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41-545: Melpa ( Medlpa , Mbowamb ) 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 . Melpa is a Pandanus language used during karuka harvest. Melpa has a voiceless velar lateral fricative , written as a double-barred el (Ⱡ, ⱡ). Melpa is notable for its binary counting system. A dictionary of Melpa has been compiled by Stewart, Strathern and Trantow (2011). Temboka,

82-613: A single landmass for most of their human history, having been separated by the Torres Strait only 8000 years ago, and that a deep reconstruction would likely include languages from both. However, Dixon later abandoned his proto-Australian proposal, and Foley's ideas need to be re-evaluated in light of recent research. Wurm also suggested the Sepik–Ramu languages have similarities with the Australian languages, but believed this may be due to

123-821: A composite of Usher's and Ross' classifications, Palmer et al. do not address the more tentative families that Usher proposes, such as Northwest New Guinea . The coherence of the South Bird's Head , East Bird's Head , Pauwasi , Kwomtari , and Central Solomons families are uncertain, and hence are marked below as "tentative." Papuan independent language families (43 families) Papuan isolates and unclassified languages (37 total) Glottolog 4.0 (2019), based partly on Usher, recognizes 70 independent families and 55 isolates. The following families are identified by Timothy Usher and Edgar Suter in their NewGuineaWorld project: In addition, poorly attested Karami remains unclassified. Extinct Tambora and

164-569: A dialect of Melpa, is the native language of the Ganiga tribe, who featured prominently in the Highlands Trilogy of documentaries by Robin Anderson and Bob Connolly ( First Contact , Joe Leahy's Neighbours , and Black Harvest ). The documentary Ongka's Big Moka also has Melpa dialogue. Papuan languages New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse region in the world. Besides

205-406: A language, they are short and utilise a reduced set of the language's phonemic inventory . Both phenomena greatly increase the possibility of chance resemblances, especially when they are not confirmed by lexical similarities. Sorted by location north Irian : Sandaun Province : Sepik River : Bismarck Archipelago : Former isolates classified by Ross: Languages reassigned to

246-514: A number of instances". However, he considered this not evidence of a connection between (Great) Andamanese and Trans–New Guinea, but of a substratum from an earlier migration to New Guinea from the west. Greenberg also suggested a connection to the Tasmanian languages . However, the Tasmanian peoples were isolated for perhaps 10,000 years, their disappearance wiped out their languages before much

287-587: A single ancestral language... when a language is termed 'Papuan', this claims nothing more than that a language is not Austronesian. Most Papuan languages are spoken by hundreds to thousands of people; the most populous are found in the New Guinea Highlands , where a few exceed a hundred thousand. These include Western Dani (180,000 in 1993) and Ekari (100,000 reported 1985) in the western (Indonesian) highlands, and Enga (230,000 in 2000), Huli (150,000 reported 2011), and Melpa (130,000 reported 1991) in

328-545: A substratum effect, but nevertheless believed that the Australian languages represent a linguistic group that existed in New Guinea before the arrival of the Papuan languages (which he believed arrived in at least two different groups). The West Papuan , Lower Mamberamo , and most Torricelli languages are all left-headed , as well as the languages of New Britain and New Ireland . These languages all have SVO word order , with

369-419: Is pronounced as fricative [x] between low and back vowels. /t/ is pronounced as [r] intervocalically. /ts/ may also be realised as [s]. All final vowels are devoiced. Alveolar stops /t, ⁿd/ may be realised as retroflex [ʈ, ᶯɖ]. The Enga orthography includes 21 different letters. Enga nouns co-occur with modifiers dóko and méndé as the and a, some, or else , which play a role in the noun class system of

410-669: Is second over all after Papuan Malay . An Enga-based pidgin is used by speakers of Arafundi languages . There are currently over 150,000 Enga people occupying the mountainous region ranging from Mount Hagen and westward to Porgera . Enga people are traditionally sedentary gardeners who grow sweet potatoes as their staple crop , and who keep pigs and fowls. Coffee and pyrethrum are also grown as cash crops in Enga culture. Pigs, pearls, shells, axes, and plumes are items of wealth and signify social occasions when exchanged or circulated. Enga clans have boundaries defining their homesteads across

