LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.10.21 (03) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 20 October 2009 - Volume 03
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From: R. F. Hahn
<sassisch at yahoo.com<http://uk.mc264.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=sassisch@yahoo.com>
>
Subject: Language varieties

Hi, Paul (Tatum)!

You suggested:

> Another nice example of the development of an isolated language might be
that of the Australian languages.

Well, Paul, this is where you can run into trouble, at least theoretically.
Whenever you are dealing with landmasses you are also dealing with the
possibility of contacts and "contamination."

Yes, due to European settlements it was mostly the coastal Australian
languages that first became threatened and eventually extinct, with the
exception of the northern coast. Furthermore, it seems to be true, by and
large, that after the demise of the theoretical land bridge, the languages
of Australia came to be cut off from the rest of the world -- "by and large"
because I have to add that apparently there were contacts between
precolonial Australians and Austronesian travelers from what are now parts
of Indonesia. (This seems to account for canoe building and non-percussive
musical instruments on Australia's northern coast.)

It has been mostly the desert languages of Australia that hung into the 20th
and 21th centuries. Compare them -- spread over vast and (to us)
inhospitable tracts of land -- and you'll find lots of similarities, even
where languages seem to be "unrelated". Most of all, there are phonological
similarities such as retroflexion, features that do not seem to be
conditioned by physiological features. This suggests contacts, even if we
assume, as is commonly done, that indigenous Australian ancestors arrived on
the continent in waves and that language classification ought to reflect
this.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

•

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