Lexical change in pre-colonial Australia

Title: Lexical change in pre-colonial Australia
Creator: Harvey, Mark
Relation: Diachronica Vol. 28, Issue 3, p. 345-381
Relation: https://benjamins.com/#catalog/journals/dia.28.3.03har/details
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Resource Type: journal article
Date: 2011
Description: Current analyses present lexical borrowing as a pervasive phenomenon in pre-colonial Australia. They propose that this follows from the high levels of multilingualism and language group exogamy which characterized pre-colonial sociality. This article shows that lexical borrowing was not pervasive in Australia, arguing that there is no necessary or even default relation between high levels of multilingualism and language group exogamy, and high levels of borrowing. These social phenomena may equally be accompanied by extremes of lexical differentiation between languages. Australia provides many examples of such differentiation. The paper also argues that there are no examples of the borrowing of lexical material from irregular paradigms in Australia. As such, the sharing of lexical material from irregular paradigms is a reliable guide to genetic relations in Australia.
Subject: borrowing; diffusion; codeswitching; multilingualsim; social network theory; Australian languages; Pama Nyungan; non Pama Nyungan
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1057425
Identifier: uon:16185
Identifier: ISSN:0176-4225
Language: eng
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