Search

The article "Proto-Austronesian *j Once Again" discusses the challenges researchers face in reconstructing the Proto-Austronesian sound system, particularly focusing on the diverse reflexes of Proto-Austronesian *j. The article explores various proposed reconstructions for *j, including a recent proposal by Laurent Sagart, which suggests a nasal value for *j. The author proposes a novel reconstruction for PAn *j as a palatal lateral [ʎ], based on phonetic observations and historical sound changes in Malayo-Polynesian languages. The article highlights the complexities of reconstructing *j in different Austronesian languages, emphasizing the need for further research to refine our understanding of this phoneme. [Extracted from the article]

The article "Adnominal Modification: The View from Amis (Formosan)" published in Oceanic Linguistics discusses the attributive adnominal modification in Northern Amis, an Austronesian language spoken in Taiwan. The study focuses on the suffixes -ay and -an used for modification, with -ay deriving modifiers attributing time-stable properties and -an deriving modifiers referring to properties true of a class of entities. The article also delves into relative clauses, voice systems, and the alignment of Natauran Amis dialects, providing detailed analyses of modifiers derived from nouns, stative/adjectival verbs, and RCs with voice-affixed verbs. The study concludes by discussing the evolution of modifiers into referring nouns and the syntactic functions of gerunds and participials in Amis. [Extracted from the article]

The article "Voice in Land Dayak Languages" published in Oceanic Linguistics explores the voice typologies of languages spoken in Borneo, focusing on five Land Dayak languages: Beaye, Ba'aje, Banyaduq, Bekati', and Ribun. These languages exhibit a two-way voice system with limited morphological affixation, relying on word order and preverbal analytic markers to differentiate subject arguments. The study reveals variations in voice profiles among these languages, suggesting a broader definition of Central Bornean-type voice to include the diversity found in Land Dayak languages. The research contributes to understanding the complexity and variation of voice systems in Austronesian languages spoken in Borneo. [Extracted from the article]

All languages exhibit basic colour terms that manifest how distinct linguistic systems categorise colour. Māori, the language of the indigenous people of New Zealand, demonstrates an instructive case where drastic innovations in colour terminology took place in response to environmental and cultural influences. We demonstrate how and when Māori accrued new colour terms to replace existing ones in its immediate ancestor, Proto-Eastern-Polynesian, and eventually coined new colour terms through borrowing from native words for nature to match the English colour categories that did not previously exist in Māori – except for the colour pink. While contemporary Māori is at the same stage as English (Stage VII) in Berlin and Kay’s colour term hierarchy, the evidence is that Māori was at Stage IV pre-colonisation, possessing only five native colour categories. The evolution of Māori’s colour categories thus illuminates how colonisation may impact the basic vocabulary of a language, both in the Māori settling a new land in the 13th century and in their subsequent language contact with English colonisers in the 19th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many Philippine languages of the Austronesian family exhibit a three-case system: two reserved for marking core arguments and the third for marking non-core participants. This paper examines the Batanic subgroup, which differs from the typical Philippine configuration by distinguishing two separate non-core cases (oblique and locative), thus raising the question of how the single non-core category of other Philippine languages is more finely split in Batanic languages. Previous analyses of the Batanic non-core cases often reduce the oblique to merely marking indefiniteness but ascribe a wider range of functions to the locative in marking various peripheral arguments and adverbials. Using textual and usage-based data, this paper proposes a reevaluation of the non-core cases in Batanic and argues that: (1) the Batanic oblique should be conceptualized more like the typical Philippine oblique, as it marks both indefinite and definite participants excluded from the core for various syntactic reasons, and that (2) the functions of the locative are more specific, compact, and stem from its basic spatial meaning with an additional association with animacy. This analysis offers a typological perspective on possible ways that languages organize their non-core categories and provides further insight on what exactly the 'non-core' might consist of. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates lexical borrowing from Austroasiatic into Austronesian languages. It does so for the following contact stages and interactions between these languages following the Austronesian overseas dispersal: (Stage 1) early contacts between Austroasiatic and Malayo-Polynesian particularly in the early Neolithic in the area encompassing mainland Southeast Asia, Northwest Kalimantan, and Sumatra, often resulting in the transmission of faunal terms; (Stage 2) interactions between speakers of Mon-Khmer and Malayo-Chamic languages during the early development of statehood; (Stage 3) exchange of terms in the period of early Khmer, Cham, and Malay kingdoms. Some of these transmissions can be shown to have taken place against the backdrop of the paramountcy of the kingdom of Funan. The latter stage also involves Sanskrit loanwords which were transmitted to Malayo-Polynesian via a Mon-Khmer language. The loanwords in this article are informative of Southeast Asia’s language history as well as the region’s cultural history.

