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Re: CHAT: Vexillology and games (was: Re: Flag ofEngland)

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Thursday, June 22, 2000, 18:59
Barry Garcia wrote:
>I'm wondering, is there any good books out there on Proto-austronesian? >I've not been able to find anything but a swadesh list of >proto-malayo-polynesian:>
The foundation is: Otto Dempwolff, Vergleichende Lautlehre des austronesischen Wortschatzes. Zeitschrift für eingeborenen Sprachen, Beihefte l5 (1934), 17(l937), 19(l939). (3 sep. volumes; reprinted by Kraus in 1969) If you don't know German, don't be intimidated. Once you get the technical linguistic terms & abbreviations, it's very formulaic and repetitive. The 3d vol. (19) is the reconstructed wordlist, some 2000 items. Isidore Dyen, The Malayo-Polynesian Laryngeals. A supplemental volume publ by the Linguistic Soc. of America around 1953. A major revision/realignment of two of Dempwolff's correspondence sets; later revisions of this revision by others, mainly in journal articles. (But see also the two Dahl books mentioned below.) I.Dyen, A Lexicostatistical Classification of the Austrnesian Languages. Intl.Jnl. of Amer. Ling., supplement, 1965. No data offered. Useful as a broad outline only, has all the usual problem associated with lexisostatistics. Main conclusion dictated by the logic of the method (i.e. Melanesia was the homeland) derided as dead wrong, and even Dyen, I think, has sort-of admitted it was wrong. Otto Christian Dahl, Proto Austronesian. Lund/London 1973/76. A good update of Dempwolff, plus Dyen & later. O.C.Dahl, Early Phonetic and Phonemic Changes in Austronesian. Oslo 1981. Another good update. These two are probably the best Engl. language sources, and have good bibliographies. O. C.Dahl, Malgache et Maanyan. Oslo 1951. Showed that Malegasy is most closely related to languages of southern Borneo. If you can find them, the "Proceedings of the __th International Conference on AN Linguistics" will have tons of specialized papers. The first was 1974, I think there have been 7 or 8 altogether. Various publishers-- mainly Hawaii, or Pacific Linguistics (Canberra). Look especially for things by Robert Blust, and David Zorc (who did a lot of field work in Aklan, published a dictionary and grammar; his diss. on Proto Bisayan was publ. I think in the Pacific Linguistic Series-- another good place to look) Also check the archives of Oceanic Linguistics (Hawaii)-- some is indexed online. David Zorc has also publ. a "Core Etymological Dictionary of Pilipino" that might interest you. In fascicles, Manila, since around 1981. Interesting early (1900s) works by Renward Brandstetter, mostly in German, but a volume of 4 papers in Engl. trans. was published around 1916, London(?). Robert Blust, The Austronesian Languages, Cambridge Series, supposed to appear in Oct 2000, but I'll believe it when I see it. I suspect the library at Berkeley would have most of these. If they allow wandering in the stacks, it would be worth a trip. The library at Hawaii would almost certainly have all, for inter-library loan purposes. Happy hunting!