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Language Family

Demta-Sentani

New Guinea and Pacific Language Families

The Demta-Sentani languages form a small language family of coastal Indonesian Papua, spoken near the border with Papua New Guinea.

Facts
Disputed
Proto-Language Status
No proto-Demta-Sentani language has been reconstructed. Pawley and Hammarstrom (2018) note lexical resemblances between the Sentani languages and proto-Trans-New Guinea but do not treat Demta-Sentani as a Trans-New Guinea branch. 1
Pawley and Hammarstrom (2018) classify Sentani as its own separate language family rather than as part of Trans-New Guinea, despite the noted lexical resemblances.
Region
Lake Sentani region, coastal Indonesian Papua near the Papua New Guinea border. 1
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Demta-Sentani languages
Wikimedia Foundation
  • Lead sentence
    form a language family of coastal Indonesian Papua near the Papua New Guinea border
  • Classification section
    though they classify Sentani as a separate language family rather than as part of Trans-New Guinea
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