Welcome to the Pacific Languages Research Group

The Group’s research focus is on the languages and cultures of the Australia-Pacific region. Its activities focus on the following language groupings and their theoretical and typological significance:

• The Oceanic branch of the Austronesian language family (Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Polynesia and Micronesia). 
• Aboriginal languages of Australia. 
• Papuan languages of Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and eastern Indonesia. 
• Western Austronesian languages of Indonesia, the Philippines, and island and coastal Southeast Asia. 
• Pidgins and creoles of the Australia-Pacific region.

Australia has a strong tradition as a world leader in research in languages of its region. The Pacific Languages Research Group continues that tradition, placing the University of Newcastle at its forefront.

The Australia-Pacific linguistic region, defined as the area in which Austronesian, Papuan, and Australian Aboriginal languages are traditionally spoken, is home to the greatest linguistic diversity in the world. From coastal Southeast Asia to Polynesia, it is home to some 2250 distinct languages, more than one third of the total number of languages in the world today. Of these, 1250 are Austronesian, and 750 are Papuan. At the time of British colonization, some 250 Aboriginal languages were spoken in Australia.

These languages represent considerable linguistic diversity, displaying a highly varied range of structural types. Many are spoken by small numbers of people. Papua New Guinea, for example, alone holds some 850 languages, of which only 70 have more than 10,000 speakers, while a similar number have less than 100 speakers. This pattern is repeated throughout the region. As a result, many languages are highly endangered, succumbing to increasing degrees of globalisation. Conservative estimates suggest half of all languages spoken today will be extinct within a century. Many of these will be from the Australia-Pacific region. Despite this, languages of this region remain among the least investigated and poorly understood in the world.

Research in languages of this region is highly significant for diverse reasons.

• Scientific reasons: The core scientific agenda of linguistics is to model the architecture of the innate language capacity of the human mind. The extraordinary diversity of linguistic types represented in the Australia-Pacific region makes it highly significant in this, allowing for the formulation of fresh typological and theoretical hypotheses on the basis of novel data, and for the testing of existing hypotheses in the natural laboratory of the ‘exotic’ languages of the region. 
• Socio-political reasons: Language provides insights into the cultures and socio-political outlooks of the peoples of Australia’s Pacific island neighbours, feeding into Australia’s strategic outreach in this region.
• Cultural reasons: Language is the cultural manifestation through which all other cultural manifestations are, at least in part, expressed. Extinction of indigenous languages leads to permanent loss of the world view encompassed within those languages, and to disruption of socio-cultural cohesion in the communities that speak those languages. Research in regional languages provides the foundation for tools and materials to maintain or revitalize the many endangered languages of the region, assisting in maintaining cultural and social cohesion in our neighbours.