From Hubert.Cuyckens at arts.kuleuven.be Sat Dec 1 12:55:57 2007 From: Hubert.Cuyckens at arts.kuleuven.be (Hubert Cuyckens) Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2007 13:55:57 +0100 Subject: Final CFP: New Reflections on Grammaticalization 4 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From caterina.mauri at unipv.it Sat Dec 15 17:43:57 2007 From: caterina.mauri at unipv.it (Caterina Mauri) Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2007 18:43:57 +0100 Subject: Call for manifestation of interest - Theme session proposal - SLE 2008, Italy Message-ID: ** WE APOLOGIZE FOR CROSS-POSTING ** Theme Session Proposal – "What do languages code when they code realisness?" SLE 2008 – Forlì * Call for manifestation of interest * Theme Session Proposal: "What do languages code when they code realisness?" Dear list members, this is a call for manifestation of interest in a theme session that we plan to organize within the next annual meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE), to be held in Forlì, Italy, September 17-20, 2008 (http://sle2008.sitlec.unibo.it). The SLE policy for workshops and theme sessions requires us to prepare a proposal, to be submitted to the SLE program committee no later than February 15, 2008. This proposal should contain a short description of the topic to be dealt with, along with an estimate of the schedule and the overall time required. The working title of our proposal is: "What do languages code when they code realisness?". An extended description of the topic is included at the end of this message. We feel that the theme we are going to propose might raise the interest of typologists (and theoretical linguists) who have been (or are) working on the coding of realisness and related issues. Besides the individual papers, we intend to devote some time to a general discussion of the theoretical and empirical issues arising from the presentations. In detail, the structure of the theme session we intend to submit should include: · three invited contributions; · up to 10/12 selected papers (20 minutes + discussion); · a final slot (up to 60 minutes) for a general, round-table like discussion. What we ask you at this stage is to let us know as soon as possible if you are interested in contributing a paper to the theme session. Feel free to send a quick informal reply to this mail (just stating your willingness to submit a paper and specifying a possible topic for your contribution). Prospective contributors are also expected to send an abstract no later than February 1, 2008 (Friday). This tight schedule will leave us enough time to finalize the proposal to be submitted to the SLE committee. We should emphasize that there will be two stages: in the first stage, we will select papers which will be included in the proposal; in the second stage, the proposal as a whole will be evaluated by the SLE committee. Only upon acceptance of the entire theme session, every selected contribution will be considered officially "accepted" at the SLE conference. Convenors Caterina Mauri (University of Pavia, Italy) Andrea Sansò (Insubria University – Como, Italy) Important dates (first stage): · As soon as possible: informal e-mail with manifestation of interest · 1st February 2008: abstract submission (see format below) · 1st March 2008: notification of acceptance Important dates (second stage; the convenors will be looking after the finalization of the proposal): · 15th February 2008: submission of the abstract for the theme session to the SLE committee · 15th April 2008: submission of the full program (invited speakers + accepted abstracts + discussion time) to the SLE committee · 31st May 2008: notification of acceptance Format of abstracts: The selection of abstracts will be made on the basis of quality and relatedness to the topic and objectives of the theme session. The submitted abstracts (in PDF) should be anonymous, up to 2 pages long (including references), and the authors are expected to provide an overview of the goal, methodology, and data of their research. Abstracts should be sent to both convenors to the following e-mail addresses: Caterina Mauri: caterina.mauri at unipv.it Andrea Sansò: asanso at gmail.com All the abstracts will be anonymously reviewed by the program committee of the theme session (see below) before the finalization of the proposal. More information about the theme session (list of selected papers, invited speakers, etc.) will be circulated amongst the prospective participants right before the submission of the proposal to the SLE committee. Please include the following data in the body of the mail: (i) Author(s); (ii) Title; (iii) Affiliation; (iv) Contacts. Scientific committee (TBC): Kasper Boye (University of Copenhagen); Isabelle Bril (LACITO, CNRS, Villejuif); Sonia Cristofaro (University of Pavia); Ferdinand de Haan (Arizona University) Anna Giacalone (University of Pavia); Caterina Mauri (University of Pavia); Andrea Sansò (Insubria University, Como); Johan van der Auwera (University of Antwerp). Invited speakers: Sonia Cristofaro (University of Pavia); Ferdinand de Haan (Arizona University); Johan van der Auwera (University of Antwerp) Publication: if the theme session is accepted it is our intention to publish a selection of the papers with an international publisher. Caterina Mauri, Andrea Sansò *************************************** Presentation of the theme session Working title: What do languages code when they code realisness? Theme description and topics Since Givón (1984: 285ff.) and Chung and Timberlake (1985: 241ff.), the terms realis and irrealis have gained increasing currency in cross-linguistic studies on modality as flexible cover terms for a number of moods traditionally labelled as 'indicative', 'subjunctive', 'optative', 'counterfactual', 'potential', 'hypothetical', etc. Some authors (e.g. Elliott 2000: 80) have gone a step further, speaking of 'reality status' (or 'realisness') as a grammatical category to full right, realized differently in different languages, with at least two values: realis (or neutral) and irrealis. These two values are characterized in terms of actualization vs. non-actualization of a given state of affairs. According to Elliott, a proposition is realis if it asserts that a state of affairs is an "actualized and certain fact of reality", whereas it is classified as irrealis if "it implies that a SoA belongs to the realm of the imagined or hypothetical, and as such it constitutes a potential or possible event but it is not an observable fact of reality" (Elliott 2000: 66-67). There are languages which obligatorily mark realisness in all finite clauses by means of a comprehensive (morphological or syntactic) system of markers, others where the system is partial and the realisness of a proposition needs to be indicated only in specific syntactic contexts, and finally there are languages in which the marking of realisness is merely optional. In other terms, realisness may be encoded by means of an array of morpho-syntactic strategies (simple affixation, portmanteau affixation, sentence particles, adverbs, etc.). Both the functional characterization and the formal aspects of realisness are controversial (Bybee et al 1994; Bybee 1998). On the one hand, the solidarities between realisness and other functional domains such as, for instance, tense, aspect, and evidentiality make it difficult to decide whether (and to what extent) realisness is an independent functional dimension (see, e.g. Fleischman 1995). On the other hand, there are certain states of affairs (e.g. habitual, directive, and future SoAs, etc.) that are coded by means of either realis or irrealis strategies across languages, in a largely unpredictable way. This variation may reflect the inherently hybrid reality status of these states of affairs: they may have occurred but their reference time is non-specific (e.g. habituals; Givón 1984: 285; Cristofaro 