The Ok languages are a family of about a dozen related Trans–New Guinea languages spoken in a contiguous area of eastern Irian Jaya and western Papua New Guinea. The most numerous language is Ngalum, with some 20,000 speakers; the best known is probably Telefol. The Ok languages have dyadic kinship terms.

History of classification

The Ok languages are clearly related. Alan Healey identified them as a family in 1962. He later noted connections with the Asmat languages and Awyu–Dumut families (Healey 1970). Voorhoeve developed this into a Central and South New Guinea (CSNG) proposal. As part of CSNG, the Ok languages form part of the original proposal for Trans–New Guinea, a position tentatively maintained by Malcolm Ross, though reduced nearly to Healey's original conception. Ross states that he cannot tell if the similarities in CSNG are shared innovations or retentions from proto-TNG. Voorhoeve argues specifically for an Awyu–Ok relationship, and Foley believes that these two families may be closest to Asmat among the TNG languages. Loughnane and Fedden (2011) claim to have demonstrated that the erstwhile TNG isolate Oksapmin is related to the Ok family. However, this has not been generally accepted because loans from Mountain Ok have not been accounted for. Van den Heuvel & Fedden (2014) argue that Greater Awyu and Greater Ok are not genetically related, but that their similarities are due to intensive contact.

Languages

The languages are:

Reconstruction

Phonology

The following are consonants of Proto-Ok: Vowels may be, but this reconstruction may be biased toward Telefol.

Pronouns

Healey & Ross reconstruct the pronouns of proto-Ok are as follows: ! !!m.sg!!f.sg!!pl !1 !2 !3 Usher (2020) reconstructs the independent pronouns as, ! !!m.sg!!f.sg!!pl !1ex !1in !2 !3 and the subject suffixes as, ! !!m.sg!!f.sg!!pl !1 !2 !3

Evolution

Proto-Mountain Ok reflexes of proto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG) etyma, as quoted by Pawley & Hammarström (2018) from Healey (1964):

Lexicon

Usher (2020)

Some lexical reconstructions by Usher (2020) are: ! gloss !! Proto-Ok !! Proto-West Ok !! Ngalum !! Proto-Central Ok !! Proto-Lowland Ok !! Proto-Mountain Ok ! head ! hair/feather ! ear ! eye ! nose ! tooth ! tongue ! foot/leg ! blood/red ! bone ! skin ! breast ! louse ! dog ! pig ! bird ! egg ! tree/fire ! man ! woman ! sun ! moon ! water ! fire/spark ! stone ! path ! name ! eat ! one ! two

Loughnane and Fedden (2011)

Proto-Ok-Oksapmin reconstructions from Loughnane and Fedden (2011): ! gloss !! proto-Ok-Oksapmin