Reconstructing the Proto-Pahoturi Consonantal Inventory: Historical Phonology in Southern New Guinea and Beyond

Abstract: In this paper, I argue for the existence of a three-way place contrast (dental, alveolar, retroflex) in the coronal stop inventory of the protolanguage of the Pahoturi family of Southern New Guinea. This is based on a correspondence set of over a dozen words in which one of the languages, Kawam, has coronal reflexes distinct from the rest of the family, pointing to the existence of a phonemic distinction between dental and alveolar stops in the protolanguage. This distinction has only left a trace in Kawam and has been lost entirely elsewhere in the family. Next, I consider the consonant inventories of nearby language families and suggest that the dental-alveolar contrast was one of several are-ally diffused phonological features that the Pahoturi family once had in common with the Yam languages to its west and Australian languages to the south. As previous work has suggested, it appears that in the past, this set the Pahoturi and Yam families apart from the other Papuan languages nearby, but due to convergence, Pahoturi and Yam varieties today look more similar to their neighbors. Finally, to better understand the cultural landscape of the greater region, I review the known archaeological history of the greater Torres Strait region and conclude that the Torres Strait Islands were once more linguistically diverse. I suggest that during such a time, contact with the Australian linguistic area played a role in the development of Proto-Pahoturi and Proto-Yam phonology.