Phalanger Facts: Notes on Blust's Marsupial Reconstructions

Antoinette Schapper

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Linguistics and language evolution Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies Australian Indigenous Culture and History

Abstract

This squib reexamines the evidence for Blust's reconstruction of *kandoRa 'cuscus' and *mans(aə)r 'bandicoot' to the ancestor of the putative Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian family. I argue that the reconstructions are problematic, being unable to account for the distribution and semantics of reflexes in the Austronesian languages in eastern Indonesia. Examining data from Austronesian and Papuan languages in this region, I consider alternative histories for marsupial terms involving independent innovations, semantic shifts, and diffusion.

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References

2014Ethnologue. Languages of the World 2009Loanwords in the World's Languages: A Comparative Handbook 1993Central and Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian 2008Yet More on the Position of the Languages of Eastern Indonesia and East Timor 1995Comparative Austronesian dictionary : an introduction to Austronesian studies 2009Pre‐Austronesian dispersal of banana cultivars West from New Guinea: linguistic relics from Eastern Indonesia 2004Leti, a Language of Southwest Maluku 1982The linguistic value of the Wallace line

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