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Typology and Language Families: A Comment on Klamer's "Typical Features of Austronesian Languages in Central/Eastern Indonesia"
- Oceanic Linguistics
- University of Hawai'i Press
- Volume 42, Number 2, December 2003
- pp. 506-510
- 10.1353/ol.2003.0028
- Article
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In the article mentioned in the title, Klamer appears to say that typological features may be used to help determine whether a particular language is Austronesian or Papuan. I argue here that this is not so, as typological features are often shared as a result of language contact. Genealogical relatedness is demonstrated by the presence of what Johanna Nichols has called "individual-identifying features."