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The Sepik or Sepik River languages are a language family of some 50 Papuan languages spoken in the Sepik River of northern Papua New Guinea, proposed by Donald Laycock in 1965 in a somewhat more limited form than presented here. They tend to have simple phonologies, with few consonants or vowels and usually no tones.
The best-studied Sepik language is Iatmul. The most populous are Iatmul's fellow Ndu languages Abelam language and Boiken language, with about 35,000 speakers each.
The Sepik languages, like their Ramu neighbors, appear to have three-vowel systems, , that distinguish only vowel height in a vertical vowel system. Phonetic are a result of palatal and labial assimilation to adjacent consonants. It is suspected that the Ndu languages may reduce this to a two-vowel system, with epenthesis (Foley 1986).
Palmer (2018) classifies the Leonhard Schultze languages as an independent language phylum.
Like the neighboring Torricelli languages, but unlike the rest of the Sepik languages, the Ram languages and Yellow River languages do not have clause chaining constructions (for an example of a clause chaining construction in a Trans-New Guinea language, see Kamano language#Clause chaining). Foley (2018) suggests that many of the Ram and Yellow River-speaking peoples may have in fact been Torricelli speakers who were later assimilated by Sepik-speaking peoples.
Foley classifies the Leonhard Schultze languages separately as an independent language family.
| *na-m |
| *kwə-m |
| *yɨ-n, *nyɨ-n |
| *ətə-m, *tɨ-m |
| *ətə-t, *tɨ |
Note the similarities of the dual and plural suffixes with those of the Torricelli languages.
Ross reconstructs two sets of pronouns for "proto–Upper Sepik" (actually, Abau–Iwam and Wogamusin (Tama)). These are the default set (Set I), and a set with "certain interpersonal and pragmatic functions" (table 1.27):
| +Pronoun Set I |
| *nə-n |
| *nə-m |
| (*nɨ-n) |
| *ra-m |
| *tɨ- |
| +Pronoun Set II |
| *krə-m |
| *kə-m |
| ? |
| (*sə-m) |
| (*sae) |
Most Sepik languages have reflexes of proto-Sepik *na ~ *an for 1sg, *no for 1pl, and *ni for 2sg.
| ! gloss !! proto-Sepik |
| *muk |
| *ta(w)r |
| *mi |
| *wara |
| *nim |
| *ri |
| *(y)i |
| *ya |
| *na ~ *an |
| *ni |
| *no |
| *-ni |
| *-kV |
| ! group !! isolating !! agglutinative |
In contrast, languages within the Ramu languages, Lower Sepik, and Yuat languages families all have relatively uniform typological profiles.
| ! !! singular !! dual !! plural |
In Sepik languages, gender-marking suffixes are not always attached to the head noun, and can also be affixed to other roots in the phrase.
Typically, the genders of lower animals and inanimate objects are determined according to shape and size: big or long objects are typically classified as masculine (as a result of phallic imagery), while small or short objects are typically classified as feminine. In some languages, objects can be classified as either masculine or feminine, depending on the physical characteristics intended for emphasis. To illustrate, below is an example in Abau language, an Upper Sepik language:
Except for the Middle Sepik languages, most Sepik languages overtly mark nouns using gender suffixes.
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