Rediscovering Papuan languages in New Ireland

Christoph Holz

New Ireland is an island province in the northeast of Papua New Guinea.The region was first settled by Papuan groups, most of which disappeared during later migration waves of Oceanic speakers. Yet, traces of Papuan substrates remain in today’s Oceanic languages. Previous studies have shown that several languages in northcentral New Ireland share a number of phonological features, including intervocalic lenition of voiceless stops and vowel reduction in unstressed syllables. These are contact-induced changes that originated in Kuot, the only extant Papuan language in New Ireland, and spread across its neighbouring Oceanic languages. New data reveal that both phonological features also occur in the Oceanic languages of southern New Ireland, especially in Konomala. These languages are spoken far away from Kuot, which makes Kuot an unlikely source of the innovations in the south. Lenition and vowel reduction are areal features of Papuan Island Melanesia and also exist in Papuan languages of East New Britain, the province southwest of New Ireland. In this talk, I present linguistic, historical, and cultural evidence for a Papuan substrate in southern New Ireland. The data point to the mountainous inland of today’s Konomala area as the most likely candidate for the home of now extinct or migrated Papuan language communities.