Stephen A. Wurm

Linguistic prehistory in the New Guinea area

New Guinea is one of the most linguistically complex areas in the world with more than 740 Papuan and 250 Austronesian languages identified so far. Recent research into the relationships between these languages has enabled the construction of a schema for the migration of peoples into New Guinea and the consequent effects on the existing languages. The earliest peoples to enter New Guinea some 60,000 years ago, spoke Australoid languages and these are spoken still by Australian Aborigines. The first migration into New Guinea, of people speaking Papuan languages, may have started 15,000 years ago. This overlaid the Australoid languages and, in turn, was modified by the second Papuan language migration which began perhaps 10,000 years ago. A third and main Papuan language migration occurred between 5000 to 4000 years ago and again overlaid many of the the existing languages or resulted in movements of older languages to new areas. Contemporaneously with the third Papuan language migration, speakers of Austronesian languages were moving eastwards along the north coast of New Guinea and out into the Western Pacific. This was followed by a second migration of Austronesian speakers moving back westwards onto the north eastern areas of New Guinea about 4500 years ago.

Atlas of Languages of Intercultural Communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas: Vol I: Maps. Vol II: Texts

Much of the contents of this atlas is based on recent research results concerning intercultural communciation and contact language situations in a very large part of the world. Many of the findings have an impact upon existing views, especially regarding the origin of Pacific Pidgin English as well as intercommunication in the indigneous Artic and American Indian worlds, many parts of Asia including insular Southeast Asia and the Pacific proper. Several virtually unknown hybrid languages in China are dealt with and their origins discussed. Further, the functions and roads of metropolitan languages and the Pidgins based on them are investigated. This publication should be of interest to linguists, ethno-sociologists, anthropologists, historians and political scientists.

Linguistics and the prehistory of the South‐Western pacific

number of different research tools have been utilized. Linguistics has always occupied an important place amongst these tools. Its findings are of great importance in themselves, but they gather additional weight if they can be used to corroborate findings arrived at by other disciplines, or if hypotheses put forward on linguistic grounds appear tenable in the light of conclusions reached by such other disciplines. One of the most important areas for the understanding of the migrations of man into Oceania is the region of the South-western Pacific known as Island Melanesia, that is the islands stretching from the New Britain archi pelago across the Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides to New Caledonia, and including Fiji. With the exception of some areas in the New Britain archipelago and the Solomon Islands, where Papuan languages are spoken, this region is occupied by a large number of Austronesian (also known as Malayo-Polynesian) languages, which have until recently been collectively designated as Melanesian languages. These are spoken by a dark-skinned population racially similar to speakers of Papuan languages. To a varying degree a regionally defined admixture of a race with lighter skin and Poly nesian characteristics is observable amongst the speakers of these Melanesian languages, and Polynesian languages are located in a few fringe areas of that region. At the same time, such Melanesian languages are also found along considerable portions of the northern and south-eastern coasts of New Guinea, with the highest concentration in the south-eastern extremity of the huge island. These Melanesian languages constitute, in terms of the area occupied by them, only a comparatively small portion of the overall Austronesian lang uage area, which stretches from Madagascar, parts of South-east Asia and Indonesia, to Formosa in the north and across the Pacific to Hawaii and Easter Island in the east. The Austronesian languages are interrelated and have, traditionally, been subdivided into Indonesian, Micronesian, Mela nesian and Polynesian languages, but this classification, made partly on geographical grounds, has, especially recently, been subjected to serious criticism and is of doubtful validity. The speakers of Austronesian languages other than Melanesian are generally much more light-skinned that those of

Some Contact Languages and Pidgin and Creole Languages in the Siberian Region.

Abstract This paper provides an overview of language contacts and contact languages in the Siberian region in the past and present. Particular emphasis is given to the results of Russian colonization and the linguistic results of the demographic changes triggered by it.

LINGUISTIC RESEARCH IN AUSTRALIA, NEW GUINEA, AND OCEANIA

Australia and the insular world adjacent to it in the north and east contain about one-third of all the languages in the world — the New Guinea area alone around one thousand, and Australia about two hundred and sixty. Linguistic work in these areas has not been carnmensurate with the magnitude of the challenge — in many parts large-scale work has only started a few years or at best a decade or two ago, and the immensity of the task still facing linguistics concerned with the areas is quite staggering. Nevertheless, quite an impressive amount of work has been carried out to date, and some of it will be reviewed in brief below.

