Höltker's list was all that was known about Tayap in literature until the early 1970s, when the Australian linguist [[Donald Laycock]] travelled around the lower Sepik to collect basic vocabulary lists that allowed him to identify and propose classifications of the many languages spoken there. Tayap and its speakers have been extensively studied by linguistic anthropologist [[Don Kulick]] since the mid-1980s. The language is described in detail in ''Tayap Grammar and Dictionary: The Life and Death of a Papuan Language'' and in ''A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea''.<ref>{{Citation |last=Kulick |first=Don |last2=Terrill |first2=Angela |title=A Grammar and Dictionary of Tayap: The Life and Death of a Papuan Language |series=Pacific Linguistics 661 |publisher=Walter de Gruyter Inc. |year=2019 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VXWcDwAAQBAJ|isbn=9781501512209 |___location=Boston/Berlin}}</ref><ref>{{Citation |last=Kulick |first=Don |title=A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea |publisher= Algonquin Books. |year=2019 |___location=New York |isbn = 9781616209049}}</ref>
Until WWIIWorld War II, when Japanese soldiers occupied the area and caused the villagers to flee into the rainforest, [[Gapun]] was located on a hill that several thousand years earlier had been an island in the sea that receded and formed the lower Sepik River. This indicates that Tayap may be the descendant of an ancient, autochthonous language that was already in place before the various waves of migration from the inland to the coast began occurring thousands of years ago.<ref>{{Citation |first=Malcolm |last=Ross |year=2005 |chapter=Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages |editor-first=Andrew |editor-last=Pawley |editor-first2=Robert |editor-last2=Attenborough |editor-first3=Jack |editor-last3=Golson |editor-first4=Robin |editor-last4=Hide |title=Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples |series=Pacific Linguistics 572 |pages=17–65 |___location=Canberra |publisher=Pacific Linguistics}}</ref> Foley (2018) also speculates that Tayap could have been part of a larger language family that was spoken on the island before the arrival of Lower Sepik speakers. As the coastline moved further northeast, Lower Sepik speakers migrated from the foothills into the new land areas created by the receding waters.<ref>{{Citation |last=Foley |first=William A. |authorlink=William A. Foley |editor1-last=Palmer |editor1-first=Bill |date=2018 |title=The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide |chapter=The Languages of the Sepik-Ramu Basin and Environs |series= The World of Linguistics |volume=4 |___location=Berlin |publisher=De Gruyter Mouton |pages=197–432 |isbn=978-3-11-028642-7}}</ref>
==Sociolinguistics==
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==Lexicon==
Selected Tayap words from Kulick and Terrill (2019: 442-454).:▼
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▲Selected Tayap words from Kulick and Terrill (2019: 442-454).
