The northwestern part of the island of New Guinea has been the site of intense contact between a hugely diverse set of languages. Languages from at least nine nonAustronesian families (plus several isolates) are spoken alongside Austronesian languages from the South Halmahera-West New Guinea branch, which arrived in the region roughly 3500 years ago. This paper looks at lexical items in the semantic areas of flora, fauna, and color terms and catalogues apparent loans between 52 of these languages, some relatively widespread (‘crocodile’, ‘chicken’, ‘dog’) and some much more limited in their scope. So far as the direction of borrowing can be established, the patterns of shared forms indicate ongoing lexical transfer across the region with a strong preference for Austronesian-to-Papuan borrowing, suggesting a historical pattern of Austronesian cultural influence in the region.

中文翻译：

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新几内亚西北部借用的颜色和动植物术语

新几内亚岛的西北部一直是多种语言之间密切接触的地方。来自至少 9 个非南岛语族（加上几个孤立的）的语言与来自南哈马黑拉 - 西新几内亚分支的南岛语一起使用，这些语族大约在 3500 年前抵达该地区。本文着眼于植物群、动物群和颜色术语的语义领域中的词汇项目，并列出了其中 52 种语言之间的明显借用，一些相对广泛（“鳄鱼”、“鸡”、“狗”）和一些在他们的范围。就可以确定的借用方向而言，共享形式的模式表明该地区正在进行词汇转移，强烈偏爱南岛语到巴布亚语的借用，