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56-756: The first classification attempts linked Timor–Alor–Pantar to North Halmahera, as well as other members of the proposed West Papuan phylum. The two families are arguably the only linguistic groups that can be linked to the Papuan families of Melanesia , none of which have demonstrable relatives outside of Oceania. More recent proposals have considered Timor–Alor–Pantar to be part of the Trans–New Guinea phylum. However, Holton and Klamer (2018) classify Timor–Alor–Pantar as an independent language family, as they did not find convincing links with Trans–New Guinea. Usher & Schapper (2022) find them to be one of three branches of

112-415: A coherent language family. Timothy Usher, also somewhat tentatively, accepts Yawa and East Bird's Head, but not Sentani, as part of West Papuan itself, so the family can remain under that name. Holton and Klamer (2018) do not unequivocally accept the unity of West Papuan, but note that certain proposals linking "West Papuan" groups together may eventually turn out to be fruitful. Ger Reesink suggests that

168-518: A connection between WBH/NH and the Yawa languages appears to be relatively likely. The South Bird’s Head and Timor–Alor–Pantar families, while included in older formulations of the proposal, are no longer thought of as part of West Papuan. All of these languages show traces of old Austronesian influence. Much of the basic vocabulary in NH (~30%) can be linked with various Austronesian sources, suggesting

224-401: A family was a match, the family was considered a match, greatly increasing the likelihood of coincidental resemblances, and because the plural forms are related to the singular forms, a match of 1sg and 1pl, although satisfying Ross's requirement of two matches, is not actually two independent matches, again increasing the likelihood of spurious matches. In addition, Ross counted forms like *a as

280-913: A few thousand people, with only seven ( Melpa , Kuman , Enga , Huli , Western Dani , Makasae , and Ekari ) being spoken by more than 100,000. The most populous language outside of mainland New Guinea is Makasae of East Timor , with 100,000 speakers throughout the eastern part of the country. Enga is the most populous Trans-New Guinea language spoken in New Guinea , with more than 200,000 speakers. Golin , Sinasina , Mid Grand Valley Dani, Kamano , and Bunaq have between 50,000 and 100,000 speakers ( Galela of Halmahera , usually not classified as Trans-New Guinea, also has between 50,000 and 100,000 speakers.) All other Trans–New Guinea languages have fewer than 50,000 speakers. The greatest linguistic diversity in Ross's Trans–New Guinea proposal, and therefore perhaps

336-411: 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. Because the boundaries of Ross's proposal are based primarily on a single parameter, the pronouns, all internal structure remains tentative. Most TNG languages are spoken by only

392-623: A long period of contact. The languages of the Bird’s Head have undergone extensive contact with the Cenderawasih Bay languages , such as Biak . The term "West Papuan" has also been used in an areal sense, encompassing most of the non-Austronesian languages of Halmahera and Bird's Head. The German linguist Wilhelm Schmidt first linked the West Bird's Head and North Halmahera languages in 1900. In 1957 H.K.J. Cowan linked them to

448-557: A match to 2sg *ga, so that /ɡV, kV, ŋɡV, V/ all counted as matches to *ga. And although /n/ and /ɡ/ occur in Papuan pronouns at twice the level expected by their occurrence in pronouns elsewhere in the world, they do not correlate with each other as they would if they reflected a language family. That is, it is argued that Ross's pronouns do not support the validity of Trans–New Guinea, and do not reveal which families might belong to it. Ross also included in his proposal several better-attested families for non-pronominal evidence, despite

504-566: 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, because these are extremely resistant to borrowing. For example,

560-466: A proposed language family of about two dozen non-Austronesian languages of the Bird's Head Peninsula (Vogelkop or Doberai Peninsula) of far western New Guinea , the island of Halmahera and its vicinity, spoken by about 220,000 people in all. It is not established if they constitute a proper linguistic family or an areal network of genetically unrelated families. The best known "West Papuan" language

