(-mba) | *nani(-ma) |
2 | *ni(-mba) | ||
3 | *[e]-mba |
Some lexical reconstructions of Proto-Trans Enga (Proto-Engan) by Usher (2020) are:
The Enga-Kewa-Huli reflexes of proto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG) etyma, if Engan languages are indeed members of the Trans-New Guinea family, are:
Enga:
Huli:
Kewa:
Basic vocabulary of Enga and Kewa from William A. Foley (1986):
gloss | Enga | Kewa |
---|---|---|
‘two’ | rama | laapo |
‘man’ | akari | ali |
‘water’ | ipa | ipa |
‘fire’ | ita | repona |
‘tree’ | ita | are |
‘leaf’ | yoko | yo |
‘root’ | pingi | pitaa |
‘house’ | ada | ada |
‘breast’ | adu | adu |
‘tooth’ | nege | agaa |
‘bone’ | kori | kuli |
‘ear’ | kare | kale |
‘hair’ | iti | iri |
‘leg’ | kape | aa |
‘blood’ | kupapu | kupaa |
‘hand’ | ruma | ki |
‘egg’ | kapa | yaa apaa |
‘sun’ | nita | nare |
‘axe’ | patama | rai |
‘netbag’ | nuu | nu |
‘eat’ | ne- | na- |
‘die’ | kumi- | koma- |
‘say’ | re- | la- |
‘give’ | mai-/gi- | gi- |
‘big’ | adake | adaa |
This article uses material from the Wikipedia English article Engan languages, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license ("CC BY-SA 3.0"); additional terms may apply (view authors). Content is available under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
®Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wiki Foundation, Inc. Wiki English (DUHOCTRUNGQUOC.VN) is an independent company and has no affiliation with Wiki Foundation.