Roger Blench: Hunter-gatherer languages

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All the languages in the world are either the languages of former hunter-gatherers assimilated to those of farmers or result from the demographic expansion of farmers. Assuming that complete replacement does not always occur, it should be possible to detect a forager substrate in a variety of modern languages through analysis of specialised lexical fields, once good quality data exists on neighbouring languages. It has been argued that forager languages have specific structural features; I don’t believe this myself, but it is an idea worth testing. This page links you to all the various papers on my website that relate to hunter-gatherer/forager languages and cultures.

Topic/title	Region	Status
Detecting substrate languages
Enggano culture history page	Indonesia	Unpublished
The Vazimba/Beosi language	Madagascar	Unpublished
South Asia: remnant languages	South Asia	Published
Bangi Me	Mali	Published
Shom Pen	Nicobar islands	Published
Was there an interchange between Cushitic pastoralists and Khoesan speakers in the prehistory of Southern Africa and how can this be detected?	Southern Africa	In press Powerpoint
Other hunter-gatherer studies
The languages of the Tasmanians and their relation to the peopling of Australia	Tasmanian	Published
Bagielli lexical data	Cameroun	Unpublished
Linguistic aspects of Hadza interactions with animals	Tanzania	In press Powerpoint
The Pleistocene settlement of the rim of the Indian Ocean	Indian Ocean	Conference presentation Powerpoint	(See below)

Hypothetical ‘Austral’ migration

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