Papuan languages in the context of "Korafe language"

Play Trivia Questions online!

or

Skip to study material about Papuan languages in the context of "Korafe language"




⭐ Core Definition: Papuan languages

The Papuan languages are the non-Austronesian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands in Eastern Indonesia, Solomon Islands, and East Timor. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply a genetic relationship.

New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse region in the world. Besides 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 (for example, Lavukaleve. to the east, and in Halmahera, Timor and 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.

↓ Menu

In this Dossier

Papuan languages in the context of Languages of Oceania

Native languages of Oceania fall into three major geographic groups:

Contact between Austronesian and Papuan resulted in several instances in mixed languages such as Maisin.

↑ Return to Menu

Papuan languages in the context of Melanesians

Melanesians are the predominant and Indigenous inhabitants of Melanesia, in an area stretching from New Guinea to the Fiji Islands. Most speak one of the many languages of the Austronesian language family (especially ones in the Oceanic branch) or one of the many unrelated families of Papuan languages. There are several creoles of the region, such as Tok Pisin, Hiri Motu, Solomon Islands Pijin, Bislama, and Papuan Malay.

↑ Return to Menu

Papuan languages in the context of Aboriginal Australian languages

The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intelligible varieties) up to possibly 363. The Indigenous languages of Australia comprise numerous language families and isolates, perhaps as many as 13, spoken by the Indigenous peoples of mainland Australia and a few nearby islands. The relationships between the language families are not clear at present although there are proposals to link some into larger groupings. Despite this uncertainty, the Indigenous Australian languages are collectively covered by the technical term "Australian languages", or the "Australian family".

The term can include both Tasmanian languages and the Western Torres Strait language, but the genetic relationship to the mainland Australian languages of the former is unknown, while the latter is Pama–Nyungan, though it shares features with the neighbouring Papuan, Eastern Trans-Fly languages, in particular Meriam Mir of the Torres Strait Islands, as well as the Papuan Tip Austronesian languages. Most Australian languages belong to the widespread Pama–Nyungan family, while the remainder are classified as "non-Pama–Nyungan", which is a term of convenience that does not imply a genealogical relationship.

↑ Return to Menu

Papuan languages in the context of Trans–New Guinea languages

Trans–New Guinea (TNG) is an extensive family of Papuan languages spoken on the island of New Guinea and neighboring islands, a region corresponding to the country Papua New Guinea as well as parts of Indonesia.

Trans–New Guinea is perhaps the third-largest language family in the world by number of languages. The core of the family is considered to be established, but its boundaries and overall membership are uncertain. The languages are spoken by around 3 million people. There have been several main proposals as to its internal classification.

↑ Return to Menu

Papuan languages in the context of Maisin language

Maisin (or Maisan) is a divergent Austronesian language of Papua New Guinea, containing Papuan features. It is a Nuclear Papuan Tip language, with the Papuan element being Binanderean or Dagan. It is spoken by the Maisin people of Oro Province.

Maisin displays significant lexical copying from Korafe, a neighboring Papuan language.

↑ Return to Menu

Papuan languages in the context of Languages of Indonesia

Indonesia is home to over 700 living languages spoken across its extensive archipelago. This significant linguistic variety constitutes approximately 10% of the world’s total languages, positioning Indonesia as the second most linguistically diverse nation globally, following Papua New Guinea. The majority of these languages belong to the Austronesian language family, prevalent in the western and central regions of Indonesia, including languages such as Acehnese, Sundanese, and Buginese. In contrast, the eastern regions, particularly Papua and the Maluku Islands, are home to over 270 Papuan languages, which are distinct from the Austronesian family and represent a unique linguistic heritage. The language most widely spoken as a native language is Javanese, primarily by the Javanese people in the central and eastern parts of Java Island, as well as across many other islands due to migration.

Languages in Indonesia are classified into nine categories: national language, locally used indigenous languages, regional lingua francas, foreign and additional languages, heritage languages, languages in the religious domain, English as a lingua franca, and sign languages.

↑ Return to Menu

Papuan languages in the context of Cassowary

Cassowaries (Indonesian: kasuari; Biak: man suar 'bird strong'; Tok Pisin: muruk; Papuan: kasu weri 'horned head') are flightless birds of the genus Casuarius, in the order Casuariiformes. They are classified as ratites, flightless birds without a keel on their sternum bones. Cassowaries are native to the tropical forests of New Guinea (Western New Guinea and Papua New Guinea), the Moluccas (Seram and Aru Islands), and northeastern Australia.

Three cassowary species are extant. The most common, the southern cassowary, is the third-tallest and second-heaviest living bird, smaller only than the ostrich and emu. The other two species are the northern cassowary and the dwarf cassowary; the northern cassowary is the most recently discovered and the most threatened. A fourth, extinct, species is the pygmy cassowary.

↑ Return to Menu

Papuan languages in the context of Noun classifier

A classifier (abbreviated clf or cl) is a word or affix that accompanies nouns and can be considered to "classify" a noun depending on some characteristics (e.g. humanness, animacy, sex, shape, social status) of its referent. Classifiers in this sense are specifically called noun classifiers because some languages in Papua as well as the Americas have verbal classifiers which categorize the referent of its argument.

In languages that have classifiers, they are often used when the noun is being counted, that is, when it appears with a numeral. In such languages, a phrase such as "three people" is often required to be expressed as "three X (of) people", where X is a classifier appropriate to the noun for "people"; compare to "three blades of grass". Classifiers that appear next to a numeral or a quantifier are particularly called numeral classifiers. They play an important role in certain languages, especially East and Southeast Asian languages, including Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese.

↑ Return to Menu