Trans-New Guinea languages
Encyclopedia
Trans–New Guinea is an extensive family
of Papuan languages
spoken in New Guinea
and neighboring islands, perhaps the third largest language family in the world. (See List of language families#By variety.) The core of the family is considered to be established, but its boundaries and overall membership are uncertain. There have been three main proposals.
were first proposed by S. Ray in 1907, parts of Marind
were recognized by Ray and JHP Murray in 1918, and the Rai Coast languages
in 1919, again by Ray.
The precursor of the Trans–New Guinea family was Stephen Wurm
's 1960 proposal of an East New Guinea Highlands
family. Although broken up as a unit (though retained within TNG) by Malcolm Ross in 2005, it united different branches of TNG for the first time, linking Engan, Chimbu–Wahgi, Goroka, and Kainantu. (Duna and Kalam were added in 1971.) Then in 1970 Clemens Voorhoeve and Kenneth McElhanon noted 91 lexical resemblances between
the Central and South New Guinea
(CSNG) and Finisterre–Huon families, which they had respectively established a few years earlier. Although they did not work out regular sound correspondences, and so could not distinguish between cognates due to genealogical relationship, cognates due to borrowing, and chance resemblances, their research was taken seriously. They chose the name Trans–New Guinea because this new family was the first to span New Guinea, from the Bomberai Peninsula
of western West Irian to the Huon Peninsula
of eastern PNG. They also noted possible cognates in other families Wurm would later add to TNG: Wurm's East New Guinea Highlands, Binandere in the 'Bird's Tail' of PNG, and two families that John Z'graggen would later (1971, 1975) unite in his 100-language Madang–Adelbert Range
family.
In 1975 Wurm accepted Voorhoeve and McElhanon's suspicions about further connections, as well as Z'graggen's work, and postualed additional links to, among others, the languages of the island of Timor
to the west of New Guinea, Angan
, Goilalan
, Koiarian
, Dagan
, Eleman
, Wissel Lakes, the erstwhile Dani-Kwerba family, and the erstwhile Trans-Fly–Bulaka River family (which he had established in 1970), expanding TNG into an enormous language phylum that covered most of the island of New Guinea, as well as Timor and neighboring islands, and included over 500 languages spoken by some 2 300 000 people. However, part of the evidence for this was typological, and Wurm stated that he did not expect it to stand up well to scrutiny. Although he based the phylum on characteristic personal pronoun
s, several of the branches had no pronouns in common with the rest of the family, or even had pronouns related to non-TNG families, but were included because they were grammatically similar to TNG. Other families which had typical TNG pronouns were excluded because they did not resemble other TNG families in their grammatical structure.
Because grammatical typology is readily borrowed—many of the Austronesian languages
in New Guinea have grammatical structures similar to their Papuan neighbors, for example, and conversely many Papuan languages resemble typical Austronesian languages typologically—other linguists were skeptical. William Foley
rejected Wurm's and even some of Voorhoeve's results, and broke much of TNG into its constituent parts: several dozen small but clearly valid families, plus a number of apparent isolates
.
In 2005 Malcolm Ross published a draft proposal re-evaluating Trans–New Guinea, and found what he believed to be overwhelming evidence for a reduced version of the phylum, based solely on lexical resemblances, which retained as much as 85% of Wurm's hypothesis, though some of it tentatively.
The strongest lexical evidence for any language family is shared morphological
paradigms, especially highly irregular or suppletive paradigms with bound morphology. For example, if the only recorded German words were gut "good" and besser "better", that alone would be enough to demonstrate that in all probability German was related to English. However, because of the great morphological complexity of many Papuan languages, and the poor state of documentation of nearly all, in New Guinea this approach is essentially restricted to comparing pronoun
s. Ross reconstructed pronouns sets for Foley's basic families and compared these reconstructions, rather than using a direct mass comparison of all Papuan languages; attempted to then reconstruct the ancestral pronouns of the proto-Trans–New Guinea language, such as *ni "we", *ŋgi "you", *i "they"; and then compared poorly supported branches directly to this reconstruction. Families required two apparent cognates to be included.
Ross also included in his proposal several better-attested families for non-pronominal evidence, despite a lack of pronouns common to other branches of TNG, and he suggested that there may be other families that would have been included if they had been better attested. Several additional families are only tentatively linked to TNG. Note also that because the boundaries of Ross's proposal are based primarily on a single parameter, the pronouns, all internal structure remains tentative.
, Enga
, Western Dani
, and Ekari
) being spoken by more than 100,000. The most populous language outside of mainland New Guinea is Makasai on Timor, with 70,000.
The greatest linguistic diversity in Ross's Trans–New Guinea proposal, and therefore perhaps the location of the proto-Trans–New Guinea homeland, is in the interior highlands of Papua New Guinea, in the central-to-eastern New Guinea cordillera where Wurm first posited his East New Guinea Highlands family. Indonesian Papua
and the southeastern peninsula of New Guinea (the "bird's tail") have fewer and more widely extended branches of TNG, and were therefore likely settled by TNG speakers after the protolanguage broke up. Ross speculates that the TNG family may have spread with the high population densities that resulted from the domestication of taro
, settling quickly in the highland valleys along the length of the cordillera but spreading much more slowly into the malaria
l lowlands, and not at all into areas such as the Sepik River valley where the people already had yam agriculture and thus supported high population densities. Ross suggests that TNG may have arrived at its western limit, the islands near Timor
, perhaps four to 4.5 thousand years ago, before the expansion of Austronesian into this area.
