Areal Diffusion and Genetic Inheritance

Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald is Professor and Associate Director of the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at La Trobe University. She has worked on descriptive and historical aspects of Berber languages and has published, in Russian, a grammar of modern Hebrew (1990). She is a major authority on languages of the Arawak family, from northern Amazonia, and has written grammars of Bare (1995) (based on work with the last speaker who has since died) and Warekena (1998), plus A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia (CUP 2003), in addition to essays on various typological and areal features of South American languages. Her monographs, Classifiers: A Typology of Noun Categorization Devices (2000, paperback reissue 2003), Language Contact in Amazonia (2002) and Evidentiality (2004) are published by Oxford University Press. She is currently working on a reference grammar of Manambu, from the Sepik area of New Guinea. R. M. W. Dixon is Professor and Director of the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at La Trobe University. He has published grammars of a number of Australian languages (including Dyirbal and Yidiñ), in addition to A Grammar of Boumaa Fijian (University of Chicago Press 1988), The Jarawara Language of Southern Amazonia (OUP 2004), and A Semantic Approach to English Grammar (OUP 2005). His works on typological theory include Where Have All the Adjectives Gone? and Other Essays in Semantics and Syntax (Mouton,1982) and Ergativity (CUP 1994). The Rise and Fall of Languages (CUP 1997) expounded a punctuated equilibrium model for language development: this is the basis for his detailed case study Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development (CUP 2002).

1. Introduction ; 2. Archaeology and the Historical Determinants of Punctuation in Language-Family Origins ; 3. An Indo-European Linguistic Area and its Characteristics: Ancient Anatolia. Areal Diffusion as a Challenge to the Comparative Method? ; 4. The Australian Linguistic Area ; 5. Descent and Diffusion: The Complexity of the Pilbara Situation ; 6. Contact-Induced Change in Oceanic Languages in North-West Melanesia ; 7. Areal Diffusion, Genetic Inheritance, and Problems of Subgrouping: A North Arawak Case Study ; 8. Linguistic Diffusion in Present-Day East Anatolia: From Top to Bottom ; 9. The Role of Migration and Language Contact in the Development of the Sino-Tibetan Language Family ; 10. On Genetic and Areal Linguistics in Mainland South-East Asia: Parallel Polyfunctionality of 'Acquire' ; 11. Genetic Versus Contact Relationship: Prosodic Diffusibility in South-East Asian Languages ; 12. Language Contact and Areal Diffusion in Sinitic Languages ; 13. Areal Diffusion Versus Genetic Inheritance: An African Perspective ; 14. Convergence and Divergence in the Development of African Lanaguages ; 15. What Language Features can be 'Borrowed'?