Project: TransNewGuinea.org: Trans-New Guinea Online
TransNewGuinea.org is a database of the Trans-New Guinea language family and friends. The Trans-New Guinea language family currently occupies most of the interior of New Guinea. This family is possibly the third largest in the world with 400 languages and is tentatively thought to have originated with root-crop agriculture around 10,000 years ago. However, vanishingly little is known about this family’s history.
Publications from this Project:
Turvey & Pettorelli [1] present a fascinating study exploring links between biological and linguistic diversity across New Guinea. With the world’s highest linguistic diversity (around 900 languages, an average of one language per 1000 km2 [2]), as well as the high biodiversity characteristic of a large mountainous tropical island, New Guinea is an ideal test case for investigating patterns and drivers of biocultural diversity. Turvey & Pettorelli's finding that numbers of languages and mammal species are correlated across grid cells in New Guinea is consistent with studies in other parts of …
Abstract PDF 10.1098/rspb.2014.2986
The island of New Guinea has the world’s highest linguistic diversity, with more than 900 languages divided into at least 23 distinct language families. This diversity includes the world’s third largest language family: Trans-New Guinea. However, the region is one of the world’s least well studied, and primary data is scattered across a wide range of publications and more often then not hidden in unpublished “gray” literature. The lack of primary research data on the New Guinea languages has been a major impediment to our under-standing of these languages, and the history of the peoples in New …
Abstract PDF 10.1371/journal.pone.0141563 Website Overview