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<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=589154704-26032007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>I compiled a Swadesh list of 18th-century Tahitian some
years ago, which Blust used in his comparative study of retention rates in
Austronesian. </FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=589154704-26032007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>Tahitian of course is well documented today, and there are
several independent sources from the late 1700s, so the early evidence is pretty
secure. </FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=589154704-26032007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=589154704-26032007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>There's a facsimile of Parkinson at "Eighteenth Century
Collections Online" (<A
href="http://www.gale.com/EighteenthCentury/">http://www.gale.com/EighteenthCentury/</A>),
but it requires a subscription.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=589154704-26032007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=589154704-26032007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>One thing it clarifies from your examples is that the
printed form for "To walk" is "Ta eaco", hence probably a transcription error
for "Ta caco". This kind of error occurs all the time in early vocabls,
especially in cases like Parkinson's, where the manuscripts were edited and
printed after the writer's death. </FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=589154704-26032007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=589154704-26032007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>I'm not sure what you're counting as substantial change,
but surely it would not imply the language originated from scratch just over
1000 years ago -- merely that all the words had undergone significant change in
that time. I would expect similar results if looking at a sample of English
vocabulary from that far back. </FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=589154704-26032007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=589154704-26032007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>Ross Clark</FONT></SPAN></DIV><BR>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader lang=en-us dir=ltr align=left>
<HR tabIndex=-1>
<FONT face=Tahoma size=2><B>From:</B> an-lang-bounces@anu.edu.au
[mailto:an-lang-bounces@anu.edu.au] <B>On Behalf Of </B>Richard
Parker<BR><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, 25 March 2007 12:47 p.m.<BR><B>To:</B>
an-lang@anu.edu.au<BR><B>Subject:</B> [An-lang] Re: An-lang Digest, Vol 45,
Issue 5 <BR></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV>More on early vocabularies </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I suspect that some of these early vocabularies have been compared with
later ones, but I wonder if anyone has used them to estimate a very rough rate
of change for some Austronesian languages with a view to doing a bit of
glottochronology?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I recently found a wordlist of Savu, compiled by Sydney Parkinson, Capt
Cook's naturalist's draughtsman, in 1773, and compared it with the modern Savu
list compiled by Robert Blust.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Their were several regular S>H changes:</DIV>
<DIV>soofoo (breast) huhu </DIV>
<DIV>sivànga (nose) huwaŋa </DIV>
<DIV>sillaèo (to see) héléo </DIV>
<DIV>lasilai (sand) laha lae </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>some V>W</DIV>
<DIV>vooe (fruit) wue </DIV>
<DIV>raee, vorai (earth/soil) rai[wawa] </DIV>
<DIV>vàva (below) wawa</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>and some other word changes that I'm not so sure about, like:<BR>teaco (to
walk) ta-kako<BR>racäee (skin) kuri</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Out of 80 words that I was able to compare, I estimated there were 37 that
had changed substantially (though I may have made some non-professional
gaffes).</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Nevertheless, it's an astonishing rate of change. (Using a simple
calculation, it would imply that the language originated from scratch just over
1000 years ago).</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Both Savu wordlists are on the AVBD database at:</DIV>
<DIV><A
href="http://language.psy.auckland.ac.nz/austronesian">http://language.psy.auckland.ac.nz/austronesian</A></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>regards</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Richard Parker</DIV></BODY></HTML>