East Papuan languages
Encyclopedia
  • Baining (East New Britain)
    Baining languages
    The Baining or East New Britain languages are a small language family spoken by the Baining people on the island of New Britain in Papua New Guinea...

    family


  • North Bougainville
    North Bougainville languages
    The North or West Bougainville languages are a small language family spoken on the island of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea. They were classified as East Papuan languages by Stephen Wurm, but this does not now seem tenable, and was abandoned in Ethnologue .The family includes the closely related...

    family — Bougainville


  • South Bougainville
    South Bougainville languages
    The South or East Bougainville languages are a small language family spoken on the island of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea. They were classified as East Papuan languages by Wurm, but this does not now seem tenable, and was abandoned in Ethnologue .The languages include a closely related group...

    family — Bougainville


  • Central Solomon family

* Dunn et al. found no demonstrable shared vocabulary between these fifteen languages.

** Ross considered these four languages in addition to the fifteen studied by Dunn et al.

True language isolates

These three languages are not thought to be demonstrably related to each other or to any language in the world. If the Yele – West New Britain family is not confirmed, the region may contain six isolates rather than three.

Sulka
Sulka language
Sulka is a possible language isolate scattered across the eastern end of New Britain island, Papua New Guinea. There are about 3000 speakers.Sulka is very poorly attested. There is some evidence that it might be related to Kol or Baining....

isolate* – New Britain (poor data quality; the possibility remains that Sulka will be shown to be related to Kol or Baining)

Kol
Kol language (Papua New Guinea)
The Kol language is a language spoken in eastern New Britain island, Papua New Guinea. There are about 4000 speakers.Kol appears to be a language isolate, though it may be distantly related to the poorly attested Sulka language.-See also:...

isolate* – New Britain

Kuot
Kuot language
The Kuot language, or Panaras, is a language isolate, the only non-Austronesian language spoken on the island of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. There are about 2,400 speakers, concentrated primarily on the northwest coast of the island...

 (Panaras)
isolate* – New Ireland
New Ireland (island)
New Ireland is a large island in Papua New Guinea, approximately 7,404 km² in area. It is the largest island of the New Ireland Province, lying northeast of the island of New Britain. Both islands are part of the Bismarck Archipelago, named after Otto von Bismarck, and they are separated by...



* Dunn et al. found no demonstrable shared vocabulary between these fifteen languages.

Austronesian languages formerly classified as East Papuan

Wurm classified the three languages of the Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz Islands
The Santa Cruz Islands are a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean, part of Temotu Province of the Solomon Islands. They lie approximately 250 miles to the southeast of the Solomon Islands Chain...

 and Reef Islands
Reef Islands
The Reef Islands are a loose collection of 16 islands in the northwestern part of the Solomon Islands province of Temotu. These islands have historically also been known by the names of Swallow Islands and Matema Islands....

 as an additional family within East Papuan. However, new data on these languages, along with advances in the reconstruction of Proto-Oceanic
Proto-Oceanic language
Proto-Oceanic is a protolanguage that language comparatists – particularly after Otto Dempwolff's works – have proposed as the probable common ancestor to the group of Oceanic languages...

, has made it clear that they are in fact Austronesian
Austronesian languages
The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...

:
  • Reef Islands – Santa Cruz family: Santa Cruz
    Santa Cruz language
    The Santa Cruz language is the main language spoken on the island of Nendö or 'Santa Cruz', in the Solomon Islands.-Genetic affiliation:It was widely believed until recently that Santa Cruz was a Papuan language...

    , Nanggu
    Nanggu language
    The Nanggu language is one of two Reefs – Santa Cruz languages spoken on Nendö Island .-Names:The language is known by outsiders as Nanggu , from the name of one of the villages where it is still spoken...

    , Äiwoo


Similarly, Wurm had classified the extinct Kazukuru language
Kazukuru language
Kazukuru is an extinct language that was once spoken in New Georgia, Solomon Islands. The Dororo and Guliguli languages are supposedly its only known relations. The speakers of Kazukuru gradually merged with the Roviana people from the sixteenth century onward, and adopted Roviana as their language...

 and its possible sister languages of New Georgia
New Georgia
New Georgia is the largest island of the Western Province of the Solomon Islands.-Geography:This island is located in the New Georgia Group, an archipelago including most of the other larger islands in the province...

 as a sixth branch of East Papuan. However, in a joint 2007 paper, Dunn and Ross argued that this was also Austronesian.
  • Kazukuru family: Kazukuru language
    Kazukuru language
    Kazukuru is an extinct language that was once spoken in New Georgia, Solomon Islands. The Dororo and Guliguli languages are supposedly its only known relations. The speakers of Kazukuru gradually merged with the Roviana people from the sixteenth century onward, and adopted Roviana as their language...

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