The West Papuan languages are 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.

West Papuan
Geographic distribution	Halmahera (Maluku Islands) and Bird's Head Peninsula (West Papua)
Linguistic classification	One of the world's primary language families
Subdivisions	Amberbaken (Mpur) North Halmahera Yawa ? East Bird's Head West-Central Bird's Head
Glottolog	None
Distribution of the West Papuan languages

The best known "West Papuan" language is Ternate (50,000 native speakers) of the island of the same name, which is a regional lingua franca and which, along with neighboring Tidore, were the languages of the rival medieval Ternate and Tidore sultanates, famous for their role in the spice trade.

Languages

West Papuan

• North Halmahera (Halmahera – West Makian)
  • Core North Halmahera
  • West Makian
• Amberbaken (Mpur)
• Yawa (Yapen)
• West–Central Bird's Head
  • West Bird's Head
  • Abun
  • Maybrat (Central Bird's Head)
• East Bird's Head
  • Burmeso
  • Hatam–Mansim (Hatam – Moi Brai)
  • Mantion–Meax (Southeast Bird's Head)

History

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 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.[1]

In 2005, Malcolm Ross made 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)[2] considers West Bird's Head, Abun, and Maybrat to form a unified family, but does not accept West Papuan as 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.[3]

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.[4] Ger Reesink suggests that the West Papuan family should be considered an areal network of unrelated linguistic families, noting the lack of adequate evidence for genetic relatedness.[5]

Pronouns

The pronouns Ross reconstructs for proto-West Papuan are,

I	*da, *di-	exclusive we	*mam, *mi-
		inclusive we	*po-
thou	*ni, *na, *a-	you	*nan, *ni-
she	*mV	they	*yo, *ana, *yo-

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 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.

family	I	thou	we
West Papuan	*da, *di-	*na, *ni, *a-	*mam, *mi
EBH-Sentani	*da, *di	*ba~wa, *bi	*meme, *me
Yava	*rei	*wein	(imama etc.)

Word order

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 is also present in the isolates Abun, Mpur, and Maibrat.[4]

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.[4]

Phonology

All Papuan languages of East Nusantara have five or more vowels.[4]

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 the Bird's Head Peninsula are non-tonal.[6]^{: 134–135}

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.[4]^: 583

Lexical comparison

This article or section should specify the language of its non-English content, using {{lang}}, {{transliteration}} for transliterated languages, and {{IPA}} for phonetic transcriptions, with an appropriate ISO 639 code. Wikipedia's multilingual support templates may also be used. (December 2021)

Basic vocabulary of two West Bird's Head languages (WBH) (Moi and Tehit) and three language isolates (Mpur, Abun, Maibrat), quoted by Holton & Klamer (2018)[4] from Miedema & Reesink (2004: 34) and (Reesink 2005: 202); these show diverse non-cognate forms among Papuan languages of the Bird's Head Peninsula:[7][8]

West Bird's Head family and Bird's Head isolates:
basic vocabulary

gloss	Moi (WBH)	Tehit (WBH)	Mpur	Abun	Maibrat
arm/hand	nin	naa	wom	cim	atem
leg/foot	eelik	deit	pet	wis	ao
house	keik	mbol	jan	nu	amah
good	bok	hnjo	mafun	ndo	mof
dog	oofun	mqaan	per	ndar	mtah
pig	baik	qorik	dwaw	nok	fane
chicken	kelem tole	kokok	kokor	dam kukur	kok
louse	-jam	hain	im	im	sruom
water/river	kla	kla	war		aja
banana	o	ogo	fa	weu	apit

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):[9][4]

Lexical comparisons between North Halmahera and
West Bird's Head families

gloss	Galela (NH)	Pagu (NH)	Moi (WBH)	Tehit (WBH)
‘head’	sahe	saek	sawa	safakos
‘fruit’, ‘eye’	sopo	sowok	suwo	sfuon
‘egg’	gosi	–	–	esyen
‘man’	ya-nau	naul	ne	nau
‘meat’	lake	lakem	kem	qan
‘tree’	gota	–	–	kot
‘water’	ake	akel	kala	kla
‘drink’	oke	okel	ook	ooqo
‘stab’	saka	sakal	saa	sqaa

The lexical data below is from the Trans-New Guinea database[10] and Usher (2020),[11] unless noted otherwise.

See also

• Papuan languages
• West Trans–New Guinea languages
• Districts of West Papua for a list of districts and villages with respective languages
• List of ethnic groups of West Papua

References

External links

• West Papuan sound comparisons

На других языках

[es] Lenguas papúes occidentales

[fr] Langues papoues occidentales

[it] Lingue di Papua occidentale

[ru] Западнопапуасские языки