<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">I rather interpreted the question as meaning “what features might indicate that Oceania forms a distinctive linguistic area?”<div class="">since essentially a list of shared features was being put forward which were presumed not to be so common elsewhere. Hence</div><div class="">the nature of my comment that more retracted articulation for voiced coronals is quite common elsewhere (see also</div><div class="">contributions from Olle Engstrand and Mark Donohoe).</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">“Oceania” is certainly an ambiguous term: I agree that in any specific case its scope needs to be made explicit.</div><div class="">In my own work I use the term to refer <b class=""><i class="">geographically</i></b> to the area east of Wallace’s line and west of the </div><div class="">western coastline of the Americas. <b class=""><i class="">Linguistically</i></b> I use it to refer to the languages in this area</div><div class="">that do not belong to families which are more “at home” in another area; in this case it means that Oceania</div><div class="">includes Australian and the various “Papuan” groups, but excludes Austronesian since this family is anchored in </div><div class="">South-East Asia and Aleut and the “Eskimo” languages since these relate to language families the majority of </div><div class="">whose members are in North America. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Ian</div><div class=""><br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Apr 5, 2017, at 02:55, Martin Haspelmath <<a href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de" class="">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class="">
  
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    I must say that I find the question ("what are interesting
    grammatical typological features for capturing the diversity of
    Oceania?") a bit odd.<br class="">
    <br class="">
    Reesink & Dunn were specifically concerned with inferring
    prehistory, and one might ask which grammatical features are the
    most conservative (or stable). But this would hardly be an
    Oceania-specific question.<br class="">
    <br class="">
    I'm not sure what is meant by "capturing the diversity of"
    something. When an area is relatively uniform in salient features
    (e.g. with respect to word order, or vowel systems), then one needs
    less salient features to see internal diversity. But are there
    salient features with respect to which "Oceania" is relatively
    uniform?<br class="">
    <br class="">
    In other words, which feature would NOT be "interesting"?<br class="">
    <br class="">
    And here's another question: What is "Oceania"? This term has so
    many different meanings that I'm confused by it (see
    <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceania">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceania</a>). Do at least the specialists
    in Oceanic languages agree to use it in the sense of "the language
    area of Oceanic languages (i.e. including New Zealand and parts of
    New Guinea), i.e. in a sense that is not even mentioned by the
    Wikipedia article.<br class="">
    <br class="">
    Best,<br class="">
    Martin<br class="">
    <br class="">
    <br class="">
    <div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 05.04.17 10:32, Kilu von Prince
      wrote:<br class="">
    </div>
    <blockquote cite="mid:CAK3VzU=NpT4Lmqy5GqE0gk=tHhLnP5QpmCL87NSbn-6X8iDuuQ@mail.gmail.com" type="cite" class="">
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      <div dir="ltr" class=""><span style="font-size:12.8px" class="">Hi Hedvig,</span>
        <div style="font-size:12.8px" class=""><br class="">
        </div>
        <div style="font-size:12.8px" class="">what an intriguing proposal! I'm
          working on a comparative project on Oceanic languages of
          Melanesia, so there are quite a number of things that come to
          my mind. For the time being, I'd suggest the following:</div>
        <div style="font-size:12.8px" class=""><br class="">
        </div>
        <div style="font-size:12.8px" class="">* Portmanteau subject-agreement
          markers that simultaneously encode TMA information (y/n)</div>
        <div style="font-size:12.8px" class="">* Modes of negation: simple
          marker, circumfix/ circumclitics, or portmanteau TMA markers
          that simultaneously encode polarity</div>
        <div style="font-size:12.8px" class="">* Using "finish", "it is finished"
          etc. frequently to structure a narrative, or more generally as
          a marker of perfectifity (y/n)</div>
        <div style="font-size:12.8px" class="">* Using serial verb "go" to
          indicate passage of time in a narrative (y/n)</div>
        <div style="font-size:12.8px" class=""><br class="">
        </div>
        <div style="font-size:12.8px" class="">These are not necessarily the only
          or most interesting things to look at from our perspective,
          I'll have to think about it some more. Feel free to contact me
          directly for further exchange of ideas.</div>
        <div style="font-size:12.8px" class=""><br class="">
        </div>
        <div style="font-size:12.8px" class="">Best,</div>
        <div style="font-size:12.8px" class="">Kilu</div>
      </div>
      <div class="gmail_extra"><br class="">
        <div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Apr 5, 2017 at 10:28 AM, Kilu
          von Prince <span dir="ltr" class=""><<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:kilu.von.prince@hu-berlin.de" target="_blank" class="">kilu.von.prince@hu-berlin.de</a>></span>
          wrote:<br class="">
          <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
            .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
            <div dir="ltr" class="">Hi Hedvig,
              <div class=""><br class="">
              </div>
              <div class="">what an intriguing proposal! I'm working on a
                comparative project on Oceanic languages of Melanesia,
                so there are quite a number of things that come to my
                mind. For the time being, I'd suggest the following:</div>
              <div class=""><br class="">
              </div>
              <div class="">* Portmanteau subject-agreement markers that
                simultaneously encode TMA information (y/n)</div>
              <div class="">* Modes of negation: simple marker, circumfix/
                circumclitics, or portmanteau TMA markers that
                simultaneously encode polarity</div>
              <div class="">* Using "finish", "it is finished" etc. frequently to