2004), they may have not yet occurred but they are either highly probable or expected with a high degree of certainty (e.g. directives, futures; Roberts 1990; Chafe 1995; Mithun 1995; Ogloblin 2005; Sun 2007), etc. Some of the factors that appear to have an influence on the cross-linguistic coding of realisness have been already hinted at in the typological literature. For instance, in some languages argument structure and referentiality/definiteness of arguments appear to be crucial to the choice of a realis or irrealis strategy (the presence of definite arguments entailing realis marking, whereas indefinite/non-specific arguments require irrealis marking). Furthermore, the deictic anchoring of the proposition to the speaker's here-and-now (in the sense of Fleischman 1989) may determine different realisness values for directives and futures in some languages (e.g. predictions, intentions or scheduled events are marked as realis, whereas other future SoAs are irrealis; second-person directives, which require the presence of the performer, are coded as realis more frequently than third-person directives). Yet, a complete picture of the range of factors affecting realisness is still missing. New insights into these factors and their interactions may come from a wider amount of cross-linguistic data, as well as a better understanding of the diachronic mechanisms leading to the emergence and establishing of realisness systems. This theme session aims to assess our current understanding of the realisness dimension in grammar and to plot the directions for future research. We invite abstracts for papers dealing with foundational/theoretical issues and/or taking an empirical, data-driven stance on the coding of realisness across languages. At the foundational/theoretical level, possible topics include (but are not limited to): · the status of realisness in linguistic theory; · interactions between realisness and other functional domains (tense, aspect, evidentiality, etc.); · cross-linguistic variation in the classification of certain states of affairs as either realis or irrealis; · factors affecting the realisness value of a state of affairs: argument structure; referentiality/definiteness of arguments; degree of deictic anchoring to the speaker's here-and-now; etc. At the empirical level, possible topics include (but are not limited to): · in-depth investigations of realisness systems in single languages or language families; · the areal dimension of realisness marking; · realisness in languages without dedicated realis/irrealis markers; · realisness as a relevant dimension in interclausal relations: disjunction (see, e.g., Mauri 2008), complementation (Ammann & van der Auwera 2004), switch reference, etc.; · the diachronic origin and the grammaticalization of realis/irrealis markers as a key to understanding their functional properties and distribution. References Ammann, A., and J. van der Auwera. 2004. Complementizer-headed main clauses for volitional moods in the languages of South-Eastern Europe. A Balkanism? In: O. Tomić (ed.), Balkan syntax and semantics, 293-314. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bybee, J. 1998. "Irrealis" as a grammatical category. Anthropological Linguistics 40 (2): 257-271. Bybee, J., R. Perkins, and W. Pagliuca. 1994. The evolution of grammar. Tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Bybee, J., and S. Fleischman (eds.). 1995. Modality in grammar and discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Chafe, W. 1995. The realis-irrealis distinction in Caddo, the Northern Iroquoian languages, and English. In: Bybee & Fleischman (eds.) 1995, 349-365. Chung, S., and A. Timberlake. 1985. Tense, aspect, and mood. In: T. Shopen (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, Vol. III: Grammatical categories and the lexicon, 202-258. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cristofaro, S. 2004. Past habituals and irrealis. In: Y. A. Lander, V. A. Plungian, A. Yu. Urmanchieva (eds.), Irrealis and Irreality, 256-272. Moscow: Gnosis. Elliott, J. R. 2000. Realis and irrealis: Forms and concepts of the grammaticalisation of reality. Linguistic Typology 4: 55-90. Fleischman, S. 1989. Temporal distance: a basic linguistic metaphor. Studies in Language 13 (1): 1-50. Fleischman, S. 1995. Imperfective and irrealis. In: Bybee & Fleischman (eds.) 1995, 519-551. Givón, T. 1984. Syntax. A functional-typological introduction. Vol. 1. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Mauri, C. 2008. The irreality of alternatives. Towards a typology of disjunction. Studies in Language 32 (1): 22-55. Mithun, M. 1995. On the relativity of irreality. In: Bybee & Fleischman (eds.) 1995, 367-388. Ogloblin, A. K. 2005. Javanese. In: A. Adelaar, and N. P. Himmelmann (eds.), The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar, 590-624. London-New York: Routledge. Roberts, J. R. 1990. Modality in Amele and other Papuan languages. Journal of Linguistics 26: 363-401. Sun, J. T.-S. 2007. The irrealis category in rGyalrong. Language and Linguistics 8 (3): 797-819. _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From phonosemantics at earthlink.net Sat Dec 15 20:34:43 2007 From: phonosemantics at earthlink.net (jess tauber) Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2007 15:34:43 -0500 Subject: Role of ideophones in Bantu and Niger-Congo in historical linguistics Message-ID: Been oh so quiet here discussion-wise since that whole thing about He-who-shall-not-be-brought-up. Hope all noses have been successfully re-jointed. Since summer I've been back working on ideophones, finally doing that mass crosslinguistic survey that I'd been meaning to get to for decades now, after the suggestion by Johanna Nichols that I do some actual statistical analysis back while I was at UCB a long, long time ago. Currently Bantu and Niger-Congo are the focus. Despite claims by some that ideophones there are not reconstructable some in fact ARE- with the bases from which they are snipped going back to common Bantu. Because of this one cannot escape from historical changes- unusual in many cases for ideophones in other language families, but apparently not here. Even so there is a pattern underlying the ideophonic systems, so far as I can tell. Vowels generally fit the common crosslinguistic pattern, with for instance /a/ meaning 'flat(ly)', /o/ having to do with rounded volumes, and so on. Consonants (once you've peeled away the historical changes) also fit nicely- for instance many, many labial initial forms dealing with collapse against some firmer (though not necessarily dry) surface. Interestingly, the derivational extensions also appear to be in many cases iconically organized, a surprise. For instance 'locational' -am- has a far more specific reference than usually admitted- orientation at an angle less than normal/perpendicular to some reference plane segment. Other extensions also have more concrete spatial reference as well, some temporal. Indeed, the entire construction type, with ideophone/noun prefix, unidentifiable intervening segmental materials, and spatial/temporal suffix, looks a lot like the 'bipartite construction' so popular in Western North America, and Yahgan in South America. However, the senses are flipped. In Yahgan, for instance, the entire set of instrument/bodypart/manner prefixes feeds into the grammaticalization of voice, while in Bantu the spatio-temporal suffixes do. Yahgan pathway/location suffixes grammaticalize into TAM markers- while it may be the ideophones which serve this function, at least for some elements of aspect (other inflections being on the auxiliary). The American bipartite systems deal primarily with controlled activities, with a minority having to do with loss of control- yet so many ideophones in the Bantu languages appear to deal with loss or lack of control, in keeping with ideophones in many other families. The questions I have about the Bantu (and