This paper discusses a phenomenon that has so far received little attention in previous literature: the presence, in several languages from different branches of the Austronesian family, of polyfunctional markers, which combine an aspectual meaning of change of state with information and discourse structuring functions. In this study, based on a comparative analysis of fifty-two Austronesian languages, I show that polyfunctional change of state markers are distributed throughout the entire family, crosscutting the major typological and geographical divide between Western and Eastern Austronesian. I argue that the development of information and discourse structuring functions of change of state markers derives from applying the notions of current relevance and transition to new situation not to eventualities, but to elements of propositions, and I also suggest that this process may be universally valid and could explain the similar development of change of state markers into information and discourse structuring devices attested in non-Austronesian languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This reply explores issues with documenting prosodic structures given their unique relationship with metalinguistic knowledge. New evidence and perspectives are incorporated into a deeper investigation of Budai Rukai and the analytical decisions that underlie its reanalyzed prosodic system. This case study is then taken as a basis for discussion of a possible standardized protocol for the documentation of prosodic structures, in which diverse types of phonological evidence are integrated and contextualized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ease and consistency with which speakers of many languages provide direct judgments about syllable structure has been taken by scholars as evidence that these judgments are accurate and sufficient argumentation for an analysis of syllable structure in descriptive works. This paper questions whether the results of direct elicitation tasks reliably indicate a prosodic domain that is meaningful in the language's phonology and provides alternative forms of evidence for syllable structure from intonation. This is done through a case study of Budai Rukai, a Formosan language whose contact relationship with Sinitic languages affects how speakers respond to syllable judgment tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differential object marking (DOM) is known from a great variety of language families. We present data suggesting that, contrary to what is suggested in recent typological surveys, DOM is also a widespread phenomenon in Austronesian symmetrical voice languages. To do this, we show why the identification of DOM constructions in these languages is difficult, propose a definition for DOM that takes note of the peculiarities of symmetrical voice systems, and briefly review three types of DOM systems attested in the area. Our findings have implications for claims regarding the universality of DOM, and quality control in compiling large-scale typological databases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a study of ideophones in Northern Amis, an East Formosan, Austronesian language of Taiwan. Ideophones depict sensory experiences, and they generally have the same phonological and phonotactic properties as other lexemes; however, some ideophones show consonant and vowel alternations denoting grades of intensity or pitch, and a number of ideophones denoting bad smells and tastes are characterized by specific sequences of phonemes. Crucially, beyond their purely depictive function, many ideophones are also used to describe sensory experiences, in which case, they are derived and inflected as verbs, modifiers and nouns; yet, their greater grammatical integration does not necessarily lead to the loss of their ideophonic properties. Rather, these two functions, depiction and description, are better seen as occurring on a continuum between two poles, as in Japanese (Dingemanse & Akita 2017). Only when the depictive function and the pairing of form and sensory depiction are lost do these lexemes become de-ideophonic, generally taking on non-sensorial semantics.

