Simon Greenhill | |
---|---|
Born | Simon James Greenhill |
Nationality | New Zealand |
Occupation | Scientist |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Auckland |
Thesis | |
Doctoral advisor | Russell Gray |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History; Australian National University |
Main interests | Evolution,computational phylogenetics,quantitative comparative linguistics |
Simon James Greenhill is a New Zealand scientist who works on the application of quantitative methods to the study of cultural evolution and human prehistory. He is well known for creating and building various linguistics databases,including the Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database, [1] [2] TransNewGuinea.org, [3] Pulotu, [4] and many others. In addition to Austronesian,he has contributed to the study of the phylogeny of many language families,including Dravidian [5] and Sino-Tibetan. [6]
He is a graduate of University of Auckland,New Zealand. [7] The title of his 2008 doctoral thesis is The archives of history :a phylogenetic approach to the study of language. [8]
Greenhill is currently a scientist affiliated with the Australian National University in Canberra,Australia,and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena,Germany. [9]
The Austronesian languages are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia,Madagascar,the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan. There are also a number of speakers in continental Asia. They are spoken by about 386 million people. This makes it the fifth-largest language family by number of speakers. Major Austronesian languages include Indonesian,around 250–270 million speakers,Malay,Javanese,and Tagalog (Filipino). According to some estimates,the family contains 1,257 languages,which is the second most of any language family.
The East Papuan languages is a defunct proposal for a family of Papuan languages spoken on the islands to the east of New Guinea,including New Britain,New Ireland,Bougainville,Solomon Islands,and the Santa Cruz Islands. There is no evidence that these languages are related to each other,and the Santa Cruz languages are no longer recognized as Papuan.
The Lower Mamberamo languages are a recently proposed language family linking two languages spoken along the northern coast of Papua province,Indonesia,near the mouth of the Mamberamo River. They have various been classified either as heavily Papuanized Austronesian languages belonging to the SHWNG branch,or as Papuan languages that had undergone heavy Austronesian influence. Glottolog 3.4 classifies Lower Mamberamo as Austronesian,while Donohue classifies it as Papuan. Kamholz (2014) classifies Warembori and Yoke each as coordinate primary subgroups of the South Halmahera–West New Guinea languages.
Borean is a hypothetical linguistic macrofamily that encompasses almost all language families worldwide except those native to sub-Saharan Africa,New Guinea,Australia,and the Andaman Islands. Its supporters propose that the various languages spoken in Eurasia and adjacent regions have a genealogical relationship,and ultimately descend from languages spoken during the Upper Paleolithic in the millennia following the Last Glacial Maximum. The name Borean is based on the Greek βορέας,and means "northern". This reflects the fact that the group is held to include most language families native to the northern hemisphere. Two distinct models of Borean exist:that of Harold C. Fleming and that of Sergei Starostin.
The Yawa languages,also known as Yapen languages,are a small family of two closely related Papuan languages,Yawa and Saweru,which are often considered to be divergent dialects of a single language. They are spoken on central Yapen Island and nearby islets,in Cenderawasih Bay,Indonesian Papua,which they share with the Austronesian Yapen languages.
The Central Solomon languages are the four Papuan languages spoken in the state of the Solomon Islands.
The West Bomberai languages are a family of Papuan languages spoken on the Bomberai Peninsula of western New Guinea and in East Timor and neighboring islands of Indonesia.
The Duna–Pogaya (Duna–Bogaia) languages are a proposed small family of Trans–New Guinea languages in the classification of Voorhoeve (1975),Ross (2005) and Usher (2018),consisting of two languages,Duna and Bogaya,which in turn form a branch of the larger Trans–New Guinea family. Glottolog,which is based largely on Usher,however finds the connections between the two languages to be tenuous,and the connection to TNG unconvincing.
The Bosavi or Papuan Plateau languages are a family of the Trans–New Guinea languages in the classifications of Malcolm Ross and Timothy Usher. The family is named after Mount Bosavi and the Papuan Plateau.
Quantitative comparative linguistics is the use of quantitative analysis as applied to comparative linguistics. Examples include the statistical fields of lexicostatistics and glottochronology,and the borrowing of phylogenetics from biology.
The Kho-Bwa languages,also known as Bugunish and Kamengic,are a small family of languages spoken in Arunachal Pradesh,northeast India. The name Kho-Bwa was originally proposed by George van Driem (2001). It is based on the reconstructed words *kho ("water") and *bwa ("fire"). Blench (2011) suggests the name Kamengic,from the Kameng area of Arunachal Pradesh,or alternatively Bugun–Mey,after its two main members. Alternatively,Anderson (2014) refers to Kho-Bwa as Northeast Kamengic.
Laurent Sagart is a senior researcher at the Centre de recherches linguistiques sur l'Asie orientale unit of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).
Sino-Austronesian or Sino-Tibetan-Austronesian is a proposed language family suggested by Laurent Sagart in 1990. Using reconstructions of Old Chinese,Sagart argued that the Austronesian languages are related to the Sinitic languages phonologically,lexically and morphologically. Sagart later accepted the Sino-Tibetan languages as a valid group and extended his proposal to include the rest of Sino-Tibetan. He also placed the Tai–Kadai languages within the Austronesian family as a sister branch of Malayo-Polynesian. The proposal is considered a minority view,and has been criticised by many other linguists who argue that the similarities between Austronesian and Sino-Tibetan more likely arose from contact rather than being genetic.
West Bird's Head languages are a small family of poorly documented Papuan languages spoken on the Bird's Head Peninsula of New Guinea.
Abun,also known as Yimbun,Anden,Manif,or Karon,is a Papuan language spoken by the Abun people along the northern coast of the Bird's Head Peninsula in Sausapor District,Tambrauw Regency. It is not closely related to any other language,and though Ross (2005) assigned it to the West Papuan family,based on similarities in pronouns,Palmer (2018),Ethnologue,and Glottolog list it as a language isolate.
Mor is a nearly extinct Trans–New Guinea language of Indonesia. It is spoken along the Budidi River and the Bomberai River on the Bomberai Peninsula.
The Rung languages are a proposed branch of Sino-Tibetan languages. The branch was proposed by Randy LaPolla on the basis of morphological evidence such as pronominal paradigms. However,Guillaume Jacques and Thomas Pellard (2021) argues that these languages do not constitute a monophyly based on recent phylogenetic studies and on a thorough investigation of shared lexical innovations.
The Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database or ABVD is a large database of basic vocabulary lists that mainly covers the Austronesian languages. It also has a comprehensive inventory of basic vocabulary lists for Kra–Dai languages,Hmong–Mien languages,Japonic languages,and other languages of East Asia. It is currently the largest lexical database of Austronesian languages in terms of the number of languages covered.
The farming/language dispersal hypothesis proposes that significant language families in the world dispersed along with the expansions of agriculture. This hypothesis was created by Peter Bellwood and Colin Renfrew.
Johann-Mattis List is a German scientist. He is known for his work on quantitative comparative linguistics. List is currently Senior Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig,Germany.