New Guinea Languages

clearly specified. Obsidian artifacts which are typologically distinct are clearly good specimens; although chips and other artifactual byproducts are also usable. Chips are especially useful if they can be provided in quantity, since the sample will then have greater statistical reliability than single artifacts. Artifacts collected from the surface or from ambiguous contexts should be considered for study only as a last resort, and the accompanying data should clearly state this information. Layers of hydration on obsidian which has been burned are apparently destroyed for measuring purposes, and this material should not be included if any other obsidian is available. (Incidentally, only obsidian and similar types of glass show hydration; such lithic materials as flint, chalcedony, jasper, quartz, quartzite, etc., are not suitable for this method.) We hope that this general statement, combined with the more detailed article appearing in American Antiquity (April, 1960), will be sufficient o gain the co-operation of all the Associates of CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY. This co-operation will help perfect the method and give it universal utility. Before sending obsidian specimens, please communicate directly with us, describing the sample, the cultures the specimens refer to, their stratigraphic relationships, etc. After this notification, we will send the donor detailed shipping instructions, forms for submitting data and samples, etc. Address your correspondence to Dr. Clifford Evans, or to Donavan L. Clark, Division of Archeology, U. S. National Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington 25, D. C., U. S. A.

The question of aboriginal place names

In this article, the author advances a case for the preservation and use of these names and in developing the case illustrates that their recording and reduction to writing is not as difficult as generally supposed.

Endangered Languages, Multilingualism and Linguistics:

ion in an English sentence, as opposed to the very concrete and detailed nature in the rendering of the same concepts in an indigenous language. Also, subdividing the world into individual units named by words in a given language, often follows quite different logic and principles in different languages. In an indigenous language, many bird species may be tagged with different names, but this would be the case only with birds of cultural interest to the speakers. Birds of no interest and concern to the speakers, may be subsumed under one or some very few general terms, perhaps one for small birds and one for big ones. At the same time, flightless large birds like a cassowary (a large ostrichlike jungle bird in New Guinea) is regarded as an animal, not as a bird, which may be reflected by peculiarities of the structure of given languages. To turn to a different language area, the Arabic language, and the Somali language of northeastern Africa, have a great range of different words for ’camel’ according to the type and nature of a camel, and to the use to which it is put, and its qualities. Similarly, they have a range of words for different kinds of dates and for different sizes of dates, etc. Also, desert areas have different names according to whether they are sandy, stony, rocky, criss-crossed by dry waterways, etc. This argumentation could be continued on and on, mentioning different ways of looking at the world and splitting it into different concepts as expressed through their languages. The realization that each language is based on a different world view ... led to the recognition of the scientific, not only social, importance of the study of endangered languages, which from the point of view of the above mentioned first theory, seemed to be scientifically irrelevant. It is now an established fact that with the disappearance of a language, especially an exotic one, an irreplaceable element in the mosaic of the totality of our knowledge of human thought and philosophy has been lost forever. The increasingly widespread recognition of what has been said in the preceding paragraph not only by linguists, but more and more generally, constitutes an important watershed in approaches to language in general. It also has a very important bearing on attitudes, activities, and processes involving languages in danger of disappearing. Also there is a growing realization that one very important factor in the preservation and maintenance of languages in danger of disappearing, especially in the case of minority languages threatened by large metropolitan languages spoken by very largely only monolingual speakers, is biand multilingualism. In view of this, interest in biand multilingualism, also by traditionally monolingual speakers of large metropolitan languages such as English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese etc. is now on the increase. It has to be borne in mind in this that until not long ago, in states dominated by usually monolingual speakers of large languages, attitudes and language policies were current which were hostile to the continuation of minority languages and placed their speakers before an either/or choice: either they become also monolingual speakers of the dominant language and carriers of the civilization and culture of its speakers and forget their language, or they keep their language and remain underprivileged fringe members of the state. It hardly occurred to the speakers of a dominant language that stable bilingualism of the minority language speakers would have been an easy solution allowing the minority people entry into the world of the dominant language speakers, while maintaining their ethnic identity and self-respect as minority language speakers. The speakers of the dominant large languages are almost completely ignorant of the fact, that stable continuing biand multilingualism, not monolingualism, is the norm in much of the world, e.g.