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

Andy,

Interesting. I had been under the (apparently false) assumption that the Maori were Australian Aborigines. The Pama-Ngungan family seems to be a new kid on the block (although I do find a full listing in Google). Is the Pama-Ngungan language truly a "family" or could it assume the label of "dialect"? Are you thus claiming that Pama-Ngungan is the "sole" language for Australia?

Gerry

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

From: Andrew Howey

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2003 9:47 PM

Subject: 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