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Yele-West New Britain languages

New Guinea and Pacific Language Families

Yele-West New Britain is a tentative language family proposed by linguist Malcolm Ross uniting three languages, Anem and Ata, also called Wasi, of western New Britain, and Yeli Dnye, also called Yele, of Rossel Island in the Louisiade Archipelago. Stephen Wurm had classified the languages as East Papuan, a classification now considered untenable; Ross's proposal rests mainly on corresponding pronoun systems shared across the three languages, though the link between Yeli Dnye and the West New Britain pair is more dubiously established, and the grouping remains tentative and disputed.

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