The Papuan languages are the non-Austronesian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands in Eastern Indonesia, Solomon Islands, and East Timor. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply a genetic relationship.
New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse region in the world. Besides the Austronesian languages, there arguably are some 800 languages divided into perhaps sixty small language families, with unclear relationships to each other or to any other languages, plus many 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 (for example, Lavukaleve) to the east, and Halmahera, Timor and the Alor archipelago 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.
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.
Concept The "Papuan languages" are a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply a genetic relationship. The concept of Papuan (non-Austronesian) speaking Melanesians as distinct from Austronesian-speaking Melanesians was first suggested and named by Sidney Herbert Ray in 1892.
According to William A. Foley (1986):
Speaker numbers
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.
History of classification 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.Wurm 1975 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); long-range comparison has also suggested connections between selected languages, but again the methodology is not orthodox in historical linguistics.Murray Gell-Mann et al. (2009) "Distant Language Relationship: The Current Perspective", Journal of Language Relationship·Вопросы языкового родства
The Great Andamanese languages may be related to some western Papuan languages, but are not themselves covered by the term Papuan.
Wurm (1975) The most widely used classification of Papuan languages is that of Stephen Wurm, listed below with the approximate number of languages in each family in parentheses. This was the scheme used by Ethnologue prior to Ross's classification (below). It is based on very preliminary work, much of it typological, and Wurm himself has stated that he does not expect it to hold up well to scrutiny. Other linguists, including William A. Foley, have suggested 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 (1986) divides 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 did not take contact-induced change into account. For example, several of the main branches of his Trans–New Guinea phylum have no vocabulary in common with other Trans–New Guinea languages, and were classified as Trans–New Guinea because they are similar grammatically. However, there are also many Austronesian languages that are grammatically similar to Trans–New Guinea languages due to the influence of contact and bilingualism. Similarly, several groups that do have substantial basic vocabulary in common with Trans–New Guinea languages are excluded from the phylum because they do not resemble it grammatically.
Wurm believed the Papuan languages arrived in several waves of migration with some of the earlier languages (perhaps including the Sepik–Ramu languages) being related to the Australian languages, a later migration bringing the West Papuan, Torricelli and the East Papuan languages and a third wave bringing the most recent pre-Austronesian migration, the Trans–New Guinea family.
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).
Foley (2003) Foley summarized the state of the literature. Besides Trans–New Guinea and families possibly belonging in TNG (see), he accepted the proposals for,
Lower Sepik-Ramu (Lower Sepik + Lower Ramu) Middle Sepik (incl. Ndu and maybe Sepik Hill) Torricelli Sko Lakes Plain and Cenderawasih Bay (probably related) East Bird's Head West Bird's Head Marind Bougainville (2 branches not close to each other: North Bougainville + South Bougainville)
Ross (2005) 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 restricts this approach largely 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.) Ethnologue (2009) largely follows Ross.
It has been suggested that the families that 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 9–13 isolates. However, because of his more stringent criteria, he was not able to find enough data to classify all Papuan languages, especially many isolates that 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 that have been heavily transformed by contact with Papuan languages, much as the Takia language has. The Reef Islands – Santa Cruz languages of Wurm's East Papuan phylum were a potential 24th family, but subsequent work has shown them to be highly divergent Austronesian languages as well.
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 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.
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 (13) (problematic) Left May (7) Fas (2) ? Kwomtari (3) 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 Sorted by location
north Irian: Abinomn language (Baso, Foia) Isirawa language (Donohue links it to Kwerba)
Sandaun Province: Karkar language (Yuri) – since shown to be a Pauwasi language 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 (on basic lexical resemblances)
Languages reassigned to the Austronesian family: Lower Mamberamo (Donohue argues this is a relexified Papuan family; Yoke may not belong) Kazukuru language (2007)