Ockham’s Razor

A somewhat out of date now link to an Ockham’s Razor program by David Rose (University of Sydney), which includes discussion of prehistory.

Language Contact and Deliberate Change

Sarah Thomason, University of Michigan. Journal of Language Contact 1. Discusses cases where speakers have deliberately engineered correspondences and evaluates the potential harm for reconstruction.

Linguistic Indulgence

Many papers in Language Description, History and Development : Linguistic indulgence in memory of Terry Crowley Edited by Jeff Siegel, John Lynch and Diana Eades are on Australian languages.

2. A desiderative complement construction in Warrwa.
William B. McGregor
27-40
3. Noun incorporation in Rembarrnga discourse.
Graham R. McKay
41-52
4. A revised view of the verbal suffixes of Yugambeh-Bundjalung
M.C. Sharpe
53-68
16. Complex predication and the coverb construction
Mengistu Amberber, Brett Baker and Mark Harvey
209-219
19. Nganyaywana revisited: Lessons from Terry Crowley’s work on New England languages
Paul Black
255-265
20. Divergent regularity in word-initial truncation in the Arandic languages
Harold Koch
267-280
32. The Crowley corrective: An alternative voice for language endangerment
Michael Walsh
431-437
34. Funeral liturgy as a strategy for language revival
Rob Amery and Dennis O’Brien
457-467

(Hat-tip: David Nash)

McGregor, Nekes and Worms

Anthropos 102 includes an article by Bill McGregor on the editing of Nekes and Worms’ Australian Languages. The abstract can be found here.

Seminar announcement

Peter Sutton: Abstract for talk is here.

“Equilibrium and punctuation: small language survival and large language expansion on a hunter-gatherer continent”

(SOAS, Jan 16th)

Ozbib update

OZBib

A linguistic bibliography of Aboriginal Australia

and the Torres Strait Islands

SUPPLEMENT 1999-2006

Compiled by Geraldine Triffitt

Published by Mulini Press, Canberra

OZBIB was compiled by Lois Carrington and Geraldine Triffitt and published by Pacific Linguistics in 1999. Its aim was to provide a full bibliographical listing of all published materials and theses on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages and linguistics. This Supplement covers the period from July 1999 to September 2006 plus addenda from OZBIB. There are both language and subject indexes to the bibliography.

OZBIB is broad in scope. It lists both theoretical and applied linguistics works. It covers the description and analysis of languages, dictionaries, grammars, works on bilingual education, language policy, language use in courts of law, the experiences of language speakers and the linguistic output of language centres. Included in the Indigenous languages are creoles and Aboriginal English.

Available from

Naviti Documentation, PO Box 537, MAWSON, ACT 2607
No Credit Card facilities available

$30 + postage and handling.

Postage rates: Australia $5.50: Overseas air mail $10-$17 depending on destination

Geraldine Triffitt is a librarian with linguistic qualifications from the Australian National University. She worked as Bibliographer (Linguistics) and Collection Manager (Linguistics) at AIAS and AIATSIS Library from 1986 to 1997.

Nekes and Worms’ Australian Languages

Somehow I forgot to post that Bill McGregor’s edition of Australian Languages (Nekes and Worms) is out. Here is the publisher’s blurb.

Australian Languages is the magnum opus of Hermann Nekes and Ernest Worms, two missionary linguists who undertook pioneering investigations of a number of languages spoken in Dampier Land and the Kimberley (far north west of Australia) and to a lesser extent further afield, in Queensland and New South Wales during the 1930s and 1940s. Presenting a wealth of information on many now extinct or moribund languages, the work is of enormous value to descendants of speakers as well as to linguists, including Australianists, descriptive linguists, typologists, and historians of linguistics.

The original text of Australian Languages, which appeared previously only on micro-film, is divided into five parts: a grammar outlining some of the major features of Australian languages (with particular focus on the Nyulnyulan languages traditionally spoken on Dampier Land); an English finder list; an alphabetically arranged wordlist covering a variety of languages; a separate wordlist of Dyirbal (North Queensland), and a small number of texts.

William B. McGregor has revised, annotated and updated the material. An accompanying CD-ROM contains a digitized facsimile of the entire original micro-film with links to an electronic version of the book, a user-friendly database version of the dictionaries and other accompanying material.

It really is a very impressive volume.

Homo sapiens populates the earth

Patrick Manning: Homo sapiens populates the earth: A provisional synthesis, privileging linguistic evidence.

Journal of World History. 17.2 (2006) 115-196 Link goes to full article.

Keen: Constraints on the development of inequalities

The latest issue of Current Anthropology has the following article by Ian Keen:

Constraints on the Development of Enduring Inequalities in Late Holocene Australia: Ian Keen. volume 47 (2006), pages 7–38

Conditions in Late Holocene Australia, including variable and unpredictable environments, reliance on a wide array of food resources, relatively low population densities, some degree of mobility, and shared access to land and waters, contrast sharply with those posited as conditions for the emergence of complexity among hunter-gatherer societies such as those of the Northwest Coast of North America. Nevertheless, Aboriginal societies varied considerably in a number of ways, including resources of male power. In particular, the article contrasts features of “reproductive power” in the high- and very-high-polygyny societies of the north coast of Australia with those of other regions of the continent. High to very high polygyny developed in areas with relatively high population density and certain forms of kin classification and engendered considerable inequality among patri-groups, but various social and environmental conditions imposed constraints on the development of enduring hierarchy.

Linguistic Areas

The following text is taken from Palgrave’s web site. Book includes a chapter on Australian languages.

Description
The contributors to this collection address issues of definition and theory of linguistic areas, analyze the process of convergence, and introduce methods to assess the impact of language contact across geographical zones. New cases studies are introduced which extend the corpus of areas described so far. They are accompanied by discussions that revisit some of the more well-established linguistic areas.

Contents
List of Figures and Maps
List of Tables
List of Abbreviations
Notes on the Contributors
Introduction; A.McMahon, Y.Matras & N.Vincent
Areal Linguistics: A Closer Scrutiny; L.Campbell
All or Nothing; T.Stolz
Keeping Contact in the Family: Approaches to Language Classification and Contact-induced Change; A.McMahon & R.McMahon
Linguistic Areas, Language Contact and Typology: Some Implications from the Case of Ethiopia as a Linguistic Area; W.Bisang
Structural Isoglosses between Khoekhoe and Tuu: The Cape as a Linguistic Area; T.Güldemann
The Sri Lanka Sprachbund: The Newcomers Portuguese and Malay; P.Bakker
On the Roles of Turkic in the Caucasus Area; L.Johanson
The Circle That Won’t Come Full: Two Potential Isoglosses in the Circum-Baltic Area; M.Koptjevskaja-Tamm
Complex Emotion Predicates in Eastern Indonesia: Evidence for Language Contact?; S.Musgrave
Another Look at Australia as a Linguistic Area; C.Bowern
Towards a Typology of the Siberian Linguistic Area; G.D.S.Anderson
Index