Contact-Induced Grammatical Change in Melanesia: Who were the Agents of Change?

Abstract

This article examines the currently accepted view about the origins of grammatical change that has occurred in Austronesian languages in contact with Papuan languages in Melanesia. The view is that this change is the result of Austronesian speakers’ bilingualism in a Papuan language, and therefore that Austronesian speakers were the agents of change. The article presents an alternative scenario—that the grammatical change may have been the result of a process involved in acquisition of the Austronesian language by Papuan speakers, who then would have been the agents of change. This scenario is supported by a description of similarities in the changed grammatical features of the Austronesian languages and those of contact languages, which clearly did arise from a process of acquisition—namely, language transfer. It is also supported by the degree of lexical borrowing in at least one of the changed Austronesian languages, Takia, which suggests acquisition rather than bilingualism played a key role.