Extended West Papuan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Extended West Papuan language family is a tentative proposal in Malcolm Ross's classification of Papuan languages. It includes the West Papuan languages of the Indonesian island of Halmahera and the Bird's Head Peninsula of far western New Guinea; the Yawa language isolate (or small family) on Yapen Island in Cenderawasih (Geelvink) Bay, Indonesian New Guinea (previously placed in the hypothetical Geelvink Bay family), and a newly proposed East Bird's Head-Sentani family scattered across northern Indonesian New Guinea.

The Extended West Papuan languages are defined by common first-person pronouns: da or di for the singular ("I"), and m- for the exclusive ("we"), which are found in all branches of the three constituent families except for the Amberbaken isolate within West Papuan proper.

Several linguists, including Joseph Greenberg and Timothy Usher of the Rosetta Project, believe that the Andamanese languages off the coast of Burma are related to the West Papuan languages. The evidence is strongest for Northern (Great) Andamanese, which has the common Extended West Papuan pronouns d- "I" and m- "we". Greenberg expressed doubts that Southern Andamanese (Önge-Järawa) should be included, but Usher believes that such a relationship can be demonstrated, with m- shifting to "I" in Önge.

The families linked by these various proposals are thus,

[edit] Pronouns

The pronominal evidence connecting these families is at least as strong as the evidence for classifying Borai-Hattam as West Papuan. The relevant pronouns are "I", "thou", and "we" (exclusive).

family	I	thou	we
West Papuan	da, di-	na, ni, *a-	mam, mi
EBH-Sentani	da, di	ba~wa, bi	meme, me
Yava	*rei	*wein	(imama etc.)
Andamanese	*d-	ŋi, ŋ-	*mi, m-

All have forms in *d for "I" and *m for "we". (Most Yawa forms of "we" also have m, such as imama, but they are too diverse for an easy reconstruction.) EBH-Sentani and Yava have bilabials for "thou".

[edit] See also

Papuan languages

[edit] Reference

Malcom Ross (2005). "Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages." In: Andrew Pawley, Robert Attenborough, Robin Hide and Jack Golson, eds, Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples, 15-66. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.