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Downloaded From V. Heeschen The position of the Mek languages of Irian Jaya among the Papuan languages; History, typology, and speech In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 148 (1992), no: 3/4, Leiden, 465-488 This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 03:38:53PM via free access VOLKER HEESCHEN THE POSITION OF THE MEK LANGUAGES OF IRIAN JAYA AMONG THE PAPUAN LANGUAGES; HISTORY, TYPOLOGY, AND SPEECH' Introduction This article sets out to evaluate the unity and diversity of the Papuan languages from different points of view. I wil1 tackle this genera1 task by giving an account specifically of what differentiates the Mek languages from, and subsequently what relates them to, the other Papuan languages. Until approximately forty years ago, the Papuan languages had 'been thought to be mostly not related to each other ... The term "Papuan languages" or "non-Austronesian languages" was, in consequence, only employed as a negative classificatory term describing languages referred to by that name, as distinct from Austronesian ... languages, without presuming the existence of any genetic link between them' (Wurm 1982:3). Over the past four decades an impressive number of descriptive works on these languages, including complete grammars, wntten mostly by members of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, have been published. Thanks to language surveys conducted by that institution, and, above all, thanks to the work of scholars like Anceaux, Cowan, Wurm, Laycock, Voorhoeve, Dutton2, and others, our insight into the classification of the 1 The main linguistic and anthropological field work for this study was camed out for a penod of about one and a half years in Eipomek and for about three years in Kosarek. Wordlists and sample texts were collected in almost al1 parts of the area of the Mek language family, however. The research was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Max-Planck- Institut fur Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen, and the Forschungsstelle fur Humanethologie in der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Andechs. Dunng my longer stays in Kosarek I was the guest of the Protestant Church of Irian Jaya and was financially supported by the Vereinigte Evangelische Mission of Wuppertal. The article was prepared for the International Conference on the Mek and their Neigh- bours held in Seewiesen, Germany, in October 1990. The ideas underlying it were first presented in a lecture given at the University of Bern on January 18th, 1988. 2 A complete bibliography is to be found in Wurm 1982. VOLKER HEESCHEN is a research assistant at the Forschungsstelle fur Humanethologie in der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, who obtained his Ph.D. at the Ruhr-Universitat in Bochum. Specialized in Papuan linguistics, the philosophy of language and ethnolinguistics, he has previously published Die Sprachphilosophie U! v. Humboldts and A dictionary of rhe Yale language (wirh a sketch of grammar and English index). Dr. Heeschen's address is Prinzenweg 22b, D-8 130 Starnberg, Germany. Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 03:38:53PM via free access 466 Volker Heeschen Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 03:38:53PM via free access The Position of the Mek Languages of Iriun Jaya 467 Papuan languages has improved dramatically. The classification work was based generally on lexicostatistical surveys, but was also supported by dialect studies, work on language families, and typological studies, as wel1 as by research into the problems of substrata and language mixing. It culminated in the establishment of five major and a nurnber of minor phyla, each including languages that are genetically related to each other, but themselves without any genetic interconnection. The Mek languages are spoken in an area in the eastern highlands of Irian Jaya. The Mek language family was first identified by Bromley (Bromley 1966-7; compare Voorhoeve 1975, Heeschen 1978). Wurm (1982: 187) decided 'to give the family provisionally the status of a subphylum' within the Trans-New Guinea phylum. Foley (1986), adher- ing to the more rigorous methods of comparative linguistics and taking the criticisms directed against the method of lexicostatistics int0 account, refuses to accept the division into phyla, but divides the Papuan languages into some 65 language families; he does not mention the Mek languages. The first data concerning a Mek language were published as early as 19 12 by De Kock, who, as a member of a Dutch expedition, had penetrated to the southern borders of the Mek language area, near Mount Goliath, and compiled a wordlist and analysed the counting system. Thus, the languages were known for a long time as the 'Goliath languages'. The boundaries of this family are: in the west, the mountains between the Yaholi and Obahak rivers and Kosarek, and