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Reappraising the Eff Ects of Language Contact in the Torres Strait

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Reappraising the Eff Ects of Language Contact in the Torres Strait Journal of Language Contact 4 (2011) 106–140 brill.nl/jlc Reappraising the Eff ects of Language Contact in the Torres Strait Jessica Hunter , Claire Bowern , and Erich Round * Yale University Abstract Th e contact history of the languages of the Eastern and Western Torres Strait has been claimed (e.g. by Dixon 2002, Wurm 1972, and others) to have been suffi ciently intense as to obscure the genetic relationship of the Western Torres Strait language. Some have argued that it is an Australian (Pama-Nyungan) language, though with considerable infl uence from the Papuan language Meryam Mir (the Eastern Torres Strait language). Others have claimed that the Western Torres language is, in fact, a genetically Papuan language, though with substantial Australian substrate or adstrate infl uence. Much has been made of phonological structures which have been viewed as unusual for Australian languages. In this paper we examine the evidence for contact claims in the region. We review aspects of the phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon of the Eastern and Western Torres Strait languages with an eye to identifying areal infl uence. Th is larger data pool shows that the case for intense contact has been vastly overstated. Beyond some phonological features and some loan words, there is no linguistic evidence for intense contact; moreover, the phonological features adduced to be evidence of contact are also found to be not specifi cally Papuan, but part of a wider set of features in Australian languages. Keywords Australian languages ; areal diff usion ; Papua New Guinea ; metatypy ; convergence ; grammatical contact 1 Introduction and Background Information Th e Western Torres Strait language (WTS) and Meryam Mir are spoken on western and eastern islands respectively in the Torres Strait between Cape York, Australia and Papua New Guinea. Th e genetic affi liation of WTS and its degree of linguistic similarity to Meryam Mir, a Papuan language of the Eastern Trans-Fly family, have been contentious. Some, including Capell ( 1956 ) and Dixon ( 2002 ), have argued that WTS is genetically Papuan, but * We thank Rod Mitchell and Barry Alpher for insightful comments; however, all errors of interpretation are our own. Th is work was funded in part by NSF grant BCS-844550. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI 10.1163/187740911X558798 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 08:04:08AM via free access J. Hunter et al. / Journal of Language Contact 4 (2011) 106–140 107 strongly infl uenced by Australian languages, while others, including Wurm ( 1972a , 1972b ) and Dixon ( 1980 ), have argued that WTS is Australian and a member of the Pama-Nyungan family. Alpher et al (2007) show that WTS is Pama-Nyungan, but do not discuss the extent of convergence between WTS and Meryam Mir. Here we examine structural similarities between WTS and Meryam Mir in the areas of phonology, nouns and pronouns, modifi ers, verbs, deixis, and syntax. We argue that the degree of structural similarity between the two languages has been overstated and is not borne out by a systematic comparison of features. Previous investigations of Torres Strait language con- tact have focused heavily on certain areas of Western Torres phonology and extrapolated from it without, it seems, looking into other areas of grammar in detail. A thorough comparison reveals that the case for structural convergence is weak. Section 2 outlines details of the features listed above and includes a brief description of WTS, a description of Meryam Mir, and a comparative evalua- tion of the similarity between the two languages based on the preceding descriptions. Following the investigation of structural similarity, Section 3 is a brief investigation of lexical similarity between the two languages. Section 4 summarizes the fi ndings. 1.1 Th eoretical Context Contact linguistics combines elements of both historical linguistics and sociolinguistics in order to study the “linguistic consequences” of interaction between two or more languages (Winford 2003 : 9-10). Perhaps the most obvious result of contact between languages is the borrowing of lexical items, but borrowing of non-lexical, structural features also occurs. According to Th omason’s (2001: 70) borrowing scale, the borrowing of content words occurs in situations of casual contact, but as the intensity of contact increases, more and more categories of lexical items can be borrowed and structural borrowing can also occur (see also Th omason and Kaufmann 1988 for detailed discussion). Examples of borrowed structure include the repurposing of native syntactic structures for new functions at the fi rst level of intensity above casual contact, the loss or addition of phonemes based on the inventory of the source language, and a shift in stress placement at the second level above casual contact, and the “loss or addition of agreement patterns” and wide- spread changes in the language’s typology at the most intense level of con- tact, a type of language change termed “metatypy” by Ross (e.g. 1996, 2007). Preceded by both lexical borrowing and grammatical calquing, metatypy arises in a situation of bilingualism when morphosyntactic constructions Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 08:04:08AM via free access 108 J. Hunter et al. / Journal of Language Contact 4 (2011) 106–140 are “restructured” such that they imitate constructions modeled in the source language, resulting in a matching of constructions in “both meaning and mor- phosyntax” (Ross 2007 : 124). 