The Northwest 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 h ...
of
Papuan 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 ...
.
Many of the constituent branches of Northwest Papuan were first proposed to be related by H.K.J. Cowan in the 1950s. Voorhoeve (1971) connected the Border and Tor families. Using only pronouns as a diagnostic,
Malcolm Ross linked most of the western (Foja Range) branch of the family, which is now fairly secure. The current form of the proposal was worked out by Timothy Usher under the name "North(west) New Guinea"
Northwest New Guinea
/ref> (not to be confused with the proposed North New Guinea branch of the Austronesian language family).
It is not yet certain, however, that the similarities in vocabulary between Foja Range and the other constituent families are due to inheritance rather than borrowing.
Languages
* Fas
* Sentani
* Border (Upper Tami)
* Sko
* Foja Range
** Nimboran
** Kwerbic
**'' Mawes''
** Orya–Tor
The western branch, Foja Range, is equivalent to Ross's Tor–Kwerba family with the addition of Nimboran.
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 Nimboran, Kapauri (under Kwerbic above), Border
Borders are usually defined as geographical boundaries, imposed either by features such as oceans and terrain, or by political entities such as governments, sovereign states, federated states, and other subnational entities. Political borders c ...
, and possibly also Elseng (under Border above) to form a unified language family.
Lexical comparison
The lexical data below is from the Trans-New Guinea database
References
{{language families
Languages of Papua New Guinea
Languages of western New Guinea
Proposed language families
Papuan languages