Boreanesian diachrony (was: RE: typology of V-initial lgs)

Kristian:
> This is what I have pictured for Boreanesian. The Boreanesians migrated
> from Japan before sea levels rose over 10K years ago. Japanese, Korean,
> and Ainu are all verb-final. So Boreanesian was perhaps a verb-final
> language. But due to an areal influence from the surrounding Austronesian
> languages, Boreanesian is now a verb-initial language with a post-
> positional holdover from ancient times.
I don't see any reason why this couldn't be the case, but 10K years is
surely long enough for the word order parameters to oscillate several
times over. Hence, from a synchronic point of view, the postpositionality
can't be relied on as evidence of earlier contact or relatedness with
Jap/Kor/Ainu (& I doubt we have any idea of what J/K/A were like 10K
years ago, either). And also, from a diachronic point of view, if
Boreanesian were postpositional 10K years ago, there'd be little
reason in particular to expect it to have remained so.

--And.