The West Papuan languages are a proposed

language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in hist ...

of about two dozen

non-Austronesian languages The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian and non- Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands, by around 4 million people. It is a strictly geogr ...

of the

Bird's Head Peninsula The Bird's Head Peninsula ( Indonesian: ''Kepala Burung'', nl, Vogelkop) or Doberai Peninsula (''Semenanjung Doberai''), is a large peninsula that makes up the northwest portion of the island of New Guinea, comprising the Indonesian provinces o ...

(Vogelkop or Doberai Peninsula) of far western

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of Port Moresby (Capital of Papua New Guinea). It is a simplified version of ...

, the island of

Halmahera Halmahera, formerly known as Jilolo, Gilolo, or Jailolo, is the largest island in the Maluku Islands. It is part of the North Maluku province of Indonesia, and Sofifi, the capital of the province, is located on the west coast of the island. Hal ...

and its vicinity, spoken by about 220,000 people in all. It is not established if they constitute a proper linguistic family or an areal network of genetically unrelated families. The best known "West Papuan" language is

Ternate Ternate is a city in the Indonesian province of North Maluku and an island in the Maluku Islands. It was the ''de facto'' provincial capital of North Maluku before Sofifi on the nearby coast of Halmahera became the capital in 2010. It is off the we ...

(50,000 native speakers) of the island of the same name, which is a regional

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...

and which, along with neighboring

Tidore Tidore ( id, Kota Tidore Kepulauan, lit. "City of Tidore Islands") is a city, island, and archipelago in the Maluku Islands of eastern Indonesia, west of the larger island of Halmahera. Part of North Maluku Province, the city includes the island ...

, were the languages of the rival medieval

and

sultanates, famous for their role in the spice trade.

Languages

;West Papuan *

North Halmahera North Halmahera Regency ( id, Kabupaten Halmahera Utara) is a regency (on Halmahera Island) of North Maluku Province, Indonesia. It was declared a Regency on 31 May 2003. The capital town of the regency lies at the port of Tobelo. The Regency, whi ...

(Halmahera – West Makian) **Core North Halmahera ** ''West Makian'' *'' Amberbaken (Mpur)'' * Yawa (Yapen) *West–Central Bird's Head ** West Bird's Head ** ''Abun'' **''

Maybrat Maybrat may refer to the following topics from Southwest Papua, Indonesia: * Maybrat language * Maybrat people * Maybrat Regency Maybrat Regency is a regency of Southwest Papua Province of Indonesia. It has an area of , and had a population of 33, ...

(Central Bird's Head)'' *East Bird's Head ** ''Burmeso'' ** Hatam–Mansim (Hatam – Moi Brai) ** Mantion–Meax (Southeast Bird's Head)

History

The German linguist Wilhelm Schmidt first linked the West Bird's Head and North Halmahera languages in 1900. In 1957 H.K.J. Cowan linked them to the non-Austronesian languages of

Timor Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is East Timor–Indonesia border, divided between the sovereign states of East Timor on the eastern part and Indonesia on the western p ...

as well.

Stephen Wurm Stephen Adolphe Wurm ( hu, Wurm István Adolf, ; 19 August 1922 – 24 October 2001) was a Hungarian-born Australian linguist. Early life Wurm was born in Budapest, the second child to the German-speaking Adolphe Wurm and the Hungarian-sp ...

believed that although traces of West Papuan languages were to be found in the languages of Timor, as well as those of Aru and

Great Andaman Great Andaman is the main archipelago of the Andaman Islands of India. It comprises seven major islands. From north to south, these are North Andaman, Interview Island, Middle Andaman, Long Island, Baratang Island, South Andaman, and Rutland Is ...

, this was due to a

substratum In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or sup ...

and that these languages should be classified as Trans–New Guinea, Austronesian, and

Andamanese The Andamanese are the indigenous peoples of the Andaman Islands, part of India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands union territory in the southeastern part of the Bay of Bengal in Southeast Asia. The Andamanese peoples are among the various groups ...

, respectively. Indeed, most of the languages of

East Nusa Tenggara East Nusa Tenggara ( id, Nusa Tenggara Timur – NTT; pt, Sonda Oriental) is the southernmost province of Indonesia. It comprises the eastern portion of the Lesser Sunda Islands, facing the Indian Ocean in the south and the Flores Sea in the nor ...

and Maluku appear to have some non-Austronesian influence. In 2005, Malcolm Ross made a tentative proposal, based on the forms of their pronouns, that the West Papuan languages form one of three branches of an

extended West Papuan The West Papuan languages are a proposed language family of about two dozen non-Austronesian languages of the Bird's Head Peninsula (Vogelkop or Doberai Peninsula) of far western New Guinea, the island of Halmahera and its vicinity, spoken by ab ...

family that also includes the

Yawa languages The Yawa languages, also known as Yapen languages, are a small family of two closely related Papuan languages, Yawa (or Yava) and Saweru, which are often considered to be divergent dialects of a single language (and thus a language isolate). ...

, and a newly proposed East Bird's Head – Sentani family as a third branch.

Søren Wichmann Søren Wichmann (born 1964) is a Danish linguist specializing in historical linguistics, linguistic typology, Mesoamerican languages, and epigraphy. Since June 2016, he has been employed as a University Lecturer at Leiden University Centre for Li ...

(2013)Wichmann, Søren. 2013
A classification of Papuan languages
In: Hammarström, Harald and Wilco van den Heuvel (eds.), History, contact and classification of Papuan languages (Language and Linguistics in Melanesia, Special Issue 2012), 313-386. Port Moresby: Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea. considers West Bird's Head, Abun, and

to form a unified family, but does not accept West Papuan as a coherent language family. Timothy Usher, also somewhat tentatively, accepts Yawa and East Bird's Head, but not Sentani, as part of West Papuan itself, so the family can remain under that name. Holton and Klamer (2018) do not unequivocally accept the unity of West Papuan, but note that certain proposals linking "West Papuan" groups together may eventually turn out to be fruitful. Ger Reesink suggests that the West Papuan family should be considered an areal network of unrelated linguistic families, noting the lack of adequate evidence for genetic relatedness.

