Papers in New Guinea Linguistics No. 22 (original) (raw)

The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide

2017

The New Guinea Area is arguably the region with the highest level of language diversity on earth, in terms of both total number of languages, and number of apparently unrelated language families. On the basis of present knowledge, it is home to more than 1,300 languages, almost one fifth of the world's total number, belonging to upward of 40 distinct language families with no generally accepted wider phylogenetic links, as well as several dozen isolates 2. It is also the world's least documented linguistic region. Of Hammarström's (2010) list of the 27 least documented families (including isolates) in the world, 20 are located in this area. In some cases, an entire family is known only from a few short wordlists of its members. The region is also the locus of considerable language endangerment. Many of its languages are spoken by a few hundred or very few thousand people, and extensive pressure from larger languages is common, including from larger indigenous languages supplanting smaller languages, and from lingua francas such as Tok Pisin in the east and Papuan Malay in the west. For the exceptionally complex Sepik-Ramu basin, for example, Foley (this volume chapter 3) states that "virtually all languages within the Sepik-Ramu basin are endangered, some critically so" (Foley's emphasis). The sheer number of languages that are largely unknown to research, together with the rapid pace of language loss, means the complete phylogenetic and typological picture of the area may never be fully known. This volume sets out to give an overview of the languages, families and typology of this area on the basis of current knowledge.

The languages and linguistics of the New Guinea area: A comprehensive guide ed. by Bill Palmer

Oceanic Linguistics, 2019

The New Guinea Area is arguably the region with the highest level of language diversity on earth, in terms of both total number of languages, and number of apparently unrelated language families. On the basis of present knowledge, it is home to more than 1,300 languages, almost one fifth of the world's total number, belonging to upward of 40 distinct language families with no generally accepted wider phylogenetic links, as well as several dozen isolates 2. It is also the world's least documented linguistic region. Of Hammarström's (2010) list of the 27 least documented families (including isolates) in the world, 20 are located in this area. In some cases, an entire family is known only from a few short wordlists of its members. The region is also the locus of considerable language endangerment. Many of its languages are spoken by a few hundred or very few thousand people, and extensive pressure from larger languages is common, including from larger indigenous languages supplanting smaller languages, and from lingua francas such as Tok Pisin in the east and Papuan Malay in the west. For the exceptionally complex Sepik-Ramu basin, for example, Foley (this volume chapter 3) states that "virtually all languages within the Sepik-Ramu basin are endangered, some critically so" (Foley's emphasis). The sheer number of languages that are largely unknown to research, together with the rapid pace of language loss, means the complete phylogenetic and typological picture of the area may never be fully known. This volume sets out to give an overview of the languages, families and typology of this area on the basis of current knowledge.

Papers in New Guinea Linguistics No. 25

1986

A careful study of the permissible consonant clusters and vowel clusters facilitates the interpretation of ambiguous segments [w ] and [u ], [y] and [i ], as we ll as [n Y] and [sY]. Interpretation of these segments wi ll be discussed in Section 5. 4.1 Consonant clusters YAWA PHONOLOGY 15 '3 sg mas' , Imol '3 sg fern'. None of the ergative pronouns begins with a non-suspect vv. Granting , then , Iyl and Iwl word initially , we must expect them word medially. We suggest that all non-syllabic vocoids [i ] and [u ] be interpreted as consonants when they occur intervocalically , e.g. , [v i v] is Ivyvl and [V U v] is Ivwv/. This re sults in many more ev syllables , which fits the prevalence of this syllable type in Yawa and indeed its universal prevalence in languages .

The Languages of New Guinea

The New Guinea region is the most linguistically diverse region in the world, with some thousand languages in less than 900,000 sq km. There are about three dozen language families and close to that number of language isolates, although two very different language families dominate, the coastal Austronesian languages and the montane Trans New Guinea family, each with about 300 languages. The other smaller families are largely restricted to the northern lowlands. Typologically the languages exhibit enormous variation and many unusual properties. Vowel systems in which central vowels predominate and consonantal systems lacking fricatives and rarer still, nasals are attested. Morphological types range from isolating to polysynthetic, and most languages are head marking. Verbs normally carry more complex inflection than nouns. Of nominal categories, gender is often exuberantly elaborated, but surprisingly case is not, the weak development of which is an areal feature in contrast to Australian languages on

Language Contact and Language Change in the Sepik Region of New Guinea: The Case of Yalaku

2020

Yalaku is one of the smallest members of the Ndu language family of the Sepik region of New Guinea. Spoken in a hilly area off the Sepik river, Yalaku has been in intensive contact with the unrelated Kwoma for several generations. Comparison between Yalaku and closely related Manambu shows the presence of a number of grammatical patterns borrowed from Kwoma, alongside a number of loanwords. Tok Pisin, the lingua franca of Papua New Guinea, is known to every speaker of Yalaku, with the two languages in a diglossic relationship. Lexical loans from Tok Pisin are avoided; however, Tok Pisin impact is being felt in the pronunciation patterns by younger speakers, calques, and the presence of two borrowed grammatical forms—the possessive verb and the negator. Cultural and linguistic factors suggest an explanation for this seemingly curious development.

A Study of the Dialects of Amele

Language and Linguistics in Melanesia 22.1–2, 67–126., 1991

The main purpose of this article is to document the results of research into the dialects of the Amele language of Papua New Guinea. Dialect boundaries are determined and the phonological, lexical and grammatical differences between the dialects are described.

Papers in New Guinea Linguistics No. 13

1970

l Gawigl is the Medlpa pronunciation of the name of the Kaugel river, language, or people. Gawigl is the term used by Gordon Bunn and Graham Scott, in their Language8 of the Mt. Hagen Sub-District (DIES, Port Moresby, 1962). Kakoli is the form used in the language itself (phonem ic spelling of Kaugel, which is the form used on Administration maps).