The Keram languages of New Guinea are part of the Ramu family. They are the Mongol–Langam languages and a pair of languages sometimes thought to belong to the Grass family. (See Grass languages for the history of classification.)
Keram | |
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Keram River | |
Geographic distribution | Keram River watershed, Papua New Guinea |
Linguistic classification | Ramu–Keram
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Subdivisions |
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Glottolog | None |
Foley (2018) classifies most of them in the Grass branch of the Ramu family,[1] while Usher classifies them as coordinate with the Ramu family, leaving a reduced number of languages in the Grass branch.[2]
They are named for the Keram River.
Usher (2020) reconstructs the pronouns of East Keram and West Keram as follows:[3]
East Keram | West Keram | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
sg | pl | sg | pl | |
1 | *ni | *anɨ | *ni | *an |
2 | *[o/u] | *[o/u]nɨ | *u | *un |
3 | *ma | *aLɨ | *mɨ, *ma- | *ndɨ |