Finisterre languages
The Finisterre languages are a language family, spoken in the Finisterre Range of Papua New Guinea, classified within the original Trans-New Guinea proposal, and William A. Foley considers their TNG identity to be established. They share with the Huon languages a small closed class of verbs taking pronominal object prefixes some of which are cognate across both families, strong morphological evidence that they are related.
The most populous Finisterre languages are Wantoat, Rawa and Yopno, with about 10,000 speakers apiece, and Iyo, with about half that number.Huon and Finisterre, and then the connection between them, were identified by Kenneth McElhanon. They are clearly valid language families. Finisterre contains six clear branches. Beyond that, classification is based on lexicostatistics, which is generally unreliable. The outline below follows McElhanon and Carter et al..
- Finisterre family
- * Erap branch
- **Boana: Nuk–Nek, Nakama, Numanggang, Munkip
- **Finongan, Gusan, Mamaa
- **Nimi, Sauk, Uri
- * Gusap–Mot branch
- **Madi, Neko, Nekgini
- **Ngaing, Rawa, Ufim, Iyo
- * Uruwa branch: Sakam – Som, Nukna, Yau, ?Weliki
- * Wantoat branch: Awara–Wantoat, Tuma-Irumu
- * Warup branch: Asaro'o – Molet, Bulgebi, Degenan, Forak, Guya, Gwahatike, Muratayak
- * Yupna branch: Domung–Ma, Nankina, Bonkiman–Yopno, ?Yout Wam
