This study investigates the role of human agency in the gene flow and geographical distribution of the Australian baobab, Adansonia gregorii. The genus Adansonia is a charismatic tree endemic to Africa, Madagascar, and northwest Australia that has long been valued by humans for its multiple uses. The distribution of genetic variation in baobabs in Africa has been partially attributed to human-mediated dispersal over millennia, but this relationship has never been investigated for the Australian species. We combined genetic and linguistic data to analyse geographic patterns of gene flow and movement of word-forms for A. gregorii in the Aboriginal languages of northwest Australia. Comprehensive assessment of genetic diversity showed weak geographic structure and high gene flow. Of potential dispersal vectors, humans were identified as most likely to have enabled gene flow across biogeographic barriers in northwest Australia. Genetic-linguistic analysis demonstrated congruence of gene flow patterns and directional movement of Aboriginal loanwords for A. gregorii. These findings, along with previous archaeobotanical evidence from the Late Pleistocene and Holocene, suggest that ancient humans significantly influenced the geographic distribution of Adansonia in northwest Australia.

In many languages, expressions of the type ‘x said: “p”’, ‘x said that p’ or ‘allegedly, p’ share properties with common syntactic types such as constructions with subordination, paratactic constructions, and constructions with sentence-level adverbs. On closer examination, however, they often turn out to be atypical members of these syntactic classes. In this paper we argue that a more coherent picture emerges if we analyse these expressions as a dedicated syntactic domain in itself, which we refer to as ‘reported speech’. Based on typological observations we argue for the idiosyncrasy of reported speech as a syntactic class. The article concludes with a proposal for a cross-linguistic characterisation that aims at capturing this broadly conceived domain of reported speech with a single semantic definition.

The Australian Aboriginal language Ungarinyin (Worrorran) has one single complex-clause construction for expressing reported speech ('say'), that can also signal reported thought ('think') and attribute intentions ('want'). By demonstrating which formal and functional distinctions are essential to the interpretation of this Ungarinyin construction, the present paper aims to contribute to understanding the exact nature of the syntactic relation involved in reported speech constructions. Following the account of McGregor (1994; 1997;, I analyse the clausal syntax of reported speech constructions as a dedicated syntactic relation, separate from more familiar clausal relations such as coordination and subordination. I call this relation the 'frame-in' construction.Subsequently, I compare the conventionalised reported speech construction in Ungarinyin to a variety of more loosely integrated non-conventionalised or semi-conventionalised strategies for expressing speech and thought attribution in the language. Collectively I refer to these strategies as examples of 'defenestration', constructions without the typical marking of the syntactic frame-in relation, while expressing the meaning associated with a regular frame-in construction. Instances of defenestration differ from syntactic frame-in in that they express the meaning of a frame-in construction through transparent compositional means.I argue that types of defenestration show remarkable regularities in Ungarinyin, and, tentatively, crosslinguistically, which has consequences for the analysis of indexicality and iconicity in syntax and presents a new context for analysing the syntax of reported speech constructions in relation to multimodal features, particulary for the category of free (in)direct speech and 'zero quotatives'.

We present a first, broad-scale typology of extended reported speech, examples of lexicalised or grammaticalised reported speech constructions without a regular quotation meaning. These typically include meanings that are conceptually close to reported speech, such as think or want, but also interpretations that do not appear to have an obvious conceptual relation with talking, such as cause or begin to. Reported speech may therefore reflect both concepts of communication and inner worlds, and meanings reminiscent of ‘core grammar’, such as evidentiality, modality, aspect (relational) tense and clause linking. We contextualise our findings in the literature on fictive interaction and perspective and suggest that extended reported speech may lend insight into a fundamental aspect of grammar: the evolution of verbal categories. Based on the striking similarity between the meanings of extended reported speech and grammatical categories, we hypothesise that the phenomenon represents a plausible linguistic context in which grammar evolved.