Abstract The Philippines are central to understanding the expansion of the Austronesian language family from its homeland in Taiwan. It remains unknown to what extent the distribution of Malayo-Polynesian languages has been shaped by back migrations and language leveling events following the initial Out-of-Taiwan expansion. Other aspects of language history, including the effect of language switching from non-Austronesian languages, also remain poorly understood. Here we apply Bayesian phylogenetic methods to a core-vocabulary dataset of Philippine languages. Our analysis strongly supports a sister group relationship between the Sangiric and Minahasan groups of northern Sulawesi on one hand, and the rest of the Philippine languages on the other, which is incompatible with a simple North-to-South dispersal from Taiwan. We find a pervasive geographical signal in our results, suggesting a dominant role for cultural diffusion in the evolution of Philippine languages. However, we do find some support for a later migration of Gorontalo-Mongondow languages to northern Sulawesi from the Philippines. Subsequent diffusion processes between languages in Sulawesi appear to have led to conflicting data and a highly unstable phylogenetic position for Gorontalo-Mongondow. In the Philippines, language switching to Austronesian in ‘Negrito’ groups appears to have occurred at different time-points throughout the Philippines, and based on our analysis, there is no discernible effect of language switching on the basic vocabulary.

Pseudosluicing diagnostics have played an important role in wider debates about sluicing. Sluicing is the term used to describe the deletion of an embedded clausal constituent, which leaves only a wh‐phrase overt. Genuine sluicing requires syntactic or semantic identity between the sluiced clause and its antecedent, contrasting with pseudosluicing, in which pro‐drop creates the appearance of a sluice but no identity is required. The underlying structure of sluicing in several Austronesian languages has been argued to be pseudoclefts, which involve a nominal wh‐predicate and a headless relative clause argument. Both Malagasy and Nukuoro have been analysed as having pseudocleft sluicing, and on the basis of this, claims about the type of identity required in sluicing have been made. Both analyses rely on diagnostics that rule out the possibility of pseudosluicing. This paper reexamines the pseudosluicing diagnostics used for Malagasy and Nukuoro and concludes that they have been insufficiently controlled for. This is supported by data from Madurese showing that pseudosluicing diagnostics are inconclusive in these Austronesian languages. Language‐internal support is needed for such diagnostics, especially as they play an important role in the conclusions drawn from Austronesian languages on the wider identity requirement for sluicing. Three language‐specific diagnostics are given which are successfully able to identify pseudosluicing in Madurese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiential constructions is an understudied topic in western Austronesian languages. The focus is on Northern Amis (Formosan), with some crosslinguistic comparison. In Amis, experiential constructions are derived by a syncretic suffix –en, which is also an Undergoer Voice suffix. In experiential constructions, –en is suffixed to stative-intransitive verbs compatible with experiences, and functions as an applicative voice that licenses an extra-thematic experiencer marked as the nominative argument, generally with adverse meaning. Though reminiscent of adversative passives in some Asian languages, experiential constructions in Amis are not passives, nor are they standard Undergoer Voice –en constructions for two main reasons: (i) they are restricted to stative and intransitive stems; (ii) their argument structure and case-marking are different. It is argued that the source of Amis experiential constructions is a Proto-Austronesian adversative *ka- … -an/-en construction (Blust, Robert. 1999. Notes on Pazeh phonology and morphology. Oceanic Linguistics 38(2). 321–365) and that Amis innovated by creating a verbal ma- … -en experiential applicative construction from that originally non-finite construction.

The internal subgrouping of Land Dayak languages (Sarawak, Malaysia and West Kalimantan, Indonesia) as well as the reconstructability of length distinctions in the vowel system of Proto-Land Dayak, have received recent attention that has resulted in changes to the internal subgrouping and a restriction of the full/reduced distinction in Proto-Land Dayak vowels. Earlier work on the reconstructability of the full/reduced distinction relied on assumptions about the subgrouping of certain languages that needed to be confirmed pending future research. In this paper, documentation of some previously unstudied Land Dayak languages is presented. The data from these languages, which was originally collected for syntactic analysis and description, supports a restriction in full/reduced to Proto-Land Dayak *a but not other vowels, lending support to earlier proposals based on more limited datasets. The documentation of these languages also allows for a more accurate internal subgrouping of Land Dayak and shows the utility of language data beyond initial collection as well as the importance of archiving.

