<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr">The idea that structural features within Austronesian change once every 50,000 years is … not strongly supported by the data. To pick on just a couple of features, the languages attest no agreement on the verb (Proto-Austronesian), nominative-accusative agreement (Southeast Sulawesi), just Nominative (various locations)Nominative-Active (Nusa Tenggara Timor), Stative-Active (Maluku), and then down to none again (Polynesia).<div>Clausal word order is verb-initial, then SVO, some SOV, more SVO, and more verb-initial.</div><div>Possessive affixes are suffixal, except when they're prefixal, or attached to separate possessive classifiers.</div><div>These aren't features with exceptional turn-over, in this family. Literally any feature shows so many states that you cannot characterise the family, phonologically or morphosyntactically (other than a vague tendency to stay head-initial). This is quite unlike other families, as Donohue and Denham (to appear) demonstrate.</div><div>And the family is less than 50,000 years old (as are all families we know of, of course), so it's hard to see how "<span style="color:rgb(33,30,30);font-family:AdvPSA1A1,serif">just once about every 50,000 years</span>" can be advanced as a serious proposal.</div><div><br></div><div>A slightly-relevant aside on bottlenecks: the eruption of Mt. Toba ca 75,000 years ago is the (pre)historical event that is most likely relevant. This was a volcanic event that nearly wiped out life on earth, such that "<font face="arial, sans-serif">today's humans are descended from a very small population of between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding pairs</font>".</div><div><br></div><div>-Mark Donohue</div><div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br></span></div><div>1. <span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Donohue, Mark, and Tim Denham. To appear (2020?). Becoming Austronesian: mechanisms of language dispersal across Indo-Malaysia. In Antoinette Schapper, David Gil and John McWhorter, eds, </span><i style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Austronesian undressed</i><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.</span></div><div><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br></span></div><div><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><font face="arial, sans-serif">2. </font><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory</a></span></div><div><br></div></div></div></div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, 23 Jan 2020 at 22:25, Haspelmath, Martin <<a href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<div>There is an interesting tension between one passage in Evans (2017):<br>
<br>
<p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt"><span style="font-family:STIX,serif" lang="EN-US">“widespread multilingualism should increase the rates of language change, in particular the rate at which new typological features
appear.” (Evans 2017: 930) </span><span lang="EN-US"></span></p>
<br>
and one passage in Evans & Levinson (2009):<br>
<br>
<p style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt"><span style="font-family:AdvPSA1A1,serif;color:rgb(33,30,30)" lang="EN-US">“The structural properties of language change on a near-glacial time scale. ... a structural feature within a single
large language-family like Austronesian changes on average just once about every 50,000 years.<span>
</span>What that implies is that </span><span style="font-family:AdvPSA1A4,serif;color:rgb(33,30,30)" lang="EN-US">all the languages we now sample from are within structural spitting distance of the ancestral tongue!
</span><span style="font-family:AdvPSA1A1,serif;color:rgb(33,30,30)" lang="EN-US">It is quite surprising in this light that typologists have been able to catalogue so much linguistic variation.” (Evans & Levinson 2009: 477)</span></p>
<br>
So did prehistoric small languages change fast or slowly?<br>
<br>
If they changed as slowly as suggested by Evans & Levinson
(and also by Michael Cysouw in his recent Lingtyp post), then
Proto-World may perhaps indeed be responsible for some current
distributions (i.e. we may not have reached a stationary
distribution yet, to use the Maslova/Croft terminology).<br>
<br>
But if they changed as fast as suggested by Evans (2017) and the
(more recent?) idea that there was a lot of multilingualism in
earlier times, then it seems that the Proto-World/bottleneck
founder population is not relevant for explaining universals (as
also suggested by Mark Dingemanse in his recent Lingtyp post).<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
On 23.01.20 05:24, Nicholas Evans wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div style="font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0)">
Sorry all about the missing attachment earlier – must have
failed to load when I was out bush on a dodgy line. Here it is
now. And you'll see that it also takes seriously the hybrid
origins of language (both speech and gesture), with initial
contributions from each according to their affordances,
subsequently transferred across modalities by multilingual
contact</div>
<div style="font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0)">
<br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0)">
Best Nick</div>
<hr style="display:inline-block;width:98%">
<div id="gmail-m_6287686228332603865divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font style="font-size:11pt" face="Calibri, sans-serif" color="#000000"><b>From:</b>
Lingtyp <a href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank"><lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org></a> on
behalf of Nicholas Evans <a href="mailto:nicholas.evans@anu.edu.au" target="_blank"><nicholas.evans@anu.edu.au></a><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Tuesday, January 21, 2020 9:24 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> Ian Maddieson <a href="mailto:ianm@berkeley.edu" target="_blank"><ianm@berkeley.edu></a>; David Gil
<a href="mailto:gil@shh.mpg.de" target="_blank"><gil@shh.mpg.de></a><br>
<b>Cc:</b> <a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>
