Borrowed Color and Flora/Fauna Terminology in Northwest New Guinea

Abstract

The northwestern part of the island of New Guinea has been the site of intense contact between a hugely diverse set of languages. Languages from at least nine non-Austronesian families (plus several isolates) are spoken alongside Austronesian languages from the South Halmahera-West New Guinea branch, which arrived in the region roughly 3500 years ago. This paper looks at lexical items in the semantic areas of flora, fauna, and color terms and catalogues apparent loans between 52 of these languages, some relatively widespread (‘crocodile’, ‘chicken’, ‘dog’) and some much more limited in their scope. So far as the direction of borrowing can be established, the patterns of shared forms indicate ongoing lexical transfer across the region with a strong preference for Austronesian-to-Papuan borrowing, suggesting a historical pattern of Austronesian cultural influence in the region.