1 Language contact has long been a focus of Australian historical work (see Bowern 2011 and the references therein). For example, Dixon ( 2002 : 22-27) attributes many of the characteristics typical of Australian languages to a process of structural diff usion for languages “where a signifi cant proportion of the speakers of one also have some competence in the other.” “Phonetic and pho- nological” features, “grammatical categories, construction types and techniques,” “grammatical forms” (such as pronouns), and lexical items can all diff use. 1.2 Methodology of the current study In this article, the phonology, nouns and pronouns, modifi ers, verbal systems, and deixis of WTS and Meryam Mir are investigated and compared in an attempt to survey the complete language systems, rather than pointing out a few similar or dissimilar features arbitrarily. Th at is, we examine grammatical features of the languages as a whole for an overall picture of degree of similar- ity. Shared features must be found in both languages in order to demonstrate contact-induced change. Th at is, we maintain that it is not suffi cient to claim that WTS is “un-Australian” or “Papuan” without describing the areas of the language which are claimed to be the result of contact. Discussion here focuses in particular on the claim that various structural and phonological features in WTS are ‘un-Australian’ or ‘Papuan-infl uenced’, and specifi cally whether the infl uence comes from Meryam Mir. We recognize that this approach has some drawbacks. For example, in con- fi ning the discussion to whether the features in question are similar or not, we rule out identifi cation of features which have obliquely diff used, or which have subsequently undergone change such that source and result are now dis- tinct. Th is is of necessity; if two features are not similar, there are many reasons why they might diff er, and in most cases identifi cation of the cause of diff er- ence would be impossible (at least at this stage), or would draw us into specu- lative histories well beyond the immediate scope of this paper. We also limit discussion here to WTS and Meryam Mir, not because we wish to imply that these are the only two languages involved in potential regional contact, but 1 We recognize that there are cases of language contact that, beyond metatypy, result in the borrowing of structural features in a process which may come to render the source and result dissimilar. However, identifi cation of such features requires a solid foundation of knowledge of the languages under consideration. Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 08:04:08AM via free access J. Hunter et al. / Journal of Language Contact 4 (2011) 106–140 109 because previous debate in the literature has focused specifi cally on these lan- guages. We are concerned here primarily with the reevaluation of the claims of Wurm, Dixon, Capell, and others, that WTS is unclassifi able because of con- tact-induced change with Meryam Mir . 1.3 Why WTS and Meryam Mir? WTS a member of the Pama-Nyungan language family, while Meryam Mir is uncontroversially classifi ed as an Eastern Trans-Fly Papuan language. However, the classifi cation of WTS has been the subject of debate. Capell ( 1956 : 89) considers Meryam Mir to be a Papuan language, but classifi es WTS as “Australian-infl uenced Papuan” rather than an Australian language, on the basis of physical resemblances between Islanders and “Papuan easterners” and on facts about WTS’s phonemic inventory, namely its voicing contrast in its stops and its possession of the fricatives / s / and / z/, which he considers proto- typically non-Australian. (Th at is, two of the features are phonological and one is not linguistic.) Dixon ( 2002 : 130) agrees with Capell’s assessment and also considers WTS to be “Australian-infl uenced Papuan” with an “Australian sub- stratum.” Th is is a reversal of Dixon’s (1980: 234) standpoint, in which he clas- sifi ed WTS as Australian, because “although it has some unusual characteristics, there are enough correspondences with mainland [Australian] languages to leave no doubt concerning the genetic connection.” Here, Dixon notes that WTS and Meryam Mir share some similarity in terms of phonological inven- tory and lexical items, but have “few similarities at the grammatical level.” Wurm ( 1972a : 151) classifi es WTS as Australian, but notes that it has “a largely un-Australian phonological system” and “has been lexically infl u- enced by the neighboring Miriam language [Meryam Mir],” which he consid- ers Papuan.
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