Laura C. Robinson

The Historical Relations of the Papuan Languages of Alor and Pantar

The historical relations of the Papuan languages scattered across the islands of the Alor archipelago, Timor, and Kisar in southeast Indonesia have remained largely conjectural. This paper makes a first step toward demonstrating that the languages of Alor and Pantar form a single genealogical group. Applying the comparative method to primary lexical data from twelve languages sampled across the islands of the Alor-Pantar archipelago, we use form-meaning pairings in basic cognate sets to establish regular sound correspondences that support the view that these languages are genetically related. We reconstruct 97 Proto[&mdash]Alor-Pantar vocabulary items and propose an internal subgrouping based on shared innovations. Finally, we compare Alor-Pantar with Papuan languages of Timor and with Trans-New Guinea languages, concluding that there is no lexical evidence supporting the inclusion of Alor-Pantar languages in the Trans-New Guinea family.

Internal classification of the Alor-Pantar language family using computational methods applied to the lexicon

The non-Austronesian languages of Alor and Pantar in eastern Indonesia have been shown to be genetically related using the comparative method, but the identified phonological innovations are typologically common and do not delineate neat subgroups. We apply computational methods to recently collected lexical data and are able to identify subgroups based on the lexicon. Crucially, the lexical data are coded for cognacy based on identified phonological innovations. This methodology can succeed even where phonological innovations themselves fail to identify subgroups, showing that computational methods using lexical data can be a powerful tool supplementing the comparative method.

Conditions on pronominal marking in the Alor-Pantar languages

Abstract We examine the varying role of conditions on grammatical relations marking (namely animacy and volitionality) by looking at different languages of one family, using both existing descriptions and working with specially prepared video stimuli. This enables us to see the degree of variation permitted within closely related languages. We look at four Alor-Pantar languages (Teiwa, Adang, Kamang, and Abui), Papuan languages of eastern Indonesia. The conditions on argument marking are manifested in different ways. Those languages with syntactic alignment index objects with a prefix, those which have semantic alignment index objects and some subjects with a prefix. In 42 video clips we systematically varied animacy and volitionality values for participants in one and two-participant events. These clips were used in fieldwork to elicit descriptions of the events. The data show that animacy of the object is an important factor which favours indexation of the object on the verb in all four languages to varying degrees. Volitionality, on the other hand, is a factor in the semantically aligned languages only. While the presence of a prefix on the verb is semantically motivated in many instances, marking is not directly determined by verbal or participant semantics, and lexical factors must also play a role.

The Northeastern Luzon Subgroup of Philippine Languages

This paper presents a survey of the languages of the northeastern part of the large northern Philippine island of Luzon—Dupaningan Agta, Pahanan Agta, Casiguran Agta, Nagtipunan Agta, Dinapigue Agta, Paranan, and Kasiguranin—the first five of which are spoken by Negrito Filipino groups. With the exception of Kasiguranin, these languages compose a subgroup called Northeastern Luzon. Evidence is presented to determine the internal and external relationships of these languages, including historical phonology, functors, and lexicon. It is argued that they are not members of the Northern Cordilleran subgroup, as has been previously suggested, but instead form a primary branch of the Northern Luzon (Cordilleran) subgroup.

A grammar of Klon: A non-Austronesian language of Alor, Indonesia by Louise Baird (review)

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Discovering history through language: Papers in honour of Malcolm Ross (review)

This volume is dedicated to Malcolm Ross, a prolific scholar who started in linguistics later in life and who has made significant contributions to Austronesian (AN) and Papuan linguistics. The volume starts out with an overview of Ross’s life written by his former student (and volume editor) Bethwyn Evans, beginning with Ross’s early interest in language. His first career as an English teacher took him to Papua New Guinea, where he became interested in AN and Papuan linguistics. Although he began his PhD at the age of 40, Ross has become a very influential scholar in the studies of AN and Papuan languages, particularly in historical linguistics. The second chapter of the book is a complete listing of his works, including unpublished papers. There are two main sections in this volume. The first, entitled “Historical relationships amongst languages,” contains ten chapters dealing with subgrouping and classification, mostly on AN and Papuan languages. The second section, entitled “Historical development of languages across time,” contains twelve chapters, mostly dealing with reconstruction and language change, and primarily focused on AN languages. Because of the number and varied content of the chapters, this review can only touch briefly on each chapter. The first main section begins with a chapter by Roger Blench, who examines various kinds of evidence (linguistic, archaeological, zoological) for early presence of AN peoples in areas where AN languages are not spoken today, including Japan, China, Thailand, Australia, Africa, and the Americas. Some hypotheses he rejects, such as those linking Austronesians with the main Japanese islands, but others he considers more convincing, such as the presence of Austronesians in the Americas before European contact. The next contribution is from Robert Blust, who brings together six different Austronesian etymologies to show how single words, or more accurately, single cognate sets, can shed light on questions of linguistic subgrouping. For example, Chamorro retains ProtoAustronesian (PAN) *baRiuS ‘typhoon’ as pakyo with the original meaning. This etymon is often retained with the meaning ‘wind’ or ‘strong wind’ in areas that do not have typhoons. The simplest explanation for the Chamorro reflex, however, is that it never lost its original meaning ‘typhoon’, implying that the ancestors of today’s Chamorro speakers never migrated through an area without typhoons. This single word points strongly, then, to the northern or central Philippines as a source area for the Chamorro language. The next two chapters follow up on genealogical subgroupings originally proposed by Ross. Bethwyn Evans’s paper is a first attempt to show the relatedness of the South Bougainville languages using the comparative method. This small family of Papuan languages was proposed by Ross (2001, 2005) based on lexicostatistical, structural, and pronominal evidence. Evans examines published and unpublished lexical data and proposes correspondence sets and reconstructs lexical items in various semantic domains. Evans herself acknowledges that it is a first attempt, one that is hindered by gathering data from various sources and a lack of documentation, particularly of the phonologies and lexicons