451-414: Is the conjunctive suffix -pi meaning 'and' or 'even', two different suffixes -le meaning 'rather' or -yalé 'like' to indicate similarity, two different suffixes -mba 'very' or an argumentative -mba to indicate emphasis or contrast. These two forms of -mba differ in meaning as well as tone. When it is used in a argumentative sense it is said with a higher tone than previous syllables versus when it

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492-551: Is used to emphasize. Although it includes conjunctive suffixes, Enga does not actually include any conjunction words such as 'and' other than pánde 'or'. Instead those conjunctive suffixes are used to combine the noun or noun phrase with all the noun phrases and then typically followed by the determiner. Enga pronouns stand out morphosyntactically but can vary from dialects: These pronouns are similar to animates in that determiners may occur in agentive, and possessive cases, but not used instrumentally or locative. Enga verbs play

533-739: The Alor archipelago to the west. The westernmost language, Tambora in Sumbawa , is extinct. One Papuan language, Meriam , is spoken within the national borders of Australia , in the eastern Torres Strait . Several languages of Flores , Sumba , and other islands of eastern Indonesia are classified as Austronesian but have large numbers of non-Austronesian words in their basic vocabulary and non-Austronesian grammatical features. It has been suggested that these may have originally been non-Austronesian languages that have borrowed nearly all of their vocabulary from neighboring Austronesian languages, but no connection with

574-880: The Austronesian family : Unclassified due to lack of data: Unaccounted for: Søren Wichmann (2013) accepts the following 109 groups as coherent Papuan families, based on computational analyses performed by the Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) combined with Harald Hammarström 's (2012) classification. Some of the groups could turn out to be related to each other, but Wichmann (2013) lists them as separate groups pending further research. 9 families have been broken up into separate groups in Wichmann's (2013) classification, which are: An automated computational analysis ( ASJP 4) by Müller, Velupillai, Wichmann et al. (2013) found lexical similarities among

615-576: The East Papuan languages have not been addressed, except to identify Yele as an Austronesian language. Joseph Greenberg proposed an Indo-Pacific phylum containing the (Northern) Andamanese languages , all Papuan languages, and the Tasmanian languages , but not the Australian Aboriginal languages . Very few linguists accept his grouping. It is distinct from the Trans–New Guinea phylum of

656-475: The Takia language has. The Reef Islands – Santa Cruz languages of Wurm's East Papuan phylum were a potential 24th family, but subsequent work has shown them to be highly divergent Austronesian languages as well. Note that while this classification may be more reliable than past attempts, it is based on a single parameter, pronouns, and therefore must remain tentative. Although pronouns are conservative elements in

697-514: The Australian languages, a later migration bringing the West Papuan, Torricelli and the East Papuan languages and a third wave bringing the most recent pre-Austronesian migration, the Trans–New Guinea family. Two of Wurm's isolates have since been linked as the and since Wurm's time another isolate and two languages belonging to a new family have been discovered, Foley summarized the state of

738-663: The Austronesian languages, there arguably are some 800 languages divided into perhaps sixty small language families, with unclear relationships to each other or to any other languages, plus many language isolates . The majority of the Papuan languages are spoken on the island of New Guinea, with a number spoken in the Bismarck Archipelago , Bougainville Island and the Solomon Islands to the east, and in Halmahera , Timor and

779-598: The Papuan languages of Timor has been found. In general, the Central–Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages are marked by a significant historical Papuan influence, lexically, grammatically, and phonologically, and this is responsible for much of the diversity of the Austronesian language family. The "Papuan languages" are a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply a genetic relationship . The concept of Papuan (non-Austronesian) speaking Melanesians as distinct from Austronesian -speaking Melanesians

820-567: The Papuan region is the Trans–New Guinea phylum , consisting of the majority of Papuan languages and running mainly along the highlands of New Guinea. The various high-level families may represent distinct migrations into New Guinea, presumably from the west. Since perhaps only a quarter of Papuan languages have been studied in detail, linguists' understanding of the relationships between them will continue to be revised. Statistical analyses designed to pick up signals too faint to be detected by

861-407: The agentive or possessive cases, but not used instrumentally or locative. Body parts are in the animate class and can include words like kíngi (arm), pungí (liver), and yanúngí (skin, body). These differ from the previous classes in which they may have a determiner occur either as the instrumental or locative, but not in the agentive or possessive cases. Location nouns are used to determine

