Response to Blust "The Resurrection of Proto-Philippines"

Abstract

This article is a response to Blust's lengthy article in <i>Oceanic Linguistics</i> 58(2): 153–256 in which he begins by critiquing an old paper (Reid 1982) that he knows I no longer believe in, but Blust continues to discuss it as though it is still my current position. His article is an attempt to establish his Proto-Philippines (PPh) primarily by reconstructing a large body of lexical items that he assumes are only found in the Philippines. I do not believe a PPh existed. I discuss multiple problems in phonology that are apparent in his reconstructions, both in the article and his online Austronesian Comparative Dictionary from which he has drawn his reconstructions. This includes the issue of prenasalization, its direction, and loss. Much of the discussion is involved with borrowing, or Blust'sterm "leakage," which assumes the reality of a PPh. His discussion of borrowing rejects what is known and discussed by other researchers. There is discussion of relying on negative evidence for assuming the reality of a hypothesis that Blust claims I was guilty of, and of which he is also guilty. The Blust article does not discuss the position of the languages of many Negrito groups in relation to his PPh, where his earlier articles do. The problems with his PPh are summarized in the conclusion.