West Papuan Languages - Classification

Classification

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.

The classification used here is based on Wurm, modified to reflect the North Halmaheran classification of Voorhoeve 1988. He identifies the subdivisions of his Papuan classification as families (on the order of the Germanic languages), stocks (on the order of the Indo-European languages), and phyla (on the order of the Afroasiatic languages). West Papuan is a phylum in this terminology.

Wurm's family-level nodes are bold in the cladogram below:

Ethnologue (2009) removed Mpur, Hattam, Abun, and Mai Brat, as families of their own, and added the Yawa languages.

Most of the languages of East Nusa Tenggara and Maluku appear to have some non-Austronesian influence.