TransNewGuinea.org: An online database of New Guinea languages

Simon J. Greenhill

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0141563

TransNewGuinea.org: An online database of New Guinea languages

Simon J. Greenhill^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

14 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The island of New Guinea has the world's highest linguistic diversity, with more than 900languages divided into at least 23 distinct language families. This diversity includes the world's third largest language family: Trans-New Guinea. However, the region is one of theworld's least well studied, and primary data is scattered across a wide range of publications and more often then not hidden in unpublished "gray" literature. The lack of primaryresearch data on the New Guinea languages has been a major impediment to our understanding of these languages, and the history of the peoples in New Guinea. TransNewGuinea.org aims to collect data about these languages and place them online in a consistent format. This database will enable future research into the New Guinea languages with bothtraditional comparative linguistic methods and novel cutting-edge computational techniques. The long-term aim is to shed light into the prehistory of the peoples of New Guinea, and to understand why there is such major diversity in their languages.

Original language	English
Article number	0141563
Journal	PLoS ONE
Volume	10
Issue number	10
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0141563
Publication status	Published - 27 Oct 2015

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TransNewGuinea.org: An online database of New Guinea languages

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