Sister or Subgroup Work in progress comments welcome Claire Bowern Yale University ALS December 2020 The problem Is Tangkic a subgroup of PamaNyungan or a sister Today Background Tangkic ID: 1047592
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1. Tangkic and Pama-NyunganSister or Subgroup?Work in progress, comments welcome!Claire Bowern, Yale UniversityALS, December 2020
2. The problemIs Tangkic a subgroup of Pama-Nyungan, or a sister?
3. Today
4. Background
5. Tangkic as Pama-NyunganTypological grounds: suffixing, no argument agreementWurm (1972): active/passive; absence of ergativitytense-based case marking (“shared” with Karnic, Paakintyi)Some lexical materialE.g. O’Grady, Voegelin, Voegelin (1966), Oates (1971), Wurm (1972)
6. Blake (1988), Evans (1988)Yanyuwa as Warluwaric (subgroup of Pama-Nyungan)Tangkic as non-Pama-Nyungan, following Evans (1985).Garrwa and Wanyi as Non-Pama-Nyungan, but closely relatedBased on pronominal evidence, plus case suffixes.E.g. 2pl, 3pl ki-, pi- Northern, Non-Pama-Nyungan forms
7. Current “consensus”(Note Garrwan controversy; cf. Harvey 2009)Evans (2003)
8. Bouckaert, Bowern, and Atkinson (2018)
9. Tangkic as subgroup of pama-nyungan?Based on lexical cognates (200 words; 6500+ cognates, from Chirila; Bowern 2016)Phylogenetic cognate modeling (fitting distributions of matching items)Tangkic and Garrwan were originally included as outgroups…But ended up ‘inside’ Pama-Nyungan
10.
11. Tangkic within Pama-NyunganNorthern“Central”
12. In sum:Pronouns say no, lexicon says yes/maybeBUT other Pama-Nyungan subgroups have pronoun changesE.g. Yolngu ŋarra 1sgRenewal of clusivity distinctions (across family)Dl > Pl (e.g. *ŋali as plural)Other Pama-Nyungan languages with 3pl *pu- (e.g. Umpila, Kaanju, Noongar, Wardandi)Tangkic paradigm is very regular: STEM-rra (dl), STEM-la (plural)(Can’t use verb morphology, it’s innovative)Lexicon isn’t diagnostic on its ownSparce, conflicting evidence
13. Evaluating “Sparce-Evidence” Claims
14. Evidence for Old relationshipsDistinguishing shared retentions from loans:TimeWords are replaced at different rates; old relationships should have more words in slow rate categoriesSemantic fieldsMore words should be in stable semantic categoriesGeographyRetentions are not diagnostic for close relationship: Innovations should cluster, retentions should be scattered across the tree (not just in close subgroups)(Phonological distance)Matches shouldn’t just be in phonologically similar words Relates to regularity arguments, not further discussed here…(cf. McMahon and McMahon 2006; Slaska 2004, etc)When the evidence is sparce, and could be due to borrowing, chance, or shared relationship, how can we distinguish between them?
15. How much lexical evidence?Not much! (best attested, most widespread, most secure)TangkicPama-NyunganEnglishTangkicPama-NyunganEnglish*miburlda*miyileyeAll*liki*RuŋkacryAll*baaja*patyabiteAll*banjija*parntismell- North*jara*tyarrathigh, leg- West*kunbuka*kumpuurine- South*ŋamathu*ŋama(tyi)mother- South*wanjija*wanticlimb+ South*buka*pukarotten+ West*rdiyaja*tatyieatCentral, South*niya*nyu3sg+ North*buŋgal*punkuknee+ North*ŋuku*ŋukuwater+ North*buka*pukadie+ South14 cognates in widespread languages, well attested, well reconstructed to both Tangkic and other parts of Pama-NyunganAcross groups in Pama-Nyungan: therefore likely retentions, not due to borrowing (Cf. Garrwan, where likely loans caused convergence problems)
16. TimeBowern (2019): PCA including characteristics of dataset, conservative vocabulary (for Pama-Nyungan)➞ shared items are among the most conservative (but not the most conservative)
17. Re-evaluating Tangkic: Discussion and Conclusions
18. Patterning of RetentionsIn all P-Ny branches: 36 (62 counting > 3 lgs)Western Torres: 10Kulin: > 30Maric: c. 26Yolngu: c. 30Nyulnyulan: 17 Worrorran: 14Tiwi: 0Jarrakan: 0 (coding not complete)
19. Too much uncertainty…In order to clarify Tangkic the position of Tangkic, we’ll need to clarify the higher structure of Pama-Nyungan firstCan’t use just lexical evidenceBut can’t use just pronouns eitherThe lexical material fulfills the criteria for retentions, but doesn’t help us decide what it’s retained from.
20. Thanks!NSF Grants BCS-0844550 and BCS-1423711Blake, Barry. 1988. Redefining Pama-Nyungan: Towards the prehistory of Australian languages. (Ed.) Nicholas Evans & Steve Johnson. Aboriginal Linguistics 1. 1–90.Bowern, Claire. 2016. Chirila: Contemporary and Historical Resources for the Indigenous Languages of Australia. Language Documentation & Conservation 10. http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/24685 Evans, Nicholas. 1988. Arguments for Pama-Nyungan as a genetic subgroup, with particular reference to initial laminalization. Aboriginal Linguistics 1. 91–110.Evans, Nicholas & Rhys Jones. 1997. The cradle of the Pama-Nyungans: Archaeological and linguistic speculations. In Patrick McConvell & Nicholas Evans (eds.), Archaeology and linguistics: Aboriginal Australia in global perspective, 385–417. Melbourne / New York: Oxford University Press Australia.Evans, Nicholas (ed.). 2003. The non-Pama-Nyungan languages of northern Australia: Comparative studies of the continent’s most linguistically complex region (Pacific Linguistics 552). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.Harvey, Mark. 2009. The genetic status of Garrwan. Australian Journal of Linguistics 29(2). 195–244.