Iatmul and Its Typological Relationship to an Indian Language

Deborah Salle
Sep 16
2 min read

Updated: Sep 29

Introduction

We can compare and classify languages according to their grammatical typology. Grammatical classification is different from genetic classification.

(T. Crowley and C. Bowern, p 219, 2010, An Introduction to Historical Linguistics.)

Non-Austronesian languages in Papua New Guinea do not have an established genetic relationship to languages outside of New Guinea.

Table 1. Grammatical Classification of Iatmul with an Indian Language. Tok Pisin and English are added to demonstrate grammatical differences.

Major Classification	Tamil	Iatmul	Tok Pisin	English
Morphological Type	Agglutinating	Agglutinating	Isolating	Inflecting
Syntactic Alignment	Nominative with ergative features	Both nominative and ergative	Neutral	Accusative
Basic Constituent Order	Subject-Object-Verb	Subject-Object-Verb	Subject-Verb-Object	Subject-Verb-Object
Verb Chains and Serialization	Yes	Yes	Yes	No

First Analysis

So here we have our first analysis using major grammatical type categorization. Iatmul and the Ancient Indian Language both have similar morphological type, syntactic alignment, basic constituent order and verb serialization. No significant differences can be observed when comparing their grammatical typology.

But, other languages can also have these major grammatical features. We have to look at more specific grammatical features like phonemes, morphemes and syntax.

What's Next?

Phonemes or units of sounds in Iatmul and the Tamil languages are also very similar. We will publish that comparison as part of our second analysis. We will also continue to include Tok Pisin and English in our analysis, just for fun.

With detailed linguistic analysis and consultation. We hope to release some results in February, 2026 in line with The International Language Day and present the complete findings at the PNG Linguistics Society Conference, 2026.

Thank you for reading and Happy 50th Anniversary Papua New Guinea!

To understand the context of this post, please read our infographic on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/posts/png-papua-new-guinea-language-services-676572204_read-the-first-clue-in-my-blog-post-here-activity-7373663635480563712-gdZ2?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAADQNhDoBNNKN-AcvHAAMtkaS7Y2Z49r7NKU .