616-441: A somewhat different inventory: *l and *r do not occur initially in native words. Usher reconstructs the vowels as *i *u [*e] [*o] *a *ɒ (where it's not clear that *e, *o were phonemically distinct) and the diphthong *ai. Heston reconstructs the vowels *a, *e, *i, *o, *u, and *ə. Heston also proposes that Proto–Timor–Alor–Pantar had penultimate stress when the penultimate and final syllables were both light, and final stress when

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672-470: A tentative proposal, based on the forms of their pronouns, that the West Papuan languages form one of three branches of an extended West Papuan family that also includes the Yawa languages , and a newly proposed East Bird's Head – Sentani family as a third branch. Søren Wichmann (2013) considers West Bird's Head , Abun , and Maybrat to form a unified family, but does not accept West Papuan as

728-541: Is Ternate (50,000 native speakers) of the island of the same name, which is a regional lingua franca . Along with neighboring Tidore , they were the languages of the rival medieval Ternate and Tidore sultanates, famous for their role in the spice trade . The North Halmahera (NH) languages , spoken in the Maluku Islands , share some structural similarities with certain Papuan families in Melanesia , which

784-644: 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, Sentani, and the seven 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 does not use specialized terms for different levels of classification as Donald Laycock and Stephen Wurm did. In

840-516: Is also present in the isolates Abun , Mpur , and Maibrat . The South Bird's Head family generally has SOV word order, although SVO word order is also permitted in transitive clauses. The Timor-Alor-Pantar languages also have verb-final word order. All Papuan languages of East Nusantara have five or more vowels. Abun and Mpur are fully tonal languages, with Mpur having 4 lexical tones, and Abun having 3 lexical tones. Meyah and Sougb are pitch-accent languages . All other languages of

896-576: Is an extensive family of Papuan languages spoken on the island of New Guinea and neighboring islands, a region corresponding to the country Papua New Guinea as well as parts of Indonesia . Trans–New Guinea is perhaps the third-largest language family in the world by number of languages. The core of the family is considered to be established, but its boundaries and overall membership are uncertain. The languages are spoken by around 3 million people. There have been several main proposals as to its internal classification. Although Papuan languages for

952-515: Is essentially restricted to comparing pronouns . 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. However, if any language in

1008-577: Is generally accepted. In 1957 HKL Cowan linked the Timor languages to the West Papuan family. However, when Stephen Wurm expanded Trans–New Guinea in 1975, he decided Timor–Alor–Pantar belonged there, and he linked it to the South Bird's Head languages in a South Bird's Head – Timor–Alor–Pantar branch of that phylum. Wurm noted similarities with West Papuan, a different family, but suggested this

1064-460: Is needed): Groups and isolates sometimes classified as Trans-New Guinea, but rejected by Pawley and Hammarström (2018) as Trans-New Guinea: Glottolog , of which Hammarström is one of the editors, accepts 10 groups as part of a Nuclear Trans–New Guinea family, based on Foley (2000), Pawley (2005) and Edgar Suter (1997). Matthew Dryer used lexicostatistics to evaluate Pawley and Hammarström (2018), based on 40-word Swadesh list data from

1120-567: 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 A. Foley rejected Wurm's and even some of Voorhoeve's results, and he broke much of TNG into its constituent parts: several dozen small but clearly valid families, plus

1176-559: Is the most likely hypothesis, though they prefer to leave it unclassified for now. Usher (2020) finds that the Timor–Alor–Pantar fit within the West Bomberai languages, as a third branch of that family, and has begun to reconstruct the West Bomberai protolanguage as the ancestor of Timor–Alor–Pantar, as well as proto–Timor–Alor–Pantar itself. According to Dryer (2022), based on a preliminary quantitative analysis of data from

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1232-534: The ASJP database, Timor–Alor–Pantar is likely to be a subgroup of Trans–New Guinea. The Timor–Alor–Pantar languages have been in considerable contact with these Austronesian languages: Holton & Klamer (2018) reconstruct the Proto–Timor–Alor–Pantar consonant inventory as follows: Proto– Alor–Pantar developed a voiceless uvular stop *q but lost *f and some of the liquids. Usher (2020) reconstructs