Markers of the FRUSTRATIVE (non-realization of an expected outcome) often have a variety of uses. The Kimaragang frustrative dara also marks various related functions such as “discontinuous past”, “action narrowly averted”, frustrated intention or desire, and counterfactual conditionals. Davis & Matthewson (2022) describe a similar but not identical range of uses for the frustrative marker séna7 in St’át’imcets, and propose that the core meaning of this marker involves a type of epistemic modality. They further propose that their analysis can be extended to Kimaragang dara, suggesting that observed differences of usage may be due to differences in the tense-aspect systems of the two languages.This paper argues that the Kimaragang frustrative is different from séna7 in two respects: (1) the nature of the “frustrated expectation” inference, and (2) type of modality (epistemic vs. circumstantial). Frustrated expectation is lexically entailed in St’át’imcets, but Kimaragang dara entails only that the expected outcome cannot be asserted to be true at the time of speaking, with frustrated expectation arising as a pragmatic inference in contexts where it is reasonable to expect the speaker to know the actual outcome. Davis & Matthewson show that séna7 is purely epistemic in nature: it marks an unexpected correlation between two propositions, which need not belong to a single chain of events. Kimaragang dara is circumstantial in nature: it marks an initial situation whose expected outcome within the normal course of events is so far unrealized. It can be used to describe counterfactual situations, which are not epistemically accessible.

Makada is a dialect of Kuanua spoken on the island of Makada, one of the Duke of York Islands, a small group of islands located between the larger islands of New Ireland and New Britain in the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea. As a dialect of Kuanua, Makada belongs to the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian family. Although some early reports noted Makada's similarity to the Kuanua varieties spoken on the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain, the Makada dialect has often mistakenly been assumed to be a dialect of Ramoaaina (also known as "Duke of York"), the language of its closest neighbors, spoken on the other islands of the group. Although influenced by Ramoaaina, Makada is a dialect of Kuanua, which is also spoken on the "mainland" of New Britain and on the islands of Watom and Matupit. This paper is intended to serve as an introduction to Makada, presenting its basic features and showing it to be a dialect of Kuanua. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With its linguistic and cultural diversity, Austronesia is important in the study of evolutionary forces that generate and maintain cultural variation. By analysing publicly available datasets, we have identified four classes of cultural features in Austronesia and distinct clusters within each class. We hypothesized that there are differing modes of transmission and patterns of variation in these cultural classes and that geography alone would be insufficient to explain some of these patterns of variation. We detected relative differences in the verticality of transmission and distinct patterns of cultural variation in each cultural class. There is support for pulses and pauses in the Austronesian expansion, a west-to-east increase in isolation with explicable exceptions, and correspondence between linguistic and cultural outliers. Our results demonstrate how cultural transmission and patterns of variation can be analysed using methods inspired by population genetics.

