Study unravels Tasmania's historic languages (fwd link)

[Phil Cash Cash]

Great article Claire! Congrats

Phil

On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 10:53 AM, Phillip E Cash Cash <
cashcash at email.arizona.edu> wrote:

> *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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