Roger Blench: Hunter-gatherer languages

 

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All the languages in the world are either the languages of former hunter-gatherers assimilated to those of farmers or result from the demographic expansion of farmers. Assuming that complete replacement does not always occur, it should be possible to detect a forager substrate in a variety of modern languages through analysis of specialised lexical fields, once good quality data exists on neighbouring languages. It has been argued that forager languages have specific structural features; I don’t believe this myself, but it is an idea worth testing. This page links you to all the various papers on my website that relate to hunter-gatherer/forager languages and cultures.

 

Topic/title

Region

Status

 

Detecting substrate languages

 

 

 

Enggano culture history page

Indonesia

Unpublished

The Vazimba/Beosi language

Madagascar

Unpublished

South Asia: remnant languages

South Asia

Published

Bangi Me

Mali

Published

Shom Pen

Nicobar islands

Published

Was there an interchange between Cushitic pastoralists and Khoesan speakers in the prehistory of Southern Africa and how can this be detected?

Southern Africa

In press

Powerpoint

 

 

 

 

Other hunter-gatherer studies

 

 

 

The languages of the Tasmanians and their relation to the peopling of Australia

Tasmanian

Published

Bagielli lexical data

Cameroun

Unpublished

Linguistic aspects of Hadza interactions with animals

Tanzania

In press

Powerpoint

The Pleistocene settlement of the rim of the Indian Ocean

Indian Ocean

Conference presentation

Powerpoint

(See below)

 

Hypothetical ‘Austral’ migration

 

 

 

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