Bird's Head languages
| West Papuan | |
|---|---|
| (proposed) | |
| Geographic distribution |
Maluku and West Papua |
| Linguistic classification |
Extended West Papuan ?
|
| Subdivisions | |
| Glottolog | None |
The West Papuan languages are a hypothetical language family of about two dozen Papuan languages of the Bird's Head Peninsula (Vogelkop or Doberai Peninsula) of far western New Guinea and the island of Halmahera, spoken by about 220,000 people in all.
The best known West Papuan language is Ternate (50,000 native speakers), which is a regional lingua franca and which, along with Tidore, were the languages of the rival medieval Ternate and Tidore kingdoms of the spice trade.
The German linguist Wilhelm Schmidt first linked the Bird's Head and Halmahera languages in 1900. In 1957 HKL 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.
In 2005, Malcolm Ross made a tentative proposal that the West Papuan languages form one of three branches of an extended West Papuan family that also includes the Yawa language isolate (or small family), previously placed in the hypothetical Geelvink Bay family, and a newly proposed East Bird's Head – Sentani family as a third branch. West Papuan proper is distinguished from these other extended West Papuan families in having forms like na or ni for the second-person singular ("thou") pronoun.
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