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Language Family

Pauwasi

New Guinea and Pacific Language Families

The Pauwasi languages are a likely family of Papuan languages spoken mostly in Indonesia, around the headwaters of the Pauwasi River on the border between Indonesia's West New Guinea and Papua New Guinea. The family comprises seven languages divided into East Pauwasi, West Pauwasi and South Pauwasi branches, with the Molof language tentatively included, and its subfamilies are considered at best only distantly related to each other; the best-described Pauwasi language is Karkar, spoken across the border in Papua New Guinea.

Facts
Region
Headwaters of the Pauwasi River in the Indonesia-Papua New Guinea border region, mostly on the Indonesian side. 1
Proto-Language Status
No proto-language uniting the family has been reconstructed; the West, East and South Pauwasi subgroups are at best only distantly related, and several researchers are agnostic about whether the three groups are related at all. 1
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Pauwasi languages
Wikipedia
  • Introduction, first paragraph
    They are spoken around the headwaters of the Pauwasi River in the Indonesian-PNG border region.
  • Introduction, second paragraph
    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.
View the Source
Wikidata: Pauwasi
Wikidata Q7155496, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)View the Source
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