larger Niger-Congo) situation are- even through multiple historical changes, how can you keep the system iconically organized? Does this require constraints on allowable changes to keep them relatively transparent? Or does it mean that replacement is the norm, with new, more iconic forms pushing out old, opaque ones? Finally, are we dealing here not with 'grammaticalization' per se, but its evil twin, antigrammaticalization, which would explain the continuing use of these constructions in the creation of 'new' ideophones? How many other languages families are amenable to such analysis? Jess Tauber phonosemantics at earthlink.net _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Sun Dec 16 07:29:10 2007 From: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2007 08:29:10 +0100 Subject: sound replacement in loans Message-ID: Dear friends, Claire Bowern had suggested to post my following question (originally addressed to the LINGTYP list) to HISTLING, too.: Within the context of my research on Caucasian Albanian (Old Udi), I came across a rather remarkable instance of 'sound replacement' in loans: A palatal voiceless fricative () is (systematically?) replaced by a voiced pharyngeal stop. I wonder whether some of you have come across a parallel process in other languages...To be more concrete: What I have in mind are cases of replacement within loans (!), not sound changes within the history of a given language. That is, Language A has a in a term that is borrowed into Language B with a voiced pharyngeal (I write <%>) instead, say /asha/ in Language A (donor language) > /a%a/ in Language B (recipient language). [Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to give concrete examples from Caucasian Albanian, as long as the corresponding text (the so-called Caucasian Albanian Palimpsest) has not been edited. Sorry for this! But I have to respect the copyright of others....] Thanks for any suggestions.... Best wishes, Wolfgang -- ---------------------------------------------------------- *Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze * ---------------------------------------------------------- /Primary contact: / Institut für Allgemeine & Typologische Sprachwissenschaft Dept. II / F 13 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 München Tel.: 0049-(0)89-2180-2486 (Secretary) 0049-(0)89-2180-5343 (Office) Fax: 0049-(0)89-2180-5345 Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de /// Wolfgang.Schulze at lmu.de Web: http://www.als.lmu/de/mitarbeiter/index.php Personal homepage: http://www.wolfgangschulze.in-devir.com ---------------------------------------------------------- /Second contact: / Katedra Germanistiký Fakulta humanitných vied Univerzita Mateja Béla / Banská Bystrica Tajovského 40 SK-97401 Banská Bystrica Tel: (00421)-(0)48-4465108 Fax: (00421)-(0)48-4465512 Email: Schulze at fhv.umb.sk Web: http://www.fhv.umb.sk/app/user.php?user=schulze ---------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From halldj at babel.ling.upenn.edu Sun Dec 16 19:19:11 2007 From: halldj at babel.ling.upenn.edu (Damien Hall) Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2007 14:19:11 -0500 Subject: sound replacement in loans In-Reply-To: <20071216073605.C59AADF055@amanita.mail.rice.edu> Message-ID: Dear Wolfgang I don't have any other specific examples of sound replacement within loans to give you, but I have one question. I don't know about any variety of Albanian, but it appears from Wikipedia that modern Albanian at least has a voiceless palatal fricative but not a voiced pharyngeal stop. So (if the Caucasian Albanian you're looking at is similar) the situation you're talking about is one where the language replaces a phoneme it has in its native inventory with one that seems to appear only in loanwords. Could you confirm (to me personally, if not to the whole list, if the question is naïve) whether CA had the same or a similar consonant inventory to modern Albanian? If it is indeed the case that the language is replacing a phoneme it has in its native inventory with one that isn't in the native inventory, I really don't have any parallels to suggest! Is that the unusual case that you're asking for parallels to? Damien Hall University of Pennsylvania _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From rankin at ku.edu Sun Dec 16 20:17:06 2007 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2007 14:17:06 -0600 Subject: sound replacement in loans Message-ID: I understand the copyright constraints you are operating under, but I'm afraid that probably most of us would need a little more information in order to attempt to answer your query. If the example you have in mind is, say, polysyllabic and there are several attractive phonetic matches between your projected source and recipient words, the replacement of "sh" with "%" (the pharyngeal stop) would pose an interesting problem. If, however, the posited source and loan have approximately the form you give an example, e.g., VshV to V%V, then I might tend to question whether it is really a borrowing or merely a chance resemblance. Even if the semantic match is exact, the VCV is pretty short for us to be certain. The only case I can think of that is even close is a change within a single language: 15th century Spanish "sh" (written "x") evolving into modern Spanish /x/ varying dialectally with /h/. The velar or laryngeal is at least a little closer, but is never a stop. Best wishes, Robert L. Rankin University of Kansas ________________________________ From: histling-l-bounces at mailman.rice.edu on behalf of Wolfgang Schulze Sent: Sun 12/16/2007 1:29 AM To: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu Subject: [Histling-l] sound replacement in loans Dear friends, Claire Bowern had suggested to post my following question (originally addressed to the LINGTYP list) to HISTLING, too.: Within the context of my research on Caucasian Albanian (Old Udi), I came across a rather remarkable instance of 'sound replacement' in loans: A palatal voiceless fricative () is (systematically?) replaced by a voiced pharyngeal stop. I wonder whether some of you have come across a parallel process in other languages...To be more concrete: What I have in mind are cases of replacement within loans (!), not sound changes within the history of a given language. That is, Language A has a in a term that is borrowed into Language B with a voiced pharyngeal (I write <%>) instead, say /asha/ in Language A (donor language) > /a%a/ in Language B (recipient language). [Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to give concrete examples from Caucasian Albanian, as long as the corresponding text (the so-called Caucasian Albanian Palimpsest) has not been edited. Sorry for this! But I have to respect the copyright of others....] Thanks for any suggestions.... Best wishes, Wolfgang -- ---------------------------------------------------------- Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze ---------------------------------------------------------- Primary contact: Institut für Allgemeine & Typologische Sprachwissenschaft Dept. II / F 13 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 München Tel.: 0049-(0)89-2180-2486 (Secretary) 0049-(0)89-2180-5343 (Office) Fax: 0049-(0)89-2180-5345 Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de /// Wolfgang.Schulze at lmu.de Web: http://www.als.lmu/de/mitarbeiter/index.php Personal homepage: http://www.wolfgangschulze.in-devir.com ---------------------------------------------------------- Second contact: Katedra Germanistiký Fakulta humanitných vied Univerzita Mateja Béla / Banská Bystrica Tajovského 40 SK-97401 Banská Bystrica Tel: (00421)-(0)48-4465108 Fax: (00421)-(0)48-4465512 Email: Schulze at fhv.umb.sk Web: http://www.fhv.umb.sk/app/user.php?user=schulze ---------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From mltarpent at hotmail.com Mon Dec 17 02:44:32 2007 From: mltarpent at hotmail.com (Marie-Lucie Tarpent) Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 02:44:32 +0000 Subject: sound replacement in loans In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I don't know anything about the languages in question, but how recent are the loans? If they are fairly old, could "sh" and "%" both have arisen from a common source which was neither? Also, the Spanish change "sh"> [x] is documented also in a French dialect (Poitou/Vendée) and also in some Canadian French (e.g. Manitoba). My guess is that it arises from a retracted, even retroflexed pronunciation of the "sh" which produces an auditory effect similar to that of [x]. In these dialects both "sh" and "zh" have become velar fricatives, voiceless and voiced respectively. Getting back to the 2 languages considered, if "sh" is indeed the original in the donor language , it might have undergone extreme retroflexion in the borrowing language, and then be interpreted as a consonant involving the extreme back of the mouth, all the way to the pharynx. The development of the manner of articulation and the glottal state of this new consonant could be secondary to that of the new place of articulation. Marie-Lucie Tarpent Mount Saint Vincent University Halifax, Canada ---------------------------------------- > Subject: RE: [Histling-l] sound replacement in loans > Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2007 14:17:06 -0600 > From: rankin at ku.edu > To: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu > > I understand the copyright constraints you are operating under, but I'm afraid that probably most of us would need a little more information in order to attempt to answer your query. If the example you have in mind is, say, polysyllabic and there are several attractive phonetic matches between your projected source and recipient words, the replacement of "sh" with "%" (the pharyngeal stop) would pose an interesting problem. If, however, the posited source and loan have approximately the form you give an example, e.g, VshV to V%V, then I might tend to question whether it is really a borrowing or merely a chance resemblance. Even if the semantic match is exact, the VCV is pretty short for us to be certain. > > The only case I can think of that is even close is a change within a single language: 15th century Spanish "sh" (written "x") evolving into modern Spanish /x/ varying dialectally with /h/. The velar or laryngeal is at least a little closer, but is never a stop. > > Best wishes, > > Robert L. Rankin > University of Kansas > > ________________________________ > > From: histling-l-bounces at mailman.rice.edu on behalf of Wolfgang Schulze > Sent: Sun 12/16/2007 1:29 AM > To: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu > Subject: [Histling-l] sound replacement in loans > > > Dear friends, > Claire Bowern had suggested to post my following question (originally addressed to the LINGTYP list) to HISTLING, too.: > > Within the context of my research on Caucasian Albanian (Old Udi), I came across a rather remarkable instance of 'sound replacement' in loans: A palatal voiceless fricative () is (systematically?) replaced by a voiced pharyngeal stop. I wonder whether some of you have come across a parallel process in other languages...To be more concrete: What I have in mind are cases of replacement within loans (!), not sound changes within the history of a given language. That is, Language A has a in a term that is borrowed into Language B with a voiced pharyngeal (I write _________________________________________________________________ Use fowl language with Chicktionary. Click here to start playing! http://puzzles.sympatico.msn.ca/chicktionary/index.html?icid=htmlsig_______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From HardyF at gc.adventist.org Mon Dec 17 14:23:47 2007 From: HardyF at gc.adventist.org (Hardy, Frank) Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 09:23:47 -0500 Subject: Histling-l Digest, Vol 12, Issue 2 In-Reply-To: <20071216073606.0E112DF05C@amanita.mail.rice.edu> Message-ID: We have something similar to this in Hawaiian, where English "s" comes over into Hawaiian as /k/. A seasonally appropriate example of this is the word "Christmas" (Hawaiian /kalikimaka/), where "ch" = /k/, "r" = /l/, "t" = /k/, "m" = /m/, and "s" = /k/. This leads to a first hypothetical intermediate form *klikmak, where consonant substitutions have been done but nothing more. A second hypothetical intermediate form is *kalikimak, since no two consonants can appear immediately adjacent to each other. They must be separated by vowels. The final step in the derivation is to add an obligatory word-final vowel, thus /kalikimaka/, the correct surface form. This is not an isolated example within the language. English "s" routinely comes over into Hawaiian as /k/. The reason for this in Hawaiian might be different from the corresponding reason in Udi, however. Hawaiian only has 12 phonemically distinct sounds, and five of these are vowels. So with an inventory of only seven consonants (h, k, l, m, n, p, w) one's choices are extremely limited. One strategy would be to let a letter simply drop. (English "r" sometimes does this, although more frequently it corresponds to Hawaiian /l/.) In such a context it might be a matter of searching for something - anything - that could serve as a counter to maintain a foreign sound's place within a word, whether it makes sense phonologically or not. In Caucasian languages, by contrast, where there might be 48 or so distinct consonant sounds, the reason for choosing a sound with so little intuitive support would require a different level of explanation. -----Original Message----- From: histling-l-bounces at mailman.rice.edu [mailto:histling-l-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of histling-l-request at mailman.rice.edu Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2007 2:36 AM To: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu Subject: Histling-l Digest, Vol 12, Issue 2 Send Histling-l mailing list submissions to histling-l at mailman.rice.edu To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to histling-l-request at mailman.rice.edu You can reach the person managing the list at histling-l-owner at mailman.rice.edu When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Histling-l digest..." Today's Topics: 1. sound replacement in loans (Wolfgang Schulze) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2007 08:29:10 +0100 From: Wolfgang Schulze Subject: [Histling-l] sound replacement in loans To: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu Message-ID: <4764D3C6.7060207 at lrz.uni-muenchen.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Dear friends, Claire Bowern had suggested to post my following question (originally addressed to the LINGTYP list) to HISTLING, too.: Within the context of my research on Caucasian Albanian (Old Udi), I came across a rather remarkable instance of 'sound replacement' in loans: A palatal voiceless fricative () is (systematically?) replaced by a voiced pharyngeal stop. I wonder whether some of you have come across a parallel process in other languages...To be more concrete: What I have in mind are cases of replacement within loans (!), not sound changes within the history of a given language. That is, Language A has a in a term that is borrowed into Language B with a voiced pharyngeal (I write <%>) instead, say /asha/ in Language A (donor language) > /a%a/ in Language B (recipient language). [Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to give concrete examples from Caucasian Albanian, as long as the corresponding text (the so-called Caucasian Albanian Palimpsest) has not been edited. Sorry for this! But I have to respect the copyright of others....] Thanks for any suggestions.... Best wishes, Wolfgang -- ---------------------------------------------------------- *Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze * ---------------------------------------------------------- /Primary contact: / Institut für Allgemeine & Typologische Sprachwissenschaft Dept. II / F 13 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 München Tel.: 0049-(0)89-2180-2486 (Secretary) 0049-(0)89-2180-5343 (Office) Fax: 0049-(0)89-2180-5345 Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de /// Wolfgang.Schulze at lmu.de Web: http://www.als.lmu/de/mitarbeiter/index.php Personal homepage: http://www.wolfgangschulze.in-devir.com ---------------------------------------------------------- /Second contact: / Katedra Germanistiký Fakulta humanitných vied Univerzita Mateja Béla / Banská Bystrica Tajovského 40 SK-97401 Banská Bystrica Tel: (00421)-(0)48-4465108 Fax: (00421)-(0)48-4465512 Email: Schulze at fhv.umb.sk Web: http://www.fhv.umb.sk/app/user.php?user=schulze ---------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/private/histling-l/attachments/20071216/5d8c5f25/attachment.html ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l End of Histling-l Digest, Vol 12, Issue 2 ***************************************** _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Tue Dec 18 07:28:09 2007 From: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 08:28:09 +0100 Subject: sound replacement in loans In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear friends and colleagues, many thanks for your so helpful comments on my little query concerning a possible 'relationship' between [sh] and [%] (= voiced pharyngeal stop) in loans. Let me briefly clarify a bit the problem: The language in question is Caucasian Albanian (CA). Till recently, practically nothing had been known about this language spoken in Northern and Western Azerbaijan between roughly 300 and 900 AD. It is said to have been the 'official' language of the Christian Kingdom of (Caucasian) Albania (300-700 AD) also used in religious service. In 1996, Zaza Aleksidze from Tbilisi identified the lower layers of two Palimpsest manuscripts found in the St. Katharine monastery on Mt. Sinai (1975) as containing text in the so-called Caucasian Albanian script. So far, this script was known only fragmentarily (some very brief inscriptions and a Medieval alphabet list): The scirpt differs totally from Old Armenian and Old Georgian, although it clearly belongs into the 'same' context). The two manuscripts include some 120 pages with CA texts in their lower layers that, however, are heavily erased and mostly extremely difficult to read. Preliminary studies done by Zaza Aleksidze supported the hypothesis that we have to deal with an early variant of Udi, an Southeast Caucasian language nowadays spoken by some 5.000 people in Northern Azerbaijan and in the diaspora (basically Russian and Armenia). In 2003, Jost Gippert (Comparative Linguistics, U Frankfurt) and I have started to decipher and interpret the lower layer of the Palimpsests. The bulk of the work is now done (it took us more than four years to decipher the sound values, to restore the texts, and to translate them (the CA Palimpsests will be published in several volumes of /Monumenta Palaegraphica Medii Aevi/, Series Ibero-Caucasica at Brepols (Tournhout) in 2008). The texts include fragments of a early Christian lectionary and fragments of the Gospel of John. In sum, the texts document roughly 10.000 CA word tokens (that gives us about 1.000 lexical entries). The language has /nothing/ to do with Balkan Albanian: The resemblance of the two ethnonyms is coincidendal and due to the Ancient Greek interpretation of the local name *Alwan (as albanioi). CA clearly is East Caucasian, a so-to-say 'aunt' of Modern Nizh Udi. Thus the Palimpsest for the first time allows to describe the earlier stage of an East Caucasian language (probably 500-600 AD). For more details see Gippert & Schulze 2007. Some remarks on the Caucasian Albanian Palimpsest. In: /Iran and the Caucasus/ (11) 2007:201-212 and http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/Cauc_alb.htm (Attention! Page is not updated!). So far the background. Now let me briefly come back to my original question. As I have said earlier: I have to respect Jost Gippert's share in the copyright of the CA data and hence cannot give concrete examples. But let me 'paraphrase' them: In the CA texts there are at least three loans from language A that are marked for a [sh] in the donor language: CshVC, CVrshVC, and CVrshVCVC. In CA, the loans yield the form CV%VC, CV%VC, and CV%VCVC respectively. The last two examples may suggest the hypothesis that the cluster [rsh] is changed to [%], what would come close to what Marie-Lucie Tarpent has suggested: [sh] "/might have undergone extreme retroflexion in the borrowing language, and then be interpreted as a consonant involving the extreme back of the mouth, all the way to the pharynx. The development of the manner of articulation and the glottal state of this new consonant could be secondary to that of the new place of articulation./" In fact, some of the pharyngealized vowels in Modern Udi (as well as in CA) probably stem from old */Vr/, although the pharyngeal may likewise be original/old in other words. However, the first example (CshVC > CV%VC) shows that the shift from [sh] to [%] happened without the present of [r]. Naturally, we might argue that here the shift has taken place in analogy to the process [rsh] > [%]. But things become more difficult, if we consider some original, that is 'Lezgian' CA words that contain [%] and that may have cognate in Modern Udi containing [s'] (a dento-alveolar voiceless fricative [a so-called 'middle sibilant']). The three (?) relevant pairs do not argue in favor of the presence of *-rsh- in Pre-Udi/CA. Unfortunately, the data are too few to prove that [sh] in the donor language A is /systematically/ replaced by [%] in CA, but we do not have counter-examples. So, we start from the hypothesis that the process is quite 'regular' within the relationship between Language A (donor language) and CA. Well, that's just to put my question into the corresponding context. I will consider all your proposals in order to get closer to that puzzle - I guess all of them will help..... Best wishes, and many thanks again, Wolfgang -- ---------------------------------------------------------- *Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze * ---------------------------------------------------------- /Primary contact: / Institut für Allgemeine & Typologische Sprachwissenschaft Dept. II / F 13 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 München Tel.: 0049-(0)89-2180-2486 (Secretary) 0049-(0)89-2180-5343 (Office) Fax: 0049-(0)89-2180-5345 Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de /// Wolfgang.Schulze at lmu.de Web: http://www.als.lmu/de/mitarbeiter/index.php Personal homepage: http://www.wolfgangschulze.in-devir.com ---------------------------------------------------------- /Second contact: / Katedra Germanistiký Fakulta humanitných vied Univerzita Mateja Béla / Banská Bystrica Tajovského 40 SK-97401 Banská Bystrica Tel: (00421)-(0)48-4465108 Fax: (00421)-(0)48-4465512 Email: Schulze at fhv.umb.sk Web: http://www.fhv.umb.sk/app/user.php?user=schulze ---------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From hopper at cmu.edu Tue Dec 18 13:10:25 2007 From: hopper at cmu.edu (Paul Hopper) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 08:10:25 -0500 Subject: sound replacement in loans In-Reply-To: <47677689.2080600@lrz.uni-muenchen.de> Message-ID: Dear Wolfgang, If it turned out that a neighboring [r] was involved, it would add an interesting new dimension. Some years ago Geoff Nathan, of Southern Illinois University, did a study of "rhotics" in an attempt to explain why [r] develops such a wide variety of different phonetic manifestations, including things like the New York City labiodental flap, the Danish voiced uvular fricative, the Czech palatal fricative, etc. If I remember right, he concluded that