Torsten wrote

> If one regards creating song lines as the Aboriginal equivalent as
> surveying, it's interesting (I think) that many of the putative
> loanwords from Sundalandish I put on my site, eg.
>
> http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/Hrg.html
> http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/md.html
>
> seem to have to do with surveying; note the Benveniste quote in the
> former. Also, these loanwords are a pain in the way you describe;
> they seem to follow no rules. I note that this situation applies to
> Pama-Nyungan, which is a late intrusion into Australia?

There is no evidence that Pama Nyungan is in any way intrusive to
Australia. It followes an identical set of phonemics as all non Pama-
Nyungan languages. It would also seem that it is just a language
group that became incredibly popular - especially associated with the
more arid and semi arid areas of the continent, giving these
languages an advantage over those that were more ecologically
limited. Given the stability of settlement (eg we have some areas of
continuous settlement going back for 39.5K years through to today
here in the area of Perth - with the same family groups still living
there), it makes linguistic "intrusions" difficult to determine. In
the north things are even more complex. The Bradshaw art has been
replaced by Wandjina art, and the cintemporary Wandjina artists say
they have no understanding of who the Bradshaw painters were.

There is still a great deal of work to be done in unravelling these
situations.

Regards

John