West Papuan languages

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West Papuan
Geographic distribution:	Papua
Genetic classification:	Extended West Papuan ? West Papuan
Subdivisions:	Amberbaken Borai-Hattam Halmahera Bird's Head

The West Papuan languages are a hypothetical language family of about two dozen Papuan languages of the Bird's Head Peninsula (Vogelkopf or Doberai Peninsula) of far western New Guinea and the island of Halmahera, spoken by about 220 000 people in all. The most populous and best known West Papuan language is Ternate (50 000 native speakers), which is a regional lingua franca and which, along with Tidore, were the languages of the rival medieval Ternate and Tidore kingdoms of the spice trade.

The German linguist Wilhelm Schmidt first linked the Bird's Head and Halmahera languages in the year 1900. In 1957 HKL Cowan linked these to the non-Austronesian languages of Timor as well. Stephen Wurm 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, this was due to a substratum and that these languages should classified as Trans-New Guinea, Austronesian, and Andamanese, respectively.

In 2005 Malcolm Ross made a tentative proposal that the West Papuan languages form one of three branches of an extended West Papuan family that also includes the Yawa language isolate (or small family), previously placed in the hypothetical Geelvink Bay family, and a newly proposed East Bird's Head-Sentani family as a third branch. West Papuan proper is distinguished from these other extended West Papuan families in having forms like na or ni for the second-person singular ("thou") pronoun.

The classification used here is based on Wurm, modified to reflect the North Halmaheran classification of Voorhoeve 1988. He identifies the subdivisions of his Papuan classification as families (on the order of the Germanic languages), stocks (on the order of the Indo-European languages), and phyla (on the order of the Afro-Asiatic languages). West Papuan is a phylum in this terminology.

1 Classification
2 Pronouns
3 References
4 See also

[edit] Classification

West Papuan phylum

Mpur (Amberbaken) isolate
Borai-Hattam family: Hattam, Borai
Core West Papuan
- (Northern) Halmahera family
  - Core North Halmaheran
    - Ternate-Tidore
    - Sahu
    - Northeast Halmaheran: Tobelo, Galela, Loloda, Modole, Pagu, Tabaru,
  - West Makian family-level isolate: West Makian
- Bird's Head
  - West Bird's Head family: Kuwani, Tehit, Kalabra, Seget, Moi, Moraid
  - North-Central Bird's Head
    - North Bird's Head family: Abun Tat, Abun Ji, Abun Je
    - Central Bird's Head family: Karon Dori, Mai Brat

[edit] Pronouns

The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto-West Papuan are,

I	da, di-	exclusive we	mam, mi-
I	da, di-	inclusive we	*po-
thou	ni, na, *a-	you	nan, ni-
she	*mV	they	yo, ana, *yo-

These are shared by the "core" West Papuan families. Borai-Hattam reflects only "I" and "thou", and Amberbaken only "thou", "you", and "she".

[edit] References

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.
Voorhoeve, C. L. (1988). The languages of the northern Halmaheran stock. Papers in New Guinea Linguistics, no. 26., 181-209. (Pacific Linguistics A-76). Canberra: Australian National University.