DESCRIPTION

Back in 1972, when I was struggling with early drafts of my dissertation, Charles Hockett, the chair of my committee and my primary advisor, told me with considerable frustration “Never let your guests into the kitchen.” That was because my earliest drafts read more like a Sunday magazine presentation about Bisayan than a scientific treatise. Nevertheless, there is a lot of background information that might otherwise “remain in the kitchen” and never make it to the dining table. And so, this presentation will give background information behind the paper Paz and PPh – 4 decades later, which is set to be released in the upcoming issue of The Archive.

I will explain some of the primary needs and necessities to look at the reconstruction of over-arching accent and phonology, the subgrouping of Philippine languages, and the reality of a “Proto-Philippine node”. For example, what research and data have taught me over several decades is that the most overwhelming realities about Philippine languages is a probable binary split between a Proto-Northern-Philippine (PNP) and a Proto-Southern-Philippine (PSP). Regardless of whether or not there is a superordinate node of “Proto-Philippine” (which scholars like Reid (1982, 2020), Ross (2005, 1996, 2020), and Liao (2020) have challenged), PNP and PSP are considered defensible nodes under Proto-Malayo-Polynesian.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Dr. Zorc has been blessed with over 40 years of experience in comparative-historical linguistics, lexicography, language teaching, language analysis, curriculum development, and applied linguistics. He has conducted research on 80 languages of the Philippines, Aboriginal Australia, Armenia, and Africa, encompassing the Austronesian, Bantu, Cushitic, Indo- European, and Pama-Nyungan language families.

His publication of 31 books on 24 languages, 40 journal articles, and 30 presentations at international conferences solidifies his reputation as one of the world’s leading authorities on the less-commonly taught languages, especially of the Philippines. He has produced 6 dictionaries (Aklanon, Eastern Armenian, Somali, Tagalog Slang, Filipino Etymological, and Yolngu Matha). He was awarded the Brother Andrew Gonzalez, FSC Distinguished Professorial Chair in Linguistics and Language Education by the Linguistic Society of the Philippines on February 26, 2005.