Language Contacts in Prehistory: Studies in StratigraphyHenning Andersen Every language includes layers of lexical and grammatical elements that entered it at different times in the more or less distant past. Hence, for periods preceding our earliest historical documentation, linguistic stratigraphy the systematic study of such layers may yield information about the prehistory of a given tradition of speaking in a variety of ways. For instance, irregular phonological reflexes may be evidence of the convergence of diverse dialects in the formation of a language, and layers of material from different source languages may form a record of changing cultural contacts in the past. In this volume are discussed past problems and current advances in the stratigraphy of Indo-European, African, Southeast Asian, Australian, Oceanic, Japanese, and Meso-American languages. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Slavic and the IndoEuropean migrations | 45 |
The development of the perfect in IndoEuropean | 74 |
Japan | 76 |
Africa | 107 |
Language contacts in NiloSaharan prehistory | 135 |
Southeast Asia | 159 |
Millers and mullers The archaeolinguistic | 177 |
Loanword strata in Rotuman | 201 |
J Marshall Unger | 241 |
MesoAmerica | 259 |
289 | |
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African archaeological Ateker attested Australia Austroasiatic Baltic languages Bantu languages borrowed Celtic Central century cognate core F cultural Dahl's Law dialects diffusion E'Uv early Eastern Ngumpin Ehret etymologies evidence Fijian Gaulish Germanic Historical Linguistics Indo-European Indo-European languages Indo-Iranian Indo-Iranian and Greek innovations Japanese Khmer Korean language contact layers lenition lexemes lexical linguistic stratigraphy loans loanwords Longo Masele McConvell middle perfect morphological MSEA Nahuatl Ngumpin-Yapa Nilo-Saharan Nuclear Polynesian languages patterns phonological Polynesian languages prehistory present-aorist system Proto-Indo-European proto-language proto-Rub PRub reconstruction reduplication reflexes root Rotuman Rub languages Sanskrit seed seed-grinding semantic Slavic Slavic and Baltic sound change sound shifts speakers stative strata stratigraphy stratum Studies substratum Sudanic suffix Surmic Table Thai theory Tong Tongan Uduk Uto-Aztecan Uto-Aztecan languages verb vocabulary vowel Western Koman word Zone F