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902-464: The chart below it shows the case distribution and the noun classes in relation to one another. dóko or méndé (pronoun) (body part) (artifacts) Animates can occur in different subclasses such as proper names. Some examples of animates can include takánge (father), endángi (mother), Aluá (a man's name), Pasóne (a woman's name), or mená (pig). All of which would include a determiner being either demonstrative or indefinite and can be with

943-510: The classifications below. Joseph Greenberg proposed that the Andamanese languages (or at least the Great Andamanese languages ) off the coast of Burma are related to the Papuan or West Papuan languages. Stephen Wurm stated that the lexical similarities between Great Andamanese and the West Papuan and Timor–Alor families "are quite striking and amount to virtual formal identity [...] in

984-440: The comparative method, though of disputed validity, suggest five major Papuan stocks (roughly Trans–New Guinea , West , North , East , and South Papuan languages); long-range comparison has also suggested connections between selected languages, but again the methodology is not orthodox in historical linguistics. The Great Andamanese languages may be related to some western Papuan languages, but are not themselves covered by

1025-623: The eastern (PNG) highlands. To the west of New Guinea, the largest languages are Makasae in East Timor (100,000 in 2010) and Galela in Halmahera (80,000 reported 1990). To the east, Terei (27,000 reported 2003) and Naasioi (20,000 reported 2007) are spoken on Bougainville. Although there has been relatively little study of these languages compared with the Austronesian family, there have been three preliminary attempts at large-scale genealogical classification, by Joseph Greenberg , Stephen Wurm , and Malcolm Ross . The largest family posited for

1066-679: The exception of the language isolate Kuot , which has VSO word order . All other Papuan languages are right-headed . Tonal Papuan languages include the Sko , Lepki , Kaure , Kembra , Lakes Plain , and Keuw languages. Enga language Enga is a language of the East New Guinea Highlands spoken by a quarter-million people in Enga Province , Papua New Guinea . It has the largest number of speakers of any Trans–New Guinea language, as well as any native language in New Guinea, and

1107-402: The families that appear when comparing pronouns may be due to pronoun borrowing rather than to genealogical relatedness. However, Ross argues that Papuan languages have closed-class pronoun systems, which are resistant to borrowing, and in any case that the massive number of languages with similar pronouns in a family like Trans–New Guinea preclude borrowing as an explanation. Also, he shows that

1148-466: The following language groups. Note that some of these automatically generated groupings are due to chance resemblances. Bill Palmer et al. (2018) propose 43 independent families and 37 language isolates in the Papuasphere, comprising a total of 862 languages. A total of 80 independent groups are recognized. While Pawley & Hammarström 's internal classification of Trans-New Guinea largely resembles

1189-404: The influence of contact and bilingualism . Similarly, several groups that do have substantial basic vocabulary in common with Trans–New Guinea languages are excluded from the phylum because they do not resemble it grammatically. Wurm believed the Papuan languages arrived in several waves of migration with some of the earlier languages (perhaps including the Sepik–Ramu languages ) being related to

1230-617: The language. Akáli man dóko the epe-ly-á-mo. come- PRES Akáli dóko epe-ly-á-mo. man the come-PRES The man is coming. Akáli man méndé a epe-ly-á-mo. come- PRES Akáli méndé epe-ly-á-mo. man a come-PRES A man is coming. Noun classes in Enga appear to be cued primarily through syntactic patterns. The classes denote animates, inanimates, body parts, locationals, events, colors, inner states, and other minor classes. Nouns may also be inflected for cases such as agentive AG , instrumental INST, possessive POSS, locative LOC , and temporal. In

1271-754: The literature. Besides Trans–New Guinea and families possibly belonging in TNG ( see ), he accepted the proposals for, Malcolm Ross re-evaluated Wurm's proposal on purely lexical grounds. That is, he looked at shared vocabulary, and especially shared idiosyncrasies analogous to English I and me vs. German ich and mich . The poor state of documentation of Papuan languages restricts this approach largely to pronouns . Nonetheless, Ross believes that he has been able to validate much of Wurm's classification, albeit with revisions to correct for Wurm's partially typological approach. (See Trans–New Guinea languages .) Ethnologue (2009) largely follows Ross. It has been suggested that

