Papuan languages
The term
Papuan languages refers to those
languages of the western Pacific which are neither
Austronesian nor
Australian. That is, the term is defined negatively and does not imply a linguistic relationship.
The majority of the Papuan languages are spoken on the island of
New Guinea (which is divided between the country of
Papua New Guinea and Indonesian provinces of
Papua and
West Irian Jaya), with a number spoken in the
Bismarck Archipelago,
Bougainville Island, and the
Solomon Islands to the east, and in
Halmahera,
Timor, and the
Alor archipelago to the west. One Papuan language,
Meriam Mir, is spoken within the national borders of
Australia, in the eastern
Torres Strait. The only Papuan languages with official recognition are those of
East Timor.
New Guinea is perhaps the most linguistically diverse region in the world. Besides the Austronesian languages, there are some 800 languages divided into perhaps sixty small language families, which are not obviously related to each other or to anything else, plus a large number of
language isolates. Although there has been relatively little study of these Papuan languages compared with the Austronesian languages, there have been three preliminary attempts at large-scale genealogic classification by
Joseph Greenberg,
Stephen Wurm, and
Malcolm Ross. The largest family posited for the Papuan region is the
Trans-New Guinea phylum, consisting of the majority of Papuan languages and running mainly along the highlands of New Guinea. Since perhaps only a quarter of Papuan languages have been studied in detail, linguists' understanding of the relationships between them will continue to be revised.
Several languages of
Flores and nearby islands, and especially the language of
Savu Island (also called
Savu) are usually thought to be Austronesian, but are reported to have large numbers of non-Austronesian words in their basic vocabulary. It has been suggested that these may originally have been non-Austronesian languages that have since borrowed nearly all of their vocabulary from neighboring Austronesian languages, but no connection with the Papuan languages of Timor or Halmahera has been found.
The languages of the
Andaman Islands may be related to some western Papuan languages, but are not themselves covered by the term Papuan.
Joseph Greenberg proposed an "Indo-Pacific" phylum containing the (Northern)
Andamanese languages, Papuan languages, and
Tasmanian languages, but not
Australian Aboriginal languages. It has no equivalent to the Trans-New Guinea phylum. See
Indo-Pacific languages for details. Very few linguists accept this grouping.
The most widely used classification of Papuan languages is that of Wurm, listed below with the approximate number of languages in each family in parentheses. This scheme is that used by the
Ethnologue. It is based on very preliminary work, much of it
typological, and Wurm himself has stated that he doesn't expect it to hold up well to scrutiny. Other linguists, including
William Foley, suggest that many of Wurm's phyla are based on
areal features and structural similarities, and accept only the lowest levels of his classification, most of which he inherited from prior taxonomies. Foley deconstructs Papuan languages into over sixty small language families, plus a number of isolates.
The main problem with Wurm's classification is that he did not take contact-induced change into account. For example, several of the main branches of his Trans-New Guinea (TNG) phylum have no vocabulary in common with other TNG languages, and were classified as TNG because they are similar grammatically. However, there are also many
Austronesian languages that are grammatically similar to TNG languages due to the influence of contact and
bilingualism. Similarly, several groups which
do have vocabulary in common with TNG languages are excluded from the phylum because they do not resemble it grammatically.
Papuan families proposed by Wurm (with approximate number of languages)
*
Amto-Musan languages (2)
*
Burmeso language (isolate)
*
Busa language (isolate)
*
East Bird's Head languages (3)
*
East Papuan languages (36)
*
Geelvink Bay languages (12)
*
Yuri language (isolate)
*
Porome language (isolate)
*
Kwomtari-Baibai languages (6)
*
Left May languages (7)
*
Sepik-Ramu languages (104)
*
Sko languages (7)
*
Torricelli languages (48)
*
Trans-New Guinea languages (598)
*
West Papuan languages (26)
*
Yalë language (isolate)
Two of Wurm's isolates have since been linked as the
*
Lower Mamberamo languages (2), and since Wurm's time another isolate and two languages belonging to a new family have been discovered,
*
Abinomn language (isolate)
*
Bayono-Awbono languages (2).
Malcolm Ross re-evaluated Wurm's proposal on purely lexical grounds. That is, he looked at shared vocabulary, and especially shared idiosyncrasies such as English
good vs.
better. Unfortunately, the poor state of documentation of Papuan languages means that this approach is largely restricted to
pronouns. Nonetheless, Ross believes that he has been able to validate much of Wurm's classification, albeit with revisions to correct for Wurm's partially typological approach. (See
Trans-New Guinea languages.)
It has been suggested that the families which appear when comparing pronouns may be due to
pronoun borrowing rather than to genealogical relatedness. However, Ross argues that Papuan languages have
closed-class pronoun systems, which are resistant to borrowing, and in any case that the massive number of languages with similar pronouns in a family like Trans-New Guinea preclude borrowing as an explanation. Also, he shows that the two cases of alleged pronoun borrowing in New Guinea are simple coincidence, explainable as regular developments from the protolanguages of the families in question: as earlier forms of the languages are reconstructed, their pronouns become
less similar, not more. (Ross argues that
open-class pronoun systems, where borrowings are common, are found in hierarchical cultures such as those of
Southeast Asia and
Japan, where pronouns indicate details of relationship and social status rather than simply being grammatical
pro-forms as they are in the more egalitarian New Guinea societies.)