No image of precolonial Visayans is as emblematic as the tattooed Pintados. But this imagery is almost always coupled with notions of warriorship and male valour in scholarly and popular discourses about the early Visayas. Comparing what we know about Visayan tattooing with customary tattooing in southern Mindanao and other tattooing traditions in the Austronesian-speaking world has opened methodological queries on how to re-read the historical materials used as basis for portraying tattooing as the domain of warriorship and masculinity. Such associations should not be treated as historical or ethnographic givens, as they greatly narrow our understanding of tattooing as a social practice. A more cautious re-evaluation of Visayan tattooing shows that it was a more broadly accessible custom used to various degrees with many significations. Specifically, we revisit the dimensions of tattooing as rite of passage, as protection, and for beauty, proposing anthropologically grounded and elaborated readings for each as starting points for more socially and culturally embedded interpretations of early Visayan tattooing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the enigmatic figure of the 'Man with No Breath' in the Visayan Labaw Donggon and the Sugidanon epics of Panay is not just a random flair in literary imagery, but works as a cultural pointer to a coherent and durable schema relating to personhood (of a self composed of 'detachable' or 'partible' parts) as it intersects with a particular ontology (of basic reality from a construal of 'breathing'). Our ethnographic-comparative approach to this character takes it as an elaborated expression of indigenous reasoning centring on 'breathing' and its figurations in socio-symbolic fields. Taking relevant data coming from our Pantaron Manobo ethnography and epics to bear on Visayan epic data, we outline a logical schema – relating 'breathing', 'cutting' and 'marking' ('breathing is cutting and linking' and 'cutting is marking with breath') – objectified in the figure of the 'Man with No Breath'. This breathing-cutting-marking thema has broader regional heuristic use: opening possibilities in understanding other than the usual 'metaphorical' or 'animistic' glossings of South East Asian/Austronesian 'soul', 'spirit', 'life force' or 'breath'. The anthropological value of this figure is apt since 'breath' in this region (with its linguistic and cultural particularities) has long assumed a specific ritual/religious valence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Six main alternative linkage proposals which involve the Sino-Tibetan family, including Sinitic and other language families of the East Asian area (Miao-Yao, Altaic/Transeurasian, Austroasiatic, Tai-Kadai, Austronesian) are briefly outlined. Using the standard techniques of comparative linguistics, a remote linkage between the Sino-Tibetan languages, including Sinitic, the Yeniseian languages of Siberia, and the Na-Dene languages of northwest North America is demonstrated. This includes cognate core lexicon showing regular sound correspondences, morphological similarities of form and function, as well as similarities in social structure. The other proposals for linkages that connect Sinitic and other languages of the East Asian area appear not to be based on a genetic linguistic relationship but rather due to contact: millennia of loanwords from Sinitic into the languages of those families and some lexicon borrowed into Sinitic. More remains to be done to further document the status of the linkage between Sino-Tibetan and Dene-Yeniseian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Diachronica is the property of John Benjamins Publishing Co. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Diachronica is the property of John Benjamins Publishing Co. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper aims to describe the landscape and seascape terminology of Alorese, an Austronesian language spoken in the Alor archipelago of eastern Indonesia. Alorese uses unique way of expressing landscape terminology by retaining some of its ancestral Austronesian landscape terminology and innovating relatively new forms, functions and semantic references from its neighboring non-Austronesian languages. Previous research show that Alorese has innovated relatively new forms due to contact with its surrounding non-Austronesian languages. The current paper fills the gap where there has not been any discussion regarding the Alorese landscape terminology outside its preposition function. Discussion on cross-linguistic categorization, such as landscapes in areas such as eastern Indonesia is proven to be fruitful. The Alorese linguistic landscapes are expressed through geographical references and some forms appear unique to Alorese's dialectal variations. In general, the reference to elevations and directionalities in Alorese is achieved through geographical references, such as nala kokar 'towards Kokar (a town)' or klou lau 'seawards (lau 'sea')' rather than generic land form terms, suchas wara 'westwards' which is also an Indonesian loan barat 'west'. Its non-Austronesian borrowed terminologies include words, such as iti dola 'mountainwards', containing loanwords from Alor-Pantar (Papuan) languages dol 'mountain'. The data of this research were gathered from my 2018 and 2020 fieldwork in 14 Alorese villages located across the northern coast of Alor and Pantar as well as the small islands of Buaya and Ternate. Collections of terminologies show variations in the use of words not only depending on the geographical references, but also relative to the neighboring non-Austronesian languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japanese native chickens (JNCs) comprise approximately 50 breeds, making Japan a diversity hotspot for native chicken breeds. JNCs were established through the repeated introduction of chickens from foreign countries. Jidori, which is the generic name of JNC breeds whose ancestral morphology resembles that of their wild progenitor (red junglefowls), is generally thought to have propagated from north East Asia (Korea and north China) to ancient Japan. However, mitochondrial haplogroup D, which is abundant in Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) as well as the Pacific but relatively rare in other regions, can be observed in some Jidori breeds (e.g., Tosa-Jidori, Tokuji-Jidori) with high frequency, leading to speculation that chickens from ISEA or the Pacific also contributed genetically to JNCs. To test this hypothesis, we sequenced the mitochondrial genomes of Jidori breeds and conducted phylogeographic analysis. Our results indicate that the JNC Haplogroup D belongs to Sub-haplogroup D2, which is currently only observed in Xinjiang, northwest China, and not to Sub-haplogroup D1, which is widely distributed in the ISEA-Pacific region. The other mitochondrial haplogroups of Jidori examined in this study also showed affinity to those of chickens native to north East Asia. Therefore, our findings support the north East Asian origin hypothesis for Jidori.

