A closer look shows that rather than constituting a linguistic area on its own, the region between Lombok and Papua is simply part of a typological continuum that runs from the northern Austronesian languages in Taiwan and the Philippines through Malaysia and western Indonesia east toward Melanesia, without any linguistically de²nable borders on either side. 1. DEFINING A LINGUISTIC AREA IN "CENTRAL/EASTERN INDONESIA." In her Rejoinder to Malcolm Ross's squib, Klamer (2003) addresses Ross's critique of her 2002 article, Typical features of Austronesian languages in Central/Eastern Indonesia, stating that, rather than attempting to present a rubric for evaluating genetic relatedness, the article was intended to describe a set of grammatical features that are relevant to the area she discussed (which is "roughly the geographic area between Lombok and Papua"). 1 This is made clear in quotes from her discussion such as "regarding the features chosen: how typical are they for the area?, " "the paper was intended as a typological characterization of an area, " and "complex linguistic areas like C/E Indonesia" [emphases mine].An approach that addresses areal, rather than historical, issues, does crucially rely on two methodological points that are only addressed in passing: (1) are the morphosyntactic features really typical of the area that Klamer describes, and (2) do these features serve to de²ne this area? Ross (2003:506) suggests not, saying that "the features she enumerates for this region are also widespread among Oceanic languages." While Ross concludes that this commonality con²rms "that the major typological divide among Austronesian languages is one that separates the … languages of Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, western Indonesian, and Madagascar from … Eastern Nusantara and Oceania," I suggest that there is no "major typological divide" located in the region that Klamer describes, and that the features she examines ²nd as many exemplifying languages to the west of East Nusantara 2 as they do in the languages to the east of this "area," in as great a proportion of sample set. A qualifying note is required
