Re: [tied] Re: IE & linguistic complexity

Of course, PNG has a completely different and much more variegated topography than Australia, with a lot of rough terrain, highlands, rivers, and tropical forests. There is agriculture and animal husbandry there. Additionally, a substantial part of PNG was colonised by Austronesians pretty recently. All these factors are potential equilibrium-busters and would account for numerous (if small-scale) "phylogenetic explosions" in the history of the region.

What Australia and PNG have in common is the genetic diversity of their languages. Languages are more numerous and families tend to be slightly bigger in PNG (Austronesian, of course, is a case apart); there is probably more creolisation as well (as opposed to mere diffusion). Anyway, whatever the local conditions, old and relatively undisturbed linguistic areas tend to be occupied by many tiny families and linguistic isolates, and the construction of large-scale family trees for them proves difficult or impossible.

Dixon himself points to differences between equilibrium scenarios in different parts of the world, e.g. to the limited extent of lexical diffusion (combined, however, with powerful typological convergence) in North America.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----

From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Saturday, November 04, 2000 2:50 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] Re: IE & linguistic complexity

On Thu, 2 Nov 2000 17:49:27 +0100, Piotr wrote: >There is an interesting argument about linguistic areas in Bob Dixon's >"Rise and Fall of Languages" (1997 [2nd edition 1999], Cambridge University >Press). Supposing, for the sake of the argument, that Australia was peopled >just once, ca. 50,000 BP, by a small linguistically uniform group of people >(say, a few boatloads) and that any subsequent immigrations (before the >arrival of the Europeans) were not substantial enough to upset its linguistic >structure -- how would Proto-Australian have developed into the known >Australian languages? The problem I have with Dixon's scenario is that, again for the sake of argument, New Guinea was peopled by the exact same few boatloads of people. And New Guinea (as well as the Northern, tropical, tip of Australia), has developed in a radically different way. We have a twisty maze of languages, all different: phonologically, typologically, lexically. In fact, after 50,000 years, what we would expect is NG, not Australia. Ironically, I think it's precisely a lack of _equilibrium_ which has likely created the Australian situation. As Dixon himself notes on p. 92 of the "Rise and Fall", Australian prehistory has seen several cycles of population contraction (extremely dry periods) followed by expansion (wetter periods) and contraction again. Language mixing may have taken place when the remnant population was confined to relatively few spots along the coast and major rivers. Repeat several times and stir well, and you may get something like the Australian linguistical situation. This did not happen in the climatically much more stable New Guinea, or in places where there was a constant influx of new populations and languages. ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv@...