Elseng language
Encyclopedia
Elseng is a poorly documented Papuan language
spoken by about 300 people in the Indonesia
n province of Papua
. It is also known as Morwap, which means "what is it?"
Laycock classified Elseng as a language isolate
, but noted pronominal similarities with the Border languages
. Ross included it in Border because of these similarities, but noted that it doos not appear to share any lexical similarities with the family. However, this may be an effect of the paucity of data on Elseng.
Papuan languages
The Papuan languages are those languages of the western Pacific which are neither Austronesian nor Australian. The term does not presuppose a genetic relationship. The concept of Papuan peoples as distinct from Melanesians was first suggested and named by Sidney Herbert Ray in 1892.-The...
spoken by about 300 people in the Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
n province of Papua
Papua (Indonesian province)
Papua comprises most of the western half of the island of New Guinea and nearby islands. Its capital is Jayapura. It's the largest and easternmost province of Indonesia. The province originally covered the entire western half of New Guinea...
. It is also known as Morwap, which means "what is it?"
Laycock classified Elseng as a language isolate
Language isolate
A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with other languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common with any other language. They are in effect language families consisting of a single...
, but noted pronominal similarities with the Border languages
Border languages (New Guinea)
The Border or Tami languages are an independent family of Papuan languages in Malcolm Ross's version of the Trans–New Guinea proposal.-Classification:* ? Morwap isolate...
. Ross included it in Border because of these similarities, but noted that it doos not appear to share any lexical similarities with the family. However, this may be an effect of the paucity of data on Elseng.