Papuan languages

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The distribution of the Papuan languages, in red. Tan is Austronesian and grey the historical range
of Australian.
The Papuan languages are the non-Austronesian and non-Australian languages spoken on the
western Pacific island of New Guinea, and neighbouring islands, by around 4 million people.[1] It is a
strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply a genetic relationship. The concept of Papuan
peoples as distinct from Melanesians was first suggested and named by Sidney Herbert Ray in
1892.

Contents

 1Languages
 2Greenberg's classification
 3Wurm (1975)
 4Ross (2005)
o 4.1Papuan families proposed by Ross
o 4.2Language isolates
o 4.3Other
 5Wichmann (2013)
 6Usher (2018)
 7External relations
 8See also
 9References
o 9.1Notes
o 9.2General references
 10External links

Languages[edit]
New Guinea is one of the most linguistically diverse regions 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 any other languages, plus a large number of language
isolates. The majority of the Papuan languages are spoken on the island of New Guinea, with a
number spoken in the Bismarck Archipelago, Bougainville Island and the Solomon Islands to the
east, and in Halmahera, Timor and the Alorarchipelago to the west. The westernmost
language, Tambora in Sumbawa, is extinct. One Papuan language, Meriam, 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.
Several languages of Flores, Sumba, and other islands of eastern Indonesia are classified as
Austronesian but have large numbers of non-Austronesian words in their basic vocabulary and non-
Austronesian grammatical features. It has been suggested that these may have originally been non-
Austronesian languages that have borrowed nearly all of their vocabulary from neighboring
Austronesian languages, but no connection with the Papuan languages of Timor has been found. In
general, the Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages are marked by a significant historical
Papuan influence, lexically, grammatically, and phonologically, and this is responsible for much of
the diversity of the Austronesian language family.
Most Papuan languages are spoken by hundreds to thousands of people; the most populous are
found in the New Guinea highlands, where a few exceed a hundred thousand. These
include Western Dani (180,000 in 1993) and Ekari (100,000 reported 1985) in the western
(Indonesian) highlands, and Enga (230,000 in 2000), Huli (150,000 reported 2011),
and Melpa (130,000 reported 1991) in the eastern (PNG) highlands. To the west of New Guinea, the
largest languages are Makasae in East Timor (100,000 in 2010) and Galela in Halmahera (80,000
reported 1990). To the east, Terei (27,000 reported 2003) and Naasioi (20,000 reported 2007) are
spoken on Bougainville.
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. The various high-level families may represent
distinct migrations into New Guinea, presumably from the west.[2] 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.
Statistical analyses designed to pick up signals too faint to be detected by the comparative method,
though of disputed validity, suggest five major Papuan stocks (roughly Trans–New
Guinea, West, North, East, and South Papuan languages);[3] long-range comparison has also
suggested connections between selected languages, but again the methodology is not orthodox in
historical linguistics.[4]
The Great Andamanese languages may be related to some western Papuan languages, but are not
themselves covered by the term Papuan.[2]

Greenberg's classification[edit]
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. Very few linguists accept his grouping. It is distinct from the Trans–New Guinea phylum
of the classifications below.