The 

East Papuan languages is a defunct proposal for a family of Papuan languages spoken on

the islands to the east of New Guinea, including New Britain, New Ireland, Bougainville, Solomon
Islands, and the Santa Cruz Islands. There is no evidence that these languages are related to
each other, and the Santa Cruz languages are no longer recognized as Papuan.
All but two of the starred languages below (Yélî Dnye and Sulka) make a gender distinction in
their pronouns. Several of the heavily Papuanized Austronesian languages of New Britain do as
well. This suggests a pre-Austronesian language area in the region.

History of the proposal[edit]

The East Papuan languages were proposed as a family by linguist Stephen Wurm (1975) and
others. However, their work was preliminary, and there is little evidence that the East Papuan
languages actually have a genetic relationship. For example, none of these fifteen languages
marked with asterisks below share more than 2–3% of their basic vocabulary with any of the
others. Dunn and colleagues (2005) tested the reliability of the proposed 2–3% cognates by
randomizing the vocabulary lists and comparing them again. The nonsense comparisons
produced the same 2–3% of "shared" vocabulary, demonstrating that the proposed cognates of
the East Papuan languages, and even of proposed families within the East Papuan languages,
are as likely to be due to chance as to any genealogical relationship. Thus in a conservative
classification, many of the East Papuan languages would be considered language isolates.
Since the islands in question have been settled for at least 35 000 years, their considerable
linguistic diversity is unsurprising. However, Malcolm Ross (2001; 2005) has presented evidence
from comparing pronouns from nineteen of these languages that several of the lower-level
branches of East Papuan may indeed be valid families. This is the classification adopted here.
For Wurm's more inclusive classification, see the Ethnologue entry here.

Classification (Ross 2005)[edit]

Small families[edit]
Each of the first five entries in boldface is an independent language family, not known to be
related to the others. Languages that are transparently related to each other are listed together
on the same line. The first family is a more tentative proposal than the others and awaits
confirmation.
Reconstructed pronoun sets for each of the families are given in the individual articles.

 ? Yele – West New Britain family [tentative]


Yélî Dnye (Yele)* (Rossel Island)

 West  New Britain 
Anêm* (New Britain)

Ata (Pele-Ata, Wasi)* (New Britain)

 East New Britain family


Baining: Mali*, Qaqet, Kairak, Simbali, Ura, Makolkol
 Taulil–Butam: Taulil**, Butam (extinct)**
 North Bougainville family (Bougainville)

Keriaka

Konua (Rapoisi)**

Rotokas: Rotokas*, Eivo

 South Bougainville family (Bougainville)

  Buin 
Buin*

Motuna (Siwai)*

Uisai

Nasioi: Koromira, Lantanai, Naasioi*, Nagovisi (Sibe)**, Oune, Simeku

 Central Solomon family

Bilua* (Vella Lavella Island)

Touo  (Baniata)* (southern Rendova Island, part of the New Georgia Islands)

Lavukaleve* (Russell Islands)

Savosavo* (Savo Island)

* Dunn and colleagues found no demonstrable shared vocabulary between these fifteen
languages.
** Ross considered these four languages in addition to the fifteen studied by Dunn and
colleagues.
True language isolates[edit]
These three languages are not thought to be demonstrably related to each other or to any
language in the world.

 Sulka isolate* – New Britain (poor data quality; the possibility remains that Sulka will be
shown to be related to Kol or Baining)
 Kol isolate* – New Britain
 Kuot (Panaras) isolate* – New Ireland
* Dunn and colleagues found no demonstrable shared vocabulary between these fifteen
languages.

Austronesian languages formerly classified as East Papuan[edit]

Wurm classified the three languages of the Santa Cruz and Reef Islands as an additional family
within East Papuan. However, new data on these languages, along with advances in the
reconstruction of Proto-Oceanic, has made it clear that they are in fact Austronesian:

 Reefs – Santa Cruz languages: Santa Cruz, Nanggu, Äiwoo

Similarly, Wurm had classified the extinct Kazukuru language and its possible sister languages
of New Georgia as a sixth branch of East Papuan. However, in a joint 2007 paper, Dunn and
Ross argued that this was also Austronesian.

 Kazukuru family: Kazukuru language

Lexical comparison[edit]
The tables below give lexical comparisons for the East Papuan languages (i.e., all Papuan
languages spoken in New Britain and islands to the east), with languages listed roughly from
west to east. All lexical items are from the Trans-New Guinea database[1] unless noted otherwise.