Everything about The East Papuan Languages totally explained
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.
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's 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
.
Classification (Ross 2005)
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
Nasioi branch: Koromira, Lantanai, Naasioi*, Nagovisi (Sibe)**, Oune, Simeku
Central Solomons family
Bilua isolate* — Vella Lavella Island
Touo (Baniata) isolate* — South Rendova Island
Lavukaleve isolate* — Russell Islands
Savosavo isolate* — Savo Island
* 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.
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 isn't 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.
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're in fact Austronesian:
Reef Islands-Santa Cruz family: Santa Cruz, Nanggu, Äiwoo
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.
Kazukuru family: See Kazukuru languageFurther Information
Get more info on 'East Papuan Languages'.
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