Indo-Pacific languages

Indo-Pacific
(spurious)
Geographic
distribution
Oceania, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Australia
Linguistic classificationProposed language family
Subdivisions
GlottologNone

Indo-Pacific is a hypothetical language macrofamily proposed in 1971 by Joseph Greenberg and now believed to be spurious. It grouped together the Papuan languages of New Guinea and Melanesia with the languages of the Andaman Islands (or at least Great Andamanese) and, tentatively, the languages of Tasmania, both of which are remote from New Guinea. The valid cognates Greenberg found turned out to be reflexes of the less extensive Trans–New Guinea family. Recently the Kusunda language (and possibly other unclassificated languages), which is generally seen as a language isolate, is also included in the Indo-Pacific proposal.[1] Greenberg did not include "Australian" in his original 1971 proposal.

  1. ^ Paul Whitehouse; Timothy Usher; Merritt Ruhlen; William S.-Y. Wang (2004-04-13). "Kusunda: An Indo-Pacific language in Nepal". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 101 (15): 5692–5695. Bibcode:2004PNAS..101.5692W. doi:10.1073/pnas.0400233101. PMC 397480. PMID 15056764.

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