The West Papuan languages are a proposed

language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics ...

of about two dozen non-Austronesian languages of the

Bird's Head Peninsula The Bird's Head Peninsula ( Indonesian: , , meaning Bird's Head in Indonesian and Dutch) or Doberai Peninsula (''Semenanjung Doberai'') is a large peninsula that makes up the northwest portion of the island of New Guinea, comprising the Indones ...

(Vogelkop or Doberai Peninsula) of far western

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; , fossilized , also known as Papua or historically ) is the List of islands by area, world's second-largest island, with an area of . Located in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is ...

, 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 Provinces of Indonesia, province of Indonesia, and Sofifi, the capital of the province, is located on the west coa ...

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 (), also known as the City of Ternate (; ), is the List of regencies and cities of Indonesia, city with the largest population in the province of North Maluku and an island in the Maluku Islands, Indonesia. It was the ''de facto'' provi ...

(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, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...

. Along with neighboring

Tidore Tidore (, 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 of Tidore (with three sm ...

, they were the languages of the rival medieval

and

sultanates, famous for their role in the

spice trade The spice trade involved historical civilizations in Asia, Northeast Africa and Europe. Spices, such as cinnamon, cassia, cardamom, ginger, pepper, nutmeg, star anise, clove, and turmeric, were known and used in antiquity and traded in t ...

Origins and contact

The North Halmahera (NH) languages, spoken in the

Maluku Islands The Maluku Islands ( ; , ) or the Moluccas ( ; ) are an archipelago in the eastern part of Indonesia. Tectonics, Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone. Geographically they are located in West ...

, share some structural similarities with certain Papuan families in

Melanesia Melanesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It extends from New Guinea in the west to the Fiji Islands in the east, and includes the Arafura Sea. The region includes the four independent countries of Fiji, Vanu ...

, which was noted as far back as 1900. In addition, there is a number of lexical and morphemic correspondences between NH and West Bird’s Head (WBH). These are not easily explainable as chance resemblance. The question then is whether they are due to language contact (i.e., borrowing) or to common descent (i.e., genealogical inheritance). On the other hand, there is little evidence linking the individual families of the Vogelkop Peninsula to each other, with the relationship perhaps better considered areal (i.e., a

Sprachbund A sprachbund (, from , 'language federation'), also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. Th ...

). In spite of the shared morpho-syntactic features, many of these languages exhibit little in the way of lexical resemblance. It is not clear if East Bird’s Head ( Mantion–Meyah and Hatam–Mansim), Maybrat, Mpur, and Abun are related to any of the remaining groups. However, a connection between WBH/NH and 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. Due to their strong similarity, they are sometimes considered to be divergent dialects of a single langua ...

appears to be relatively likely. The South Bird’s Head and Timor–Alor–Pantar families, while included in older formulations of the proposal, are no longer thought of as part of West Papuan. All of these languages show traces of old Austronesian influence. Much of the basic vocabulary in NH (~30%) can be linked with various Austronesian sources, suggesting a long period of contact. The languages of the Bird’s Head have undergone extensive contact with the Cenderawasih Bay languages, such as

Biak Biak is the main island of Biak Archipelago located in Cenderawasih Bay near the northern coast of Papua (province), Papua, an Indonesian province, and is just northwest of New Guinea. Biak has many atolls, reefs, and corals. The largest popula ...

. The term "West Papuan" has also been used in an areal sense, encompassing most of the non-Austronesian languages of Halmahera and Bird's Head.

Languages

*West Papuan ** North Halmahera (Halmahera – West Makian) ***Core North Halmahera *** ''West Makian'' **'' Amberbaken (Mpur)'' ** Yawa (Yapen) **West–Central Bird's Head *** West Bird's Head *** ''Abun'' ***'' Maybrat (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 Indonesia–Timor-Leste border, divided between the sovereign states of Timor-Leste in the eastern part and Indonesia in the ...

as well.

Stephen Wurm Stephen Adolphe Wurm (, ; 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-speaking Anna Novroczky. ...

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 Rut ...

, this was due to a

substratum Substrata, plural of substratum, may refer to: *Earth's substrata, the geologic layering of the Earth *''Hypokeimenon'', sometimes translated as ''substratum'', a concept in metaphysics *Substrata (album), a 1997 ambient music album by Biosphere * ...

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

Andamanese The Andamanese are the various indigenous peoples of the Andaman Islands, part of India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the union territory in the southeastern part of the Bay of Bengal. The Andamanese are a designated Scheduled Tribe in Indi ...

, respectively. Indeed, most of the languages of

East Nusa Tenggara East Nusa Tenggara (; ) 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 north, with a total land area of 47,238.07 km2. It cons ...

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 family that also includes the

, 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 L ...

(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 Maybrat 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 (Interlinear gloss, glossed ) 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 part of speech, parts of speech, but so ...

. :

Word order

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

North Halmahera languages The North Halmahera (NH) 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 H ...

(

, West Makian, and Sahu; due to Austronesian influence). SVO word order is also present in the isolates Abun, Mpur, and Maibrat. The South Bird's Head 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 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 and Sougb are

pitch-accent language A pitch-accent language is a type of language that, when spoken, has certain syllables in words or morphemes that are prominent, as indicated by a distinct contrasting pitch ( linguistic tone) rather than by volume or length, as in some other l ...

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 Maybrat 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

The following is a basic vocabulary table 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 ...

and Tehit) and three

language isolate A language isolate is a language that has no demonstrable genetic relationship with any other languages. Basque in Europe, Ainu and Burushaski in Asia, Sandawe in Africa, Haida and Zuni in North America, Kanoê in South America, and Tiwi ...

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

:Reesink, Ger P. 2005. ''West Papuan languages: roots and development''. In: Pawley et al. (eds.) 185–218. : Below are lexical lookalikes between

(''NH'') ( Galela and

Pagu The Projektions-AG Union (generally shortened to PAGU) was a Cinema of Germany, 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 ...

) 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. :

References

* *

External links

West Papuan sound comparisonsPapuans on the move: The linguistic prehistory of the West Papuan languages (OUTOFPAPUA project)
{{DEFAULTSORT:West Papuan Languages Proposed language families Languages of Western New Guinea Papuan languages