Deep linguistic prehistory with particular reference to Andamanese *

In 1992, American linguist Johanna Nichols introduced a new method of detecting typological patterns at great time depths, based on the morphological analysis and cross-linguistic comparisons of several structural types and grammatical categories (Nichols 1992). She claimed that her method reveals patterns that may go back as far as the initial modern human colonization of the globe, and she set up a preliminary model of early linguistic spread. Has Nichols taken a ground-breaking step towards a greater understanding of our distant linguistic past? And how can we test this? Towards the end of her book, Nichols 1992:263-65 calls for an analysis of ‘critical’ languages which are in a unique position to fill the gaps in her study and thus essential to our understanding of global linguistic prehistory. Using Nichols’ method as a testing model, this article highlights one such critical language group – the Andamanese language family, spoken by the indigenous Negrito population on the Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal – in an effort to shed further light on the distant linguistic past of our species

Loanword phonology in Jahai

Jahai, a language belonging to the Northern Aslian subgroup of the Aslian branch of Austroasiatic, is spoken by a community of approximately one thousand individuals in remote parts of Perak and Kelantan, Peninsular Malaysia, and reportedly also by a small community in the adjacent part of southernmost Thailand. Jahai speakers have long been in frequent contact with speakers of neighbouring languages, notably Temiar, a Central Aslian language, and Malay, the Austronesian majority language. Malay in particular has been an important source of borrowing, and a considerable portion of the Jahai vocabulary is of Malay origin. The present article describes the phonological changes that these words undergo when borrowed into Jahai1

Spatial coordinate systems in demonstrative meaning

Exploring the semantic encoding of a group of crosslinguistically uncommon “spatial-coordinate demonstratives”, this work establishes the existence of demonstratives whose function is to project angular search domains, thus invoking proper coordinate systems (or “frames of reference”). What is special about these distinctions is that they rely on a spatial asymmetry in relativizing a demonstrative referent (representing the Figure) to the deictic center (representing the Ground). A semantic typology of such demonstratives is constructed based on the nature of the asymmetries they employ. A major distinction is proposed between asymmetries outside the deictic Figure-Ground array (e.g., features of the larger environment) and those within it (e.g., facets of the speaker/addressee dyad). A unique system of the latter type, present in Jahai, an Aslian (Mon-Khmer) language spoken by groups of hunter-gatherers in the Malay Peninsula, is introduced and explored in detail using elicited data as well as natural conversational data captured on video. Although crosslinguistically unusual, spatial-coordinate demonstratives sit at the interface of issues central to current discourse in semantic-pragmatic theory: demonstrative function, deictic layout, and spatial frames of reference

The language of eating and drinking: a window on Orang Asli meaning-making

We make in this chapter a first probe into the lexical domain of eating and drinking as it is construed in the Aslian languages, a branch of the Austroasiatic language family spoken by a majority of the Orang Asli of the Malay Peninsula. Fundamental to human experience and representation, the domain of ingestion has received increased linguistic attention in recent years. Setting out from our own primary field data from several Aslian languages, collected over the past 25 years , we examine the form, meaning, and history of eating and drinking vocabulary and show that Aslian harbours unusual lexical strategies for ingestion. We place particular focus on ingestion events as expressed in the class of verbs. Moreover, in this seemingly restricted and mundane domain, we unpack semantic principles of wider significance to Aslian meaning-making, which speak directly to cultural distinctions within the Orang Asli sphere. In particular, we uncover a clear distinction in semantic categorisation strategies between foragers and non-foragers

Semplates: A guide to identification and elicitation

Semplates are a new descriptive and theoretical concept in lexical semantics, borne out of recent L&C work in several domains. A semplate can be defined as a configuration consisting of distinct layers of lexemes, each layer drawn from a different form class, mapped onto the same abstract semantic template. Within such a lexical layer, the sense relations between the lexical items are inherited from the underlying template. Thus, the whole set of lexical layers and the underlying template form a cross-categorial configuration in the lexicon. The goal of this task is to find new kinds of macrostructure in the lexicon, with a view to cross-linguistic comparison

Time and Place in the Prehistory of the Aslian Languages

The Aslian language family, located in the Malay Peninsula and southern Thai Isthmus, consists of four distinct branches comprising some 18 languages. These languages predate the now dominant Malay and Thai. The speakers of Aslian languages exhibit some of the highest degree of phylogenetic and societal diversity present in Mainland Southeast Asia today, among them a foraging tradition particularly associated with locally ancient, Pleistocene genetic lineages. Little advance has been made in our understanding of the linguistic prehistory of this region or how such complexity arose. In this article we present a Bayesian phylogeographic analysis of a large sample of Aslian languages. An explicit geographic model of diffusion is combined with a cognate birth-word death model of lexical evolution to infer the location of the major events of Aslian cladogenesis. The resultant phylogenetic trees are calibrated against dates in the historical and archaeological record to infer a detailed picture of Aslian language history, addressing a number of outstanding questions, including (1) whether the root ancestor of Aslian was spoken in the Malay Peninsula, or whether the family had already divided before entry, and (2) the dynamics of the movement of Aslian languages across the peninsula, with a particular focus on its spread to the indigenous foragers

Maps meet myths : Understanding Jahai place naming through Geographical Information Systems

Placenames are seemingly universal, with the potential to reveal different systems of organizing information in everyday communication. We report on the relationship between placenames in Jahai, an indigenous language spoken by the Jahai people of the Malay Peninsula, and the environment. Our approach explores the tendency to organize names using a hierarchy of kinship associated with the cnεl, mythological entities in origin stories, which appears to map onto catchment areas. By associating linguistic data with these ethnographic inputs and geographical properties calculated in a Geographic Information System, we generate and make suggestions for productive ways of understanding placenames as systems

Landscape terms and place names elicitation guide

Landscape terms reflect the relationship between geographic reality and human cognition. Are ‘mountains’, ‘rivers, ‘lakes’ and the like universally recognised in languages as naturally salient objects to be named? The landscape subproject is concerned with the interrelation between language, cognition and geography. Specifically, it investigates issues relating to how landforms are categorised cross-linguistically as well as the characteristics of place naming