The Foja Range languages, or Tor–Kwerba in more limited scope, are a family of about two dozen Papuan languages. They are named after the Foja Mountains of western New Guinea.
Languages All the languages had been part of Stephen Wurm's 1975 Trans–New Guinea proposal, but he did not recognize them as a unit, retaining Kwerba within Capell's 1962 Dani–Kwerba proposal, for example. Foley (2018) classifies the Orya–Tor and Kwerbic languages together, as Tor–Kwerba. Usher (2020) adds Nimboran and Mawes, naming the expanded family Foja Range, after the Foja mountain range"Foja" is the Dutch spelling, often rendered "Foya" in English, so one might expect that in modern Indonesian orthography it would be "Foya" as well. However, the Indonesian spelling remains "Foja", as it was before the spelling reform. Thus the "j" may be pronounced as either an English "y" or an English "j". that passes through all four branches of the family.
Foja Range Orya–Tor Nimboran Mawes West Foja Range (Greater Kwerbic) Isirawa Masep Kapauri–Sause Apauwar–Kwerba (Kwerbic) Apauwar Coast Kwerba
Typological overview Even though grammatical gender is present in Tor-Kwerba languages, there is no overt gender marking on nouns.
Pronouns Reconstructed proto-Tor-Kwerba independent pronouns are:
|+ Proto-Tor-Kwerba independent pronouns ! !! sg !! pl |- ! 1 | * ~ *|| * |- ! 2
Cognates Reconstructed proto-Tor-Kwerba words that are widely distributed throughout the family (Foley 2018):
* 'eye' * 'leg' * 'louse' * 'sky' * ~ * 'tree'
References
External links Tor-Kwerba languages database at TransNewGuinea.org