Abstract
This article seeks to identify traces of language contact between speakers of Australian languages and speakers of Austronesian languages other than Macassans. I put forward evidence for lexical borrowing into northern Australian languages from Austronesian languages in South and East Sulawesi, Maluku and Timor-Rote, as well as from Austronesian languages of the Sama-Bajau and Oceanic subgroups. Although the evidence is fragmentary, the presence of these borrowings could be taken to indicate a more varied history of contact with Australia than the Macassan-dominated linguistic data suggest.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 434-452 |
| Number of pages | 29 |
| Journal | Australian Journal of Linguistics |
| Volume | 41 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2021 |
Funding
This work was supported by the Volkswagen Stiftung DoBeS project ‘Aru languages documentation’, the European Research Council ‘OUTOFPAPUA’ project (grant agreement no. 848532), and the Australian Research Council project ‘Waves of words’ (DP180100893). Many thanks to Rachel Hendery, Campbell Macknight, David Mead, Edgar Suter and Erik Zobel for discussion of data and ideas for this article. The comments of two anonymous reviewers also contributed to improving the clarity of this article. All errors are my own.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Horizon 2020 Framework Programme | 848532 |
| European Research Council | |
| Australian Research Council | DP180100893 |
| Volkswagen Foundation |