New Guinea Languages and Linguistics

By Miriam van Staden

More than one hundred participants from seven different countries met in Jayapura recently to discuss the state of the art in the study of languages and linguistics in the New Guinea area. It was the first time that a conference was jointly organized by the universities of Jayapura, Indonesia, and Port Moresby, PNG. The two main aims of the conference were to bring together linguists from all over the world to discuss data from languages on both sides of the border, and to discuss efforts to safeguard the declining or dying languages in the two regions.
The island of New Guinea, of which the western half is a province of Indonesia and the eastern part constitutes Papua New Guinea (PNG), can boast of no less than one thousand languages, an estimated one fifth of world's languages. Many of these languages have fewer than 5,000 speakers, some as few as 500 or less. Although the diversity among these languages is tremendous, it has turned out to be possible to establish language families. While some languages exhibit features that resemble those of the surrounding Austronesian languages, most are classified as so-called Non-Austronesian, or Papuan languages. More than 25 papers were presented on linguistic aspects of these New Guinea languages, giving perspectives on language (re)classification and interrelatedness.
Other presentations referred to the second aim of the conference, which was the position of the indigenous languages in both regions. It appeared that in addition to linguistic similarities, the position in which the indigenous languages find themselves, too, may be compared and justified close cooperation between the two regions.
In both countries many of the indigenous languages are still largely unknown and unwritten. Now, that the traditional communities are increasingly coming into contact with the outside world and the national languages are being introduced into the communities, the indigenous languages risk being replaced by these national languages. The importance of preserving these languages was therefore one of the main issues of the conference. Keynote speaker Professor Kenneth Pike, stressed that people can contribute more to the cultural growth and economic development of a nation if they have a sense of belonging to a community. This can only be the case if their own culture is respected and has a place in this community.

Language and identity
Since language is so closely related to identity, linguists have an important contribution to make. They can provide preliterate people with an alphabet, a grammar, and a written tradition, helping speakers to revalue their own language. The impact of this on a community can be tremendous: seeing their own language in writing may enhance the sense of identity and increase self-esteem within a community. As Gille Gravelle from the Summer Institute for Linguistics (SIL) in Jayapura pointed out: 'The Meah people, for example, always thought their language could not be written and, hence, was unworthy. When they learned how to write their own language, they assigned it higher prestige'.
Dr Thomas Perry (Simon Fraser University) compared the situation in Irian Jaya and PNG to Canada, where the indigenous cultures and languages had long been ignored, resulting in lack of identity and self-respect on the part of the indigenous people. He related current drugs problems and crime to the neglect of indigenous cultures, warning that if no attention is paid to the languages and cultures of the people, the social cost will be enormous.
In addition to the importance of high self-esteem on the part of the population, it also appears that governments can reach their communities more effectively through the vernacular than in the national language. Reading materials on health education and family planning have a larger impact if they are written in the local languages. It is, therefore, of great consequence that governments acknowledge the importance of the indigenous languages, supporting communities to preserve their own language by allowing these languages a place in the school curriculum, and providing funding for linguistic research and literacy programmes.

Barefoot linguists
In respect to literacy programmes, it must be noted that PNG is still very much ahead. However, in this light, the establishment of a linguistics programme at the University of Cenderawasih, starting in August 1996 is a positive development. The university will provide training for thirty students each year to become linguistic fieldworkers. Professor William Foley (University of Sydney) recommended that, on a short term basis, the aim of the department should be to generate 'barefoot linguists', rather than highly trained theoretical linguists, which can be one of the long-term goals. What is needed in these regions now, is not so much linguists who collect their data in the field and leave to write an academic piece, but people who can provide language communities with an alphabet and an outline of the grammar. How these aims may be effectuated was shown by a promising large number of participants from Papua New Guinea and Indonesia who presented papers on the description of their own languages.
Proceedings of this conference will be published by the University of Cenderawasih, and will cost USD 30 (USD 20 on subscription).
The second International Conference on New Guinea Languages and Linguistics will be held in Port Moresby in August 1997.