Australian Languages

[Steven Schaufele]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Katachumen wrote:
 
> 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.
 
Correct me if i'm wrong, but my atlas suggests that the Australian
continent isn't all that far from New Guinea or Indonesia.  I don't at
the moment have access to the kind of geological maps Katachumen refers
to, but it seems to me that any cultural group capable of navigating
amongst the islands of SE Asia would have had little trouble venturing
as far as northern Australia.  Not that they necessarily did so, but i'm
inclined to agree with Katachumen that geography doesn't seem to present
a significant barrier to continued settlement between SE Asia and
Australia.
 
And, with regard to Claire Bowern's statement,
 
> 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.
 
It's certainly true that word-lists of a few hundred entries are very
shaky supports for any comparative-linguistic hypothesis, but they can
be quite adequate *`suggestors'* for such hypotheses.  Legitimate
scientific hypotheses can come from any sort of source at all, including
totally(?) irrational ones such as dreams (cf. Kekule).  The difference
between science and wild speculation doesn't lie in the source of the
hypothesis but in how it is, and can be, tested.  I grant i'm not a
specialist in comparative Australian and know very little about the data
and proposals Bowern is referring to, but i admit that what little i do
know strongly suggests that there is a serious lack of the probative
data necessary for testing any decent scientific hypothesis.  But surely
not for *suggesting* it.
 
Best,
Steven
--
Steven Schaufele, Ph.D., Asst. Prof. of Linguistics, English Department
 
Soochow University, Waishuanghsi Campus, Taipei 11102, Taiwan, ROC
 
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