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The Ngaju-Dayak ‘Old Speech Stratum‘

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Isidore Dyen
Isidore Dyen*
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

In an article entitled Dempwolff's *R (Lg. 29.359–366), I referred (362 f.) to a difference between Dempwolff and myself in the interpretation of the Ngaju-Dayak material which he assigns to a posited ‘alte Sprachschicht’. What was there characterized as a difference in interpretation can now be shown to involve a fundamental procedure in the application of the comparative method. For this reason it appears worth while to specify the procedure.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 32 , Issue 1: January-March , March 1956 , pp. 83 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © 1956 by the Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Eingeborenen-Sprachen [= Beihefte] 19.52 fn. 1.

2 Versuch einer Grammatik der Dajakschen Sprache; Dajaksch-deutsches Wōrterbuch (both Amsterdam). In citations from these works, e c j replace ä tj dj respectively.

3 Versuch 2.

4 For the meaning of *(h) see Dyen, The Proto-Malayo-Polynesian laryngeals 30 (Baltimore, 1953).

5 For example the one in his article Lexico-statistic dating of prehistoric ethnic contacts, PAPS 96.456–7.

6 The nonappearance of a reflex of *k in the Ngaju-Dayak word is taken to be an instance of loss by analogic change.

7 Versuch 13.

8 Beihefte 19.51. It is irrelevant that Dempwolff reaches the conclusion of statistical superiority, in effect, by adding the items with ambiguous reflexes to those with ‘regular’ reflexes.