Some observations on Proto-Austronesian *t to k

Notes Some Observations on Proto-Austronesian *t to k Anthony P. Grant EDGE HILL UNIVERSITY, ORMSKIRK, uk 1. INTRODUCTION.1 This note provides information on another language that exhibits the PMP *t > k change discussed in Blust (2004), namely Makuva of East Timor, and suggests that this change (which also involves an apparent merger of original *k and *t) has not come about through substratum in�uence from the neighboring dominant non-An language Fataluku. The author also takes issue with some misunderstandings of Caddoan data in the subsequent squib by Donohue (2006), and presents the correct facts. 2. PMP *T > K: ANOTHER INSTANCE. The recent squib by Mark Donohue (Donohue 2006) addresses some of the issues raised in the account provided by Blust (2004) of the change from PMP *t to /k/ in some 43 daughter languages. This change actually represents at least 20 historically independent instances of *t > k change, including three historically separate instances of this in Polynesian. Striking soundchanges in Austronesian are not infrequent, as the extensive treatment of ten such changes in Blust (2005) makes clear, 2 but the change of *t > k is unusually widespread within Austronesian, and the nature of its geographical and genetic distribution makes it clear that this change is not an exclusively shared innovation that serves to mark off a single cluster of related languages. Donohue points out that the reverse change, that from *k to t in the world�s languages, is...