Re: Pama-Nyungan, was Re: Indo-European family tree

Doug Dee wrote:

> In a message dated 9/30/2005 8:15:26 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> andjo@FREE.FR
> writes:
>
> >When IE languages have replaced non-IE ones in historical times, eg
> >Etruscan
> and
> >many languages of the Americas, the process has been facilitated by
> >imperial
> >control by IE-speakers. Since there presumably weren't any empires around
> >in
> >pre-Roman West and Central Europe, some other mechanism is presumably
> required
> >to explain its initial spread.
>
> That reminds me of a question about another language family:  RMW Dixon
> says
> that one reason to doubt that Pama-Nyungan (in Australia) is really a
> language
> family is that it is hard to see how one language (proto-Pama-Nyungan)
> could
> have replaced all the previously existing languages across a wide area
> (most
> of Australia) in the absence of empires, agriculture, or anything else
> that
> would have given the proto-Pama-Nyungans a decisive advantage over the
> preexisting languages and cultures.
>
> I'd be interested in the opinions of list members about that argument.
>
Australia is probably a unique situation-- tens of millennia of total
isolation. I've never looked into the historical work done on Austr.
languages, but on the basis of IE and other known families, it seems
unlikely one could really reconstruct much beyond +/- 10,000 YPB, which
leaves another +/- 50,000 years unaccounted for. A possibility would be that
Pama-Nyungan speakers were somewhat more numerous-- or perhaps lived in
environmentally more favorable areas-- thus they contributed a lot of loans
to other languages ??? Perhaps they contributed wives, since many
"primitive" cultures are exogamous.

The neighboring Indonesian archipelago is another example-- the original
inhabitants were presumably Australoids, but Austronesian speakers almost
completely replaced them west of the Wallace Line, 90% to the east. But this
took place not more than 3-5000 YPB. Where did the originals go? Killed,
assimilated? One has to assume that at least some fled to New
Guinea/Australia-- a new infusion of long-lost cousins. In such ancient
times, it's hard to speak of Group X being technologically superior to Group
Y, which is the usual explanation in more modern times.

Not too long ago, it was common to speak of x-hundred _distinct_ lang.
families in Papua/NG; nowadays the number is much reduced-- though I don't
know on what criteria, and am suspicious...OTOH, Sapir was derided for
proposing 6 super-families for North America-- research since his time has
more or less proven him right. So who knows????