Table Of ContentLANGUAGE CONTACTS IN PREHISTORY
AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND
HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
General Editor
E.F. KONRAD KOERNER
(Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie
und Universalienforschung, Berlin)
Series IV – CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY
Advisory Editorial Board
Raimo Anttila (Los Angeles); Lyle Campbell (Christchurch, N.Z.)
Sheila Embleton (Toronto); John E. Joseph (Edinburgh)
Manfred Krifka (Berlin); Hans-Heinrich Lieb (Berlin)
E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.); Hans-Jürgen Sasse (Köln)
Volume 239
Henning Andersen (ed.)
Language Contacts in Prehistory: Studies in Stratigraphy.
Papers from the Workshop on Linguistic Stratigraphy and Prehistory
at the Fifteenth International Conference on Historical Linguistics,
Melbourne, 17 August 2001
LANGUAGE CONTACTS
IN PREHISTORY
STUDIES IN STRATIGRAPHY
Edited by
HENNING ANDERSEN
University of California, Los Angeles
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
International Conference on Historical Linguistics (15th : 2001 : Melbourne, Australia). Language
contacts in prehistory : Studies in stratigraphy / Edited by Henning Andersen
p. cm. -- (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series IV,
Current issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763 ; v. 239)
“Papers from the workshop on linguistic stratigraphy and prehistory of the Fifteenth International
Conference onHistorical Linguistics, Melbourne, 17 August 2001.”
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Historical linguistics--Congresses. 2. Languages in contact--Congresses. I. Andersen, Henning.
II. Title. III. Series.
P140 .I5 2003
417’.7--dc21 2003041797
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PREFACE
Some months before the Fifteenth International Conference on Historical
Linguistics, my colleague Chris Ehret and myself were discussing matters of
linguistic stratigraphy and then discovered that we were both planning to attend
the ICHL in Melbourne. It was not a big leap to agree to organize a workshop on
"Linguistic stratigraphy and prehistory". Accordingly I submitted the following
workshop proposal and call for papers to the conference organizers Barry Blake
and Kate Burridge of La Trobe University on our joint behalf.
Every linguistic tradition includes layers of material that entered it at
different times in the more or less distant past. Hence, for periods preceding our
earliest historical documentation, linguistic stratigraphy may yield evidence that
can complement the archaeological record where there is one, but can be eloquent
in and of itself where there is none.
The chronological layering of the lexical and grammatical material of a
language may reflect the prehistory of its speakers in several ways. For instance,
layers of word formation or borrowing may bear witness to stages in
technological development or to changing currents in spiritual culture; irregular
phonological reflexes may be evidence of the convergence of diverse dialects in
the formation of a tradition of speaking; layers of material from different source
languages may form a record of changing cultural contacts in the past; in some
instances, layers of material from a single source language spanning a lengthy
period of time shed light on the prehistoric development of both the target
language and the source language. The stratigraphic evidence may be sufficiently
determinate to suggest the nature of the contact in individual prehistoric episodes
of language contact, indicating whether it was indirect or direct, ephemeral or
long-lasting, a borrowing relationship or a case of language shift. Lexical and
grammatical elements may carry different weight in the evaluation of prehistoric
episodes of language contact, as may also appellatives and propria, and among
propria, hydronyms, toponyms, and anthroponyms.
The aim of the proposed workshop is to highlight this important area of
historical linguistics and to bring together linguists working with diverse
geographical and cultural areas for the discussion of recent advances and work in
progress as well as problems of method and issues of interpretation.
The workshop took place on the last day of the Melbourne conference,
Friday 17 August, 2001. In addition to the papers included in this volume, a
paper was presented by Theo Vennemann on "Superstratal Semitic terms in
Germanic", which will appear elsewhere.
VI PREFACE
I am grateful to Barry Blake and Kate Burridge for providing such a
pleasant context for the workshop, to the audience for stimulating discussion, to
my co-authors for their unfailing spirit of co-operation, to the series editor,
Konrad Koerner for his continued collegial support, and to Jean Hough, who
produced the maps and other graphics on the basis of the authors' sketches.
Los Angeles, California, December 2002 Henning Andersen
CONTENTS
Introduction
Henning Andersen 1
Indo-European
Stratum and shadow.
A genealogy of stratigraphy theories from the Indo-European West
Bernard Mees 11
Slavic and the Indo-European migrations
Henning Andersen 45
The development of the perfect in Indo-European.