), stocks (on the order of the Indo-European languages
), and phyla (on the order of the Afroasiatic languages). Trans–New Guinea is a phylum in this terminology. A language that is not related to any other at a family level or below is called a Trans–New Guinea isolate
in this scheme.
accepted the core of TNG: "The fact, for example, that a great swath of languages in New Guinea from the Huon Peninsula to the highlands of Irian Jaya mark the object of a transitive verb with a set of verbal prefixes, a first person singular in /n/ and second person singular in a velar stop
, is overwhelming evidence that these languages are all genetically related; the likelihood of such a system being borrowed vanishingly small." He considered the relationship between the Finisterre–Huon, Eastern Highlands (Kainantu–Gorokan), and Irian Highlands (Dani – Paniai Lakes) families (and presumably some other smaller ones) to be established, and said that it is "highly likely" that the Madang family belongs as well. He considered it possible but not yet demonstrated that the Enga, Chimbu, Binandere, Angan, Ok, Awyu, Asmat (perhaps closest to Ok and Awyu), Mek, and the small language families of the tail of Papua New Guinea (Koiarian, Goilalan, etc., which he maintains have not been shown to be closely related to each other) may belong to TNG as well.
Ross removed about 100 languages from Wurm's proposal, and only tentatively retained a few dozen more, but in one instance he added a language, the erstwhile isolate Porome
.
Ross did not have sufficient evidence to classify all Papuan groups.
Trans–New Guinea phylum (Ross 2005)
branches as independent families. They also break up the Central and South New Guinea
within TNG, though they maintain both Southeast Papuan
(including Goilalan
) and West Trans–New Guinea
as units.
reconstructs the voiced series as prenasalized /mb nd ŋɡ/), plus a palatal affricate /dʒ ~ ndʒ/, the fricative /s/, and the approximants /l j w/. Syllables are typically (C)V, with CVC possible at the ends of words. Many of the languages have word tone.
There is a related but less commonly attested form for 'we', *nu, as well as a *ja for 'you', which Ross speculates may have been a polite form. In addition, there were dual
suffixes *-li and *-t, and a plural suffix *-nV, (i.e. n plus a vowel) as well collective number
suffixes *-pi- (dual) and *-m- (plural) which functioned as inclusive we
when used in the first person. (Reflexes of the collective suffixes, however, are limited geographically to the central and eastern highlands, and so might not be as old as proto-Trans–New Guinea.)
Language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' comes from the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a...
of Papuan languages
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 in New Guinea
New Guinea
New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...
and neighboring islands, perhaps the third largest language family in the world. (See List of language families#By variety.) The core of the family is considered to be established, but its boundaries and overall membership are uncertain. There have been three main proposals.
History of the proposal
Although Papuan languages for the most part are poorly documented, several of the branches of Trans–New Guinea have been recognized for some time. The Eleman languagesEleman languages
The Eleman languages are a family of Trans–New Guinea languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross. The five languages of Eleman proper are clearly related. They were identified as a family by Sidney Herbert Ray in 1907, and would later be incorporated in the Trans–New Guinea classifications of...
were first proposed by S. Ray in 1907, parts of Marind
Marind languages
The Marind languages are a well established language family of Papuan languages, spoken by the Marind-anim. They form part of the Trans–New Guinea languages in the classifications of Stephen Wurm and Malcolm Ross.* Marind family...
were recognized by Ray and JHP Murray in 1918, and the Rai Coast languages
Rai Coast languages
The Rai Coast languages are a family of languages in the Madang branch of the Trans–New Guinea languages phylum of New Guinea.Sidney Herbert Ray identified what was then known of the Rai Coast languages as a unit in 1919. They were linked with the Mabuso languages in 1951 by Arthur Capell in his...
in 1919, again by Ray.
The precursor of the Trans–New Guinea family was Stephen Wurm
Stephen Wurm
Stephen Adolphe Wurm was a Hungarian-born Australian linguist.- Biography :Wurm was born in Budapest, the second child to the German-speaking Adolphe Wurm and Hungarian-speaking Anna Novroczky, and was christened Istvan Adolphe Wurm...
's 1960 proposal of an East New Guinea Highlands
East New Guinea Highlands languages
East New Guinea Highlands is a 1960 proposal by Stephen Wurm for a family of Papuan languages spoken in Papua New Guinea that formed part of his 1975 expansion of Trans–New Guinea. The original proposal consisted of West-Central , Central , East-Central , and Eastern . Duna and Kalam were added in...
family. Although broken up as a unit (though retained within TNG) by Malcolm Ross in 2005, it united different branches of TNG for the first time, linking Engan, Chimbu–Wahgi, Goroka, and Kainantu. (Duna and Kalam were added in 1971.) Then in 1970 Clemens Voorhoeve and Kenneth McElhanon noted 91 lexical resemblances between
the Central and South New Guinea
Central and South New Guinea languages
The Central and South New Guinea languages are a proposed family of the Trans–New Guinea languages . They were part of Voorhoeve & McElhanon's original TNG proposal, but have been reduced in scope by half in the classification of Malcolm Ross...
(CSNG) and Finisterre–Huon families, which they had respectively established a few years earlier. Although they did not work out regular sound correspondences, and so could not distinguish between cognates due to genealogical relationship, cognates due to borrowing, and chance resemblances, their research was taken seriously. They chose the name Trans–New Guinea because this new family was the first to span New Guinea, from the Bomberai Peninsula
Bomberai Peninsula
Bomberai Peninsula is located on the Western New Guinea region at the opposite south of the Bird's Head Peninsula in South East Asia. To the west lies the Sebakor Bay and the south Kamrau Bay. Sabuda island lies off the western tip of the peninsula, which is separated from the mainland by Berau...
of western West Irian to the Huon Peninsula
Huon Peninsula
Huon Peninsula is a large rugged peninsula on the island of New Guinea in Morobe Province, eastern Papua New Guinea. It is named after French explorer Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec who discovered it along with his personal assistant and porter, Henry Ole. The peninsula is dominated by the steep...
of eastern PNG. They also noted possible cognates in other families Wurm would later add to TNG: Wurm's East New Guinea Highlands, Binandere in the 'Bird's Tail' of PNG, and two families that John Z'graggen would later (1971, 1975) unite in his 100-language Madang–Adelbert Range
Madang languages
The Madang or Madang–Adelbert Range languages are the largest family of Trans–New Guinea languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross. William Foley concurs that it is "highly likely" that the Madang languages are part of TNG. The family is named after Madang Province and the Adelbert...
family.
