The Language, Culture, Environment and Origins of Proto-Tani Speakers: What is Knowable, and What is Not (Yet)

Abstract

This chapter represents a linguist's effort at pre-historical reconstruction - an inherently interdisciplinary enterprise - in an area where there is not only no well-established interdisciplinary framework within which to couch one's research, but where there also exists no more than a pale fraction of the data (from all relevant disciplines, certainly including linguistics) that would normally be required in order to form solid, defensible hypotheses of any appreciable strength. So what's the point? Well, there are really two: the first point is to summarize what is in fact known (at least, to linguists), so that we can begin to assess what kind of "picture of the past" the facts suggest. The second is to help initiate a conversation between linguistics and other disciplines in the area, so that we can begin to understand what kinds of data and hypotheses we're currently able to offer one another, and/or may eventually be capable of offering one another, given additional data, time, resources, and so on. Ultimately, my goal is not to form a grand, sweeping hypothesis of the type that would make a good newspaper headline (e.g., Johnson 1996). Rather, my hope here is simply to take whatever small steps the data currently permit me to within the confines of my methodologies. With any luck, this may be able to stimulate further thinking either in similar directions or, just as welcomely, in opposing ones.