Papuan Languages

a conventional designation for a number of language groups and isolated languages in New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomon Islands that do not belong to the Malayo-Polynesian (Austronesian) family. There are more than 2 million speakers of Papuan languages (1970, estimate). Various estimates place the number of Papuan languages at between 300 and 700, with no reliable data on genetic relations between the languages. According to the preliminary data of the Australian scholar S. Wurm, the languages may be classified as follows: Trans-New Guinea phylum (approximately 1.4 million speakers), Sepik Ramu (approximately 100,000), Western Papuan phylum (fewer than 100,000), Wapei-Palei phylum (approximately 65,000), Toaripi phylum (approximately 30,000), the Bougainville phylum on the island of Bougainville (approximately 40,000), and a number of smaller genetic groupings. The major Papuan languages, in numbers of speakers, are Enga (110,000), Hagen (60,000), Chimbu (60,000), Huli (54,000), Kamano (40,000), Wahgi (40,000), and Kewa (40,000). Bilingualism and multilingualism are common. In eastern New Guinea a number of regional languages are spoken in addition to Neo-Melanesian, a Pidgin English used by more than 0.5 million people in New Guinea and the neighboring islands. In western New Guinea (Irian Jaya), Indonesian is widely used as a common language.

The Papuan languages are typelogically diverse. They are distinguished by rich consonant systems that include preglottal-ized and prenasalized consonants and by a specific set of allo-phonic alternations, in which, for example, [t] and [p] are frequently allophones of a single phoneme. Verbal affixes with single grammatical functions form an extremely complex inflectional system. There are complex morphophonemic alternations at affix junctures. Many Papuan languages have grammatical classes, unusual counting systems, and forms known as medials (types of adverbial participles).

N. N. Miklukho-Maklai was the first to provide a scholarly description of Bongu and other Papuan languages. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Papuan languages were studied by the British scholar S. Ray. Most research in the mid-20th century has been done by Dutch, Australian, and American linguists, including S. Wurm, A. Capell, C. Voorhoeve, and H. K. J. Cowan. The Papuan languages have not been fully described.

The languages generally do not have writing systems and are not used for instruction in schools. Literature is practically nonexistent.