The (Greater) West Bomberai languages are a family of Papuan languages spoken on the Bomberai Peninsula of western New Guinea and in East Timor and neighboring islands of Indonesia.

Languages

Of the three languages on the mainland, Baham and Iha are closely related to each other while the third is distant, forming a third branch of the family along with the Timor–Alor–Pantar languages: This split, with two of the three branches on the mainland, suggests that Timor–Alor–Pantar may be the result of a relatively recent migration from New Guinea, perhaps arriving in the Timor area shortly before the Austronesian languages did, as Austronesian influence post-dates Proto–West Bomberai and even Proto-Timor–Alor–Pantar.

History of classification

Wurm, Voorhoeve & McElhanon included Timor–Alor–Pantar and mainland West Bomberai as separate stocks within Trans–New Guinea. Ross grouped them together to form a branch of his proposed West Trans–New Guinea stock, though with mainland West Bomberai as an additional branch within Timor–Alor–Pantar. Holton & Robinson (2014) found little evidence to support a connection of Timor–Alor–Pantar with Trans–New Guinea, but Holton & Robinson (2017) conceded that a relationship with Trans-New Guinea, and in particular with West Bomberai, was the most likely hypothesis. Usher & Schapper (2022) established that the two mainland branches of the family are no closer to each other than they are to the Timor–Alor–Pantar languages – indeed that Kalamang might be the most divergent, and Usher has begun to reconstruct the West Bomberai protolanguage.

Phonemes

Usher & Schapper (2022) reconstruct the following inventory of consonants: Word-initial *k and *kʷ become *ʔ and *w in TAP. *kʷ becomes /k/ and intervocalic *p *t *k become /w, r, zero/ in Kalamang. Prenasalized plosives did not occur initially in Proto-West Bomberai, having merged with the voiceless plosives. Medially, *mb *nd *ŋɡ become voiced stops in TAP; this is an areal feature, with proto-Austronesian *mb *nd *ŋɡ having done the same in neighboring Austronesian languages. The vowels are still uncertain, but are likely to have been a simple *a *e *i *o *u system and appear to have included a diphthong *ai.

Pronouns

Usher & Schapper (2022) reconstruct the free pronouns as: ! !!sg!!pl !1excl !1incl !2 The correspondences are mostly straightforward; initial *k has been lost from Timor-Alor-Pantar.

Cognates

Protoforms of the 40 most-stable items in the Swadesh list include the following. ! Proto–West Bomberai !! gloss