Australian Languages

[Katachumen]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
In a message dated 5/12/98, 4:27:55 AM, C.Bowern at student.anu.edu.au writes:
<<Please note that the name of the language family is Pama-Nyungan, NOT
Pamanyungen. The name is dervied from two of the words for 'man' (Pama and
Nyunga) which are found in many languages in Australia.
 
Incidentally, with the quality of material that exists on the Tasmanian
languages, I'm surprised that anyone can make any hypotheses about its
genetic affiliations at all. When there are only a few hundred words in
orthopgraphies that might represent anything it wouldn't be surprising if
there were "cognates" with every language family in the world.
 
Finally, although it is true that the Torres Strait has only been a Strait
since the last Ice Age, I believe that Tasmania was a separate island long
before that - certainly the comparative depths of Bass Strait and the
Torres Strait would support this. While this doesn't disprove the
Indo-Pacific theory, it makes the time at which Indo-Pacific immigrants
must have reached Tasmania considerably earlier).
>>
 
Well, I was simply following suggestions by others (Ruhlen et al.) about the
affinities of Tasmanian, and also following geological maps which do show
Tasmania appended to Australia during the Paleolithic.
But my main point was that we should question any hypothesis which suggests
that Australia was settled once and once only, c. 50000 BC, and then was
subsequently isolated from the rest of humanity until modern times. There is
no reason at all why this should be true, and good reason to think that the
continent remained accessible for resettlement throughout the Paleolithic.
Therefore we can not simply assume an age of 50000 years or so for Proto-
Australian.