1288-438: The ASJP database. Dryer concludes that the following language families are likely to be Trans–New Guinea. They are listed in order of highest to lowest score, i.e. starting with the most likely. Dryer does not consider that evidence based solely on pronouns and the word for 'louse' is sufficient to conclude that a family is a member of Trans-New Guinea. This is because they are more likely to be an areal form ( Wanderwort ) in

1344-824: The Bird's Head Peninsula are non-tonal. Of all the Papuan languages spoken in the Bird's Head Peninsula, Abun has the largest consonant inventory with 20 consonants, while neighboring Maybrat has the smallest with 11 consonants. Large consonant inventories similar to that of Abun are also found in the North Halmahera languages , such as Tobelo, Tidore, and Sahu. The following is a basic vocabulary table of two West Bird's Head languages ( WBH ) ( Moi and Tehit ) and three language isolates ( Mpur , Abun , Maibrat ), quoted by Holton & Klamer (2018) from Miedema & Reesink (2004: 34) and (Reesink 2005: 202); these show diverse non-cognate forms among Papuan languages of

1400-403: The Bird's Head Peninsula : Below are lexical lookalikes between North Halmahera languages ( NH ) ( Galela and Pagu ) and West Bird's Head languages ( WBH ) ( Moi and Tehit ) from Voorhoeve (1988: 194), as quoted by Holton & Klamer (2018): Trans%E2%80%93New Guinea Irian Jaya, W to E PNG highlands, W to E Southern PNG, E to W Trans–New Guinea ( TNG )

1456-711: The West Bomberai family within Trans–New Guinea, with regular sound correspondences. The languages are demonstrably related, with the Alor–Pantar languages forming a distinct subgroup. The following conservative classification is from Ross (2005), Schapper et al. (2012), and Holton et al. (2012). The list given above is conservative, without any undemonstrated groups. Bunak and the Alor–Pantar languages are sometimes grouped together as "West Timor", while Bunak and East Timor have been grouped as "Timor–Kisar". Although

1512-627: The proto-language 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 malarial lowlands, and not at all into areas such as the Sepik River valley where the people already had yam agriculture, which thus supported high population densities. Ross suggests that TNG may have arrived at its western limit,

1568-786: The Alor–Pantar languages are clearly related, as are the Timor–Kisar languages and the two groups to each other, until comparative work is done on all languages simultaneously it will not be clear whether Bunak is closer to East Timor or to Alor–Pantar, or whether Alor–Pantar is a valid node. Kaiping and Klamer (2019), though, found Bunak to be the most divergent Timor-Alor-Pantar language, splitting off before East Timor and Alor-Pantar did. Languages in Central and East Alor are generally more agglutinative than languages in Pantar and Timor , which are more isolating. Despite their geographic proximity,

1624-465: The Papuan languages of Timor are not closely related, and demonstration of a relationship between any of them is difficult, apart from the clearly related Alor–Pantar languages on the islands neighboring Timor. Arthur Capell first proposed that the Timor languages were a family in 1941, and Watuseke & Anceaux did the same for Timor–Alor–Pantar in 1973. Both units have been broken up in more recent classifications, though their ultimate relationship

1680-471: The Vogelkop Peninsula to each other, with the relationship perhaps better considered areal (i.e., a Sprachbund ). In spite of the shared morpho-syntactic features, many of these languages exhibit little in the way of lexical resemblance. It is not clear if East Bird’s Head ( Mantion–Meyah and Hatam–Mansim ), Maybrat , Mpur , and Abun are related to any of the remaining groups. However,

1736-588: The West Papuan family should be considered an areal network of unrelated linguistic families, noting the lack of adequate evidence for genetic relatedness . The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto-West Papuan are, These are shared by the "core" West Papuan families. Hattam reflects only "I" and "thou", and Amberbaken only "thou", "you", and "she". Ross's Extended West Papuan languages have forms in *d for "I" and *m for "we". (Most Yawa forms of "we" have m, such as imama, but they are too diverse for an easy reconstruction.) These are found in all branches of

