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The Mailuan or Cloudy Bay languages are a small family of Trans–New Guinea languages spoken around Cloudy Bay in the "Bird's Tail" (southeastern peninsula) of New Guinea. They are classified within the Southeast Papuan branch of Trans–New Guinea.

Languages

The languages, which all share about half of their vocabulary, are,

• Domu, Binahari–Binahari-Ma, Morawa, Mailu (Magi), Laua

Bauwaki–O'oku is closely related to the Mailuan languages.

Classification

Dutton (1971) said Bauwaki was a link to the Yareban languages. It has greater lexical similarity with Aneme Wake (Yareban) than the closest Mailuan language, Domu. Usher (2020) classifies Mailuan, Bauwaki and Yareban together.

Magi shows evidence of language shift from an Oceanic language in many Oceanic words.

Pronouns

Usher (2020) reconstructs the proto-Mailuan–Yareban pronouns as:

	sg	du	pl
1excl	*na		*ge
1incl		*gu	*i
2	*ga		*ja
3	*e		*ema

Ross (1995) reconstructs the Mailuan pronouns as:

	sg	du	pl
1	*i	*gu-	*ge
2	*ga	*a	*a, *mee
3		*emu

Vocabulary comparison

This article should specify the language of its non-English content, using {{lang}}, {{transliteration}} for transliterated languages, and {{IPA}} for phonetic transcriptions, with an appropriate ISO 639 code. Misplaced Pages's multilingual support templates may also be used. See why. (September 2021)

The following basic vocabulary words are from Thomson (1975) and various SIL field notes, as cited in the Trans-New Guinea database.

The words cited constitute translation equivalents, whether they are cognate (e.g. kuma, uma, tuma for “louse”) or not (e.g. baka, ulim, muruu for “egg”).

Additional word lists can be found in Ray (1938).

Evolution

Mailuan reflexes of proto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG) etyma are:

Mailu language:

• ama ‘breast’ < *amu
• maa ‘mouth’ < *maŋgat
• kisa ‘bone’ < *kondaC
• tupa ‘short’ < *tu(p,mb)a(C)
• guia ‘cassowary’ < *ku(y)a

Bauwaki language:

• baba ‘father’ < *mbapa
• idi ‘hair’ < *iti
• (ine) ibi ‘name’ < *imbi
• iini- ‘sleep’ < *kin(i,u)-

References

Bibliography

• 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.

Notes

1. ^ New Guinea World, Owen Stanley Range
2. Thomson, N.P. "The Dialects of Magi". In Conrad, R., Dye, W., Thomson, N. and Bruce Jr., L. editors, Papers in New Guinea Linguistics No. 18. A-40:37-90. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1975. doi:10.15144/PL-A40.37
3. Greenhill, Simon (2016). "TransNewGuinea.org - database of the languages of New Guinea". Retrieved 2020-11-05.
4. Saville, W. J. V. 1912. A Grammar of the Mailu Language, Papua. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 42: 397-436.
5. Ray, Sidney H. 1938. The languages of the Eastern and South-Eastern Division of Papua. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 68: 153–208.
6. Pawley, Andrew; Hammarström, Harald (2018). "The Trans New Guinea family". In Palmer, Bill (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide. The World of Linguistics. Vol. 4. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 21–196. ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.

• Mailuan languages
• Mailu–Yareban languages
• Languages of Central Province (Papua New Guinea)