Trans-New Guinea languages

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Categories: Proposed language families | Papua New Guinea | Trans-New Guinea languages | Papuan languages | Languages of Papua New Guinea

Trans-New Guinea (TNG) is a hypothetical family of languages spoken by about 2 300 000 people on New Guinea, Timor, and neighboring islands. With over 500 languages, the family is one of the largest in the world. Most of these languages are quite small, with only four (Melpa, Enga, Western Dani, and Ekari) being spoken by more than 100 000 people; the most populous language in Timor is Makasai, with 70 000. The name 'Trans-New Guinea' means "Across New Guinea", so called because its languages are spoken in both Papua New Guinea and Indonesian Papua.

Although Papuan languages are poorly known, several of the branches of Trans-New Guinea have been recognized for some time. The Eleman languages 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 linguist who proposed the Trans-New Guinea hypothesis, Stephen Würm, developed it as part of an initial attempt in 1975-1982 to classify the Papuan languages on often scanty data, and he does not expect it to stand up well to scrutiny. Many of the features he used to identify the Trans-New Guinea languages as a family, such as characteristic personal pronouns, may turn out to be areal features. Several Papuan languages have, for example, shown themselves to be adept at borrowing pronouns.

Würm identifies the subdivisions of his Papuan classification as families (on the order of the Germanic languages), stocks (on the order of the Indo-European languages), and phyla (on the order of the Nostratic hypothesis). Trans-New Guinea is a phylum in this terminology. A language that is not related to any other at a family level will be called an isolate in this scheme.

The reader should note that few liguistic clades in New Guinea above the 'family' level are demonstrably valid. Perhaps the most impressive is the East New Guinea Highlands stock, with 38 languages and a quarter of the population of Papua New Guinea. The Eleman, Marind, and Rai Coast stocks are also widely accepted.

The classification below follows Würm, and includes some later modifications to his initial proposal.

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Classification

Trans-New Guinea phylum

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See also

Papuan languages

de:Trans-Neuguinea-Sprachen es:Lenguas trans nueva guinea