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1792-411: The case of the word for 'louse' or to be highly conservative in the case of pronouns. Dryer states that similarities solely in pronouns mean that the families are related but that the relationship is so distant as to be "undetectable". Dryer notes that this is a preliminary quantitative analysis and only gives a rough prediction of the families that may or may not belong within Trans–New Guinea, and that

1848-1355: The classification is based on a single feature – shared pronouns, especially 1sg and 2sg – and thus is subject to false positives as well as to missing branches that have undergone significant sound changes, since he does not have the data to establish regular sound correspondences. 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 that 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, whereas others (Massep, Momuna) continue to defy classification. Ross removed 95 languages from TNG. These are small families with no pronouns in common with TNG languages, but that are typologically similar, perhaps due to long periods of contact with TNG languages. Andrew Pawley and Harald Hammarström (2018) accept 35 subgroups as members of Trans-New Guinea. Groups and isolates considered by Pawley and Hammarström (2018) as having weaker or disputed claims to membership in Trans-New Guinea (some of which they suggest may ultimately turn out to be Trans-New Guinea, but further evidence

1904-500: The details are as yet unclear. The families from the Ross and Glottolog classifications that are not included are Kaure, Pauwasi, Engan, Chimbu–Wahgi, Madang, Eleman, Kiwaian, Binanderean, Goilalan, and the several Papuan Gulf families. Usher only includes families that have a regular reflex of the 2sg pronoun, so there may be additional TNG families that have changed their pronouns. A number of colexification patterns (called 'semantic conflations' by Donald Laycock ), particularly in

1960-546: 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 pronouns , 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 that had typical TNG pronouns were excluded because they did not resemble other TNG families in their grammatical structure. Because grammatical typology

2016-410: The fact that German words gut "good" and besser "better" resemble their English counterparts would be stronger evidence that German is related to English than the mere lexical correspondence between German rot and English red for the color. 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

2072-513: The family except for the Amberbaken isolate. Ross's West Papuan proper is distinguished from Yawa and EBH-Sentani in having forms like na or ni for the second-person singular ("thou") pronoun . Word order is SVO in the West Bird's Head family and in western North Halmahera languages ( Ternate , Tidore , West Makian , and Sahu ; due to Austronesian influence). SVO word order

2128-524: The final syllable was heavy. Proto-Timor–Alor–Pantar pronouns as reconstructed by Ross (2005) are: Usher (2020) reconstructs the free and bound forms of the pronouns as: These have regular paradigms, with suffixes *-i and *-u on the bound forms, so for example 1sg is free *an, direct object and inalienable possessor *na-, locative, ergative and alienable possessor *nai, and dative *nau. Ross (2005) suggest these pronouns reflect proto- Trans–New Guinea 1st person *na, *ni and 2nd person *ga, *gi, and possibly

2184-597: 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

2240-564: The following families as less likely to be Trans–New Guinea. They have few basic vocabulary items in common with Trans–New Guinea: Timothy Usher and Edgar Suter, in consultation with Papuan language researchers such as William Croft , Matthew Dryer , John Lynch , Andrew Pawley , and Malcolm Ross , have reconstructed low-level constituents of Trans–New Guinea to verify, through the establishment of regular sound changes, which purported members truly belong to it, and to determine their subclassification. In many cases Usher has created new names for

2296-734: The following proto-Timor-Alor-Pantar, proto-Alor-Pantar, and proto-Timor forms, demonstrating the relatedness of the Timor and Alor-Pantar languages . Some lexical reconstructions by Usher (2020) are: Pawley and Hammarström (2018) list the following probable reflexes of Proto-Timor-Alor-Pantar (pTAP) and proto-Alor-Pantar (pAP; reconstructions drawn from Holton and Klamer 2018) from proto-Trans-New Guinea (pTNG; reconstructions from Pawley and Hammarström 2018). However, Holton and Robinson (2014) classify Timor-Alor-Pantar as an independent language family, rather than as part of Trans-New Guinea. West Papuan languages The West Papuan languages are

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2352-602: 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 he said that it

