Proto-Philippine Addenda: Theory, Method and Data

Abstract:The argument for a Philippine subgroup of Austronesian languages that has been presented by Blust is further strengthened through the addition of 320 new etymologies, amounting to an increase of about 25% over the earlier dataset. While the earlier publication aimed at comprehensiveness, this one adopts a more restrictive approach that virtually eliminates the likelihood of cognate distributions being the result of borrowing. The emphasis is thus on the quality of individual comparisons, rather than on the impact of an argument based, at least in part, on quantity. In addition, it clearly describes the foundations of the theory being defended, and provides an explicit discussion of method that lays bare certain misconceptions about the nature of historical linguistics held by some critics of the earlier proposal.