Study unravels Tasmania's historic languages (fwd link)

[Claire Bowern]

Thanks Phil!

On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 2:03 PM, Phil Cash Cash <weyiiletpu at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>
>