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Is Puyuma a Primary Branch of Austronesian?
- Oceanic Linguistics
- University of Hawai'i Press
- Volume 49, Number 1, June 2010
- pp. 194-204
- 10.1353/ol.0.0070
- Article
- Additional Information
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Malcom Ross's new theory of early Austronesian phylogeny is examined. I describe evidence that *-en served to mark verbs in undergoer voice, patient subject, in a language ancestral to Puyuma, as well as evidence that *<in> occurs in some verbs in undergoer voice, patient subject perfective, in one sociolect of Nanwang Puyuma. This evidence falsifies the claim that Puyuma reflects an early Austronesian stage at which *-en and *<in> had not yet been reinterpreted from nominalizers into voice markers. It also falsifies the phylogeny that takes that putative innovation as its central event. A hypothetical scenario is offered to account for the replacement of the *-en, *-an, and *Si- (or *Sa-) series of voice markers by the series now found in Puyuma independent verbs.