Toward a Proto-Pama-Nyungan Stem List, Part I
Sets J1-J25
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9355132 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Geoff O'Grady (corresponding author), Geoff N O'Grady |
| Year | 1998 |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 209-209 |
| Publication date | 1998-12-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Oceanic Linguistics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0029-8115 • E-ISSN: 1527-9421 |
| Publisher | University of Hawaii Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2307/3623409 |
| OpenAlex | W2328551341 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 12 |
This tabular display of 25 Proto-Pama-Nyungan stems in * j- and their reflexes represents a small part of a Top Down type of study embracing ten of the thirteen initial consonants (i.e., all but velars, under which rubric 1,561 putative cognate sets are presented in Fitzgerald 1997a). Data from sixty languages are used; of these, about 30 figure prominently in the comparisons. Some cognates span the entire width of the Australian continent. The uncovering of such cognates-at-a-distance throws further useful light on the vast Pama-Nyungan language family, which occupied seven-eighths of the area of Australia. The degree of plausibility of each putative cognate is quantified on a scale from zero to five, in keeping, for example, with the Kluge etymological dictionary of German, which qualifies many etymologies with vielleicht' perhaps, unklar' unclear, and so forth. The work is conducted in the belief, contra Heath (1994), that the reconstructible lexicon of Proto-Pama-Nyungan will ultimately amount not to a mere few dozen, but rather to several thousand. This accords with Hale's (pers, comm., 1961) assertion that Pama-Nyungan is the largest coherent genetic linguistic construct in Australia. The tabulation of the 25 cognate sets is preceded by a discussion of a number of problems on the phonological, morphological, and semantic levels that arise in Pama-Nyungan comparative work. Interestingly, a number of these problems, such as sporadic word-initial nasal gradation, sporadic medial prenasalization, and sporadic vowel fronting, have parallels in Austronesian
Linguistics · Australian Indigenous Culture and History · Computer Science · History · Language and cultural evolution · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Mathematics · Philosophy
Features
Features in categorization, or a new look at an old problem
Where have all the sound changes gone? Examining the scarcity of evidence for regular sound change in Australian languages
Medial consonant lengthening in Eastern Middle Paman
Pathways of initial consonant loss
Stress Change and Initial Consonant Loss in Umpithamu
The Prehistory and Internal Relationships of Australian Languages
Margany and Gunya
The American Heritage dictionary of the English language.
The comparative method reviewed
Handbook of Australian Languages
The Languages of Australia
Words of Our Country
Languages of Cape York
Studies in Comparative Pama-Nyungan
A New Approach to Australian Linguistics
Proto-Kanyara and proto-Mantharta historical phonology
| Citations per year | 0.44 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2010 - 2025 (16) |
| Highly cited | No |