Reconstructing remote relationships : proto-Australian noun class prefixation

Mark Harvey, Robert Mailhammer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

18 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Evaluation of hypotheses on genetic relationships depends on two factors: database size and criteria on correspondence quality. For hypotheses on remote relationships, databases are often small. Therefore, detailed consideration of criteria on correspondence quality is important. Hypotheses on remote relationships commonly involve greater geographical and temporal ranges. Consequently, we propose that there are two factors which are likely to play a greater role in comparing hypotheses of chance, contact and inheritance for remote relationships: (i) spatial distribution of corresponding forms; and (ii) language specific unpredictability in related paradigms. Concentrated spatial distributions disfavour hypotheses of chance, and discontinuous distributions disfavour contact hypotheses, whereas hypotheses of inheritance may accommodate both. Higher levels of language-specific unpredictability favour remote over recent transmission. We consider a remote relationship hypothesis, the Proto-Australian hypothesis. We take noun class prefixation as a test dataset for evaluating this hypothesis against these two criteria, and we show that inheritance is favoured over chance and contact.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)470-515
Number of pages46
JournalDiachronica
Volume34
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018

Keywords

  • Australian languages
  • noun
  • reconstruction

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