<a href="mailto:LINGTYP@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG" target="_blank"><LINGTYP@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG></a><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Lingtyp] Proto-World explains universals</font>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<div style="font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0)">
Dear Colleagues</div>
<div style="font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0)">
<br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0)">
In connection with this, you might be interested in the attached article where I argue that the old battlefield of 'monogenesis vs polygenesis' should be reconceptualised to one of 'polysemigenesis', where language arose by putting together various semi-languages,
developed in separate places, and pooling their 'inventions' in a multilingual environment. That has obvious consequences for Martin's question.</div>
<div style="font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0)">
<br>
</div>
<div style="font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0)">
Best, Nick Evans</div>
<hr style="display:inline-block;width:98%">
<div id="gmail-m_6287686228332603865x_divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font style="font-size:11pt" face="Calibri, sans-serif" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> Lingtyp
<a href="mailto:lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">
<lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org></a> on behalf of Ian Maddieson <a href="mailto:ianm@berkeley.edu" target="_blank">
<ianm@berkeley.edu></a><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Tuesday, January 21, 2020 12:50 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> David Gil <a href="mailto:gil@shh.mpg.de" target="_blank">
<gil@shh.mpg.de></a><br>
<b>Cc:</b> <a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">
lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a> <a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">
<lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org></a><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Lingtyp] Proto-World explains universals</font>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div style="word-wrap:break-word;line-break:after-white-space">
I agree with David that monogenesis of human language is unlikely for various reasons, but I think Martin’s
<div>original question had to do with whether an argument had been presented in the linguistic literature with the</div>
<div>specific form of claiming that a universal exists because it was in the prototype of all languages. An argument</div>
<div>of this basic form could be made without assuming monogenesis if the hypothesis was that each episode of 'language</div>
<div>creation' started in similar ways.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Ian<br>
<div><br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>
<div>
<div>On 20/01/2020 19:45, Haspelmath, Martin wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">Dear all,<br>
<br>
Does anyone know a case where it has been proposed (or suggested) concretely that an observed universal tendency (or absolute universal) is due to inheritance from Proto-World?<br>
<br>
Cysouw (2011: 417) has suggested this as a possibility:<br>
<br>
<font size="-1">"It is possible that there are still founder effects available in the current distribution of the world’s languages, i.e., that there are preferences in the current world’s languages that go back to incidental events during the spread
of languages over the world (Maslova 2000)."</font><br>
<br>
But while this is logically possible, are there any concrete suggestions with a global scope?<br>
Word order universals such as the Greenbergian correlations, or phonological universals such as vowel dispersion cannot be due to Proto-World (or some other founder effect), because the universality lies in the implicational patterns, not in specific structures
that all languages share. Has anyone suggested that any other universal properties (e.g. the fact that all languages can express negation or questions, or that agent-patient organization is universal, or that all languages have recursion) may be due to Proto-World
inheritance?<br>
<br>
Thanks,<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
************<br>
<br>
References:<br>
<div style="line-height:1.35;margin-left:2em">
<div>Cysouw, Michael. 2011. Understanding transition probabilities.
<i>Linguistic Typology</i> 15(2). 415–431.<br>
</div>
<span title="url_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fzotero.org%3A2&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Understanding%20transition%20probabilities&rft.jtitle=Linguistic%20Typology&rft.volume=15&rft.issue=2&rft.aufirst=Michael&rft.aulast=Cysouw&rft.au=Michael%20Cysouw&rft.date=2011&rft.pages=415%E2%80%93431&rft.spage=415&rft.epage=431"></span></div>
<span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Times"></span>
<div title="Page 3">
<div>
<div>Maslova, Elena. 2000. A dynamic approach to the verification of distributional universals.
<i>Linguistic Typology</i> 4. 307 – 333.<br>
<div><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Times"></span><br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<pre cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de" target="_blank">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10
D-07745 Jena
&
Leipzig University
Institut fuer Anglistik
IPF 141199
D-04081 Leipzig </pre>
<br>
</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<blockquote></blockquote>
<br>
<pre cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de" target="_blank">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10
D-07745 Jena
&
Leipzig University
Institut fuer Anglistik
IPF 141199
D-04081 Leipzig </pre>
</blockquote></div>
_______________________________________________<br>
Lingtyp mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank">Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a><br>
<a href="http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp</a><br>
</blockquote></div>