Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T03:22:49.130Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Linguistic prehistory of Papuan-Austronesian contact: An Abu' Arapesh case study1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

Otto Nekitel
Otto Nekitel*
Affiliation:
University of Papua New Guinea, PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

New Guinea was settled by ancestors of present day Papuan-speaking communities 40,000 years ago. Between 3 and 5 millennia BP, waves of Austronesians (AN) followed and settled mostly on the offshore islands and along some coastal areas of the New Guinea mainland. According to a well-received view, AN Diaspora originated from Taiwan and dispersed from there to inhabit much of island Southeast Asia, Malagasy and islands of the South Pacific. Austronesian colonisation was augmented by their superior cultural traits including horticulture and marine technology. In their conquest they assimilated weaker, nomadic pre-AN aboriginal communities as was the case with the Negritos of northern Philippines; settled beside or with earlier sedentary communities as was the case in Western Melanesia; or settled on uninhabited islands in Eastern Melanesia, Polynesia, and Micronesia (Pawley & Ross, 1995). Beside demographic movements, other forces were at work. Trade-induced contact between Asia and New Guinea was in place before European contact. A trade link promoted by the Sultan of Tidor was extended to involve some communities of West New Guinea (now Irian Jaya) and the West Sepik Province some 5,000 years ago. As a result, trade items such as plumes of the kumul (bird of paradise), spices, sandalwood, aromatic barks and sea slugs from “islands of the coast of Western New Guinea “found their way into the Middle East markets about 4,000 years ago (Swadling, 1996). Other internal or external forces such as intermarriages and so on were at work also (see Bellwood, 1978). This fairly brief prehistory of what went on in the northern region of New Guinea raises questions about possible cross-cultural or cross-linguistic influences. Indeed, it does pose a challenge to those who endeavour to piece together a pre-linguistic history of lexical “ruins” found to suggest cognate relationships among languages of the northern region of New Guinea. This essay attempts to adumbrate a linguistic etymology of “loan cognates” that Abu', a Papuan language of the Torricelli Phylum of the central Sepik region, shares with AN languages. It commences with a list of lexical items and statements about their etymologies. This approach inescapably leads to a delineation of the kinds of attitudes the Abu' have towards foreign linguistic elements. The paper concludes with a typological statement about grammatical typology as an additional explanation to both the Papuan-Austronesian contact, and the trade-link theory as bases for the diffusion of areal or regional linguistic features among languages of the East Sepik and Sandaun (West Sepik) provinces.

Type
Part I. Historical Perspectives
Information
South Pacific Journal of Psychology , Volume 10 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Asia-Pacific Language Research , 1999 , pp. 25 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © University of Papua New Guinea and the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Territory University, Australia 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

I express my sincere gratitude to the anonymous referees for recommending the publication of the papa and their helpful suggestions. I alone am responsible for any of its short comings.

References

REFERENCES

Bellwood, P., Fox, J., & Tryon, D. (1990). The Austronesian: Historical And Comparative Perspectives. Canberra: Australian National University.Google Scholar
Bellwood, P. (1987). Man's Conquest of the Pacific. Auckland: Collins.Google Scholar
Bradshaw, J. (1978). Multilingualism and language mixture among the Numbami. Kivung, 11, 26–49.Google Scholar
Codrington, R. (1885). The Melanesian Languages. Oxford: Clarendon Press.(quotations from the 1974. reprint, Amsterdam, Philo Press).Google Scholar
Crowley, T. (1997). An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. Auckland: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dixon, R.W. (1997). The Rise and Fall of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foley, W. (1986). Papuan Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Grace, G. W. (1978). Language: An Ethnolinguistic Essay. Unpublished manuscript. University of Hawaii.Google Scholar
Haugen, E. I. (1956). Bilingualism in the Americas. Alabama: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Laycock, D. C. (1973). Sepik languages and preliminary clarification. Pacific Linguistics, B.25.Google Scholar
Laycock, D. C. (1975). The torricelli phylum. Pacific Linguistics, C- 38, 767–780.Google Scholar
Laycock, D. C. (1986). Papuan languages and the possibility of semantic classification. In Laycock, D.C (Ed.). Papers in New Guinea Linguistics (No. 24), Pacific Linguistics, A-70.Google Scholar
Mihalic, F. (1971). The Jacaranda Dictionary and Grammar of Melanesian Pidgin. The Jacaranda Press.Google Scholar
Neckitelly, O. [Nekitel, O.]. (1975). The history of Womsis. Oral History, 3, 2–32.Google Scholar
Nekitel, O. (1984). What is happening to vernaculars? Bikmaus, 5, 89–98.Google Scholar
Nekitel, O. (1985). Sociolinguistics Aspects of Abu', a Papuan Language of the Sepik Area, Papua New Guinea. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Australian National University.Google Scholar
Nekitel, O. (1986). A sketch of nominal concord in Abu' (an Arapesh Language). In Laycock, D. (Ed.), Pacific Linguistics 24, A–70.Google Scholar
Nekitel, O. (1992). Culture change, language change: The case study of Abu' Arapesh, Sandaun Province, Papua New Guinea. In Dutton, T.E. (Ed.), Culture Change, Llanguage Change: Case Studies from Melanesia. Pacific Linguistics, C–120.Google Scholar
Nekitel, O. (1998). Voices of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow – Language, Culture and Identity. New Delhi: UBS Publishers and Distributors.Google Scholar
Nidue, J. (1990). Language use in a New Guinea village: A triglossic profile of Makopin. Language and Linguistics in Melanesia, 21, 47–69.Google Scholar
Pawley, A., & Ross, M. (1995). The prehistory of the Oceanic Languages: A current review.Google Scholar
Philssoph, H. (1990). Open structures: Aspects of cross-cultural influences in the Sepik in relation to Southeast Asia, India and the Middle East. In Lutkehaus, N et al. (Eds.), Sepik Heritage: Tradition and Change in Papua New Guinea. Durham: Carolina Academic Press.Google Scholar
Ross, M. (1988). Proto-Oceanic and the Austronesian Languages of Western Melanesia. Pacific Linguistics, C–98.Google Scholar
Swadling, P. (1996). Plumes from Paradise. PNG National Museum with Robert Brown & Associates.Google Scholar
Tuzin, D. F. (1972). The Ilahita Arapesh. Dimension of Unity. California: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Wurm, S.A. (1977). New Guinea Area Languages And Language Study. Volume 3: Language, Culture, Society And The Modern World. Pacific Linguistics, C–40.Google Scholar
Wurm, S.A., (1979). New Guinea and Neighbouring areas: A Sociolinguistic Laboratory. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wurm, S.A., (1982). Papuan languages of Oceania. Acta Linguistics, 7.Google Scholar
Rahman, Yusoph bin H. A., (1984). Bahasa Malaysia-English English-Bahasa Malaysia (Dictionary). London & Glassgow: William Collins Sons.Google Scholar