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Is Puyuma a Primary Branch of Austronesian?: A Reply to Sagart
- Oceanic Linguistics
- University of Hawai'i Press
- Volume 49, Number 2, December 2010
- pp. 543-558
- Article
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Ross (2009) proposes the Nuclear Austronesian hypothesis, according to which the Formosan languages Puyuma, Rukai, and Tsou are each probably a primary branch of Austronesian and all Austronesian languages other than these three belong to a single, Nuclear Austronesian, branch defined by the nominalization-to-verb innovation originally proposed by Starosta, Pawley, and Reid (1981 Starosta, Pawley, and Reid (1982) for Proto-Austronesian itself. Sagart (2010) argues that there is evidence that Puyuma has also undergone the nominalization-to-verb innovation and is accordingly not a primary branch of Austronesian. In this short paper we show that Sagart’s evidence is based on misanalyses of Puyuma data and that these data do not reflect the nominalization-to-verb innovation. Sagart’s argument against the Nuclear Austronesian hypothesis does not stand up to closer scrutiny.