                structure a narrative, or more generally as a marker of
                perfectifity (y/n)</div>
              <div class="">* Using serial verb "go" to indicate passage of time
                in a narrative (y/n)</div>
              <div class=""><br class="">
              </div>
              <div class="">These are not necessarily the only or most
                interesting things to look at from our perspective, I'll
                have to think about it some more. Feel free to contact
                me directly for further exchange of ideas.</div>
              <div class=""><br class="">
              </div>
              <div class="">Best,</div>
              <div class="">Kilu</div>
            </div>
            <div class="gmail_extra"><br class="">
              <div class="gmail_quote">
                <div class="">
                  <div class="h5">On Wed, Apr 5, 2017 at 4:21 AM, Hedvig
                    Skirgård <span dir="ltr" class=""><<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:hedvig.skirgard@gmail.com" target="_blank" class="">hedvig.skirgard@gmail.com</a>></span>
                    wrote:<br class="">
                  </div>
                </div>
                <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
                  .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
                  <div class="">
                    <div class="h5">
                      <div dir="ltr" class="">
                        <div class="">
                          <div class="m_-4326409139743084763m_-305663611913455126gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">
                            <div dir="ltr" class="">
                              <div dir="ltr" class="">
                                <div dir="ltr" class="">
                                  <div dir="ltr" class="">
                                    <div dir="ltr" class="">
                                      <div dir="ltr" class=""><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:small" class="">Dear typologists,</span><br class="">
                                        </div>
                                      </div>
                                    </div>
                                  </div>
                                </div>
                              </div>
                            </div>
                          </div>
                        </div>
                        <div class="gmail_quote">
                          <div dir="ltr" class="">
                            <div class=""><p class="m_-4326409139743084763m_-305663611913455126m_1554752280181880654gmail-p1">What
                                are interesting grammatical typological
                                features for capturing the diversity of
                                Oceania? I sent this message earlier to
                                the mailing list for pacific
                                linguistics, but I thought I'd try here
                                as well since I didn't get any response
                                there yet.</p><p class="m_-4326409139743084763m_-305663611913455126m_1554752280181880654gmail-p1">I
                                work with a grammatical survey of the
                                world's languages, Grambank, and I'm
                                also personally interested in Oceania in
                                particular for my PhD project. I've been
                                doing some thinking as to what features
                                would be interesting to cover to more
                                accurately capture the grammatical
                                diversity of Oceania in particular,
                                besides the feature set that we already
                                have for the world-sample.</p><p class="m_-4326409139743084763m_-305663611913455126m_1554752280181880654gmail-p1">One
                                guide are the features that Reesink,
                                Dunn et al used in their publications on
                                Sahul and Melanesia (see attachments and
                                references listed below).  They've taken
                                in input from a lot of previous
                                literature and commentary, so it's a
                                good set.</p><p class="m_-4326409139743084763m_-305663611913455126m_1554752280181880654gmail-p1">Besides
                                those, do you have other suggestions?</p><p class="m_-4326409139743084763m_-305663611913455126m_1554752280181880654gmail-p1">From
                                a rather Samoan-centric perspective, I'd
                                be inclined to add features like these:</p>
                              <ul class="">
                                <li class="">Is there a "neutral" choice in
                                  attributive possession, i.e. not
                                  alienable/inalienable,
                                  dominant/subordinate?</li>
                                <li class="">Can the agent be expressed as the
                                  possessor of the verb instead of
                                  encoded in the more canonical
                                  ergative/nominative manner?</li>
                                <li class="">Can TA markers be entirely dropped
                                  in main clauses?</li>
                                <li class="">Is number of absolute arguments
                                  expressed by reduplication on the
                                  verb?<br class="">
                                </li>
                              </ul><p class="m_-4326409139743084763m_-305663611913455126m_1554752280181880654gmail-p1">Clearly
                                these need further refinement, I just
                                wanted to give some examples. Looking
                                forward to more suggestions!</p><div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;" class=""><font size="2" face="arial, helvetica,
                                  sans-serif" class=""><b class="">Tōfā soifua,<br class="">
                                  </b></font><b class=""><font size="2" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" class="">Hedvig
                                    Skirgård</font></b></div>
                              <b class=""><br class="">
                                References:<br class="">
                              </b>Dunn, Michael, Angela Terrill, Ger
                              Reesink, Robert A. Foley & Stephen C.
