LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.10.22 (02) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 22 October 2009 - Volume 02
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From: Paul Tatum <ptatum at blueyonder.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.10.21 (03) [EN]

How do, Ron et al.,

 From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com
>

 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."
>
Dibs - I said "might be" ! :-)

 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 my knowledge, such as it is, derives from R. Dixon's Languages of
Australia. On page 228, he says :
"It seems clear, then, that nearly all the languages of Australia form one
genetic family, going back to a single original language, pA. And it is
probable that pA was spoken at a considerable time in the past. The present
linguistic situation in Australia has had thousands - perhaps tens of
thousands - of years to evolve. It is likely that during this period there
has been no significant contact with any other languages." This evolution
occurred in a very stable political environment, with only gradual shifting
of territories - "there is evidence that many Australian communities have
lived in their present territory for a considerable time"

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.
>
>  On the same page, he refers to  anthropologists suggesting 2,200 years
being sufficient time to settle the whole continent to the population depth
encountered in 1788, though of course sufficiency isn't necessarily the time
it did take, only a minimum. While Australia might be a marginal example of
an isolated language, I think it is interesting as an example of slow
in-situ evolution, as a corollary to the Polynesian case, where the
boundaries between languages are physical

Paul Tatum.

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language varieties

Thanks, Paul.

On the same page, he refers to  anthropologists suggesting 2,200 years being
sufficient time to settle the whole continent to the population depth
encountered in 1788, though of course sufficiency isn't necessarily the time
it did take, only a minimum. While Australia might be a marginal example of
an isolated language, I think it is interesting as an example of slow
in-situ evolution, as a corollary to the Polynesian case, where the
boundaries between languages are physical

I agree.

On the basis of archeological finds (and I was once fortunate enough to
accompany archeologists on exploratory spelunking in Southwestern Australia)
it is now pretty much agreed upon that human habitation in Australia
began between
42,000 and 48,000 years ago!

Most archeologists agree upon there having been three immigration waves: (1)
"negrito" Tasmanians, (2) Murrayans, and (3) Carpentarians.

There seem to have been at least occasional, casual contacts between north
coast Australians and Malaiic islanders, as I had mentioned. They came from
roughly the same area from which Netherlanders later "discovered" Australia.
Also, in China awareness of Australia's existence may go back at least to
the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty (元朝, 1271-1368), perhaps referred to by the
Venetian merchant adventurer Marco Polo (1254-1324) as "Isle of Gold," and
possibly by 16th-century Portuguese explorers as "Great Java". On his 1603
map based in part on Chinese sources, the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci
(1552-1610) jotted next to a landmass clearly representing Australia the
Chinese equivalents of "Fire Land" and "Land of Parrots." It has also been
suggested that the famous 15th-century Muslim Chinese (Hui) explorer Zheng
He (鄭和) and his fleet visited Australia, though most historians dismiss this
as unfounded. Chinese knowledge may well be indirect, namely based on
reports of Southeast Asians which whom they traded. This may well have
something to do with Macassans having supplied China with the much coveted
trepang (sea cucumber, bêche-de-mer, hải sâm, ナマコ, 海參, *Holothuroidea*) from
the Gulf of Carpentaria for centuries.

At any rate, signs of fairly early awareness of Australia as well as
assigned attributes to that land seem to suggest that, going back quite a
few centuries, at least the northern coast was not totally cut off from the
rest of the world.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

•

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