In 1975 Wurm accepted Voorhoeve and McElhanon's suspicions about further connections, as well as Z'graggen's work, and postualed additional links to, among others, the languages of the island of Timor
Timor
Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, north of the Timor Sea. It is divided between the independent state of East Timor, and West Timor, belonging to the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara. The island's surface is 30,777 square kilometres...
to the west of New Guinea, Angan
Angan languages
The Angan languages are a family of the Trans–New Guinea languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross. The Angan languages are clearly valid as a family. They were first identified as such by J. Lloyd and A...
, Goilalan
Goilalan languages
The Goilalan languages are a family placed in the Trans–New Guinea family by Wurm and tentatively retained there in the classification of Malcolm Ross . The languages,are clearly related, especially Biagai, Kunimaipa, and Weri, which might be considered divergent dialects....
, Koiarian
Koiarian languages
The Koiarian languages are a small family of Trans–New Guinea languages spoken in the "Bird's Tail" of New Guinea...
, Dagan
Dagan languages
The Dagan languages are a small family of Trans–New Guinea languages spoken in the "Bird's Tail" of New Guinea, the easternmost Papuan languages on the mainland...
, Eleman
Eleman languages
The Eleman languages are a family of Trans–New Guinea languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross. The five languages of Eleman proper are clearly related. They were identified as a family by Sidney Herbert Ray in 1907, and would later be incorporated in the Trans–New Guinea classifications of...
, Wissel Lakes, the erstwhile Dani-Kwerba family, and the erstwhile Trans-Fly–Bulaka River family (which he had established in 1970), expanding TNG into an enormous language phylum that covered most of the island of New Guinea, as well as Timor and neighboring islands, and included over 500 languages spoken by some 2 300 000 people. However, part of the evidence for this was typological, and Wurm stated that he did not expect it to stand up well to scrutiny. Although he based the phylum on characteristic personal pronoun
Personal pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns used as substitutes for proper or common nouns. All known languages contain personal pronouns.- English personal pronouns :English in common use today has seven personal pronouns:*first-person singular...
s, several of the branches had no pronouns in common with the rest of the family, or even had pronouns related to non-TNG families, but were included because they were grammatically similar to TNG. Other families which had typical TNG pronouns were excluded because they did not resemble other TNG families in their grammatical structure.
Because grammatical typology is readily borrowed—many of the Austronesian languages
Austronesian languages
The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...
in New Guinea have grammatical structures similar to their Papuan neighbors, for example, and conversely many Papuan languages resemble typical Austronesian languages typologically—other linguists were skeptical. William Foley
William Foley
William Foley is an American linguist and professor at the University of Sydney. He specialises in Papuan and Austronesian languages. He is perhaps best known for his 1986 book The Papuan Languages of New Guinea and his partnership with Robert Van Valin in the development of role and reference...
rejected Wurm's and even some of Voorhoeve's results, and broke much of TNG into its constituent parts: several dozen small but clearly valid families, plus a number of apparent isolates
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...
.
In 2005 Malcolm Ross published a draft proposal re-evaluating Trans–New Guinea, and found what he believed to be overwhelming evidence for a reduced version of the phylum, based solely on lexical resemblances, which retained as much as 85% of Wurm's hypothesis, though some of it tentatively.
The strongest lexical evidence for any language family is shared morphological
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
paradigms, especially highly irregular or suppletive paradigms with bound morphology. For example, if the only recorded German words were gut "good" and besser "better", that alone would be enough to demonstrate that in all probability German was related to English. However, because of the great morphological complexity of many Papuan languages, and the poor state of documentation of nearly all, in New Guinea this approach is essentially restricted to comparing pronoun
Pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
s. Ross reconstructed pronouns sets for Foley's basic families and compared these reconstructions, rather than using a direct mass comparison of all Papuan languages; attempted to then reconstruct the ancestral pronouns of the proto-Trans–New Guinea language, such as *ni "we", *ŋgi "you", *i "they"; and then compared poorly supported branches directly to this reconstruction. Families required two apparent cognates to be included.
Ross also included in his proposal several better-attested families for non-pronominal evidence, despite a lack of pronouns common to other branches of TNG, and he suggested that there may be other families that would have been included if they had been better attested. Several additional families are only tentatively linked to TNG. Note also that because the boundaries of Ross's proposal are based primarily on a single parameter, the pronouns, all internal structure remains tentative.
The languages
Most TNG languages are spoken by only a few thousand people, with only four (MelpaMelpa language
Melpa is a Papuan language spoken by about 130,000 people predominantly in Mount Hagen and the surrounding district of Western Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea....
, Enga
Enga language
Enga is a language of the East New Guinea Highlands that is spoken by approximately 180,000 people in Enga Province, Papua New Guinea. It has the largest body of speakers of any native language in New Guinea....
, Western Dani
Dani People
The Dani people, also spelled Ndani, and sometimes conflated with the Lani group to the west, are a people from the central highlands of western New Guinea ....
, and Ekari
Ekari language
Ekari is a Trans–New Guinea language spoken by about 100,000 people in the Paniai lakes region of the Indonesian province of Papua, including the villages of Mapia and Moanamani. This makes it the second-most populous Papuan language in Indonesian New Guinea after Western Dani. Language use is...