Ross has proposed 23 Papuan language families and 9 isolates. However, because of his more stringent criteria, he was not able to find enough data to classify all Papuan languages, especially many isolates which have no close relatives to aid in their classification.
Ross also found that the
Lower Mamberamo languages (or at least the Warembori language; he had insufficient data on Pauwi) are Austronesian languages which have been heavily transformed by contact with Papuan languages, much as the
Takia language has. The Reef Islands-Santa Cruz family of Wurm's
East Papuan phylum are a potential 24th family, but the pronouns suggest that they may also be highly divergent Austronesian languages.
Note that while this classification may be more reliable than past attempts, it is based on a single parameter,
pronouns, and therefore must remain tentative. Although pronouns are conservative elements in a language, they are both short and utilise a reduced set of the language's
phonemic inventory. Both phenomena greatly increase the possibility of chance resemblances, especially when they are not confirmed by
lexical similarities.
Papuan families proposed by Ross*
Trans-New Guinea (reduced to 466-493 languages)
* ?
Extended West Papuan (tentative)
**
West Papuan languages (27)
**
East Bird's Head-Sentani languages (9)
**
Yawa (1-2)
*
Mairasi languages (4)
*
East Cenderawasih (Geelvink Bay) languages (10)
*
Lakes Plain languages (19; upper
Mamberamo River)
*
Tor-Kwerba languages (17)
*
Nimboran languages (5)
*
Skou languages (8)
*
Border languages (15)
*
Left May-Kwomtari languages (12) (problematic)
*
Senagi languages (2) (perhaps related to Sepik)
*
Torricelli languages (40-50) (perhaps related to Sepik)
*
Sepik languages (51)
*
Ramu-Lower Sepik languages (40) (first proposed by Foley)
*
Yuat languages (5)
*
Piawi languages (2) (perhaps in Ramu)
*
South-Central Papuan languages (22)
*
Eastern Trans-Fly languages (4; one in
Australia)
* ?
Yele-West New Britain languages (tentative)
**
Yélî Dnye (Yele) (isolate)
**
Anêm (isolate)
**
Ata (Pele-Ata, Wasi) (isolate)
*
Baining (East New Britain) languages (8)
*
North Bougainville languages (4)
*
South Bougainville languages (9)
*
Central Solomons languages (4)
Language isolates proposed by Ross (sorted by location)
north Irian:*
Abinomn language (Baso, Foia)
*
Isirawa languageSandaun Province:*
Yuri language (Karkar)
*
Busa language*
Yalë language (Nagatman)
Sepik River:*
Taiap language (Gapun), located on what had been an offshore island 4000 BCE
Bismarck Archipelago: *
Sulka language, on
New Britain*
Kol language, on New Britain
*
Kuot language (Panaras), on
New IrelandOtherFormer isolates classified by Ross:
*
Burmeso language (Taurap), in the
East Bird's Head-Sentani languages*
Porome language (Kibiri), in the Kiwai family of
Trans-New Guinea*
Morwap language (Elseng), in the
Border languagesUnclassified due to lack of data:
*
Amto-Musan languages (2)
*
Massep language (isolate)
*
Samarokena (isolate)
*
Kenati (isolate)
*
Komyandaret (isolate)
*
Molof (isolate)
* Momuna family:
Momina,
Momuna (Somahai)
*
Tofamna (isolate)
*
Usku (isolate)
*
Maramba (in Ramu?)
Unaccounted for:
*
Bayono-Awbono languages (2)
*
Kazakuru languages (3)
*
Pyu language (implied isolate)
Several linguists, including
Joseph Greenberg and Timother Usher of the
Rosetta Project, believe that the
Andamanese languages (or at least the Great Andamanese languages) off the coast of
Burma are related to the Papuan or West Papuan languages.
Stephen Wurm stated that the lexical similarities between Great Andamanese and the West Papuan and Timor-Alor families "are quite striking and amount to vitual formal identity [...] in a number of instances", but considered this to be due to a linguistic
substratum.
Greenberg also suggested a connection to the
Tasmanian languages. However, the Tasmanian peoples were isolated for perhaps 10,000 years, genocide wiped out their languages before much was recorded of them, and few linguists expect that they will ever be linked to another language family.
William Foley (1986) noted lexical similarities between
R.M.W. Dixon's 1980 reconstruction of proto-
Australian and the languages of the
East New Guinea Highlands. He believed that it was naive to expect to find a single Papuan or Australian language family when New Guinea and Australia had been a
single landmass for most of their human history, having been separated by the
Torres Strait only 8000 years ago, and that a deep reconstruction would likely include languages from both. However, Dixon later abandoned his proto-Australian proposal, and Foley's ideas need to be re-evaluated in light of recent research.
* Malcom Ross (2005). "Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages." In: Andrew Pawley, Robert Attenborough, Robin Hide and Jack Golson, eds,
Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples, 15-66. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. ISBN 08583562
* William A. Foley (1986).
The Papuan Languages of New Guinea. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521286212
* Wurm, Stephen Adolphus (1982).
The Papuan Languages of Oceania. Tübingen: Narr. ISBN 3878083572
*
2003 bibliography of Papuan languages*
Summer Institute of Linguistics site on languages (Papuan and Austronesian) of Papua New Guinea*
Map of Papuan languages (formerly known as the East Papuan family) of island Melanesia
