Comparative Dictionary and Digital Recordings for Huon Peninsula Languages

FAIN: FN-50095-11

Kenneth A. McElhanon
Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics (Dallas, TX 75236-5629)

This one year fellowship has the objective of completing a project begun by the researcher in the 1960s to document the 23 dialects/languages of the Huon Peninsula group (HP--a subgroup of the Trans New Guinea family, TNG)--spoken in the Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. Most TNG languages are documented with vocabulary lists of less than 250 lexical items. This HP lexical database of more than 2,500 lexical items and complete noun and verb morphologies for each dialect/language is unprecedented. Of these languages, four are critically endangered, one is endangered, two are unsafe to endangered, and two are unsafe. (Edited by staff)