                              Levinson. 2005. Structural phylogenetics
                              and the reconstruction of ancient language
                              history. Science 309. 2072–2075. <br class="">
                              <br class="">
                              Dunn, Michael, Robert A. Foley, Stephen C.
                              Levinson, Ger Reesink & Angela
                              Terrill. 2007. Statistical reasoning in
                              the evaluation of typological diversity in
                              Island Melanesia. Oceanic Linguistics
                              46(2). 388-403. <br class="">
                              <br class="">
                              Dunn, Michael, Stephen C. Levinson, Eva
                              Lindström, Ger Reesink, & Angela
                              Terrill. 2008. Structural phylogeny in
                              historical linguistics: Methodological
                              explorations applied in Island Melanesia.
                              Language 84(4). 710-759 <br class="">
                              <br class="">
                              Reesink, G., Singer, R., & Dunn, M.
                              (2009). Explaining the linguistic
                              diversity of Sahul using population
                              models. PLoS Biology, 7(11), e1000241.
                              doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.10002<wbr class="">41<br class="">
                              <br class="">
                              Reesink, Ger & Michael Dunn (2012)
                              Systematic typological comparison as a
                              tool for investigating language history.
                              in Nicholas Evans and Marian Klamer (eds)
                              Language Documentation & Conservation
                              Special Publication No. 5 Melanesian
                              Languages on the Edge of Asia: Challenges
                              for the 21st Century. pp. 34–71</div>
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                  <span class="">______________________________<wbr class="">_________________<br class="">
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                  </span></blockquote>
              </div>
              <span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888" class=""><br class="">
                  <br clear="all" class="">
                  <div class=""><br class="">
                  </div>
                  -- <br class="">
                  <div class="m_-4326409139743084763gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">
                    <div dir="ltr" class="">
                      <div class="">
                        <div dir="ltr" class="">
                          <div class="">
                            <div dir="ltr" class="">Dr. Kilu von Prince</div>
                            <div dir="ltr" class=""><br class="">
                            </div>
                            <div class="">Dorotheenstr. 24</div>
                            <div class="">Raum 3.311</div>
                            <div class=""><a moz-do-not-send="true" href="tel:030%2020939755" value="+493020939755" target="_blank" class="">(030)
                                2093-9755</a><br class="">
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                            <div dir="ltr" class="">Postanschrift:<br class="">
                              <div class="">Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin</div>
                              <div class="">Unter den Linden 6</div>
                              <div class="">10099 Berlin</div>
                              <div class=""><br class="">
                              </div>
                              <div class=""><br class="">
                              </div>
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      <pre wrap="" class="">_______________________________________________
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    <br class="">
    <pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">-- 
Martin Haspelmath (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10   
D-07745 Jena  
&
Leipzig University 
IPF 141199
Nikolaistrasse 6-10
D-04109 Leipzig    





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_______________________________________________<br class="">Lingtyp mailing list<br class=""><a href="mailto:Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" class="">Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a><br class="">http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp<br class=""></div></blockquote></div><br class=""><div class="">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; line-height: normal; border-spacing: 0px;"><div class=""><div class="">Ian Maddieson</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Department of Linguistics</div><div class="">University of New Mexico</div><div class="">MSC03-2130</div><div class="">Albuquerque NM 87131-0001</div><div class=""><br class=""></div></div><div class=""><br class=""></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">

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