The Polysynthetic Profile of Yimas, a Language of New Guinea

Yimas is a language of the Lower Sepik family of six languages spoken along the lower reaches of the Sepik River in the northern lowlands of Papua New Guinea. All six languages are quite morphologically complex head-marking languages, but Yimas is the most complex and cross-linguistically a good candidate for categorizing as a ‘polysynthetic language’. It has eight prefix positions preceding the verb stem and five following it, and is a ‘triple agreement language’, that is, it exhibits pronominal agreement affixes for all core arguments of a ditransitive verb. Yimas also makes heavy use of incorporation: a wide array of adjuncts are incorporated into the verb, and in most cases,non-incorporated alternatives are not available. However, Yimas differs from what has been claimed to be typical of polysynthetic languages in its heavy usage of subordination and nonfinite nominalization. This chapter addresses the place of Yimas in an overall typology of polysynthesis.

Emoia ahli (Vogt, 1932), a synonym of Emoia battersbyi (Procter, 1923) (Squamata: Scincidae)

The New Guinea scincid lizard Emoia ahli (Vogt, 1932), described from two specimens from the Sepik River in New Guinea, is shown to be indistinguishable from Emoia battersbyi (Procter, 1923), a species from the same region, based on the first examination of the syntypes since the description of the species. Several of the diagnostic characters that have previously been invoked to distinguish the two species represent misinterpretations of statements in Vogt’s description.

A distinctive addition to the tree flora of Papua New Guinea: Helicia woxvoldiana sp. nov. (Proteaceae), a large-flowered myrmecophyte from the upper Sepik

Helicia woxvoldiana (Proteaceae) is described from the Sepik River basin in Papua New Guinea, from classical localities on the Kaiserin-Augusta-Fluss itinerary of 1912–13. The new species is a canopy myrmecophyte with the largest flowers in Papuasian Helicia.

Notes on Phyllanthera (Apocynaceae) from the upper Sepik of Papua New Guinea: P. lancifolia and P. piforsteriana sp. nov.

Phyllanthera piforsteriana (Apocynaceae) is described from the Sepik River basin in Papua New Guinea. Distributional notes are also provided for P. lancifolia, a frequent associate of the new species but otherwise rarely represented in herbarium collections.

The Sepik River (Papua New Guinea) is not a dispersal barrier for lowland rain-forest frogs

Major tropical rivers have been suggested to be important dispersal barriers that increase the beta diversity of animal communities in lowland rain forests. We tested this hypothesis using assemblages of frogs in the floodplains of the Sepik River, a major river system in Papua New Guinea. We surveyed frogs at five sites within a continuous 150 × 500-km area of lowland rain forest bisected by the Sepik, using standardized visual and auditory survey techniques. We documented 769 frogs from 44 species. The similarity in species composition decreased with logarithm of geographical distance between the sites, which ranged from 82 to 465 km. The similarity decay did not depend on whether or not the compared sites were separated by the Sepik River or whether the species were aquatic or terrestrial breeders. Likewise, a DCA ordination of frog assemblages did not show separation of sites by the river as a significant factor explaining their composition. Our results suggest that even major rivers, such as the Sepik, may not act as dispersal barriers. Rivers may not limit the distribution of frogs and therefore have a limited effect on determining frog species abundance and assemblage structure in rain forests.

A Sense of People and Place

This chapter provides a general sense of the geography and economic livelihood, as well as an example of the sorts of (clan) relationships that prevail, in Iatmul villages. Topics discussed include canoes and the riverine economy; the physical geography of the Sepik River basin; and the Kanganamun village. The chapter concludes with some remarks about the nature of research methods and the kinds of problems the author encountered in the gathering of ethnographic information.