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Article published In:
Diachronica
Vol. 40:3 (2023) ► pp.287–340

Papuan-Austronesian contact and the spread of numeral systems in Melanesia

ORCID logo | Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

This study analyzes the numeral systems of Austronesian and Papuan languages, investigating their areal distribution and considering their most likely ancestral states. The presence or absence of different methods of numeration has often been ascribed to contact-induced change. This can certainly be seen in scholarship pertaining to Melanesia, where Austronesian languages probably first came into contact with Papuan languages around 3,500 years ago. Indeed, since Proto-Austronesian is reconstructed as having employed a decimal (base-10) numeral system (with reflexes occurring throughout the Austronesian world), the presence of quinary (base-5) numeral systems in the Austronesian languages of Melanesia has commonly been attributed to contact with Papuan languages. Relying on a typological survey of 1,825 languages, this paper argues that highly conventionalized quinary systems were probably rare in Melanesia prior to the arrival of Austronesian languages. Rather, it was more likely that Austronesian speakers spread lexicalized quinary systems to Papuan groups, not the other way around. In making this argument, the paper stresses that, while numeration may be something that is linguistically encoded in a systematic fashion, it may also be realized as a cultural feature without strongly conventionalized lexicalized expressions.

Keywords: areal typology, counting, binary, quinary, decimal, New Guinea, Oceanic, Eastern Malayo-Polynesian, Papuan, Austronesian
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology
    • 2.1Coding process
    • 2.2Languages and classification
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Austronesian
    • 3.2Papuan
  • 4.The geographical distribution of numeral systems in the New Guinea area
  • 5.Reconstructing numerals greater than ‘two’ in Papuan families
  • 6.Limited conventionalization in Papuan quinary systems
  • 7.The typological profile of Papuan numeral systems
  • 8.A cultural practice of digit tallying
  • 9.Contact and quinary systems
  • 10.Conclusion
  • Supplementary material
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 19 July 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.22005.bar
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