the common element was that [r] is accompanied by pharyngeal constriction, and that the specific suprapharyngeal component was secondary. If this is so, there would then be no need to posit extreme retraction of the front of the tongue as being heard as pharyngeal, an explanation that I'm not comfortable with. I don't have a copy of this article, unfortunately, and my memory may not be reliable in the details. Thanks very much for the information about Caucasian Albanian. Paul > Dear friends and colleagues, many thanks for your so helpful comments on > my little query concerning a possible 'relationship' between [sh] and [%] > (= voiced pharyngeal stop) in loans. Let me briefly clarify a bit the > problem: The language in question is Caucasian Albanian (CA). Till > recently, practically nothing had been known about this language spoken in > Northern and Western Azerbaijan between roughly 300 and 900 AD. It is said > to have been the 'official' language of the Christian Kingdom of > (Caucasian) Albania (300-700 AD) also used in religious service. In 1996, > Zaza Aleksidze from Tbilisi identified the lower layers of two Palimpsest > manuscripts found in the St. Katharine monastery on Mt. Sinai (1975) as > containing text in the so-called Caucasian Albanian script. So far, this > script was known only fragmentarily (some very brief inscriptions and a > Medieval alphabet list): The scirpt differs totally from Old Armenian and > Old Georgian, although it clearly belongs into the 'same' context). The > two manuscripts include some 120 pages with CA texts in their lower layers > that, however, are heavily erased and mostly extremely difficult to read. > Preliminary studies done by Zaza Aleksidze supported the hypothesis that > we have to deal with an early variant of Udi, an Southeast Caucasian > language nowadays spoken by some 5.000 people in Northern Azerbaijan and > in the diaspora (basically Russian and Armenia). In 2003, Jost Gippert > (Comparative Linguistics, U Frankfurt) and I have started to decipher and > interpret the lower layer of the Palimpsests. The bulk of the work is now > done (it took us more than four years to decipher the sound values, to > restore the texts, and to translate them (the CA Palimpsests will be > published in several volumes of /Monumenta Palaegraphica Medii Aevi/, > Series Ibero-Caucasica at Brepols (Tournhout) in 2008). The texts include > fragments of a early Christian lectionary and fragments of the Gospel of > John. In sum, the texts document roughly 10.000 CA word tokens (that gives > us about 1.000 lexical entries). The language has /nothing/ to do with > Balkan Albanian: The resemblance of the two ethnonyms is coincidendal and > due to the Ancient Greek interpretation of the local name *Alwan (as > albanioi). CA clearly is East Caucasian, a so-to-say 'aunt' of Modern Nizh > Udi. Thus the Palimpsest for the first time allows to describe the earlier > stage of an East Caucasian language (probably 500-600 AD). For more > details see Gippert & Schulze 2007. Some remarks on the Caucasian Albanian > Palimpsest. In: /Iran and the Caucasus/ (11) 2007:201-212 and > http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/Cauc_alb.htm (Attention! Page is not > updated!). So far the background. Now let me briefly come back to my > original question. As I have said earlier: I have to respect Jost > Gippert's share in the copyright of the CA data and hence cannot give > concrete examples. But let me 'paraphrase' them: In the CA texts there are > at least three loans from language A that are marked for a [sh] in the > donor language: CshVC, CVrshVC, and CVrshVCVC. In CA, the loans yield the > form CV%VC, CV%VC, and CV%VCVC respectively. The last two examples may > suggest the hypothesis that the cluster [rsh] is changed to [%], what > would come close to what Marie-Lucie Tarpent has suggested: [sh] "/might > have undergone extreme retroflexion in the borrowing language, and then be > interpreted as a consonant involving the extreme back of the mouth, all > the way to the pharynx. The development of the manner of articulation and > the glottal state of this new consonant could be secondary to that of the > new place of articulation./" In fact, some of the pharyngealized vowels in > Modern Udi (as well as in CA) probably stem from old */Vr/, although the > pharyngeal may likewise be original/old in other words. However, the first > example (CshVC > CV%VC) shows that the shift from [sh] to [%] happened > without the present of [r]. Naturally, we might argue that here the shift > has taken place in analogy to the process [rsh] > [%]. But things become > more difficult, if we consider some original, that is 'Lezgian' CA words > that contain [%] and that may have cognate in Modern Udi containing [s'] > (a dento-alveolar voiceless fricative [a so-called 'middle sibilant']). > The three (?) relevant pairs do not argue in favor of the presence of > *-rsh- in Pre-Udi/CA. Unfortunately, the data are too few to prove that > [sh] in the donor language A is /systematically/ replaced by [%] in CA, > but we do not have counter-examples. So, we start from the hypothesis that > the process is quite 'regular' within the relationship between Language A > (donor language) and CA. Well, that's just to put my question into the > corresponding context. I will consider all your proposals in order to get > closer to that puzzle - I guess all of them will help..... Best wishes, and > many thanks again, Wolfgang > > -- > > ---------------------------------------------------------- > > *Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze * > > ---------------------------------------------------------- > > /Primary contact: > > / > > Institut für Allgemeine & Typologische Sprachwissenschaft > > Dept. II / F 13 > > > > Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München > > > Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 > > > D-80539 München > > > > Tel.: 0049-(0)89-2180-2486 (Secretary) > > 0049-(0)89-2180-5343 (Office) > > Fax: 0049-(0)89-2180-5345 > > > Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de > /// Wolfgang.Schulze at lmu.de > > > Web: http://www.als.lmu/de/mitarbeiter/index.php > > Personal homepage: http://www.wolfgangschulze.in-devir.com > > ---------------------------------------------------------- > > /Second contact: / > > Katedra Germanistiký > > > > Fakulta humanitných vied > > > Univerzita Mateja Béla / Banská Bystrica > > Tajovského 40 > > > SK-97401 Banská Bystrica > > > Tel: (00421)-(0)48-4465108 > > > Fax: (00421)-(0)48-4465512 > > > Email: Schulze at fhv.umb.sk > > > Web: http://www.fhv.umb.sk/app/user.php?user=schulze > > ---------------------------------------------------------- > > > > _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list > Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu > https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l > _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From rankin at ku.edu Tue Dec 18 15:44:06 2007 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 09:44:06 -0600 Subject: sound replacement in loans Message-ID: To Paul's examples of rhotic/pharyngeal manifestations you can add inland Salish. My late colleague, Dale Kinkade, had numerous recordings of Salish pharyngeals. He pointed out, and my ears agreed, that these consonants had a strong rhotic "flavor" about them. I realize this evidence is anecdotal, but it at least concurs with with the hypothesis that rhotics involve pharyngeal constriction. The phonetics literature may explore this issue more thoroughly. Bob Rankin ________________________________ From: histling-l-bounces at mailman.rice.edu on behalf of Paul Hopper Sent: Tue 12/18/2007 7:10 AM To: Wolfgang.Schulze at lmu.de Cc: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu Subject: Re: [Histling-l] sound replacement in loans Dear Wolfgang, If it turned out that a neighboring [r] was involved, it would add an