Indo-Pacific languages
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The Indo-Pacific hypothesis, published by Joseph Greenberg in 1971, proposes that the Papuan languages (a large number of language families spoken in Papua New Guinea and nearby islands which are not Austronesian) are distantly related to each other as well as to the native languages of Tasmania and the Andaman Islands.
The Indo-Pacific phylum consists of fourteen families, many of which were also new proposals by Greenberg. He suggested a tentative sub-classification into seven groups, listed in bold below:
- Tasmanian
- Andamanese
- Andamanese languages (perhaps only the Great Andaman languages)
- Nuclear New Guinea
- Central New Guinea languages
- Kapauku-Baliem languages
- Highlands
- Huon
- North New Guinea languages
- South New Guinea languages
- Southwest New Guinea languages
- West Papuan
- East New Guinea
- Northeast New Guinea
- Pacific
- Bougainville languages
- New Britain languages
- Central Melanesian languages
- Central Solomons
- Santa Cruz
This classification was never widely accepted, and has largely been supplanted by that of Stephen Würm (see Papuan languages). Both are highly speculative, and generally do not agree well. For example, Greenberg's North New Guinea family corresponds to Würm's Sko, Sepik-Ramu, and Torricelli families plus the Northern branch of the Trans-New Guinea languages; while Greenberg's West New Guinea family corresponds to the Würm's East Bird's Head and Geelvink Bay families, the South Bird's Head and West Bomberai branches of Trans-New Guinea, and the Bird's Head branch of the West Papuan languages. However, there are some significant similarities: Greenberg's Northeast New Guinea family closely matches Würm's Madang-Adelbert Range branch of Trans-New Guinea, while Greenberg's Eastern New Guinea family and Würm's Eastern Main-Section branch of Trans-New Guinea both preserve Thomas Dutton's Southeast New Guinea family.
The greatest controversy concerns the geographic outliers, Tasmanian and Andamanese. While few linguists recognize a connection to Tasmanian, the West Papuan-Andamanese connection continues to garner support.