A fragment of Papua New Guinea philology

Abstract

The purpose of this short paper is to make a little piece of the history of linguistics in Papua New Guinea better known.1 Recently, in the course of research into the history of the Madang language family (a branch of the Trans New Guinea family), I came across a reference to an extinct language labelled ‘Bai-Maclay’ in Pawley & Hammarström’s (2018:63) listing of Madang languages.