Typology and the Linguistic Macrohistory of Island Melanesia

Abstract

Recent years have seen much discussion on the use and meaning of typological argumentation when reconstructing language history and language relations. We address the conclusions and methodology of a paper "Structural phylogenetics and the reconstruction of ancient language history" (Science, Sept. 23, 2005), which claims that, on the basis of a typological comparison, the non-Austronesian languages and (Austronesian) Oceanic spoken to the imediate east of new Guinea can be shown to belong to two unrelated genetic entities. We argue that the data and disucssion in this paper do not allow us to conclude that the non-Austronesian languages in the study form a valid linguistic group in any hisotircal sense, or that the methods they apply can be used to make claims about lingquistic relatedness.

Statistical Reasoning in the Evaluation of Typological Diversity in Island Melanesia

“…Beyond these general points, this paper also constitutes a concrete response to some of the misapprehensions about Dunn et al (2005) found in Donohue and Musgrave (2007) (henceforth D&M). The most important claim made by D&M is that the apparent phylogenetic pattern might be a product of areal factors, in particular, contact with Oceanic languages.…”

The Emerging Field of Language Dynamics

“…As mentioned above both related and unrelated languages are sensitive to geographical distance in the amount of similarity they exhibit, so the claim that evidence had been found for a phylogenetic relationship was completely unfounded. In fact, in a more recent paper, written in response to a critique by Donohue and Musgrave (2007), the authors now admit that they are ‘unable to tease ancient contact and phylogeny apart’ (Dunn et al. 2007: 401).…”

Issues in the genetic classification of contact languages

“…Donohue and Musgrave (2007) take issue with the results: while they agree that structural features can and should be used in investigating linguistic history, they also contend that such features may be particularly prone to borrowing, especially in linguistic areas. This "would mean that conclusions such as those drawn by Dunn et al are particularly prone to controversy; without establishing that a particular set of correspondences in grammatical features are not due to areal influence, there can be no argument about the correspondence indicating a genetic relationship" (Donohue and Musgrave 2007: 350).…”