Talk:Skou languages

Sources for information?
Where did the number of 7000 speakers of Sko languages come from? It doesn't seem right to me. And the claim that tonal languages are unusual in New Guinea is an old one, from when not many languages had been described. It's actually fairly common. Dougg 08:43, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Many of the TNG languages of the Eastern Highlands are tonal; so are several of the Torricelli languages and the languages (Papuan and Austronesian) of the Bird's Head. It's also been claimed that Abau (upper Sepik) is tonal.

I'd also like to know the source of the claim that Ross changed the internal structure of the Sko(u) languages. On my reading of his paper, he merely mentions the family in passing. Ross says that in Wurm's classification, Sko was an isolated non-TNG phylum, whereas in his own classification, it is part of a band of non-TNG families along the north coast. I don't see anything about its internal structure. MarcusCole12 11:27, 17 May 2007 (UTC)