TY - JOUR
T1 - The historical relations of the Papuan languages of Alor and Pantar
AU - Holton, Gary
AU - Klamer, Marian
AU - Kratochvíl, František
AU - Robinson, Laura C.
AU - Schapper, Antoinette
PY - 2012/6/1
Y1 - 2012/6/1
N2 - The historical relations of the Papuan languages scattered across the islands of the Alor archipelago, Timor, and Kisar in southeast Indonesia have remained largely conjectural. This paper makes a first step toward demonstrating that the languages of Alor and Pantar form a single genealogical group. Applying the comparative method to primary lexical data from twelve languages sampled across the islands of the Alor-Pantar archipelago, we use form-meaning pairings in basic cognate sets to establish regular sound correspondences that support the view that these languages are genetically related. We reconstruct 97 Proto-Alor-Pantar vocabulary items and propose an internal subgrouping based on shared innovations. Finally, we compare Alor-Pantar with Papuan languages of Timor and with Trans-New Guinea languages, concluding that there is no lexical evidence supporting the inclusion of Alor-Pantar languages in the Trans-New Guinea family.
AB - The historical relations of the Papuan languages scattered across the islands of the Alor archipelago, Timor, and Kisar in southeast Indonesia have remained largely conjectural. This paper makes a first step toward demonstrating that the languages of Alor and Pantar form a single genealogical group. Applying the comparative method to primary lexical data from twelve languages sampled across the islands of the Alor-Pantar archipelago, we use form-meaning pairings in basic cognate sets to establish regular sound correspondences that support the view that these languages are genetically related. We reconstruct 97 Proto-Alor-Pantar vocabulary items and propose an internal subgrouping based on shared innovations. Finally, we compare Alor-Pantar with Papuan languages of Timor and with Trans-New Guinea languages, concluding that there is no lexical evidence supporting the inclusion of Alor-Pantar languages in the Trans-New Guinea family.
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U2 - 10.1353/ol.2012.0001
DO - 10.1353/ol.2012.0001
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84863543389
VL - 51
SP - 86
EP - 122
JO - Oceanic Linguistics
JF - Oceanic Linguistics
SN - 0029-8115
IS - 1
ER -