Re: Hobbits spoke Indonesian!

Quoting Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>:

> Joe wrote:
> > J Y S Czhang wrote:
> >
> > >In a message dated 10/29/2004 1:10:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Joe
> > ><joe@...> writes:
> > >
> > >>Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > >>
> > >>>There does not seem to be any reason to totally exclude that
> > >>>possibility.
> > >>>
> > >>Except that the Austronesian languages seem to have originated from
> > >>Taiwan...
> > >>
> And are reconstructed only back to ~5000 B.C.E...
I do not see how a Taiwanese origin is relevant - no-one, I hope, would use the
fact that the IE languages appear to've originated in the Black Sea area as an
argument against the supposition that Latin might have been influenced by
Etruscan. Wherever AN originated, speakers of it eventually turned up at
Flores.

As for the temporal aspect, yes, a rather daunting chasm of time separates the
most recent evidence of H. floresiensis and the arrival of AN-speakers at the
place. Near as I've heard, however, it cannot be stated with absolute certainty
that floresiensis did not surive much longer, long enough that they were around
to meet AN-speakers coming paddling from Taiwan. That Indonesian languages
would have at some point have been influenced by whatever floresiensis may have
spoken does thus as far as I can see still belong to the realm of the possibly,
if more specifically to the province of highly unlikely.

There's also the possibility that some loans might have been conveyed from
"Floresian" to AN via whatever was spoken by pre-AN H. sapiens in Indonesia.

                                                  Andreas

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