Pauwasi languages

Pauwasi
Pauwasi River
Geographic
distribution		Pauwasi River watershed, West New Guinea, Papua New Guinea
Linguistic classificationOne of the world's primary language families
Subdivisions
Language codes
Glottologpauw1244

The Pauwasi languages are a likely family of Papuan languages, mostly in Indonesia. The subfamilies are at best only distantly related. The best described Pauwasi language is Karkar, across the border in Papua New Guinea. They are spoken around the headwaters of the Pauwasi River in the Indonesian-PNG border region.

Based on earlier work, the East and West Pauwasi languages of Indonesia were classified together in Wurm (1975), though he (and later researchers) did not recognize that Yuri (Karkar) of Papua New Guinea was also East Pauwasi. That connection was made by Usher, though anthropologists had long known of the connection. Later the South Pauwasi languages were also identified by Usher, and the West Pauwasi family tentatively expanded.[1] Wichmann (2013), Foley (2018) and Pawley & Hammarström (2018), noting the sharp differences among the three groups, are agnostic about whether West Pauwasi, East Pauwasi and South Pauwasi are related.[2][3][4]

  1. ^ New Guinea World
  2. ^ Wichmann, Søren. 2013. A classification of Papuan languages. In: Hammarström, Harald and Wilco van den Heuvel (eds.), History, contact and classification of Papuan languages (Language and Linguistics in Melanesia, Special Issue 2012), 313-386. Port Moresby: Linguistic Society of Papua New Guinea.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Pawley-TNG was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Foley, William A. (2018). "The Languages of the Sepik-Ramu Basin and Environs". In Palmer, Bill (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide. The World of Linguistics. Vol. 4. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 197–432. ISBN 978-3-11-028642-7.