Diachronica - Volume 39, Issue 4, 2022

An understudied morphosyntactic innovation, reanalysis of the Proto-Austronesian (PAn) stative intransitive prefix *ma- as a transitive affix, offers new insights into Austronesian higher-order subgrouping. Malayo-Polynesian is currently considered a primary branch of Austronesian, with no identifiably closer relationship with any linguistic subgroup in the homeland (Blust 1999, 2009/2013; Ross 2005). However, the fact that it displays the same innovative use of ma- with Amis, Siraya, Kavalan and Basay-Trobiawan and shares the merger of PAn *C/t with this group suggests that Malayo-Polynesian and East Formosan may share a common origin – the subgroup that comprises the four languages noted above. This observation points to a revised subgrouping more consistent with a socio-historical picture where the out-of-Taiwan population descended from a seafaring community expanding to the Batanes and Luzon after having developed a seafaring tradition. It also aligns with recent findings in archaeology and genetics that (i) eastern Taiwan is the most likely starting point of Austronesian dispersal (Hung 2005, 2008, 2019; Bellwood 2017; Bellwood & Dizon 2008; Carson & Hung 2018) and (ii) that the Amis bear a significantly closer relationship with Austronesian communities outside Taiwan (Capelli et al. 2001; Trejaut et al. 2005; McColl et al. 2018; Pugach et al. 2021; Tätte et al. 2021). Future investigation of additional shared innovations between Malayo-Polynesian and East Formosan could shed further light on their interrelationships.

The widespread Uralic family offers several advantages for tracing prehistory: a firm absolute chronological anchor point in an ancient contact episode with well-dated Indo-Iranian; other points of intersection or diagnostic non-intersection with early Indo-European (the Late Proto-Indo-European-speaking Yamnaya culture of the western steppe, the Afanasievo culture of the upper Yenisei, and the Fatyanovo culture of the middle Volga); lexical and morphological reconstruction sufficient to establish critical absences of sharings and contacts. We add information on climate, linguistic geography, typology, and cognate frequency distributions to reconstruct the Uralic origin and spread. We argue that the Uralic homeland was east of the Urals and initially out of contact with Indo-European. The spread was rapid and without widespread shared substratal effects. We reconstruct its cause as the interconnected reactions of early Uralic and Indo-European populations to a catastrophic climate change episode and interregionalization opportunities which advantaged riverine hunter-fishers over herders.

Two major types of change are generally distinguished in language contact studies: the transfer of linguistic form (frequently taken to include transfer of concomitant meaning or function) and the transfer of structural and semantic patterns by themselves, without attendant form. A type of change that is less frequently discussed is so-called relexification. This involves the transfer of form without model-language semantic or syntactic specifications that is grafted onto an equivalent recipient-language lemma. Relexification has been suggested to play a role in the development of mixed languages or creoles, but as is shown here, it can also be identified in several ordinary situations of language contact from around the world. This type of change represents a mirror image of the transfer of patterns without lexical material and supports recent models of language selection in bilinguals.

Formally similar grammatical features in a creole and its genetic or areal relatives may indicate substrate transfer, lexifier influence, or grammaticalization. Against this backdrop, the present study investigates the origin(s) of the preverbal past marker a in Palenquero Creole (Colombia). Results from distributional analysis and tests for significance indicate that several diachronically-related meanings are a-marked at rates approaching obligatory, suggesting advanced grammaticalization. Comparative results for Peninsular haber + PP suggest that past marking has grammaticalized much further in half the time in Palenquero Creole than in its lexifier, Spanish. Why? I argue, against traditional accounts about the origins of a, that, given the contact history of Palenquero speakers, most likely a pre-existing Kikongo prefixal form merged with an already grammaticalizing haber, thus propelling grammaticalization in the creole. The synchronic patterning shows adherence to typological patterns observed for perfectives in line with well-known constraints on competition and selection in contact languages, such as their grammatical congruence or particular social ecologies.