interesting new dimension. Some years ago Geoff Nathan, of Southern Illinois University, did a study of "rhotics" in an attempt to explain why [r] develops such a wide variety of different phonetic manifestations, including things like the New York City labiodental flap, the Danish voiced uvular fricative, the Czech palatal fricative, etc. If I remember right, he concluded that the common element was that [r] is accompanied by pharyngeal constriction, and that the specific suprapharyngeal component was secondary. If this is so, there would then be no need to posit extreme retraction of the front of the tongue as being heard as pharyngeal, an explanation that I'm not comfortable with. I don't have a copy of this article, unfortunately, and my memory may not be reliable in the details. Thanks very much for the information about Caucasian Albanian. Paul > Dear friends and colleagues, many thanks for your so helpful comments on > my little query concerning a possible 'relationship' between [sh] and [%] > (= voiced pharyngeal stop) in loans. Let me briefly clarify a bit the > problem: The language in question is Caucasian Albanian (CA). Till > recently, practically nothing had been known about this language spoken in > Northern and Western Azerbaijan between roughly 300 and 900 AD. It is said > to have been the 'official' language of the Christian Kingdom of > (Caucasian) Albania (300-700 AD) also used in religious service. In 1996, > Zaza Aleksidze from Tbilisi identified the lower layers of two Palimpsest > manuscripts found in the St. Katharine monastery on Mt. Sinai (1975) as > containing text in the so-called Caucasian Albanian script. So far, this > script was known only fragmentarily (some very brief inscriptions and a > Medieval alphabet list): The scirpt differs totally from Old Armenian and > Old Georgian, although it clearly belongs into the 'same' context). The > two manuscripts include some 120 pages with CA texts in their lower layers > that, however, are heavily erased and mostly extremely difficult to read. > Preliminary studies done by Zaza Aleksidze supported the hypothesis that > we have to deal with an early variant of Udi, an Southeast Caucasian > language nowadays spoken by some 5.000 people in Northern Azerbaijan and > in the diaspora (basically Russian and Armenia). In 2003, Jost Gippert > (Comparative Linguistics, U Frankfurt) and I have started to decipher and > interpret the lower layer of the Palimpsests. The bulk of the work is now > done (it took us more than four years to decipher the sound values, to > restore the texts, and to translate them (the CA Palimpsests will be > published in several volumes of /Monumenta Palaegraphica Medii Aevi/, > Series Ibero-Caucasica at Brepols (Tournhout) in 2008). The texts include > fragments of a early Christian lectionary and fragments of the Gospel of > John. In sum, the texts document roughly 10.000 CA word tokens (that gives > us about 1.000 lexical entries). The language has /nothing/ to do with > Balkan Albanian: The resemblance of the two ethnonyms is coincidendal and > due to the Ancient Greek interpretation of the local name *Alwan (as > albanioi). CA clearly is East Caucasian, a so-to-say 'aunt' of Modern Nizh > Udi. Thus the Palimpsest for the first time allows to describe the earlier > stage of an East Caucasian language (probably 500-600 AD). For more > details see Gippert & Schulze 2007. Some remarks on the Caucasian Albanian > Palimpsest. In: /Iran and the Caucasus/ (11) 2007:201-212 and > http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/Cauc_alb.htm (Attention! Page is not > updated!). So far the background. Now let me briefly come back to my > original question. As I have said earlier: I have to respect Jost > Gippert's share in the copyright of the CA data and hence cannot give > concrete examples. But let me 'paraphrase' them: In the CA texts there are > at least three loans from language A that are marked for a [sh] in the > donor language: CshVC, CVrshVC, and CVrshVCVC. In CA, the loans yield the > form CV%VC, CV%VC, and CV%VCVC respectively. The last two examples may > suggest the hypothesis that the cluster [rsh] is changed to [%], what > would come close to what Marie-Lucie Tarpent has suggested: [sh] "/might > have undergone extreme retroflexion in the borrowing language, and then be > interpreted as a consonant involving the extreme back of the mouth, all > the way to the pharynx. The development of the manner of articulation and > the glottal state of this new consonant could be secondary to that of the > new place of articulation./" In fact, some of the pharyngealized vowels in > Modern Udi (as well as in CA) probably stem from old */Vr/, although the > pharyngeal may likewise be original/old in other words. However, the first > example (CshVC > CV%VC) shows that the shift from [sh] to [%] happened > without the present of [r]. Naturally, we might argue that here the shift > has taken place in analogy to the process [rsh] > [%]. But things become > more difficult, if we consider some original, that is 'Lezgian' CA words > that contain [%] and that may have cognate in Modern Udi containing [s'] > (a dento-alveolar voiceless fricative [a so-called 'middle sibilant']). > The three (?) relevant pairs do not argue in favor of the presence of > *-rsh- in Pre-Udi/CA. Unfortunately, the data are too few to prove that > [sh] in the donor language A is /systematically/ replaced by [%] in CA, > but we do not have counter-examples. So, we start from the hypothesis that > the process is quite 'regular' within the relationship between Language A > (donor language) and CA. Well, that's just to put my question into the > corresponding context. I will consider all your proposals in order to get > closer to that puzzle - I guess all of them will help..... Best wishes, and > many thanks again, Wolfgang > > -- > > ---------------------------------------------------------- > > *Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze * > > ---------------------------------------------------------- > > /Primary contact: > > / > > Institut für Allgemeine & Typologische Sprachwissenschaft > > Dept. II / F 13 > > > > Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München > > > Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 > > > D-80539 München > > > > Tel.: 0049-(0)89-2180-2486 (Secretary) > > 0049-(0)89-2180-5343 (Office) > > Fax: 0049-(0)89-2180-5345 > > > Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de > /// Wolfgang.Schulze at lmu.de > > > Web: http://www.als.lmu/de/mitarbeiter/index.php > > Personal homepage: http://www.wolfgangschulze.in-devir.com > > ---------------------------------------------------------- > > /Second contact: / > > Katedra Germanistiký > > > > Fakulta humanitných vied > > > Univerzita Mateja Béla / Banská Bystrica > > Tajovského 40 > > > SK-97401 Banská Bystrica > > > Tel: (00421)-(0)48-4465108 > > > Fax: (00421)-(0)48-4465512 > > > Email: Schulze at fhv.umb.sk > > > Web: http://www.fhv.umb.sk/app/user.php?user=schulze > > ---------------------------------------------------------- > > > > _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list > Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu > https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l > _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From geoffnathan at wayne.edu Tue Dec 18 16:47:24 2007 From: geoffnathan at wayne.edu (Geoffrey S. Nathan) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 11:47:24 -0500 Subject: sound replacement in loans In-Reply-To: <1809.71.182.208.45.1197983425.squirrel@71.182.208.45> Message-ID: Paul Hopper wrote: > Dear Wolfgang, > > If it turned out that a neighboring [r] was involved, it would add an interesting new dimension. Some years ago Geoff Nathan, of Southern Illinois University, did a study of "rhotics" in an attempt to explain why [r] develops such a wide variety of different phonetic manifestations, including things like the New York City labiodental flap, the Danish voiced uvular fricative, the Czech palatal fricative, etc. If I remember right, he concluded that the common element was that [r] is accompanied by pharyngeal constriction, and that the specific suprapharyngeal component was secondary. If this is so, there would then be no need to posit extreme retraction of the front of the tongue as being heard as pharyngeal, an explanation that I'm not comfortable with. > > I don't have a copy of this article, unfortunately, and my memory may not be reliable in the details. > > Thanks very much for the information about Caucasian Albanian. > > Paul > > > And it turns out I'm listening in on this conversation ;-) . Yes, Paul, you remember correctly that Vanna Condax and I gave a paper at LSA about five thousand years ago entitled 'It sounds like some kind of 'r'--why?'