Research priorities in historical-comparative linguistics : a view from Asia, Australia and the Pacific

The first issue of Diachronica contained an evaluation of the comparative method as applied to "exotic" languages (Boretzky 1984). Thirty years later, it is worth taking stock of what our discipline has accomplished and itentifying future priorities and pressing issues that have (re-)emerged. The following represents the considered judgement of several practitioners in language families from a large region of the world that is underrepresented in international fora. The ideas were first presented during the 20th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL 20), Osaka, Japan, 2011. Eight contributors were asked to give a five-minute pitch on what they considered to be research priorities in the comparative-historical study of languages of the Anglo-Pacific region. The families or areas included were: Australian, Papuan, Austronesian and Austroasiatic. A final summation was provided by Brian Joseph.