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Article published In:
Diachronica
Vol. 34:4 (2017) ► pp.470–515
Articles / Aufsätze

Reconstructing remote relationships

Proto-Australian noun class prefixation

| University of Newcastle
| Western Sydney University

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.

Keywords: Proto-Australian, reconstruction, diffusion, Australian languages, noun class, prefixation, remote relationships
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Reconstruction of PA nominal classification
  • 3.Previous reconstructions of PA nominal classification
  • 4.Classification of NPN languages
  • 5.Sound correspondences and lexical cognates
  • 6.Inanimate lexical domains
    • 6.1Class IV *ma-
    • 6.2Class V *ku-
  • 7.Animate lexical domains
    • 7.1Class I *ci-
    • 7.2Class II *ciɲ-
    • 7.3Class III *ta-
  • 8.Yanyuwa and the PN languages
  • 9.The paradigmatic distribution of prefix reflexes
  • 10.Chance, contact and inheritance
  • 11.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 9 February 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.15032.har
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