Study unravels Tasmania's historic languages (fwd link)

[Phillip E Cash Cash]

*Study unravels Tasmania's historic languages*

Monday, 1 October 2012
Darren Osborne ABC
AUS

A technique normally used by biologists is providing new insight into the
diversity of Tasmania's aboriginal population more than 200 years ago.

The findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B ,
has found the island was home to 12 different languages - more than the one
or two previous suspected.

Australian researcher Associate Professor Claire Bowern of Yale University
says studying Tasmania's aboriginal language history is difficult because
there are no known native speakers and relatively few sources of
information.

"We don't have any independent witnesses of the vocabulary, which makes it
quite a difficult classification problem," says Bowern.

Access full article below:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/10/01/3599765.htm
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