East Papuan languages

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The East Papuan languages form a hypothetical and seemingly spurious family of Papuan languages spoken on the islands to the east of New Guinea, including New Britain, New Ireland, Bougainville, the Solomon Islands, and the Santa Cruz Islands.

All but two of the starred languages below (Yélî Dnye and Sulka) make a gender distinction in their pronouns. Several of the heavily Papuanized Austronesian languages of New Britain do as well. This suggests a pre-Austronesian language area in the region.

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[edit] History of the proposal

The East Papuan languages were identified as a phylum by linguist Stephen Wurm (1975) and others. However, their work was preliminary, and there is little evidence the East Papuan languages actually have a genealogical relationship. For example, none of the fifteen languages marked with asterisks below share more than 2-3% of their basic vocabulary with any of the others ('basic vocabulary' being words for basic things like fire, water, eye, or louse that are not likely to be borrowed from neighboring languages). Dunn et al. (2005) tested the reliability of the proposed 2-3% cognates by randomizing the vocabulary lists and comparing them again. The nonsense comparisons produced the same 2-3% of "shared" vocabulary, demonstrating that the proposed cognates of the East Papuan languages, and even of proposed families within the East Papuan languages, are as likely to be due to chance as to any genealogical relationship. Thus in a conservative classification, many of the East Papuan languages would be considered language isolates.

Given that the islands in question have been settled for at least 35 000 years, it's not surprising that they show considerable linguistic diversity. However, Malcolm Ross (2001; 2005) has presented evidence from comparing pronouns from nineteen of these languages that several of the lower-level branches of East Papuan may indeed be valid families. This is the classification adopted here. For Wurm's more inclusive classification, see the Ethnologue entry here.

[edit] Classification (Ross 2005)

[edit] Small families

Each of the first five entries in boldface is an independent language family, unrelated to the others. The first is a more tentative proposal than the others and awaits confirmation.

Reconstructed pronoun sets for each of the families are given in the individual articles.

? Yele-West New Britain family [tentative]

Baining (East New Britain) family: Mali*, Qaqet, Kairak, Simbali, Taulil**, Butam (extinct)**, Ura, Malkolkol

North Bougainville family — Bougainville

  • Keriaka isolate
  • Konua (Rapoisi) isolate**
  • Rotokas branch: Rotokas*, Eivo

South Bougainville family — Bougainville

  • Buin branch
    • Buin isolate*
    • Motuna (Siwai) isolate*
    • Uisai isolate
  • Nasioi branch: Koromira, Lantanai, Naasioi*, Nagovisi (Sibe)**, Oune, Simeku

Central Solomons family

* Dunn et al. found no demonstrable shared vocabulary between these fifteen languages.

** Ross considered these four languages in addition to the fifteen studied by Dunn et al.

[edit] True language isolates

These three languages are not thought to be demonstrably related to each other or to any language in the world. If the Yele-West New Britain family is not confirmed, the region may contain six isolates rather than three.

Sulka isolate* - New Britain (poor data quality; the possibility remains that Sulka will be shown to be related to Kol or Baining)

Kol isolate* - New Britain

Kuot (Panaras) isolate* - New Ireland

* Dunn et al. found no demonstrable shared vocabulary between these fifteen languages.

[edit] Other languages

Wurm classified the three languages of the Santa Cruz and Reef Islands as an additional family within East Papuan. However, new data on these languages, along with advances in the reconstruction of Proto-Oceanic, has made it clear that they are in fact Austronesian:

Similarly, Wurm had classified the extinct Kazukuru language and its possible sister languages of New Georgia as a sixth branch of East Papuan. However, in a joint 2007 paper, Dunn and Ross argued that this was also Austronesian.

[edit] References

  • Dunn, Michael; Ger Reesink; Angela Terrill (June 2002). "The East Papuan languages: a preliminary typological appraisal". Oceanic Linguistics 41 (1): 28–62. ISSN 0029-8115. OCLC 89720097. 
  • Dunn, Michael; Angela Terrill; Ger Reesink; Robert A. Foley; Stephen C. Levinson (2005-09-23). "Structural Phylogenetics and the Reconstruction of Ancient Language History". Science 309 (5743): 2072–75. ISSN 0036-8075. OCLC 111923848. 
  • Dunn, Michael; Malcolm Ross (2007). "Is Kazukuru really non-Austronesian?". Oceanic Linguistics 46: 210-231. 
  • Ross, Malcolm (2001). "Is there an East Papuan phylum? Evidence from pronouns", in Andrew Pawley, Malcolm Ross, Darrell Tryon, eds.: The boy from Bundaberg: Studies in Melanesian linguistics in honour of Tom Dutton. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, pp. 301-322. ISBN 9780858834453. OCLC 48651069. 
  • Ross, Malcolm (2005). "Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages", in Andrew Pawley, Robert Attenborough, Robin Hide, Jack Golson, eds.: Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, pp. 15-66. ISBN 0858835622. OCLC 67292782. 
  • Wurm, Stephen A. (1975). "The East Papuan phylum in general", in Stephen A. Wurm, ed.: Papuan languages and the New Guinea linguistic scene: New Guinea area languages and language study 1. Canberra: Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, pp. 783-804. OCLC 37096514. 

[edit] See also