This paper describes aspects of the phonology of Kodi, an Austronesian language of Sumba, Indonesia. Based on the analysis of recordings of an elicited word list, the description covers the segmental phonology, syllable structure, stress and the spreading of palatalization and labialization features. A pervasive feature of Kodi is a number of morphophonological processes that result in most words alternating between a longer and shorter form. These include antepenultimate vowel reduction, paragoge and apocope, as well as productive synchronic metathesis of a word-final vowel and the preceding consonant. When a word with identical vowel qualities in the two final syllables undergoes metathesis, it results in a double vowel. By measuring hundreds of vowel lengths in our data, we show that double vowels are phonetically distinct in length from stress-induced vowel lengthening in Kodi.

This article describes adverbial universal quantification in Besemah, a little-described Malayic language of southwest Sumatra, and how the syntactic position of the quantifier relates to grammatical relations and information structure. Given previous descriptions of the relationship between quantifiers and grammatical relations, especially in western Austronesian languages (e.g., Kroeger 1993; Musgrave 2001), Besemah presents a unique system of universal quantification wherein adverbial universal quantifiers place severe restrictions on which arguments can be quantified. I argue that these restrictions are fundamentally different than those described as 'quantifier float' in other languages, but they are not incidental. Instead, these restrictions can be explained by the fact that the adverbial universal quantifier also marks focus in Besemah. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research note examines the formal patterning of Austronesian relationship terminologies with or without relative age categories. Specifically, the article considers (1) the formal contrast between these patterns, (2) the key variant forms of these patterns, and (3) the distribution of these patterns and their associated variants throughout the Austronesian‐speaking world. It offers a succinct examination of a key dimension of Austronesian terminologies and points to the position of eastern Indonesia as an innovative transition zone in the development of Austronesian terminologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the effect of focus-marking on the immediate and delayed recognition of referents in Samoan. Focus-marking on a word can imply the presence of alternatives to that word which are relevant to the interpretation of the utterance. Consistent with this, psycholinguistic evidence is growing that alternatives to focus-marked words are selectively activated in the immediate processing of an utterance and longer term memory. However, most of this research is on Western Germanic languages which primarily use prosodic prominence to mark focus. We explore this in two experiments using immediate and delayed probe recognition tasks in the under-studied language Samoan, which primarily uses syntactic focus-marking. Participants heard short narratives ending in a critical sentence in which the object word was either focused or not, using a cleft-like construction. In the first experiment, probe recognition, alternatives to the object word which were either mentioned or unmentioned in the narrative were responded to more slowly if the object was focus-marked. In the second experiment, delayed recognition, participants were faster to correctly recognize mentioned alternatives, and slower to reject unmentioned, if the object was focus-marked. Both results are consistent with immediate and longer-term activation of focus alternatives. There was no significant effect of focus-marking on recognition of the object word itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence from two experiments reveals that in Chamorro, a verb-first language, the comprehension of relative clauses (RCs) is sensitive to the order of the RC with respect to the head. Unlike most other languages, Chamorro allows both postnominal and prenominal RCs, so it is possible to compare how the two types are processed within the same language. Moreover, Chamorro is a small language whose speakers do not fit the typical profile of participants in cognitive science experiments. We found that RC comprehension is affected by the relative order of RC and head, and by other language-specific factors. However, we also found new support for a subject gap advantage in all RC types. This advantage emerged in early response measures and was reinforced in postnominal RCs, but often outcompeted in prenominal RCs by other pressures. We frame this competition in terms of a model in which grammatical licensing requirements play a key role in comprehension.

