North New Guinea languages

Last updated
North New Guinea
Geographic
distribution
Northern New Guinea
Linguistic classification Austronesian
Subdivisions
Glottolog nort3206

The North New Guinea languages of Papua New Guinea and Indonesia form a possible linkage of Western Oceanic languages. They have been in heavy contact with Papuan languages.

Classification

According to Lynch, Ross, & Crowley (2002), the structure of the family is as follows:

The center of dispersal was evidently near the Vitiaz Strait between New Britain and the New Guinea mainland.

The inclusion of Sarmi and Jayapura Bay is uncertain, and it may constitute a separate branch of Western Oceanic.

Related Research Articles

Jayapura Capital and largest city of Papua, Indonesia

Jayapura is the capital and largest city of the Indonesian province of Papua. It is situated on the northern coast of New Guinea island and covers an area of 940.0 km2 (362.9 sq mi). The city borders the Pacific Ocean and Yos Sudarso Bay to the north, the sovereign state of Papua New Guinea to the east, Keerom Regency to the south, and Jayapura Regency to the west.

Oceanic languages Subgroup of the Austronesian language family

The approximately 450 Oceanic languages are a branch of the Austronesian languages. The area occupied by speakers of these languages includes Polynesia, as well as much of Melanesia and Micronesia. Though covering a vast area, Oceanic languages are spoken by only two million people. The largest individual Oceanic languages are Eastern Fijian with over 600,000 speakers, and Samoan with an estimated 400,000 speakers. The Gilbertese (Kiribati), Tongan, Tahitian, Māori, Western Fijian and Tolai languages each have over 100,000 speakers. The common ancestor which is reconstructed for this group of languages is called Proto-Oceanic.

Western Oceanic languages Linkage of Oceanic languages

The Western Oceanic languages is a linkage of Oceanic languages, proposed and studied by Ross (1988).

The Ngero–Vitiaz languages form a linkage of Austronesian languages in northern Papua New Guinea. They are spoken, from west to east, in Madang Province, Morobe Province, and New Britain.

Papuan Tip languages Branch of the Western Oceanic languages

The Papuan Tip languages are a branch of the Western Oceanic languages consisting of 60 languages.

The Sarmi-Jayapura Bay languages consist of half a dozen languages spoken on the northern coast of Papua province of Indonesia:

The Schouten languages are a linkage of Austronesian languages in northern Papua New Guinea. They are in contact with various North Papuan languages, particularly the Skou and some Torricelli languages.

The Huon Gulf languages are Western Oceanic languages spoken primarily in Morobe Province of Papua New Guinea. They may form a group of the North New Guinea languages, perhaps within the Ngero–Vitiaz branch of that family.

Sulka is a language isolate of New Britain, Papua New Guinea. In 1991, there were 2,500 speakers in eastern Pomio District, East New Britain Province. Villages include Guma in East Pomio Rural LLG. With such a low population of speakers, this language is considered to be endangered. Sulka speakers had originally migrated to East New Britain from New Ireland.

Southern Oceanic languages Subgroup of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian language family

The Southern Oceanic languages are a linkage of Oceanic languages spoken in Vanuatu and New Caledonia. It was proposed by Lynch, Ross, and Crowley in 2002 and supported by later studies. They consider it to be a linkage rather than a language group with a clearly defined internal nested structure.

Western Pantar language Papuan language spoken in parts of Indonesia

Western Pantar, sometimes referred to by the name of one of its dialects, Lamma, is a Papuan language spoken in the western part of Pantar island in the Alor archipelago of Indonesia. Western Pantar is spoken widely in the region by about 10,000 speakers. Although speakers often use Malay in political, religious, and educational contexts, Western Pantar remains the first language of children of the region, and is acquired to some extent by immigrants.

Arop-Lokep is an Oceanic language spoken by 3,015 people on four islands in the Siassi chain in the Vitiaz Strait in Papua New Guinea.

Malcolm David Ross is an Australian linguist. He is the emeritus professor of linguistics at the Australian National University.

Greater Binanderean languages

The Greater Binanderean or Guhu-Oro languages are a language family spoken along the northeast coast of the Papuan Peninsula – the "Bird's Tail" of New Guinea – and appear to be a recent expansion from the north. They were classified as a branch of the Trans–New Guinea languages by Stephen Wurm (1975) and Malcolm Ross (2005), but removed by Timothy Usher (2020). The Binandere family proper is transparently valid; Ross connected it to the Guhu-Semane isolate based on pronominal evidence, and this has been confirmed by Smallhorn (2011). Proto-Binanderean has been reconstructed in Smallhorn (2011).

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 that have not been traced to a single ancestor using comparative historical linguistics. The internal divisions of the languages are also unclear. William A. Foley considers the TNG identity of the Irian Highlands languages at least to be established.

The family of Northwest Solomonic languages is a branch of the Oceanic languages. It includes the Austronesian languages of Bougainville and Buka in Papua New Guinea, and of Choiseul, New Georgia, and Santa Isabel in Solomon Islands.

Sarmi Regency Regency in Papua, Indonesia

Sarmi Regency is one of the regencies (kabupaten) in Papua Province of Indonesia. It was formed from the western districts then within Jayapura Regency with effect from 12 November 2002. It covers an area of 18,034.0 km2, and had a population of 32,971 at the 2010 Census and 41,515 at the 2020 Census. The regency's administrative centre is at the town of Sarmi.

Podena (Fedan) is one of the Austronesian Sarmi languages spoken on the coast of Jayapura Bay and on a nearby island in the Papua province of Indonesia.

Maffin Bay, known as Teluk Maffin in Indonesian, is a small bay in the Pacific Ocean on the Northern coast of New Guinea. It is in Papua, Indonesia, below the Foja Mountains near Wakde, about 125 miles west of Jayapura. Maffin Bay was a landing site in the New Guinea campaign of World War II, and was the location of the Battle of Lone Tree Hill. After this battle, Maffin Bay was held by Task Force Tornado and defended it against Japanese attacks through the use of aggressive patrolling.

Sarmi is a coastal town and administrative center of Sarmi Regency in province of Papua in Indonesia.

References