2.4 Historical understandings of language classifications, boundaries and vitality
There are a number of works dealing with the Watut River area languages, some of which are not published. In 1989, Holzknecht published a study of the Watut area that far surpasses, in detail and
validity, the work of previous scholars. Holzknecht’s study includes an extensive literature review. The present discussion is therefore limited to key works that show a progressive understanding to the
outsider of the Watut language communities. As stated in section 2.2, census spellings are used for village names throughout this document. This practice is maintained in this section, even though census
names and spellings often differ from those used by authors of the works discussed. In direct quotations, census spellings are written in square brackets to indicate departure from the source. Otherwise, no
indication is given that the names have been modified to match census spellings. The list of village names in table 17 in appendix A specifies the alternate names found in the literature.
1963: Fischer classifies the Watut varieties, naming them according to their relative geographic
positions north, middle and south, a system later adopted by Holzknecht 1989:18–20. Fischer’s classification of Watut villages into these three varieties is shown in table 3.
Table 3. Fischer’s linguistic classification
Language group Villages
Südgruppe Wawas, Gumots, Dangal, Maralangko, Zinimb
Mittelgruppe Bencheng, Marauna, Babuaf
Nordgruppe Dungutung, Uruf, Morom, Mafanazo, Unangg
In addition to classifying the Watut varieties, Fischer presents a lexicostatistical comparison between Watut and neighbouring languages Wampar [lbq] and Adzera [adz]. For the comparison, he
uses unpublished, 100-item Wampar and Adzera wordlists obtained from Stürzenhofecker and Holzknecht Fischer 1963:280. The Middle Watut list is his own, obtained from Bencheng ibid., 207,
281. Fischer finds that Watut is 79 similar to Wampar and 60 similar to Adzera. He notes that 55 of the words on those three lists are exactly the same. Later, he decides to make a second comparison
using 128-item wordlists with words added for plants, animals, and cultural terms. In this comparison, Watut is 75 similar with Wampar and 62 similar with Adzera ibid., 283.
1965: Hooley reports his findings from a survey of communities along the southern part of the
Watut River. Concerning villages in the Watut area he says, “Although there are said to be about six dialects represented in these villages, they all claim to understand each other,” and he concludes that
literature developed in one variety might serve many of the communities Hooley 1965:6. His initial impressions about language and dialect boundaries are further investigated in Landweer and Reitmaier’s
1990 survey Landweer and Reitmaier 1990, discussed below, so no further comment is given here.
1971: Hooley analyses Austronesian language data he and K. McElhanon collected throughout
Morobe Province. This includes 100-item and 128-item wordlists taken in the Watut area in Dangal, Maralangko, Bencheng, Dungutung and Babuaf 1971:80–82. Hooley considers vernaculars with 77
similarity to be dialects of one language and vernaculars with 28 similarity members of a family ibid., 91. Based on these criteria, he classifies the vernaculars spoken at Bencheng, Babuaf and Dungutung as
dialects of one language which he calls ‘Silisili’, the name he also uses for Bencheng village ibid., 95. He finds this language to be 60–70 cognate
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with the Dangal and Maralangko languages ibid., 86. Hooley groups Silisili, Dangal and Maralangko in what he calls the Lower Watut Subfamily ibid., 96.
Hooley also finds that Silisili is 62 cognate with Adzera and 75 cognate with Wampar.
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In this section the word cognate is used to refer to apparent cognates.
1988: Ross classifies the Silisili, Maralangko and Dangal languages as being members of the Lower
Kategori