Methodology in Linguistic Prehistory, Berlin, 15–16 October 2011

The workshop “Methodology in linguistic prehistory” was held in Berlin from 15 to 16 October 2011. It was organised by the KBA and Alor Pantar collaborative research projects, both part of the EuroBABEL programme. The workshop took place thanks to funding from the European Science Foundation, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the US National Science Foundation.

Abstract

It is increasingly recognized that the investigation of linguistic prehistory is not merely an extension of traditional historical linguistics and the comparative method, but rather represents a new discipline which requires new tools, see e.g. Donohue & Denham (2010). Two EuroBABEL projects—Alor-Pantar and Kalahari Basin Area —address questions of prehistory directly, incorporating major historical components.

Moreover, these two projects focus on areas of the world that are crucial to our understanding of human migration and settlement. The Alor-Pantar region is a zone of contact between Austronesian and Papuan languages. It represents an outlier some 1000km from the New Guinea mainland and surrounded by Austronesian languages. Similarly, the Kalahari Basin Area constitutes a core pre-Bantu population that has been over-layered by the Bantu-speaking migration.

In both regions, linguistic relationships are only partially understood, and the available linguistic, genetic, and archeological evidence are often at odds. In Alor-Pantar, preliminary genetic studies indicate that speakers of Papuan languages may share more affinity with Austronesian speakers further afield than do their near Austronesian neighbors. In the Kalahari Basin Area, shared linguistic traits may, in many instances, not reflect a common linguistic origin. Unraveling these complex scenarios requires the development of new methodologies that cross traditional discipline boundaries.

Furthermore, these new methodologies, central to the aims of the Alor-Pantar and Kalahari Basin Area projects, are of wide-ranging significance to the discipline of linguistics in general. For example, they can provide new perspectives on long-established language families, such as Uralic languages, spoken in Eastern and Northern Europe and North Asia, where untangling a complex history of linguistic relatedness and contact is a standing challenge.

As a first step in forging these new methodologies, we propose to bring together members of the Alor-Pantar, Kalahari Basin Area and Ob-Ugric Languages projects and leading experts from outside the EuroBABEL programme.

The workshop consisted of 15 talks spread over two days. Presentations by EuroBABEL members provided an overview of the relevant research currently underway in the three projects. The external participants presented on the state of the art of linguistic prehistory methodology more generally. Each day of the workshop ended with time for general discussion and recommendations for future work.

References

Donohue, Mark & Tim Denham. 2010. “Farming and Language in Island Southeast Asia: Reframing Austronesian History.” Current Anthropology 51(2): 223-56.