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Description:
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In a 1969 publication the author proposed a Koiarian family consisting of
six languages: Koita, Koiari, Mountain Koiari, Ă–mie, Managalasi and Barai.
This family, part of the putative Trans New Guinea group of Papuan
languages, stretches from around Port Moresby on the southern coast of
southeast Papua almost to the sea on the north coast at the eastern end of
the Hydrographers’ Ranges.
In the current work the author enlarges on the lexicostatistically based
1969 work and applies the comparative method of historical linguistics to
the Koiarian languages, identifying shared innovations that define
subgroups within the family and reconstructing the protophonology and about
120 lexical items of Proto Koiarian. He provides similar reconstructions
for Proto Koiaric and Proto Baraic, the languages ancestral to the two
major subgroups within Koiarian.
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