This paper provides a sketch of the phonetics and phonology of Tomoip, an Austronesian language of New Britain, Papua New Guinea. Tomoip does not appear to be closely related to the other Austronesian languages of New Britain. Furthermore, it has been in contact with multiple non-Austronesian languages of the island. These two facts suggest that the language may have had a particularly interesting history. As the first publication dedicated to Tomoip, this paper is intended to serve as a starting point for further description, analysis, and classification of the language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The westernmost languages of the Austronesian family show verbal alternations that are traditionally referred to as a voice system. This paper investigates the syntax of the voice system in Mandar, a language of the South Sulawesi subfamily. It argues that this alternation tracks alternations in argument structure, determines patterns of Case-Licensing in the voicep, and positions a single argument, the pivot, to raise to the highest a-position in the clause. The process that positions the pivot is decomposed into two steps: first, a process of Object Shift that moves definite arguments out of the vp and second, a process that places the pivot in spec,tp as the result of Case-Licensing by t0. Evidence for this analysis is drawn from contexts where the external argument undergoes A ¯ -extraction and the internal argument is definite. In that context, the language employs a special construction which allows the external argument to be the pivot, allows the internal argument to undergo Object Shift, and provides the means to Case-License it within the vp. I refer to this construction as the Agent Focus and argue that it has a syntax similar to the analogous construction in the Mayan languages of the Q'anjob'alan subfamily. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With its linguistic and cultural diversity, Austronesia is important in the study of evolutionary forces that generate and maintain cultural variation. By analysing publicly available datasets, we have identified four classes of cultural features in Austronesia and distinct clusters within each class. We hypothesized that there are differing modes of transmission and patterns of variation in these cultural classes and that geography alone would be insufficient to explain some of these patterns of variation. We detected relative differences in the verticality of transmission and distinct patterns of cultural variation in each cultural class. There is support for pulses and pauses in the Austronesian expansion, a west-to-east increase in isolation with explicable exceptions, and correspondence between linguistic and cultural outliers. Our results demonstrate how cultural transmission and patterns of variation can be analysed using methods inspired by population genetics., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest, (© The Author(s) 2024.)

This paper discusses the logophoric properties of Balinese anaphors. This paper first presents evidence showing that the Balinese complex anaphor may be interpreted logophorically even in the presence of a syntactic coargument. This leads to a novel solution of the "Balinese Bind paradox." This proposal is better able to account for the interpretive constraints observed in raising constructions than previous proposals. In addition to this analysis, this paper discusses the implications of the properties of the Balinese simplex anaphor, which cannot be interpreted logophorically; only its complex counterpart can. This presents a pattern opposite to the one reported and predicted by the literature.