the mountains between the Solo and Erok rivers; and in the east, the mountains between the Kloof and Sobger rivers, and the area between Okbap and Apmisibil. In the lowlands to the north and to the south of this area, hamlets are smaller than in the high valleys, and settlements are scattered more and more widely apart in seemingly unin- habited regions. Lines that could be drawn from Keleka to the mountains between the Kloof and Sobger rivers, and from the confluence of the Solo and Erok rivers to the mountains south of the Be and Ok Cop nvers might approximately indicate the northern and southern boundaries respectively. The main groups of languages (or dialect clusters) are: 1. in the north-west, the Yale language spoken around Kosarek, the di- alects spoken in the Iluk, Obahak, Sesom, and Yamek valleys; 2. in the south-west, the dialects spoken around Korapun, Sela, and, probably, Nalca; 3. in the centre, Eipo, Una (spoken around Langda and Larye), and the dialect spoken in the Tanime valley; 4. in the east, al1 the dialects spoken between Bime and Okbap. The linguistic work done on the Mek languages so far has been in the fields of phonology, grammar, texts, and lexicography (Heeschen 1978, 1985, 1990b, 1992; Heeschen and Schiefenhövel 1983; Louwerse 1978 and 1988; Sims and Sims 1982). To the west of the Mek language area, languages of the Great Dani family are spoken (Bromley 1966-7, 1973; Voorhoeve 1975:35-7, 68). Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 03:38:53PM via free access 468 Volker Heeschen The languages from this family to be mentioned in the present article are: 1. the Angguruk language, a member of the Ngalik-Nduga sub-family, spoken in the Yaholi valley, from Welarek to Angguruk, and 2. Grand Valley Dani, a member of the Dani sub-family, spoken in the west of the Angguruk area.3 To the east of the Mek language area, languages of the Ok family are spoken. Languages from this family to be mentioned in this article are: l. Nalum, spoken around Apmisibil, and 2. Telefol, spoken across the border in Papua New Guinea. Both these languages are members of the Mountain Ok sub-family.4 To the south of the Mek language area, Awyu languages of the Awyu- Dumut family are spoken, and to the north, in pockets separated by uninhabited areas, languages of the Kaure stock.5 History To give an idea of the kind of difficulties faced by the linguist when doing research int0 Papuan languages, I will deal briefly with the general social and cultural context. Here the conditions of life in smal1 communities, and more especially intra- and inter-village marriages, trading partnerships, warfare, language attitudes and cults, are responsible for the preservation, mixing and diffusion of an incredible number of languages. Then I will discuss the eastern and western dialects of the Mek languages, in the case of which borrowing from and intermixing with the eastern and western neighbours respectively has occurred. These areas provide minor exam- ples of the above-mentioned genera1 context, which will be described in the next paragraphs. The 750 Papuan languages and, in addition, more than 250 non-Austro- nesian languages are spoken in an area of about 900,000 square km. Thus, the average size of a language area is 900 square km, and even in the times before Western contact a Papuan could easily have walked from the centre to the periphery of such an area. The average number of speakers of any single language may come close to 3000 O have no exact population figures for Irian Jaya). If we assume that each language area comprises seven to ten hamlets, then we have here speech communities of 300 to 450 speakers.6 According to Forge (1972), 450 is the maximum number of inhabitants an egalitarian community can handle; when such a community exceeds that number, it becomes subject to fission. Thus there seems to be a close correlation between the number of speakers per dialect or language 3 The comparative notes in this article relating to these languages are based on Bromley 1981, Zöllner s.a. (a) and (b). 4 Wurm 1982:14-7. Comparative notes in this article relating to these languages are based on' Hylkema 1969, 1974, and s.a., Healey 1965a-c, Healey and Healey 1977. Voorhoeve 1975:27-28,45,69; Heeschen 1978:41-45. More recent works, such as Silzer and Heikkinen 1984 and Louwerse 1988:3, give no better or more precise information. 6 Similar figures are given in Foley 1986 and Sankoff 1977. Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 03:38:53PM via free access The Position of the Mek Languages of Irian Jaya 469 on the one hand, and the size of communities, their communicative behavi- our, and their means of handling conflicts on the other. Endemic warfare tends to separate speakers of the same language, whereas exogamic, virilocal rules of mamage as well as trading partnerships relate speakers of different dialects or languages to each other.
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