Geographic
distribution: Melanesia | Glottolog: None | |
Linguistic classification: Proposed language family Subdivisions: Yele
Anêm
Ata
Baining (East New Britain)
North Bougainville
South Bougainville
Central Solomon
Sulka
Kol
Kuot (Panaras)
× Reefs – Santa Cruz
(now Austronesian)
× Kazukuru language
(now Austronesian) | ||
The East Papuan languages is a defunct proposal for a family of Papuan languages spoken on the islands to the east of New Guinea, including New Britain, New Ireland, Bougainville, Solomon Islands, and the Santa Cruz Islands. There is no evidence that these languages are related to each other, and the Santa Cruz languages are no longer recognized as Papuan.
Contents
- History of the proposal
- Small families
- True language isolates
- Austronesian languages formerly classified as East Papuan
- References
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 proposed as a family by linguist Stephen Wurm (1975) and others. However, their work was preliminary, and there is little evidence that the East Papuan languages actually have a genetic relationship. For example, none of these fifteen languages marked with asterisks below share more than 2–3% of their basic vocabulary with any of the others. Dunn and colleagues (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.
Since the islands in question have been settled for at least 35 000 years, their considerable linguistic diversity is unsurprising. 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.
Small families
Each of the first five entries in boldface is an independent language family, not known to be related to the others. Languages that are transparently related to each other are listed together on the same line. The first family 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.
* Dunn and colleagues found no demonstrable shared vocabulary between these fifteen languages.
** Ross considered these four languages in addition to the fifteen studied by Dunn and colleagues.
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 and colleagues found no demonstrable shared vocabulary between these fifteen languages.
Austronesian languages formerly classified as East Papuan
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.