Stratigraphic evidence of prehistoric areal influence
Bridget Drinka 77
Africa
Stratigraphy in African historical linguistics
Christopher Ehret 107
Stratigraphy and prehistory: Bantu Zone F
B. F. Y. P. Masele & Derek Nurse 115
Language contacts in Nilo-Saharan prehistory
Christopher Ehret 135
Southeast Asia
Evidence for Austroasiatic strata in Thai
Anthony Diller 159
Australia
Millers and mullers. The archaeo-linguistic
stratigraphy of technological change in holocene Australia
Patrick McConvell & Michael Smith 177
Oceania
Loanword strata in Rotuman
Hans Schmidt 201
VIII CONTENTS
Japan
Substratum and adstratum in prehistoric Japan
J. Marshall Unger 241
Meso-America
Uto-Aztecan in the linguistic stratigraphy of Mesoamerican prehistory
Karin Dahin 259
Language Index 289
INTRODUCTION
Henning Andersen
University of California, Los Angeles
0. Preamble
Linguistic stratigraphy is the systematic investigation of the layering of
grammatical and lexical material in a language or dialect which reflects its
historical development and past contacts between its speakers and bearers of
other linguistic and cultural traditions.
The study of loanwords is a traditional pursuit that plays an important part
in stratigraphy. It is well-known that loanwords are a significant source of
information about the cultural relations among the peoples on the stage of
history. When we turn to prehistory, loanwords and other 'borrowed' elements
increase in importance as evidence of the prehistory of a people and its contacts
with other peoples. Such linguistic data are often the best available evidence,
even when it can be correlated with archaeological evidence. For some areas and
periods, it is the only source of information. For this reason it demands and
deserves to be approached in a systematic fashion.
The aim of this volume is to focus attention on the contributions linguistic
stratigraphy can make to our knowledge of language contacts in the more or less
distant past and of population movements and periods of social and cultural
development that precede the historical record. The papers that follow below
exemplify the methods used in stratigraphy, reveal to what extent these methods
are reliable, and present significant results the methods have made it possible to
attain.
In the next few pages I will briefly mention some of the basic concepts
invoked in studies in stratigraphy (Section 1) and language contact (Section 2)
and touch on a core epistemological issue (Section 3).
1.0 Strata, stratification, and stratigraphy
1.1 Strata
The conjoint notions of 'stratum' and 'stratification' are among the oldest
geological metaphors in modern linguistic terminology.
2 HENNING ANDERSEN
The earliest linguistic use of stratum noted in the Oxford English Dictinary
dates from 1807.1 It is reasonable to suppose that this example reflects the then
current understanding of strata in geology, which was common knowledge
among intellectuals thanks to the wide impact of James Hutton's Theory of the
Formation of the Earth (1795; see Dean 1997). This was well before the first,
monumental application of the theory in William Smith's Geological Map of
England and Wales (1815), "the map that changed the world", as it has been
called (Winchester 2000). Note that the strata Chalmers describes (footnote 1)
are observable side by side on a topographic map.
This usage, which corresponds to Smith's map, is different from the
slightly later theories of superstrata and substrata, which describe a vertical
layering of language traditions in the past, reconstructible thanks to traces of a
superstratum or a substratum language in a prevailing 'matrix language'.
It is interesting to note that this understanding is not just of recent date, but
may have occurred to thoughtful people many times in the past. At least from the
Renaissance on, much of the speculation on the origin of the languages of
Europe included the idea that they were results of successive admixtures
—Italian, for instance, compounded of three or more languages, Etruscan, Latin,
and Germanic (Tuttle 1987:118). In Scipione Maffei's explanation of the
difference between the dialects of Brescia and Verona (from 1732), the notion of
substratum is fully formed, though it is unnamed (and the account is factually
wrong):
That Brescia and Verona were once in the hands of different nations, the former of the
Gauls, the latter of the Venetians, is however proven most clearly by their respective
forms of speech, all their differences in pronunciation and shortening, their divergent
accents and sounds .... This is truly a manifest, lasting testimony; for it is clear that
our present-day dialects arose in no other way than from the different manner in which
Latin was pronounced and spoken by the folk in ancient times; which diversity had
its roots nowhere else but in the genius of the different languages that came before
Latin, the imprint of which languages has remained to this very day and is practically
indelible [my translation; HA].2
1 According to the OED, stratum, substratum, superstratum, and stratification were in
general use in the 1600-1700s in metalurgy and chemistry before they entered geology (cf.
OED, s.w.). Here is the earliest linguistic use of stratum cited in the OED: "The first stratum
of names on the map of North-Britain is Cambro-British; ... the second stratum ...
superinduced on the former was the Gaelic" (1807, G. Chalmers, Caledonian, I. Map note).
2 "Che Brescia e Verona da nazioni diverse tenute già fossero, e quella da Galli, questa da
Veneti, altra grandissima pruova ne dà tuttora il linguaggio dell'una e dell'altra, e la somma
diversità di pronunzia e di troncamenti, e le contrarietà d'accenti e di suoni... Questo per verità
è un testimonio sensibile e ancora presente; certa cosa essendo che i nostri odierni dialetti non
altronde si formano, che dal diverso modo di pronunziare negli antichi tempi e di parlare
popolarmente il Latino; la qual diversità non altronde nasceva, che dal genio delle varie lingue
