Abstract
New Guinea and its satellite islands are sometimes thought of as constituting a linguistic area. This paper presents an alternative perspective on the linguistic geography of New Guinea and its neighboring regions, arguing for the existence of a MekongMamberamo linguistic area, named after the two eponymous rivers at its two extremities. The Mekong-Mamberamo area encompasses Western New Guinea (the Bird's Head and Bomberai peninsulas plus the Cenderawasih Bay and Bird's Neck regions), most of the Indonesian Archipelago (to the exclusion only of northern parts of Borneo and Sulawesi), and the entirety of Mainland Southeast Asia. Languages of the Mekong-Mamberamo linguistic area characteristically exhibit the following linguistic properties:
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