) being spoken by more than 100,000. The most populous language outside of mainland New Guinea is Makasai on Timor, with 70,000.
The greatest linguistic diversity in Ross's Trans–New Guinea proposal, and therefore perhaps the location of the proto-Trans–New Guinea homeland, is in the interior highlands of Papua New Guinea, in the central-to-eastern New Guinea cordillera where Wurm first posited his East New Guinea Highlands family. Indonesian 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...
and the southeastern peninsula of New Guinea (the "bird's tail") have fewer and more widely extended branches of TNG, and were therefore likely settled by TNG speakers after the protolanguage broke up. Ross speculates that the TNG family may have spread with the high population densities that resulted from the domestication of taro
Taro
Taro is a common name for the corms and tubers of several plants in the family Araceae . Of these, Colocasia esculenta is the most widely cultivated, and is the subject of this article. More specifically, this article describes the 'dasheen' form of taro; another variety is called eddoe.Taro is...
, settling quickly in the highland valleys along the length of the cordillera but spreading much more slowly into the malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
l lowlands, and not at all into areas such as the Sepik River valley where the people already had yam agriculture and thus supported high population densities. Ross suggests that TNG may have arrived at its western limit, the islands near Timor
Timor
Timor is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, north of the Timor Sea. It is divided between the independent state of East Timor, and West Timor, belonging to the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara. The island's surface is 30,777 square kilometres...
, perhaps four to 4.5 thousand years ago, before the expansion of Austronesian into this area.
Wurm
An updated version of Wurm's 1975 classification can be found at Ethnologue 15 (largely abandoned by Ethnologue 16) and the mirror of the book below. Wurm identifies the subdivisions of his Papuan classification as families (on the order of relatedness of the Germanic languagesGermanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
), stocks (on the order of the Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
), and phyla (on the order of the Afroasiatic languages). Trans–New Guinea is a phylum in this terminology. A language that is not related to any other at a family level or below is called a Trans–New Guinea 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...
in this scheme.
Foley
As of 2003, William FoleyWilliam Foley
William Foley is an American linguist and professor at the University of Sydney. He specialises in Papuan and Austronesian languages. He is perhaps best known for his 1986 book The Papuan Languages of New Guinea and his partnership with Robert Van Valin in the development of role and reference...
accepted the core of TNG: "The fact, for example, that a great swath of languages in New Guinea from the Huon Peninsula to the highlands of Irian Jaya mark the object of a transitive verb with a set of verbal prefixes, a first person singular in /n/ and second person singular in a velar stop
Velar stop
In phonetics and phonology, a velar stop is a type of consonantal sound, made with the back of the tongue in contact with the soft palate , held tightly enough to block the passage of air . The most common sounds are the plosives and , as in English cut and gut...
, is overwhelming evidence that these languages are all genetically related; the likelihood of such a system being borrowed vanishingly small." He considered the relationship between the Finisterre–Huon, Eastern Highlands (Kainantu–Gorokan), and Irian Highlands (Dani – Paniai Lakes) families (and presumably some other smaller ones) to be established, and said that it is "highly likely" that the Madang family belongs as well. He considered it possible but not yet demonstrated that the Enga, Chimbu, Binandere, Angan, Ok, Awyu, Asmat (perhaps closest to Ok and Awyu), Mek, and the small language families of the tail of Papua New Guinea (Koiarian, Goilalan, etc., which he maintains have not been shown to be closely related to each other) may belong to TNG as well.
Ross
Ross does not use specialized terms for different levels of classification. In the list given here, the uncontroversial families that are accepted by Foley and other Papuanists and which are the building blocks of Ross's TNG are printed in boldface. Language isolates are printed in italics.Ross removed about 100 languages from Wurm's proposal, and only tentatively retained a few dozen more, but in one instance he added a language, the erstwhile isolate Porome
Porome language
The Porome or Kibiri language is a Papuan language of southern Papua New Guinea. It was classified as a language isolate by Stephen Wurm, but Malcolm Ross has linked it to the Kiwaian languages, possibly part of the Trans–New Guinea family. There are over a thousand speakers....
.
Ross did not have sufficient evidence to classify all Papuan groups.
Trans–New Guinea phylum (Ross 2005)
- West Trans–New Guinea linkage ? [a suspected old dialect continuumDialect continuumA dialect continuum, or dialect area, was defined by Leonard Bloomfield as a range of dialects spoken across some geographical area that differ only slightly between neighboring areas, but as one travels in any direction, these differences accumulate such that speakers from opposite ends of the...
]- West Timor – Alor–Pantar ? [not well supported as a group]
- AdabeAdabe languageAdabe is a Papuan language spoken by the Adabe people on Atauro Island, East Timor. It has also been known as Ataura and Raklu-Un ....
isolate - BunakBunak languageThe Bunak language is the language of the Bunak people of the mountainous region of central Timor, split between the political boundary between West Timor, Indonesia, particularly in Lamaknen District and East Timor...
isolate - Kolana isolate
- TanglapuiTanglapui languagesThe Tanglapui languages are a pair of closely related Papuan languages,spoken on the island of Alor, of the coast of Timor in Indonesia. They have only marginal mutual intelligibility, and are ethnically distinct. The name 'Tanglapui' is used for either language....
family (2) - Alor–Pantar family (14)
- Adabe
- East Timor [perhaps closest to West Bomberai]
- FatalukuFataluku languageFataluku is a Papuan language spoken by approximately 30,000 people of Fataluku ethnicity in the eastern areas of East Timor, especially around Lospalos. It is a Papuan language, and is usually considered a Trans–New Guinea language...
isolate - Maku'a (Lovaea) isolate [now reassigned to the Austronesian family]
- Oirata isolate
- Makasai isolate
- Fataluku
- West Bomberai [perhaps closest to East Timor]
- KarasKaras languageKaras is a divergent Trans–New Guinea language spoken on Karas Island off the Bomberai Peninsula, that appears to be most closely related to the West Bomberai languages....
isolate - West BomberaiWest Bomberai languagesThe West Bomberai languages are a small family of Papuan languages spoken on the Bomberai Peninsula of western New Guinea. Two of the languages are closely related; the third is more distant and was only recently added to the family.* Karas isolate...
family (2)
- Karas
- Paniai LakesPaniai Lakes languagesThe Paniai Lakes languages, also known by the older name Wissel Lakes languages, are a small family of closely related Trans–New Guinea languages spoken in the highlands of Irian Jaya in the Paniai district...
