The Oxford Guide to the Papuan Languages

This volume presents a wide-ranging survey of the Papuan languages, spoken on the island of New Guinea and its surroundings. They make up around 12% of the world's languages, with a level of linguistic diversity comparable to the vast Eurasian zone concentrated into just 1% of the world's land area. This is true whether we count individual languages (around 890), families and isolates (around 95), or elements of structural diversity: many linguistic phenomena were first reported or are still only attested in this region. Following a detailed introduction by the editors, The Oxford Guide to the Papuan Languages is divided into four parts. The first provides structural descriptions of 23 languages from across the region, many of which have never previously been described. Part II includes typological surveys of features that are of particular interest in Papuan languages, from tone to valency change, and from information structure to kinship terminology. Chapters in Part III explore language in its cultural context, with topics including multilingualism, sign languages, and language shift, while Part IV focuses on historical and contact studies. The volume will be a crucial reference not only for scholars of Papuan languages but also for anyone interested in the human history of this fascinating and little-known part of the world.

1 - Papuan languages: A general introduction
2 - Mpur (Isolate, Birds Head)
3 - Abawiri (Lakes Plain)
4 - Sentani (Sentanic)
5 - Skou (Sko)
6 - Srenge (Torricelli)
7 - Tuwari (Walio)
8 - Haruai (Piawi)
9 - Iatmul (Sepik, Ndu)
10 - Awiakay (Arafundi)
11 - Baining (New Britain)
12 - Touo (Isolate, Solomon Is.)
13 - Bine (Oriomo)
14 - Yei (Yam)
15 - Soq (TNG, Madang)
16 - Menya (TNG, Angan)
17 - Eipo (TNG, Mek)
18 - Nalca (TNG, Mek)
19 - Telefol (TNG, Ok Oksapmin)
20 - Yaqay (TNG, Anim)
21 - Urama (TNG, Kiwaian)
22 - Iha (TNG, West Bomberai)
23 - Kalamang (TNG, West Bomberai)
24 - Abui (TNG, Alor Pantar)
25 - A typology of Papuan segmental phoneme inventories
26 - Tone in Papuan languages
27 - Semantic typology in Papuan languages
28 - Lexical typology in Papuan languages, with special reference to colexification
29 - Kinship terminology in Papuan languages
30 - Ethnobiological nomenclature in Papuan languages
31 - Lexicography and lexicology of Papuan languages
32 - Alignment in Papuan languages
33 - Valency change in Papuan languages
34 - Reciprocal constructions in Papuan languages
35 - Tense, aspect, and mood systems in Papuan languages
36 - Evidentiality and epistemic marking in Papuan languages
37 - Serial verbs in Papuan languages
38 - Coverb constructions in Papuan languages
39 - Demonstratives in Papuan languages
40 - Numeral systems in Papuan languages
41 - Nominal classification in Papuan languages
42 - Possession in Papuan languages
43 - Grammatical number in Papuan languages
44 - Suppletion in Papuan languages
45 - Switch reference in Papuan languages: Synchronic and diachronic
46 - Clause chaining in Papuan languages
47 - Reported speech in Papuan languages
48 - Information structure in Papuan languages
49 - Discourse patterns and emerging grammar in Papuan languages
50 - Multilingualism in the Papuasphere
51 - Speech styles and registers in Papuan languages
52 - Language, song, and sung tales in the Papuan region
53 - Names and naming in Papuan languages of New Guinea
54 - Gesture in New Guinea
55 - Sign languages of the Papuasphere
56 - Sociocultural processes of Papuan linguistic diversification
57 - Sociolinguistic variation in New Guinea
58 - The contemporary sociolinguistics of Tanah Papua
59 - Rampant language shift in Papua New Guinea
60 - Acquisition of Papuan languages
61 - Language socialization in Papuan languages
62 - An overview of the missionary linguistics of New Guinea
63 - Tentatively tracing Trans New Guinea
64 - The Madang branch of Trans New Guinea
65 - Comparative grammar of the Huon peninsula languages
66 - Contact-induced morphological change in Dedua
67 - Historical linguistics of the Yam family
68 - Papuan-Austronesian contact in pre-modern eastern Indonesia
69 - Austronesian-Papuan contact in Northwestern New Guinea
70 - Papuan-Papuan contact: Sepik
71 - Papuan Malay
72 - Papuan histories and linguistics

Nicholas Evans is Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at the Australian National University. He investigates linguistic diversity and what this tells us about the nature of language, culture, deep history, and human creativity. He has carried out extensive fieldwork in Northern Australia (Kayardild, Bininj Kunwok, Dalabon, Iwaidja) and Papua New Guinea (Nen, Idi); his interests range from questions of grammar-writing, linguistic typology, and translation to historical linguistics. A member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the Australian Social Sciences Academy and the British Academy, he has been awarded an inaugural Anneliese Maier Forschungspreis, and a Ken Hale Award from the Linguistics Society of America. Sebastian Fedden is Professor of Linguistics at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris and is affiliated with the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich and the University of Surrey. He is a typologist with a specialization in morphology and Papuan languages and linguistics. His interests span linguistic diversity, the relationship between language, mind and culture, and grammar writing. He has carried out fieldwork in Papua New Guinea (on Mian) and Indonesia (on languages of Alor and Pantar). His grammar of Mian, published in 2011, won the von der Gabelentz Award of the Association for Linguistic Typology (ALT) for the best published grammar from 2009 to 2012.