Lingustic Evidence for Tamil in Australian Aboriginal Languages
AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL LANGUAGES: CONSONANT-SALIENT PHONOLOGIES AND
THE ‘PLACE-OF-ARTICULATION IMPERATIVE’
Department of Speech Pathology & Audiology, School of Medicine
Flinders University, Adelaide
And
Research Centre for Linguistic Typology
Ref Page 18 & 19
A hypothesis that the phonetics and phonology of a language have been shaped by the hearing status of the speakers is not easily falsifiable, but we can at least identify two major types of prima facie counter-evidence that would be a problem for such a hypothesis: firstly, evidence that the cause of the hearing impairment had not existed in the population for long enough for it to have had the postulated effect and secondly, evidence that there are other languages with ‘long flat’ phonologies whose speakers do not show a high prevalence of COM and/or populations with a high prevalence of COM whose languages do not have ‘long flat phonologies. As to the first point, it is probably a reasonable assumption that the kinds of atypical phonological characteristics we are dealing with here would take longer than 200 years
As to the second point, there are very few languages elsewhere in the world with a system of contrasts anything like those found in Australia. Whilst the consonant systems of New Guinea and Polynesian languages typically lack a voicing distinction (and in some cases a fricative series), the number of places of articulation is invariably restricted to /p t k/(with the occasional /?/) and almost all of these languages have at least five vowels. Eskimo-Aleut languages, such as Inuktitut, typically have four places of articulation, no voicing contrast and only three vowels (although they do have fricatives). On the other side of the Arctic, Chukokto-Kamchatkan languages, such as Chukchee, arguably have five or six places of articulation, no voicing distinction and a minimal fricative contrast (but six or seven vowels). Perhaps most similar to Australian languages are the Dravidian languages of southern India. Tamil, for example, has five places of articulation in a single series of stops, paralleled by a series of nasals, and no fricatives (thus approaching the Australian proportion of sonorants to obstruents of 70% to 30%). Approaching the question from the opposite direction: according to the latest WHO data on the prevalence of chronic otitis media (Acuin 2004:14ff), Aboriginal Australians have the highest prevalence in the world – 10-54%, according to Coates & al (2002), up to 36% with perforations of the eardrum. They are followed – at some distance – by the Tamil of southern India (7.8%, down from previous estimates of 16-34%) to develop.
- Andrew Butcher
Genetic Evidence for Australian Aboriginals were Dravidians
The experiments were regarding the early coastal migration of human beings to Australia . Because, according to our theory, the first time man migrated from Africa was to Australia . India proved a critical turning point for us as genetic testing of isolated Indian populations produces a key genetic marker [one of the genetic changes] linking India as a crossroad for the journey of man to both Australia and Central Asia. So we were looking in the south of India because most Indian scientists said that the oldest population in India stayed in south India . And we found out in our experiments that these people were Dravidians.
Spencer Wells, Phd
National Geographic Science
