Everything about Papuan Languages totally explained
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 doesn't imply a linguistic relationship.
The languages
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, with unclear relationships to each other or to anything else, plus a large number of
language isolates. Although there has been relatively little study of these languages compared with the Austronesian family, there have been three preliminary attempts at large-scale genealogical 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
Sabu or Sawu) 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.
Greenberg classification
Joseph Greenberg proposed an "Indo-Pacific" phylum containing the (Northern)
Andamanese languages, all Papuan languages, and the
Tasmanian languages, but not the
Australian Aboriginal languages. It has no equivalent to the Trans-New Guinea phylum of the classifications below. See
Indo-Pacific languages for details. Very few linguists, even among Greenberg's students, accept this grouping.
Wurm classification
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 is the scheme used by
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, have suggested that many of Wurm's phyla are based on
areal features and structural similarities, and accepted only the lowest levels of his classification, most of which he inherited from prior taxonomies. Foley (1986) deconstructs Papuan languages into over sixty small language families, plus a number of isolates. However, more recently Foley has accepted the broad outline if not the details of Wurm's classification, as he and Ross have substantiated a large portion of Wurm's Trans-New Guinea phylum.
According to Ross (see below), the main problem with Wurm's classification is that he didn't 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're 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 substantial basic 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)
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).
Ross classification
Malcolm Ross re-evaluated Wurm's proposal on purely lexical grounds. That is, he looked at shared vocabulary, and especially shared idiosyncrasies analogous to English I and me vs. German ich and mich. The poor state of documentation of Papuan languages means that this approach is largely restricted to pronouns. Nonetheless, Ross believes that he's 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're in the more egalitarian New Guinea societies.)
Ross has proposed 23 Papuan language families and 9-13 isolates. However, because of his more stringent criteria, he wasn't 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'd 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's based on a single parameter, pronouns, and therefore must remain tentative. Although pronouns are conservative elements in a language, they're 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're not confirmed by lexical similarities.
Papuan families proposed by Ross
Trans-New Guinea (reduced to 466-493 languages)
? Extended West Papuan (tentative)
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 (13) (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)
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 language
Sandaun 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 Ireland
Other
Former 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 languages
Unclassified 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)
Kazukuru languages (3)
External relations
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 virtual 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 that'll 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 naïve 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.
Further Information
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