Re: Re[4]: [tied] How should Nostratic be viewed?

Gerry:

The Maori language of New Zealand definitely is Polynesian, and thus of the Austronesian family.  However, I did not mention Maori or New Zealand in my message because I had thought that people on this list were definitely aware that Maori is Polynesian-Austronesian.  As such, it has no linguistic or cultural connection with The Australian or Papuan languages. 

In Australia, there appears to be one big Pama-Ngungan familiy and one or more smaller families, which may or may not be related to each other.  In Papua-New Guinea, there exists a linguistic hodge-podge, which I don't if it has been sorted out yet.  There is some speculation that some of the northern Australian languages and some of the Papuan languages may have had mutual influence on each other.  In addition, there is some speculation that at least one possibly two, Papuan language "phyla", the Torricelli and the the Sko phyla, may be distantly related related to languages in South-East Asia, namely Burma, oops, excuse me, Myanmar.  They seem to share typological similarities (tonality, verb structure, etc.), but it remains speculative at this point.

What seems to be a good URL for this information is http://papuaweb.org/dlib/bk/pl/C38/_toc.html

There is also evidence (weak, strong, or otherwise -- you decide) of some relationship between the Ndu Australian language family and the Sepik-Ramu Phylum of Papua-New Guinea.  Also, Greenberg has made attempts to link the languages of Andaman islands wifh Papuan languages.  He has also made attempts to link the now-extinct Tasmanian languages with Papuan languages.

Please note that at no time did I mention a possibility of linkage of Papuan or Australian languages with Austronesian languages.  No information that I have read indicates this.  As far as I know, the Australian and Papuan languages are linguistically distinct from the Austronesian languages.

Andy Howey

 Geraldine Reinhardt <waluk@...> wrote:

Andy,

 

Apparently I said that based on "old" information.  The Maori of New Zealand are connected to a Polynesian subfamily.  Are the Australian Aborigines known by any other name?

 

Gerry

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

From: Andrew Howey

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2003 12:14 PM

Subject: Re: Re[4]: [tied] How should Nostratic be viewed?

Gerry,

You had said earlier that Austronesian also includes the Australian languages.  Based on everything that I've read, they form at least one, perhaps several language families of their own.  And the Aboriginal languages of Papua-New Guinea may or may not be related to those.

Andy Howey

 Geraldine Reinhardt <waluk@...> wrote:

Apparently we're off list (is this what you intended)?

 

Had no idea that Munda and Mon-Khmer  languages were spoken by 75 million people.

 

Austronesian includes the Formosan, Indonesian, Malay, Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian subfamilies. Wouldn't this amount to more?

 

Gerry

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

From: Brian M. Scott

To: Geraldine Reinhardt

Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2003 10:47 AM

Subject: Re[4]: [tied] How should Nostratic be viewed?

At 12:40:42 PM on Sunday, March 16, 2003, Geraldine
Reinhardt wrote:

> Austro-Asiatic ONLY includes the Munda and Mon-Khmer
> languages.

Munda and Mon-Khmer *families* of languages.  Comes to some
75 million speakers or so, at a rough estimate.

> Austronesian includes the languages of Australia and Asia

No, it does not include the Australian languages.  And apart
from Malay there are only isolated pockets of Austronesian
languages on the Asian mainland; most are in Oceania.

Brian




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