2408-562: The islands near Timor , perhaps four to 4.5 thousand years ago, before the expansion of Austronesian into this area. Roger Blench associates the spread of Trans–New Guinea languages with the domestication of the banana . Wurm et al. identify the subdivisions in their Papuan classification as families (on the order of relatedness of the Germanic languages ), stocks (on the order of the Indo-European languages ), and phyla (on

2464-473: 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

2520-524: The lexical similarities it is based on may be due to loanwords, areal forms ( Wanderwörter ) and so forth. (Pawley and Hammarström (2018) do not classify Bayono–Awbono and Damal as Trans–New Guinea.) Dryer lists the following families as "borderline". They have a somewhat higher basic lexical similarity with Trans–New Guinea than with non-Trans–New Guinea families: (Pawley and Hammarström (2018) do not classify South Bird's Head , Timor–Alor–Pantar or Teberan as Trans–New Guinea.) Dryer lists

2576-467: The list given here, the uncontroversial families that are accepted by Foley and other Papuanists and that 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 isolate Porome . Ross did not have sufficient evidence to classify all Papuan groups. In addition,

2632-474: 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 Papuan Peninsula of Papua New Guinea (the "bird's tail") have fewer and more widely extended branches of TNG, and were therefore likely settled by TNG speakers after

2688-444: The member families to reflect their geographic location. Much of Usher's classification is accepted by Glottolog , though under different names. As of 2024, his classification is as follows, including correspondences to the names in earlier classifications. He expects to expand the membership of the family as reconstruction proceeds. These branches may cluster together (the southwestern branches, for example, may group together), but

2744-574: The most part are poorly documented, 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 precursor of the Trans–New Guinea family was Stephen Wurm 's 1960 proposal of an East New Guinea Highlands family. Although broken up by Malcolm Ross in 2005, it united different branches of what became TNG for

2800-506: The non-Austronesian languages of Timor as well. Stephen Wurm believed that although traces of West Papuan languages were to be found in the languages of Timor, as well as those of Aru and Great Andaman , this was due to a substratum and that these languages should be classified as Trans–New Guinea , Austronesian , and Andamanese , respectively. Indeed, most of the languages of East Nusa Tenggara and Maluku appear to have some non-Austronesian influence. In 2005, Malcolm Ross made

2856-531: 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 or below is called an isolate in this scheme. ('Family-level' groups are listed in boldface ) As of 2003, William A. Foley accepted the core of TNG: "The fact, for example, that a great swath of languages in New Guinea from the Huon Peninsula to

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2912-416: The pTNG dual/inclusive *-pi-. The objection has been raised that this requires positing a "flip-flop" in which proto-TNG second-person pronouns correspond to proto-TAP third-person pronouns. Usher however establishes that proto–West Bomberai initial *k was lost from proto–Timor–Alor–Pantar (for example, proto-WB *kina 'eye', *kira 'water' and *kena[t] 'see' correspond to proto-TAP *ina, *ira and *ena), and that

2968-425: The proto–West Bomberai pronouns 2sg *ka and 2pl *ki, inherited from proto–Trans–New Guinea, correspond regularly to proto–Timor–Alor–Pantar *a and *i, while the proto–Timor–Alor–Pantar third-person pronouns *ga and *gi do not correspond to the rest of West Bomberai (or Trans–New Guinea) and are only coincidentally similar to the reconstructed proto-TNG second-person pronouns. Schapper et al. (2017: 141-143) reconstruct

3024-508: Was due to substratum influence. Ross (2005) classifies Timor–Alor–Pantar with the West Bomberai languages , the two groups forming a branch within West Trans–New Guinea . Based on a careful examination of new lexical data, Holton & Robinson (2014) find little evidence to support a connection between TAP and TNG. However, Holton & Robinson (2017) concedes that a relationship with Trans-New Guinea and West Bomberai in particular

3080-417: Was noted as far back as 1900. In addition, there is a number of lexical and morphemic correspondences between NH and West Bird’s Head (WBH) . These are not easily explainable as chance resemblance. The question then is whether they are due to language contact (i.e., borrowing) or to common descent (i.e., genealogical inheritance). On the other hand, there is little evidence linking the individual families of

3136-788: 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 postulated additional links to, among others,

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