Pronouns

The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto-West Papuan are, : These are shared by the "core" West Papuan families. Hattam reflects only "I" and "thou", and Amberbaken only "thou", "you", and "she". Ross's Extended West Papuan languages have forms in ''*d'' for "I" and ''*m'' for "we". (Most Yawa forms of "we" have ''m,'' such as ''imama,'' but they are too diverse for an easy reconstruction.) These are found in all branches of the family except for the Amberbaken isolate. Ross's West Papuan proper is distinguished from Yawa and EBH-Sentani in having forms like ''na'' or ''ni'' for the second-person singular ("thou")

pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not co ...

. :

Word order

Word order is SVO in the West Bird's Head family and in western

North Halmahera languages The North Halmahera languages are a family of languages spoken in the northern and eastern parts of the island of Halmahera and some neighboring islands in Indonesia. The southwestern part of the island is occupied by the unrelated South Halmaher ...

(

, West Makian, and

Sahu Sahu (Sahoo, or Shaw, or Shau, or Gupta, or Saha, or Saw, Shah). is a surname found in India and Pakistan. The meaning of the term "Sahu" may change from region to region.''. Usage In India, the surname is found among Gakhars, Marwadi, Janjuas, ...

; due to Austronesian influence). SVO word order is also present in the isolates Abun, Mpur, and Maibrat. The

South Bird's Head The South Bird's Head or South Doberai languages are three families of Papuan languages. They form part of the Trans–New Guinea languages in the classifications of Malcolm Ross (2005) and Timothy Usher (2020), though Pawley and Hammarström (2 ...

family generally has SOV word order, although SVO word order is also permitted in transitive clauses. The Timor-Alor-Pantar languages also have verb-final word order.

Phonology

All Papuan languages of East

Nusantara Nusantara most commonly refers to: *Nusantara (archipelago), an Old Javanese term which initially referred to the conquered territories of the Majapahit empire, corresponding to present-day Indonesia *Nusantara (planned city), the future capital ci ...

have five or more vowels. Abun and Mpur are fully tonal languages, with Mpur having 4 lexical tones, and Abun having 3 lexical tones.

Meyah Meyah (Meax) is a West Papuan language spoken in Miyah District, Tambrauw Regency of West Papua, Indonesia. The Meyah language is agglutinative and head-marking and has no grammatical cases. It has subject-object-verb word order, which comes fr ...

and

Sougb Sougb, or Sogh, is a Papuan language of the East Bird's Head language family spoken in the east of the Bird's Head Peninsula to the east of Meyah and to the south of Manokwari, including the area of Soug Jaya District, Teluk Wondama Regency. It c ...

are

pitch-accent language A pitch-accent language, when spoken, has word accents in which one syllable in a word or morpheme is more prominent than the others, but the accentuated syllable is indicated by a contrasting pitch ( linguistic tone) rather than by loudness ( ...

s. All other languages of the

are non-tonal.Klamer, Marian; Ger Reesink; and Miriam van Staden. 2008. East Nusantara as a Linguistic Area. In Pieter Muysken (ed.), ''From linguistic areas to areal linguistics'', 95-149. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Of all the Papuan languages spoken in the Bird's Head Peninsula, Abun has the largest consonant inventory with 20 consonants, while neighboring

has the smallest with 11 consonants. Large consonant inventories similar to that of Abun are also found in the

, such as Tobelo, Tidore, and Sahu.

Lexical comparison

Basic vocabulary of two

West Bird's Head languages West Bird's Head languages are a small family of poorly documented Papuan languages spoken on the Bird's Head Peninsula of New Guinea. The West Bird's Head (WBH) family is a well-defined family of six languages spoken at the western end of the B ...

(''WBH'') (

Moi Moi or MOI may refer to: People * Moi (name), a list of people with the given name or surname * Moisés Delgado (born 1994), Spanish footballer commonly known as simply Moi * Moisés Rodríguez (born 1997), Spanish footballer commonly known as s ...

and Tehit) and three

language isolate Language isolates are languages that cannot be classified into larger language families. Korean and Basque are two of the most common examples. Other language isolates include Ainu in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, and Haida in North America. The num ...

s ( Mpur, Abun, Maibrat), quoted by Holton & Klamer (2018) from Miedema & Reesink (2004: 34) and (Reesink 2005: 202); these show diverse non-cognate forms among Papuan languages of the

: : Lexical lookalikes between

(''NH'') ( Galela and

Pagu The Projektions-AG Union (generally shortened to PAGU) was a German film production company which operated between 1911 and 1924 during the silent era. From 1917 onwards, the company functioned as an independent unit of Universum Film AG, and was e ...

) and

(''WBH'') (

and Tehit) from Voorhoeve (1988: 194), as quoted by Holton & Klamer (2018):Voorhoeve, Clemens L. 1988. The languages of the northern Halmaheran stock. In: Geoffrey P. Smith, Tom Dutton, Clemens L. Voorhoeve, Stephen Schooling, Janice Schooling, Robert Conrad, Ron Lewis, Stephen A. Wurm and Theo Baumann (eds.), ''Papers in New Guinea Linguistics'' 26: 181–209. : The lexical data below is from the Trans-New Guinea database and Usher (2020), unless noted otherwise.

References

* *

External links

West Papuan sound comparisons
{{DEFAULTSORT:West Papuan Languages Proposed language families Languages of western New Guinea Papuan languages