South Halmahera–West New Guinea languages
Subgroup of the Austronesian language family / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The South Halmahera–West New Guinea (SHWNG) languages are a branch of the Malayo-Polynesian languages, found in the islands and along the shores of the Halmahera Sea in the Indonesian province of North Maluku and of Cenderawasih Bay in the provinces of Papua and West Papua. There are 38 languages.[1]
Quick Facts Geographic distribution, Linguistic classification ...
South Halmahera–West New Guinea | |
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Geographic distribution | The Maluku Islands in the Halmahera Sea, and the region of Cenderawasih Bay, Indonesia |
Linguistic classification | Austronesian
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Proto-language | Proto-South Halmahera–West New Guinea |
Subdivisions | |
Glottolog | sout3229 |
The South Halmahera–West New Guinea languages (red). The group at left is the Raja Ampat–South Halmahera languages; the one at right is the Cenderawasih Bay. (The black line is the Wallace Line.) |
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The unity of the South Halmahera–West New Guinea subgroup is well supported by lexical and phonological evidence. Blust (1978) has proposed that they are most closely related to the Oceanic languages, but this classification is not universally accepted.[2]
Most of the languages are only known from short word lists, but Buli on Halmahera, and Biak and Waropen in Cenderawasih Bay, are fairly well attested.