[Anthropgrad] FW: seminar 19 May Patrick McConvell - "PROTO-MIRNDI AND THE ORIGIN OF SUBSECTIONS"

[Sue Fraser]

Sue Fraser
School Administrator
School of Archaeology & Anthropology
ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences
AD Hope Building #14 
The Australian National University
Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia
 
T: +61 2 61253309
F: +61 2 61252711
W: http://arts.anu.edu.au/AandA
 
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-----Original Message-----
From: Rachel Hendery [mailto:rachel.hendery at anu.edu.au] 
Sent: Thursday, 14 May 2009 9:14 AM
Subject: seminar next week: 19/5 Patrick McConvell - administrators,
please forward to your lists

19/5/09 (Coombs seminar room B,11-12:30)

Patrick McConvell
"PROTO-MIRNDI AND THE ORIGIN OF SUBSECTIONS" 

ABSTRACT:
Mark Harvey's recent book Proto-Mirndi (2008) is to be celebrated as the
first published book entirely devoted to a historical-comparative study
of
an Australian language family. It is of particular interest since this
family is discontinuous, with western languages in the lower Victoria
River
basin and eastern languages in the Barkly Tableland. The first part of
the
paper is a general assessment of the reconstructions and methods used.

The second discussion topic is a prominent sub-theme in the book: a
reanalysis of the hypotheses and chronologies of the origin and
diffusion of
subsections (an eightfold sociocentric division) in McConvell (1985
etc),
pointing to what Harvey believes is an earlier origin. Other challenges
to
McConvell's work are also examined e.g  the hypothesis that diffusion of
the
terms into Arandic cannot be understood solely in terms of strict
'linguistic stratigraphy' but must take into account the (imperfect)
remodelling of loans to conform to expected sound correspondences by
speakers.

This leads into discussion of the origin and diffusion of sections, a
four-fold division found widely in Australia, from which subsections
arose
by interaction and merger in the upper Daly River area. This is the
topic of
another talk in second semester.



______________

Rachel Hendery
Research Assistant
School of Language Studies
Australian National University
Ph 6125 8203