(Wissel Lakes) family (5) - DaniDani languagesThe Dani languages are a family of clearly related Trans–New Guinea languages spoken by the Dani and related peoples in the highlands of Irian Jaya. Foley considers their TNG status to be established. They may be most closely related to the languages of Paniai Lakes, but this is not yet clear...
family (13)
- West Timor – Alor–Pantar ? [not well supported as a group]
- South Bird's HeadSouth Bird's Head languagesThe South Bird's Head or South Doberai languages are a well-established family of Papuan languages. They form part of the Trans–New Guinea languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross.* South Bird's Head family...
(South Doberai) family (12)
- Tanah MerahTanah Merah languageTanah Merah is a Trans–New Guinea language that forms an independent branch of that family in the classification of Malcolm Ross . It is spoken on the Bomberai Peninsula by perhaps a thousand people....
isolate
- MorMor languageThe Mor language of Indonesian Papua may be:*Mor language *Mor language...
isolate
- DemDem languageDem is a Trans–New Guinea language that forms an independent branch of that family in the classification of Malcolm Ross ....
isolate
- UhunduniAmungmeThe Amungme are a group of about 13,000 people living in the highlands of the Papua province of Indonesia. Their language is called Damal.They practice shifting agriculture, supplementing their livelihood by hunting and gathering...
(Damal, Amungme) isolate
- MekMek languagesThe Mek languages are a well established family of Papuan languages spoken by the Mek peoples. They form a branch of the Trans–New Guinea languages in the classifications of Stephen Wurm and of Malcolm Ross ....
family (13)
- ? Kaure–Kapori (4) [Inclusion in TNG tentative. No pronouns can be reconstructed from the available data.]
- KaporiKapori languageKapori is a former language isolate related to the small family of Kaure languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross ....
isolate - Kaure family (3)
- Kapori
- ? PauwasiPauwasi languagesThe Pauwasi languages are a well established family of Papuan languages. Stephen Wurm classified them as a branch of the Trans–New Guinea phylum, and position which Malcolm Ross tentatively retains.* Pauwasi family...
family (4) [Inclusion in TNG tentative. No pronouns can be reconstructed from the available data.]
- KayagarKayagar languagesThe Kayagar languages are a small family of Trans–New Guinea languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross. The three languages,are clearly related to each other....
family (3)
- KolopomKolopom languagesThe Kolopom languages are a family of Trans–New Guinea languages in the classifications of Stephen Wurm and of Malcolm Ross . The three Kolopom languages,are closely related....
family (3)
- Moraori isolate
- ? Kiwai–Porome (8) [TNG identity of pronouns suspect]
- Kiwaian family (7)
- PoromePorome languageThe Porome or Kibiri language is a Papuan language of southern Papua New Guinea. It was classified as a language isolate by Stephen Wurm, but Malcolm Ross has linked it to the Kiwaian languages, possibly part of the Trans–New Guinea family. There are over a thousand speakers....
(Kibiri) isolate
- MarindMarind languagesThe Marind languages are a well established language family of Papuan languages, spoken by the Marind-anim. They form part of the Trans–New Guinea languages in the classifications of Stephen Wurm and Malcolm Ross.* Marind family...
family (6)
- Central and South New Guinea ? (49, reduced) [Part of the original TNG proposal. Not clear if these four families form a single branch of TNG. Voorhoeve argues independently for an Awyu–Ok relationship.]
- Asmat–Kamoro family (11)
- Awyu–Dumut family (8–16)
- MombumMombum languagesThe Mombum languages are a pair of Trans–New Guinea languages, Koneraw and Mombum, spoken just off the southern coast of New Guinea.Mombum was first classified as a branch isolate of the Central and South New Guinea languages in Stephen Wurm's 1975 expansion for Trans–New Guinea, a position...
family (2) - OkOk languagesThe Ok languages are a family of a score of clearly related Trans–New Guinea languages spoken in a contiguous area of eastern Irian Jaya and western Papua New Guinea...
family (20)
- OksapminOksapmin languageOksapmin is a Trans–New Guinea language spoken in Telefomin District, Sandaun, Papua New Guinea. It has been influenced by the Ok languages , and the similarities with those languages were attributed to borrowing in the classifications of both Stephen Wurm and Malcolm Ross , where Oksapmin was...
isolate [now linked to the Ok family]
- Gogodala–Suki family (4)
- TirioTirio languagesThe Tirio languages are a family of Trans–New Guinea languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross. The three languages Tirio , Bitur , and Were are closely related, having about half their vocabulary in common. They share about a third of their vocabulary with Baramu...
family (4)
- ElemanEleman languagesThe Eleman languages are a family of Trans–New Guinea languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross. The five languages of Eleman proper are clearly related. They were identified as a family by Sidney Herbert Ray in 1907, and would later be incorporated in the Trans–New Guinea classifications of...
family (7)
- Inland GulfInland Gulf languagesThe Inland Gulf languages are a family of Trans–New Guinea languages in the classifications of Stephen Wurm and Malcolm Ross . The unity of the languages was established by K. Franklin in 1969...
