West Papuan Language Phylum

The West Papuan languages, also discussed under Timothy Usher's narrower Northwest Papuan proposal, are a family or group of families spoken across the Bird's Head Peninsula of western New Guinea and the neighboring islands of Halmahera, one of several competing attempts to bring order to the region's many small and poorly documented Papuan languages that show no demonstrated relationship to Trans-New Guinea or to Austronesian. This group holds every New Guinea and Pacific Language Families member whose sourced description identifies it as West Papuan or Northwest Papuan, or as a named family proposed within either scheme, without extending the label to the many other Bird's Head area families whose own sourced description does not make that specific claim.