Indo-Pacific languages
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Kwamikagami
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/* See also */
The '''Indo-Pacific language family''' proposed by [[Joseph Greenberg]] in 1971 consists of the non-[[Austronesian languages|Austronesian]] languages of [[New Guinea]] and neighboring islands, the languages of [[Tasmania]], and the languages of the [[Andaman Islands]].
==Support==
The proposal was based on rough estimation of lexical similarity and typological similarity and has not reached a stage where it can be confirmed by the standard [[comparative method]] or the reconstruction of a [[protolanguage]] and has therefore not been widely accepted by linguists.
An additional difficulty is the fact that the languages of Tasmania are extinct and so poorly attested that most historical linguists regard them as unclassifiable. The greatest controversy concerns the geographic outliers, Tasmanian and Andamanese.
==Typology==
The languages in the group are primarily [[tone language]]s and feature nouns marked for [[case (grammar)|case]], but not necessarily for [[grammatical number|number]], with the SOV [[word order]] being most common.<ref>Contemporary linguistics, p400. O'Grady, Dobrovolsky, Katamba. 1997: ISBN 058224691 1 Ppr.</ref>
==Subdivision==
According to Greenberg, the family consists of fourteen families. He suggested a tentative sub-classification into seven groups, listed in bold below. He presented no evidence for this subgrouping.
*Tasmanian
**[[Tasmanian languages]]
*Andamanese
**[[Andamanese languages]] (perhaps only the [[Great Andamanese languages]]){{Fact|date=November 2007}}
*Nuclear New Guinea
**[[Central New Guinea languages]]
**Kapauku-Baliem languages
**Highlands
**Huon
**[[North New Guinea languages (Papuan)|North New Guinea languages]]
**[[South New Guinea languages]]
**[[Southwest New Guinea languages]]
*West Papuan
**[[West New Guinea languages]]
**[[North Halmahera languages]]
**[[Timor-Alor languages]]
*East New Guinea
**[[East New Guinea languages]]
*Northeast New Guinea
**[[Northeast New Guinea languages]]
*Pacific
**[[Bougainville Island|Bougainville]] languages (see [[East Papuan languages]])
**[[New Britain]] languages (see [[East Papuan languages]])
**Central Melanesian languages (see [[East Papuan languages]])
***[[Central Solomons languages]]
***[[Temotu Province|Santa Cruz]] languages
This classification was never widely accepted, and has largely been supplanted by that of [[Stephen Wurm]] (see [[Papuan languages]]). They do not generally agree well. For example:
*Greenberg's North New Guinea family corresponds to four of Wurm's families, [[Sko languages|Sko]], [[Sepik-Ramu languages|Sepik-Ramu]], [[Torricelli languages|Torricelli]], and the Northern branch of [[Trans-New Guinea languages|Trans-New Guinea]];
*Greenberg's West New Guinea family corresponds to four of Wurm's, [[East Bird's Head languages|East Bird's Head]], [[Geelvink Bay languages|Geelvink Bay]], the South Bird's Head and West [[Bomberai]] branches of Trans-New Guinea, and the Bird's Head branch of [[West Papuan languages|West Papuan]].
The few similarities are retentions from earlier linguists' work:
*Greenberg's Northeast New Guinea family closely matches Wurm's Madang-Adelbert Range branch of Trans-New Guinea
*Greenberg's Eastern New Guinea family and Wurm's Eastern Main-Section branch of Trans-New Guinea both preserve [[Thomas E. Dutton (linguist)|Tom Dutton]]'s Southeast New Guinea family.
==References==
<references />
==See also==
*[[Trans-New Guinea languages]]
[[Category:Proposed language families]]
[[Category:Papuan languages| ]]
[[de:Indopazifisch]]
[[es:Lenguas indo-pacíficas]]
[[la:Linguae Indopacificae]]
[[pl:Języki indopacyficzne]]
[[sk:Indopacifické jazyky]]