Pahoturi languages

The Pahoturi River languages are a small family of Papuan languages spoken around the Pahoturi (Paho River). This family includes eight language varieties including Agöb (Dabu), Em, Ende, Idan, Idi, Idzuwe, Kawam, and Taeme, which are spoken in the Pahoturi River area south of the Fly River, just west of the Eastern Trans-Fly languages. Idzuwe is no longer spoken. Ross (2005) tentatively includes them in the proposed Trans-Fly – Bulaka River family, though more recent work has classified Pahoturi River as an independent family within the region.

Some Pahoturi River speakers were originally hunter-gatherers, but have recently shifted to becoming gardeners.

Classification
Wurm (1975) and Ross (2005) suggest that the Pahoturi languages may be related to the Tabo (Waia) language just north of the Fly delta. However, they present no evidence, and the pronouns do not match.

Evans and colleagues (2018) classify the Pahoturi River languages as an independent language family.

Languages
Five of the varieties have traditionally been grouped into the following two language groups:


 * 1) Agöb (Dabu), Ende, and Kawam
 * 2) Idi and Taeme

Preliminary work on the language family suggests that these varieties form a dialect chain. It is assumed that Em is more closely related to Agob and Ende, while Idan and Idzuwe are more closely related to Idi and Taeme.

Pahoturi River languages and respective demographic information listed by Evans (2018) are provided below.



! Language !! Location !! Population !! Alternate names
 * + List of Pahoturi River languages
 * Idi || central-east Morehead Rural LLG || 774 ||
 * Taeme || northeast Morehead Rural LLG || 834 || Tame, Kondobol, Yao
 * Agob || southeast Morehead Rural LLG || 1,437 || Bugi, Dabu
 * Ende || east Morehead Rural LLG || 542 ||
 * Kawam || east Morehead Rural LLG and west Oriomo-Bituri Rural LLG || 457 || Wipim
 * }
 * Ende || east Morehead Rural LLG || 542 ||
 * Kawam || east Morehead Rural LLG and west Oriomo-Bituri Rural LLG || 457 || Wipim
 * }
 * Kawam || east Morehead Rural LLG and west Oriomo-Bituri Rural LLG || 457 || Wipim
 * }

Phonemes
Usher (2020) reconstructs the consonant inventory as follows:




 * m || *mʷ || *n || ||  || *ŋ || [*ŋʷ]
 * p || *pʷ || *t || *ʈ || *ts || *k || *kʷ
 * b || *bʷ || *d || *ɖ || *dz || *g || *gʷ
 * mb || *mbʷ || *nd || *ɳɖ || *ndz || *ŋg || *ŋgʷ
 * || || *l || *ɭ || ||  ||
 * || *w || *r || *ɽ || *j || ||
 * }
 * || || *l || *ɭ || ||  ||
 * || *w || *r || *ɽ || *j || ||
 * }
 * || *w || *r || *ɽ || *j || ||
 * }

Pronouns
The pronouns Ross reconstructs for the family are:

Proto-Pahoturi River


 * {| class="wikitable"


 * I||*ŋa-na||we||?
 * thou||*ba or *be||you||*-bi
 * s/he||*bo||they||?
 * }
 * s/he||*bo||they||?
 * }
 * }

Lindsey lists the following pronouns for each of the language varieties in the family.

Documentation status
The Pahoturi River languages are all under various states of documentation. The following table lists some general lexical, grammatical, textual, and typological resources that have been identified for each of the currently spoken Pahoturi River languages.