family (6)
- Turama–Kikorian family (4)
- ? TeberanTeberan languagesThe Teberan languages are a well established family of Papuan languages that Stephen Wurm grouped with the Pawaia language as a branch of the Trans–New Guinea phylum. Malcolm Ross tentatively retains both Teberan and Pawaia within TNG, but sees no other connection between them.There are just two...
family [inclusion in TNG tentative] (2)
- ? PawaiaPawaia languagePawaia, also known as Sira, Tudahwe, Yasa, is a Trans–New Guinea language that forms a tentative independent branch of that family in the classification of Malcolm Ross . Although Pawaia has proto-Trans–New Guinea vocabulary, Ross considers its inclusion questionable on available evidence....
isolate [has proto-TNG vocabulary, but inclusion questionable]
- AnganAngan languagesThe Angan languages are a family of the Trans–New Guinea languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross. The Angan languages are clearly valid as a family. They were first identified as such by J. Lloyd and A...
family (12)
- ? Fasu (West Kutubuan) family (1–3) [has proto-TNG vocabulary, but inclusion somewhat questionable]
- ? East KutubuanEast Kutubuan languagesThe East Kutubuan languages are a small family of Trans–New Guinea languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross. There are just two languages,which are not close to the West Kutubuan languages. They were linked in a "Kutubuan" family by Franklin and Voorhoeve in 1973, but that position has...
family (2) [has proto-TNG vocabulary, but inclusion somewhat questionable]
- Duna–Pogaya family (2)
- Awin–Pa family (2)
- East StricklandEast Strickland languagesThe East Strickland languages are a family of Trans–New Guinea languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross. The six languages,are clearly related....
family (6)
- BosaviBosavi languagesThe Bosavi languages are a family of the Trans–New Guinea languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross.The languages, which are closely related, are Aimele , Kaluli, Beami, Dibiyaso , Edolo, Kasua, Onobasulu, Sonia....
family (8)
- KamulaKamula languageKamula is a Trans–New Guinea language that forms an independent branch of that family in the classification of Malcolm Ross ....
isolate
- EnganEngan languagesThe Engan languages are a family of Trans–New Guinea languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross. The nine languages are clearly related.* North Engan: Enga, Ipili, Lembena, Bisorio * Sount Engan: Huli, Angal, Samberigi , Kewa, Mendi...
family (9)
- WiruWiru languageWiru or Witu is the language spoken by the Wiru people of Ialibu-Pangia District of the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. It is a language isolate within the family of Trans–New Guinea languages.-Further reading:...
isolate (lexical similarities with Engan)
- Chimbu–Wahgi family (17)
- Kainantu–Goroka (22) [also known as East Highlands; first noticed by Capell 1948]
- Goroka family (14)
- Kainantu family (8)
- Madang (103)
- Southern Adelbert Range–Kowan
- KowanKowan languagesThe Kowan languages are a small family of languages spoken in the Adelbert Range area of Madang Province, Papua New Guinea.The languages are Waskia, with 20,000 speakers, and Korak, with 500....
family (2) - Southern Adelbert Range
- Josephstaal (7)
- Osum (Utarmbung) isolate
- WadaginamWadaginam languageWadaginam is a divergent Madang language of the Adelbert Range of Papua New Guinea....
isolate - Sikan family (2)
- Pomoikan family (3)
- Wanang (5)
- PaynamarPaynamar languagePaynamar is a divergent Madang language of the Adelbert Range of Papua New Guinea....
isolate - Atan family (2)
- Emuan family (2)
- Paynamar
- FaitaFaita languageFaita is a divergent and nearly extinct Madang language of the Adelbert Range of Papua New Guinea. It was once placed in the now-defunct Brahman branch of Madang....
isolate
- Josephstaal (7)
- Kowan
- Rai Coast–Kalam
- Rai CoastRai Coast languagesThe Rai Coast languages are a family of languages in the Madang branch of the Trans–New Guinea languages phylum of New Guinea.Sidney Herbert Ray identified what was then known of the Rai Coast languages as a unit in 1919. They were linked with the Mabuso languages in 1951 by Arthur Capell in his...
family (31) - KalamKalam languagesThe Kalam languages are a small family of languages in the Madang branch of the Trans–New Guinea languages phylum of New Guinea.The languages are:They are famous for having perhaps the smallest numbers of lexical verbs of any languages in the world, with somewhere in the range of 100 to 120 verbs...
family (4; perhaps part of Rai Coast)
- Rai Coast
- Croisilles linkageLinkageLinkage generally means "the manner or style of being united", and can refer to:*Genetic linkage, the tendency of certain genes to be inherited together*Flux linkage, the total flux passing through a surface formed by a closed conducting loop...
- Dimir-Malas (2)
- Kaukombar (4)
- Kumil (5)
- Tibor-Omosa (6)
- AmaimonAmaimon languageAmaimon is a Papuan language spoken by 1,781 people in Madang Province, Papua New Guinea.-Writing system:...
isolate - Numugen-Mabuso
- NumugenNumugen languagesThe Numugen languages are a small family of closely related languages in the Madang branch of the Trans–New Guinea languages phylum of New Guinea.The languages are Bilakura, Parawen, Ukuriguma, Usan , Yaben, and Yarawata....
family (6) - MabusoMabuso languagesThe Mabuso languages are a small family of closely related languages in New Guinea. They were linked with the Rai Coast languages in 1951 by Arthur Capell in his Madang family, which Wurm included in his Trans–New Guinea phylum...
family (29)
- Numugen
- Southern Adelbert Range–Kowan
- Finisterre–Huon (62) [part of the original TNG proposal. Has verbs which are suppletiveSuppletionIn linguistics and etymology, suppletion is traditionally understood as the use of one word as the inflected form of another word when the two words are not cognate. For those learning a language, suppletive forms will be seen as "irregular" or even "highly irregular". The term "suppletion" implies...
