Re: [tied] Digest Number 319

I'm afraid I'm unable take Manansala seriously. Anyone who claims that the Indic languages are not IE and that Classical Sanskrit is a Dravidian language "with heavy Austric and IE influence" demonstrates a profound and fundamental lack of understanding of language contact, comparative linguistics and linguistic classification. His other main thesis -- about powerful Austronesian influence on Indic -- has inspires some more "discoveries" like the reversal of Middle Indo-Aryan sound changes (dhamma is said to be more "natural and primitive" than dharma, and more purely Austronesian). This isn't just over the top but positively crazy and undermines my confidence in whatever else he has to say concerning matters I know less about.

I'd like to hear an Austronesianist's opinion about the likelihood that the dispersal of AN took place out of Sundaland ca. 8000 BC.

Your lists of forms are raw material -- lookalikes picked up from a variety of languages, not screened against things like borrowing (I've spotted Sanskrit loans among your Indonesian examples). They do look similar (well, that's why you list them), though considering the alleged 10000 years of separate development one might well wonder if it isn't a liability rather than an asset. The semantic range and flexibility of meaning for your "*man-" (testicle, brain, belly, breasts, large intestine, think, people, among others) is far too loose by any standards. Anyways, what (if any) are the reconstructed PAN forms and meanings? When and how did they enter PIE and PAA? It is difficult to discuss a vague proposal -- I'd appreciate someting a little more definite.


GJ:
Both srcheologists and linguists specialized in AN agree that AN languages are originated from Taiwan. As I pointed out earlier on this list, the Malayo-polynesian languages are just the last sub-branch of one group of Formosan languages. Any reconstruction of AN that does not take languages of Taiwan as a basis is deemed to remain at the Malayo-polynesian level (ca 3000 BC). This has far-reaching consequences when you try to make external comparison (for example, PMP *mata 'eye' is now reconstructed *maCa, the segments C and t merged in PMP and some formosan languages)/
Agriculture seems to tell us that Austronesian arrived in Taiwan by 6000 BC, beginning of the Neolithic (that is the date given by Blust, Starosta and Reid). Much/ data seem also to indicate that AN lang. are originated from northern China, but this list is not the proper place to discuss that.
The only serious external comparisons with AN are Austro-asiatic (mostly morphological) and Sino-tibetan (many affixes, more than 30 words in Swadesh's list of 200 basic words)

In any case, Manasala doesn't seem to understand pAN reconstruction well.

Guillaume