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The material presented here for the languages of the Mt. Bosavi region of Western Papua (s ee Map 4) was l argely collected by the author on a survey conducted during September, 1971. The present c lass ification is s omewhat divergent from that which was previously be lieved to exist for the are a. A tentative c lass ification for the area was first pub lished by Voorhoeve (19 6 8) and though we refine that c lassification s omewhat, the present paper can by no means be cons idered definitive.

The Swadesh 100 word list was used as the basis for the data pres ented here. Following Guds chinsky (19 56) each list of vernacular terms was compared by the inspe ction method and sc ored as c ognate or non-cognate, s imi lar to the method used by McElhanon (19 6 7). What follows is a rather detai led analys is of the mat erial for the six groups of the East Strickland Plain which is then c ompared with the availab le material for the Papuan Plateau. Together the group s from the se two areas c omprise the Bosavian region of the Central and South New Guinea Stock (Voorhoeve, 197 0). An interesting aspect'of lingui sti c re lationships which compli cates c lass ifi cation of t he groups along the east ern bank of the Strickland River, but is also evident in many parts of New Guinea, is the oc currence of c ognate chains (McElhanon, 197 0). Thus each group is cl os ely related to the group next to it, and is related to each successive group toa les ser degree. Therefore ac las sification b ased entirely upon st andard lexicostatistical methods s imply mirrors this complicat io n.