Laurent Sagart

Discernible Differences in the Babbling of Infants According to Target Language.

Samples of babbling productions of 6-, 8- and 10-month-old infants from different language backgrounds were presented to adult judges whose task was to identify the infants from their own linguistic community. The results show that certain language-specific metaphonological cues render this identification possible when the samples exhibit long and coherent intonation patterns. The segmental indications that are present in the fully syllabic productions of canonical babbling do not allow the judges to identify the infants correctly from their own linguistic community. These results seem to support the hypothesis of an early influence on babbling of the metaphonological characteristics of the target language.

THE PEOPLING OF EAST ASIA: Putting together archaeology, linguistics and genetics

Introduction 1. Examining the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis in the East Asian Context 2. From the Mountains to the Valleys: Understanding Ethnolinguistic Geography in Southeast Asia 3. The Origin and Dispersal of Agriculture and Human Diaspora in East Asia 4. Recent Discoveries at a Tapenkeng Culture Site in Taiwan: Implications for the Problem of Austronesian Origins 5. The Contribution of Linguistic Palaeontology to the Homeland of Austroasiatic 6. Tibeto-Burman vs. Indo-Chinese: Implications for Population Geneticists, Archaeologists and Prehistorians 7. Kra-dai and Austronesian: Notes on Phonological Correspondences and Vocabulary Distribution 8. The Current Status of Austric: A Review and Evaluation of the Lexical and Morphosyntactic Evidence 9. Sino-Tibetan-Austronesian: An Updated and Improved Argument 10. Tai-Kadai as a Subgroup of Austronesian 11. Proto-East Asian and the Origin and Dispersal of the Languages of East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific 12. The Physical Anthropology of the Pacific, East Asia, and Southeast Asia: A Multivariate Craniometric Analysis 13. Genetic Diversity of Taiwans Indigenous Peoples: Possible Relationship with Insular Southeast Asia 14. Genetic Analysis of Minority Populations in China and its Implications for Multi-Regional Evolution 15. Comparing Linguistic and Genetic Relationships among East Asian Populations: A Study of the RH and GM Polymorphisms 16. Hla Genetic Diversity and Linguistic Variation in East Asia 17. A Synopsis of Extant Y Chromosome Diversity in East Asia and Oceania

Phonetic analysis of late babbling: a case study of a French child.

The late babbling productions of a French child are analysed and compared with a similar study of English-speaking children. English-speaking and French children are shown to share such universal phonetic preferences as cluster reduction, final devoicing, etc. However, there are also noticeable differences which may be ascribed to corresponding differences in the target language. Thus a selective, language-specific, phonetic acquisition has been taking place during the babbling stage. A comparison of the phonetic repertoires of French, English, Thai and the late babbling corpus confirmed the close similarity between the latter and French. This study reinforces the view that babbling is relevant to the study of linguistic performance.

Acoustic Investigations of Cross-linguistic Variability in Babbling

In the past ten years, the emergence of speech in infants has been investigated in the framework of theories regarding the capacities underlying speech as part of the biological equipment of man. In particular, studies of the perceptual capacities of neonates have shown the prerequisites for speech perception to be present in infants as early as the first days of life.

Reconstructing Old Chinese uvulars in the Baxter-Sagart system (Version 0.99)

This paper discusses the reconstruction of uvular and labio-uvular stops in Old Chinese, originally proposed by Pan Wuyun. The following two improvements are proposed: (1) the Old Chinese non labialized voiced uvular stop evolved to Middle Chinese y- (???) rather than hj- (???) in Pans theory (which implies that Middle Chinese y- has two sources in Old Chinese: *1- and *G-); (2) uvulars and labio-uvulars evolve to MC velars when preceded by a minor syllable. This explains why velars and uvulars frequently alternate in phonetic series. The article also explores the evolution of (labio)uvulars in the context of different prefixes.

How Many Independent Rice Vocabularies in Asia

The process of moving from collecting plants in the wild to cultivating and gradually domesticating them has as its linguistic corollary the formation of a specific vocabulary to designate the plants and their parts, the fields in which they are cultivated, the tools and activities required to cultivate them and the food preparations in which they enter. From this point of view, independent domestications of a plant can be expected to result in wholly independent vocabularies. Conversely, when cultivation of a plant spreads from one population to another, one expects elements of the original vocabulary to spread with cultivation practices. This paper examines the vocabularies of rice in Asian languages for evidence of linguistic transfers, concluding that there are at least two independent vocabularies of rice in Asia. This suggests at least two independent starts of cultivation and domestications of Asian rice.

Is Puyuma a Primary Branch of Austronesian

Malcom Rosss new theory of early Austronesian phylogeny is examined. I describe evidence that *-en served to mark verbs in undergoer voice, patient subject, in a language ancestral to Puyuma, as well as evidence that *<in> occurs in some verbs in undergoer voice, patient subject perfective, in one sociolect of Nanwang Puyuma. This evidence falsifies the claim that Puyuma reflects an early Austronesian stage at which *-en and *<in> had not yet been reinterpreted from nominalizers into voice markers. It also falsifies the phylogeny that takes that putative innovation as its central event. A hypothetical scenario is offered to account for the replacement of the *-en, *-an, and *Si- (or *Sa-) series of voice markers by the series now found in Puyuma independent verbs.

The Higher Phylogeny of Austronesian: A Response to Winter

This paper is a response to criticism by Winter in an earlier issue of this journal of Sagart’s discussion of the higher phylogeny of Austronesian. I give examples outside of Austronesian of compound numerals being affected by several apparently irregular changes; argue that the number of changes proposed in my Austronesian model is realistic; explain the order of establishment of disyllabic numerals as depending on two factors, cardinal order and number of competitors; give Austronesian examples showing that the drive to disyllabism does apply to morphologically complex forms; and ascribe the limited similarities between the phylogenies of Blust and Ross to chance. Finally, I claim that the only realistic explanation of the nesting of six related isoglosses is a sequence of innovations.

The Chinese names of the four directions

It is shown that the Old Chinese terms for the four directions form two etymological pairs, one of which (north-south) relates to the notions of front and back (of the house: houses faced south in early China ) and the other (east-west) to notions of beginning vs. ceasing movement, applied to the sun. The relevant word families are adumbrated, the morphology explained and Sino-Tibetan cognates established.

Is Puyuma a Primary Branch of Austronesian?: A Rejoinder

This paper responds to recent criticism by Teng and Ross of a critique by Sagart of Ross’s claim, based on Teng’s grammar of Puyuma, that Puyuma has escaped the mechanism reinterpreting nominalization into verbs and should, therefore, be considered a primary branch of Austronesian. While acknowledging that Teng and Ross have presented an interpretation of the ‘do N times’ verbs that removes a part of the ground for the UVP *-en suffix being reflected in Puyuma, this paper details points in Sagart’s original paper that Teng and Ross have avoided in their response regarding Tsouic lexical innovations and fossilized *-en in two Puyuma verbs. It documents the existence of interspeaker differences in Puyuma sentences containing <in>, and argues that <in> in those and other sentences is a perfective marker of finite verbs under competition from la, a marker of new situations with perfective interpretations. Finally, it confirms the conclusion in Sagart’s paper that Puyuma has not escaped the reinterpretation of nominalizations into voicemarked verbs.