Yawa Languages - Classification

Classification

C. L. Voorhoeve tentatively linked Yawa with the East Geelvink Bay languages in his Geelvink Bay proposal. However, the relationship would be a distant one at best, and Mark Donohue felt in 2001 that Yawa had not been shown to be related to any other language. Recently Malcolm Ross made a tentative proposal that Yawa might be part of an Extended West Papuan language phylum. The pronominal resemblances are most apparent when comparing proto-Yawa to the East Bird's Head language Meax:

	I	thou	s/he	you
Proto-Yawa	*rei	*uein	*wepi	*waya
Meax	didif	bua	ofa	iwa

d~r, b~w, we~o, p~f are all common sound correspondences.

Ethnologue (2009) took this a step further, and placed Yawa within West Papuan itself.