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1312-421: The lowest levels of his classification, most of which he inherited from prior taxonomies. Foley (1986) divides Papuan languages into over sixty small language families, plus a number of isolates. However, more recently Foley has accepted the broad outline if not the details of Wurm's classification, as he and Ross have substantiated a large portion of Wurm's Trans–New Guinea phylum. According to Ross (see below),

1353-451: The main problem with Wurm's classification is that he did not take contact-induced change into account. For example, several of the main branches of his Trans–New Guinea phylum have no vocabulary in common with other Trans–New Guinea languages, and were classified as Trans–New Guinea because they are similar grammatically . However, there are also many Austronesian languages that are grammatically similar to Trans–New Guinea languages due to

1394-654: The more egalitarian New Guinea societies.) Ross has proposed 23 Papuan language families and 9–13 isolates. However, because of his more stringent criteria, he was not able to find enough data to classify all Papuan languages, especially many isolates that have no close relatives to aid in their classification. Ross also found that the Lower Mamberamo languages (or at least the Warembori language—he had insufficient data on Pauwi) are Austronesian languages that have been heavily transformed by contact with Papuan languages, much as

1435-729: The noun such as tense, aspect, person, number, gender or mood. The suffixes can be broken down into two main groups: case suffixes and others. Case suffixes are exclusively expressed in noun and noun phrases while other suffixes can be on either noun and noun phrases or verb and verb phrases. Enga differentiates nouns from noun phrases though the case endings. There are seven different cases in which these are formally marked: associative -pa (only two)/ -pipa (two or more), agentive -me/-mi, instrumental -me/mi, possessive -nya, locative -nya/-sa/-ka, temporal -sa/-nya/-pa, and vocative -oo. Other suffixes, besides case suffixes, are broken into six different categories and occur only on nouns. There

1476-412: The place. These words can include kákasa (bush), Wápaka (Wabag- a place), or Lakáipa (Lagaipa- a river). This class only uses a determiner in the location case and nothing else. The noun morphology of Enga is an exclusively suffixing language. These suffixes are generally the last member of the noun phrase, being either the determiner or the adjective. This expresses the inflectional categories of

1517-581: The term Papuan. The most widely used classification of Papuan languages is that of Stephen Wurm , listed below with the approximate number of languages in each family in parentheses. This was the scheme used by Ethnologue prior to Ross's classification (below). It is based on very preliminary work, much of it typological , and Wurm himself has stated that he does not expect it to hold up well to scrutiny. Other linguists, including William A. Foley , have suggested that many of Wurm's phyla are based on areal features and structural similarities, and accept only

1558-415: The territory and have been known to fight with each other over land, marriage exchanges, or vengeance. Men and women traditionally occupy different homes because Enga myths postulate that women may be unclean and dangerous to men. Enga society is not organised around a single chief or headman, rather it is wealthy men who have political and administrative control. Vowel sounds include /i e ɑ o u/. /k/

1599-559: The two cases of alleged pronoun borrowing in New Guinea are simple coincidence, explainable as regular developments from the protolanguages of the families in question: as earlier forms of the languages are reconstructed, their pronouns become less similar, not more. (Ross argues that open-class pronoun systems, where borrowings are common, are found in hierarchical cultures such as those of Southeast Asia and Japan , where pronouns indicate details of relationship and social status rather than simply being grammatical pro-forms as they are in

1640-461: Was first suggested and named by Sidney Herbert Ray in 1892. In accordance with William A. Foley (1986): The term 'Papuan languages' must not be taken in the same sense as 'Austronesian languages'. While all Austronesian languages are genetically related in one family, in the sense that they all descend from a common ancestral language called Proto-Austronesian spoken some 6,000 years ago... [Papuan languages] do not all trace their origins back to

1681-417: Was recorded of them, and few linguists expect that they will ever be linked to another language family . William A. Foley (1986) noted lexical similarities between R. M. W. Dixon 's 1980 reconstruction of proto- Australian and the languages of the East New Guinea Highlands . He believed that it was naïve to expect to find a single Papuan or Australian language family when New Guinea and Australia had been

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