Ritsuko Kikusawa (National Museum of Ethnology, Japan)

        Place: HF 217

Time: Friday February 17., 14.15-16.00

 

Title: The Development of "Applicative" Constructions in Western Austronesian Languages: Toward a Comparison and Reconstruction

Typological analysis and classification are inevitable for the historical linguistic comparison and reconstruction of morphosyntactic characteristics of languages. However, it is well recognized by both typologists and historical linguists that mere pattern comparison can often lead us to wrong conclusions. In this presentation, using on-going work on the historical comparison of applicative constructions in Austronesian languages, I will demonstrate how we can integrate pattern comparison with lexical reconstructon. Key morphems (that are recontructed applying the comparative method) are used here as indices for identifying the paths of structural change. How terminology and defintion can cause problems in an aproach to morphosyntactic reconstruction will also be addressed.