per the person & number of the object.]- FinisterreFinisterre languagesThe Finisterre languages are a family within the original Trans–New Guinea proposal, and William Foley considers their TNG identity to be established...
family (41) - HuonHuon languagesThe Huon languages are a family within the original Trans–New Guinea proposal, and William Foley considers their TNG identity to be established...
family (21)
- Finisterre
- ? GoilalanGoilalan languagesThe Goilalan languages are a family placed in the Trans–New Guinea family by Wurm and tentatively retained there in the classification of Malcolm Ross . The languages,are clearly related, especially Biagai, Kunimaipa, and Weri, which might be considered divergent dialects....
family (6) [inclusion in TNG tentative]
- Southeast Papuan (Bird's Tail) ? [these families have not been demonstrated to be related to each other, but have in common ya for 'you[plural]' instead of proto-TNG *gi.
- KoiarianKoiarian languagesThe Koiarian languages are a small family of Trans–New Guinea languages spoken in the "Bird's Tail" of New Guinea...
family (7) - KwaleanKwalean languagesThe Kwalean languages are a small family of Trans–New Guinea languages spoken in the "Bird's Tail" of New Guinea. They are sometimes included in a speculative Southeast Papuan branch of Trans–New Guinea , but the Southeast Papuan families have not been shown to be any more closely...
family (3) - ManubaranManubaran languagesThe Manubaran languages are a small family of Trans–New Guinea languages spoken in the "Bird's Tail" of New Guinea...
family (2) - YarebanYareban languagesThe Yareban languages are a small family of Trans–New Guinea languages spoken in the "Bird's Tail" of New Guinea. They are sometimes included in a speculative Southeast Papuan branch of Trans–New Guinea , but the Southeast Papuan families have not been shown to be any more closely...
family (5) - MailuanMailuan languagesThe Mailuan languages are a small family of Trans–New Guinea languages spoken in the "Bird's Tail" of New Guinea. They are sometimes included in a speculative Southeast Papuan branch of Trans–New Guinea , but the Southeast Papuan families have not been shown to be any more closely...
family (6) - DaganDagan languagesThe Dagan languages are a small family of Trans–New Guinea languages spoken in the "Bird's Tail" of New Guinea, the easternmost Papuan languages on the mainland...
family (9)
- Koiarian
- Binanderean (16)
- Guhu-SamaneGuhu-Samane languageGuhu-Samane, also known as Bia, Mid-Waria, Muri, Paiawa, Tahari, is a divergent Trans–New Guinea language that was related to the Binanderean family in the classification of Malcolm Ross ....
isolate - Binandere family (15) [a recent expansion from the north]
- Guhu-Samane
Unclassified Wurmian languages
Although Ross based his classification on pronoun systems, many languages in New Guinea are too poorly documented for even this to work. Thus there are several isolates that were placed in TNG by Wurm but which cannot be addressed by Ross's classification. A few of them (Komyandaret, Samarokena, and maybe Kenati) have since been assigned to existing branches (or ex-branches) of TNG, while others (Massep, Momuna) continue to defy classification.- KenatiKenati languageKenati is a poorly documented Papuan language spoken by only about 950 people in Papua New Guinea. It is also known as Aziana, Ganati, Kenathi. Specifically, it is spoken in 3 villages located in the Eastern Highlands Province, Wonenara District of Papua New Guinea.Wurm placed it in his East...
(→ Kainantu?) - KomyandaretKomyandaret languageKomyandaret is a poorly documented Papuan language that has recently been shown to be one of the Ok languages. It is close enough to Tsaukambo that there is some mutual intelligibility.-References:*Hughes, Jock. 2009. "Upper Digul Survey"...
(→ OkOk languagesThe Ok languages are a family of a score of clearly related Trans–New Guinea languages spoken in a contiguous area of eastern Irian Jaya and western Papua New Guinea...
) - MassepMassep languageMassep is a poorly documented Papuan language spoken by under 50 people in a single village. Despite the small number of speakers, however, language use is vigorous. Donohue et al. conclude that it is definitely not a Kwerba language, as it had been classified by Wurm , and they did not notice...
isolate - MolofMolof languageMolof is a poorly documented Papuan language spoken by about 200 people. Wurm placed it as an independent branch of Trans–New Guinea, but Ross could not find enough evidence to classify it....
isolate - MomunaMomuna languagesThe Momuna languages, Momina and Momuna, also known as Somahai, are a family of two closely related Papuan languages. They were placed in the Central and South New Guinea branch of the Trans–New Guinea family by Wurm, but Malcolm Ross could not locate enough evidence to classify them....
family (2) - SamarokenaSamarokena languageSamarokena is a poorly documented Papuan language spoken in Indonesian Papua. Wurm linked it to the Kwerba languages, but Ross could not find enough evidence to classify it...
(→ Kwerba) - Tofamna isolate
- UskuUsku languageUsku, or Afra, is a nearly extinct and poorly documented Papuan language spoken by about 20 people, mostly adults, in Usku village, Papua, Indonesia. Wurm placed it as an independent branch of Trans–New Guinea, but Ross could not find enough evidence to classify it.-External links:*...
isolate
Reclassified Wurmian languages
Ross removed 95 languages from TNG. These are small families with no pronouns in common with TNG languages, but which are typologically similar, perhaps due to long periods of contact with TNG languages.- Border and Morwap (Elseng), as an independent BorderBorder 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...
family (15 languages) - IsirawaIsirawa languageIsirawa is a Papuan language spoken by about two thousand people on the north coast of Papua province, Indonesia. It's a local trade language, and use is vigorous. Stephen Wurm linked it to the Kwerba languages within the Trans–New Guinea family, and it does share about 20% of its vocabulary with...
