Languages of the eastern Bird's Head

Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, 2002. — viii + 340 p. ISBN 0858834944
This book is the first detailed introduction to languages of the Bird's Head peninsula of Indonesia's Irian Jaya (Papua) province. Detailed data on these languages have only become available in the last decade, and the papers in this volume present some of the results of this new research.
The first article sketches out the relationships between the eastern Bird's Head languages - both with each other and with other languages in the surrounding area. Following the introduction are short descriptions of three languages, Mpur (by Cecilia Odé), Meyah (by Gilles Gravelle), Sougb and Mansim (both by Ger Reesink). Each of these contributions is presented as an independent unit, with illustrative text material.
The article on Mansim is of particular importance. Until Reesink's fieldwork in the region, Mansim was thought to be extinct. While the language has few speakers left, it is not quite extinct: Ger Reesink was fortunate enough to collect some materials from a few of the last remaining speakers. Mansim is closely related to Hatam, a language already described in an earlier Pacific Linguistics volume by Reesink.