*pw and *tw? Where do they come from? Is
that Pedersen's Second Law?
The Formosan homeland theory is now more
solid than any competing proposal. Recent research shows that Taiwan is the home
of several (up to nine) branches of Austronesian whose taxonomic status is
the same as that of Malayo-Polynesian or higher. This shows that the first
splits within the Austronesian family occurred there and went on for some time
before one of the local languages (Proto-MP) expanded to the Philippines and
then further. The Malayo-Polynesian "big bang" was made possible by
technological innovations such as the outrigger canoe (there are shared words
for outrigger canoes and their component parts in Malayo-Polynesian but not in
the Taiwanese branches). The dating I gave is consistent with the archaeological
dates for farmers' colonisation of Taiwan and the subsequent colonisation of the
Philippines, the Moluccas, etc. In our earlier disputes I said all that
I had to say about the dating of the last stage of the submergence of
Sundaland.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, October 13, 2001 2:17 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] IE numbers
*pwat(w)- >
*kwet(w), if you please. Since I tend to believe in the Sundaland theory,
Formosan does not enter into the picture. And if you believe that dispersion
from Sundaland took place because of inundation there are several events that
are possible candidates. Where does that 3500-3300 BCE dating come from? Is it
bound up with
some constant-sea-level out-of-Formosa
scheme?