(Saberi), as a language isolate (though classified as Kwerba by Donahue 2002) - Lakes Plain, as an independent Lakes PlainLakes Plain languages-Pronouns:The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto-Tariku are,The corresponding "I" and "thou" pronouns are proto–East Lake Plain *a, *do, Awera yai, nai , and Rasawa e-, de-. Saponi shares no pronouns with the Lakes Plain family; indeed its pronouns mamire "I, we" and ba "thou" are remenincent of...
family (19) - Mairasi, as an independent MairasiMairasi languagesThe Mairasi languages are a small independent family of Papuan languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross, that had been part of Stephen Wurm's Trans–New Guinea proposal.-Classification:* Mairasi family: Semimi, Mer, Mairasi, Northeastern Mairasi...
family (4) - Nimboran, as an independent NimboranNimboran languagesThe Nimboran languages are a small independent family of Papuan languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross, that had been part of Stephen Wurm's Trans–New Guinea proposal...
family (5) - Piawi, as an independent PiawiPiawi languagesThe Piawi languages are a small independent family of Papuan languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross, that had been part of Stephen Wurm's Trans–New Guinea proposal.-Classification:Piawi consists of only two languages:...
family (2) - Senagi, as an independent SenagiSenagi languagesThe Senagi languages are a small independent family of Papuan languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross, that had been part of Stephen Wurm's Trans–New Guinea proposal....
family (2) - Sentani (4 languages), within an East Bird's Head – Sentani family
- Tor and Kwerba, joined as a Tor–Kwerba family (17)
- Trans-Fly – Bulaka River is broken into five groups: three remaining in TNG (Kiwaian, Moraori, Tirio), plus the independent South-Central PapuanSouth-Central Papuan languages-Pronouns:The pronouns Ross reconstructs for the three families are,Proto–Morehead – Upper MaroProto-PahoturiProto–Bulaka River-References:...
and Eastern Trans-FlyEastern Trans-Fly languagesThe Eastern Trans-Fly languages are a small independent family of Papuan languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross, that constituted a branch of Stephen Wurm's 1970 Trans-Fly proposal, which he later incorporated into his 1975 expansion of the Trans–New Guinea family as part of a Trans-Fly –...
families (22 and 4 languages).
Ethnologue
Ethnologue 16 (2009) largely follows Ross, but excludes the tentative Kaure–Kapori and PauwasiPauwasi languages
The Pauwasi languages are a well established family of Papuan languages. Stephen Wurm classified them as a branch of the Trans–New Guinea phylum, and position which Malcolm Ross tentatively retains.* Pauwasi family...
branches as independent families. They also break up the Central and South New Guinea
Central and South New Guinea languages
The Central and South New Guinea languages are a proposed family of the Trans–New Guinea languages . They were part of Voorhoeve & McElhanon's original TNG proposal, but have been reduced in scope by half in the classification of Malcolm Ross...
within TNG, though they maintain both Southeast Papuan
Southeast Papuan languages
The Southeast Papuan or "Bird's Tail" languages are a geographic grouping of half a dozen small families of Papuan languages in the "Bird's Tail" of New Guinea: Koiarian, Kwalean, Manubaran, Yareban, Mailuan, and Dagan...
(including Goilalan
Goilalan languages
The Goilalan languages are a family placed in the Trans–New Guinea family by Wurm and tentatively retained there in the classification of Malcolm Ross . The languages,are clearly related, especially Biagai, Kunimaipa, and Weri, which might be considered divergent dialects....
) and West Trans–New Guinea
West Trans–New Guinea languages
The West Trans–New Guinea languages are a suggested linguistic linkage of Papuan languages, not well established as a group, proposed by Malcolm Ross in his 2005 classification of the Trans–New Guinea languages. Ross suspects they are an old dialect continuum, because they share numerous features...
as units.
Phonology
Proto-Trans–New Guinea is reconstructed with a typical simple Papuan inventory: five vowels, /i e a o u/, three phonations of stops at three places, /p t k, b d ɡ, m n ŋ/ (Andrew PawleyAndrew Pawley
Andrew Kenneth Pawley , MA, PhD , FRSNZ, FAHA, is Emeritus Professor at the School of Culture, History & Language of the College of Asia & the Pacific at the Australian National University...
reconstructs the voiced series as prenasalized /mb nd ŋɡ/), plus a palatal affricate /dʒ ~ ndʒ/, the fricative /s/, and the approximants /l j w/. Syllables are typically (C)V, with CVC possible at the ends of words. Many of the languages have word tone.
Pronouns
Ross reconstructs the following pronominal paradigm for Trans–New Guinea, with *a~*i ablaut for singular~non-singular:| I | *na | we | *ni |
| thou | *ga | you | *gi |
| s/he | *(y)a, *ua | they | *i |
There is a related but less commonly attested form for 'we', *nu, as well as a *ja for 'you', which Ross speculates may have been a polite form. In addition, there were dual
Dual (grammatical number)
Dual is a grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and plural. When a noun or pronoun appears in dual form, it is interpreted as referring to precisely two of the entities identified by the noun or pronoun...
suffixes *-li and *-t, and a plural suffix *-nV, (i.e. n plus a vowel) as well collective number
Collective number
In linguistics, singulative number and collective number are terms used when the grammatical number for multiple items is the unmarked form of a noun, and the noun is specially marked to indicate a single item...
suffixes *-pi- (dual) and *-m- (plural) which functioned as inclusive we
Clusivity
In linguistics, clusivity is a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called inclusive "we" and exclusive "we"...
when used in the first person. (Reflexes of the collective suffixes, however, are limited geographically to the central and eastern highlands, and so might not be as old as proto-Trans–New Guinea.)