Language contact and the decay of the Austronesian voice system
What can the typological diversity of the Austronesian language family tell us about the epic migration history of Austronesian and Melanesian peoples?
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Description
In this talk, Isaac Stead discusses his survey of the voice systems of 43 Austronesian languages, showing that the degree of conservatism observed in the voice system of branches of Austronesian is probably due to language contact with pre-Austronesian populations in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
Isaac will give an overview of the 4,000 year migration history of Austronesian speakers from Taiwan as far as Aotearoa. He will discuss new findings in archaeology and how they relate to this question, and discuss analogous cases of language contact between Austronesian and speakers of languages from other families in historic times.
For more information contact: Victoria Chen
victoria.chen@vuw.ac.nz