A new era presently dawns for medical genetics featuring individualised whole genome sequencing and promising personalised medical genetics. Accordingly, we direct readers attention to the continuing value of allele frequency data from Genome-Wide Association Surveys (GWAS) and single gene surveys in well-defined ethnic populations as a guide for best practice in diagnosis, therapy, and prescription. Supporting evidence is drawn from our experiences working with Austronesian volunteer subjects across the Western Pacific. In general, these studies show that their gene pool has been shaped by natural selection and become highly diverged from those of Europeans and Asians. These uniquely evolved patterns of genetic variation underlie contrasting schedules of disease incidence and drug response. Thus, recognition of historical bonds of kinship among Austronesian population groups across the Asia Pacific has distinct public health advantages from a One Health perspective. Other than diseases that are common among them like gout and diabetes, Austronesian populations face a wide range of climatedependent infectious diseases including vector-borne pathogens as they are now scattered across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. However, we caution that the value of genetic survey data in Austronesians (and other groups too) is critically dependent on the accuracy of attached descriptive information in associated metadata, including ethnicity and admixture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropological and linguistic studies place the first settlement of Austronesian speaking Taiwanese (AN_Tw) in the mid-Holocene era. However, geneticists have revealed exclusive diversity among the Bunun indigenous people, implying that their ancestral origin needs further study. The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) polymorphism of the Bunun shows a homogeneous relationship with other AN_Tw. However, the Y-chromosome polymorphism shows two major haplogroups, O1a2-M50 (60.7%), also seen to a lesser extent among the Northern AN_Tw, and O1b1a1a1a1a1-M88 (37.5%), scarce among all other AN and non-AN groups in Taiwan, but prevailing in Southeast Asia (SEA) and Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA). While the present-day mtDNA profile of the Bunun typifies the long-term demographic standard for all AN_Tw since the Neolithic era, their Y-chromosome profile suggests an arrival of male settlers in the last two to three millennia from SEA or MSEA, who mixed exclusively with the Bunun indigenous people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Massim, a cultural region that includes the southeastern tip of mainland Papua New Guinea (PNG) and nearby PNG offshore islands, is renowned for a trading network called Kula, in which different valuable items circulate in different directions among some of the islands. Although the Massim has been a focus of anthropological investigation since the pioneering work of Malinowski in 1922, the genetic background of its inhabitants remains relatively unexplored. To characterize the Massim genomically, we generated genome-wide SNP data from 192 individuals from 15 groups spanning the entire region. Analyzing these together with comparative data, we found that all Massim individuals have variable Papuan-related (indigenous) and Austronesian-related (arriving ∼3,000 years ago) ancestries. Individuals from Rossel Island in southern Massim, speaking an isolate Papuan language, have the highest amount of a distinct Papuan ancestry. We also investigated the recent contact via sharing of identical by descent (IBD) genomic segments and found that Austronesian-related IBD tracts are widely distributed geographically, but Papuan-related tracts are shared exclusively between the PNG mainland and Massim, and between the Bismarck and Solomon Archipelagoes. Moreover, the Kula-practicing groups of the Massim show higher IBD sharing among themselves than do groups that do not participate in Kula. This higher sharing predates the formation of Kula, suggesting that extensive contact between these groups since the Austronesian settlement may have facilitated the formation of Kula. Our study provides the first comprehensive genome-wide assessment of Massim inhabitants and new insights into the fascinating Kula system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new era presently dawns for medical genetics featuring individualised whole genome sequencing and promising personalised medical genetics. Accordingly, we direct readers attention to the continuing value of allele frequency data from Genome-Wide Association Surveys (GWAS) and single gene surveys in well-defined ethnic populations as a guide for best practice in diagnosis, therapy, and prescription. Supporting evidence is drawn from our experiences working with Austronesian volunteer subjects across the Western Pacific. In general, these studies show that their gene pool has been shaped by natural selection and become highly diverged from those of Europeans and Asians. These uniquely evolved patterns of genetic variation underlie contrasting schedules of disease incidence and drug response. Thus, recognition of historical bonds of kinship among Austronesian population groups across the Asia Pacific has distinct public health advantages from a One Health perspective. Other than diseases that are common among them like gout and diabetes, Austronesian populations face a wide range of climate-dependent infectious diseases including vector-borne pathogens as they are now scattered across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. However, we caution that the value of genetic survey data in Austronesians (and other groups too) is critically dependent on the accuracy of attached descriptive information in associated metadata, including ethnicity and admixture.

Six main alternative linkage proposals which involve the Sino-Tibetan family, including Sinitic and other language families of the East Asian area (Miao-Yao, Altaic/Transeurasian, Austroasiatic, Tai-Kadai, Austronesian) are briefly outlined. Using the standard techniques of comparative linguistics, a remote linkage between the Sino-Tibetan languages, including Sinitic, the Yeniseian languages of Siberia, and the Na-Dene languages of northwest North America is demonstrated. This includes cognate core lexicon showing regular sound correspondences, morphological similarities of form and function, as well as similarities in social structure. The other proposals for linkages that connect Sinitic and other languages of the East Asian area appear not to be based on a genetic linguistic relationship but rather due to contact: millennia of loanwords from Sinitic into the languages of those families and some lexicon borrowed into Sinitic. More remains to be done to further document the status of the linkage between Sino-Tibetan and Dene-Yeniseian.