. Alas, we never published it. We actually argued that a perturbation in F3 was a constant mark of 'r-ness', but we didn't carry it much further, and I now think that's not correct. Because shortly thereafter Mona Lindau published a paper on kinds of /r/: Lindau, Mona: 1985, ‘The Story of /r/’, in V.A. Fromkin (ed.), /Phonetic Linguistics: Essays in Honor of Peter Ladefoged/, Academic Press, Orlando. These days I'd say that there is a radial prototype category, with a central or prototypical member (defined as a perceptual ideal--see my paper on sonority), probably an alveolar trill, with extensions in various directions so that both the retroflex r-colored vowel in 'heard' and the uvular trill are 'kinds of /r/' without necessarily sharing any single feature in common. And yes, I've also heard people say that some West Coast Salish languages have 'five or six r's', which turn out to be various pharyngeals with the usual Salish set of secondary articulations--labialized, glottalized etc. I'm not so sure about the connection between pharyngeals and F3, however, and I agree with Paul that the retraction story is a little far-fetched. But this is late in the semester and I'm running full-speed and dropping behind, so that will have to be all for now. Other references on sound prototypes available on request, or see my phonology article in the just now out Handbook of Cognitive Grammar, Oxford University Press. Geoff -- Geoffrey S. Nathan Faculty Liaison, Computing and Information Technology, and Associate Professor of English, Linguistics Program Phone Numbers (313) 577-1259 or (313) 577-8621 Wayne State University Detroit, MI, 48202 _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From jsalmons at wisc.edu Fri Dec 28 17:35:03 2007 From: jsalmons at wisc.edu (Joseph Salmons) Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2007 11:35:03 -0600 Subject: GLAC-14 Call for Papers Message-ID: Dear HistLingers, Just a reminder that the deadline for submission of abstracts for the 14th Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference, to be held in Madison is JANUARY 4, 2008. See the Call for Papers below for details. Best regards, The GLAC-14 Organizing Committee GLAC 14 The 14th Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference University of Wisconsin–Madison May 1 – 4, 2008 Call for Papers Abstract Deadline: Friday, 4 January, 2008 Faculty, students, and independent scholars are invited to submit abstracts for 20- or 30-minute papers (plus 10 minutes of discussion) on any linguistic or philological aspect of any historical or modern Germanic language or dialect, including English (especially to the Early Modern period) and the extra-territorial varieties. Papers from any linguistic subfield—including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, language acquisition, contact, and change—and from a wide range of theoretical approaches are welcome. Please specify whether you would prefer a 20-minute or a 30- minute slot for your presentation, or would be willing to accept either as available. Please submit a single-spaced one-page abstract (in .doc or .rtf format, or .pdf if the file includes special characters or complex formatting) online at our website (see below). Include a title but no author information in the abstract itself. All abstracts will undergo anonymous review. The deadline for submissions is January 4, 2008. Notifications of acceptance will be distributed by February 4, 2008. For overseas colleagues who need notification of acceptance before February 2008 for the sake of funding requests: please note that you need an early decision and submit prior to the January deadline. We will expedite notification. Submit abstracts to: jsalmons at wisc.edu GLAC 14 Website: http://mki.wisc.edu/GLAC/GLAC14.htm _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From A.v.Kemenade at let.ru.nl Sun Dec 2 22:25:35 2007 From: A.v.Kemenade at let.ru.nl (Ans van Kemenade) Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2007 23:25:35 +0100 Subject: all that sound change In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear all, Who of the respondents over the past few days would care to organise a workshop on this at ICHL 19? Cheers, Ans van Kemenade Ans van Kemenade Radboud University Nijmegen, dept. of English Postbus 9103 6500 HD Nijmegen Tel. #31 (0)24 36 11422/12157 Fax. #31 (0)24 36 11882 HYPERLINK "http://www.ru.nl/facultyofarts/englishdept/"http://www.ru.nl/facultyofarts/ englishdept/ HYPERLINK "http://www.ru.nl/cls/"http://www.ru.nl/cls/ Van: histling-l-bounces at mailman.rice.edu [mailto:histling-l-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] Namens Henning Andersen Verzonden: zondag 27 januari 2008 21:26 Aan: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu Onderwerp: [Histling-l] 'reversed change' and 'deliberate change' Hi all, Regarding 'reversals'. Brian's suggestion that we distinguish between true sound change and socially driven changes reminds me of Kristin Bakken's (2001) paper "Patterns of restitution of sound change", which I edited a few years ago. In my discussion of the paper (2001: 8-9, 15-16) I went so far as to suggest a terminological distinction: "There are restorations, in which the loss of a constraint (say, through phonological reanalysis) allows underlying representations to resurface. Restorations are typically grammatically conditioned in that 'original' morpheme shapes are restored only in environments where they were subject to alternation. .." "Distinct from such changes are restitutions, such as those exemplified in Bakken's paper, which ensue from contact with a closely related language variety (dialect or sociolect) with pronunciation norms that happen to be phonologically more conservative in some respect. ... in reality such restitutions ... do not differ from other phoneme substitutions in individual lexemes that may occur through dialect contact .... Such a set of restitutions or substitutions is not a phonological change--or even a single change in the sense of a bounded, internally coherent historical event in the given community's tradition of speaking. It is, properly speaking, just a subset of a series of individual replacements of local word shapes with borrowed ones, part of a smaller or larger relexification, motivated by the individual word shapes' greater utility in interdialectal communication and hence defined in pragmatic and semantic terms. The progression of such a relexification begins as an elaboration of speakers' grammars, as elements of a local tradition of speaking are matched with marked covariants appropriate for specified pragmatic purposes. It runs to completion lexeme by lexeme, as the traditional elements one by one fall into disuse, superseded by the borrowed, more widely used, more viable alternatives. .." Regarding 'deliberate change' It is mostly valuable to draw the distinction between innovation and change. Evidently individuals can enter deliberately made innovations into usage. But whether deliberate innovations result in change depends on other speakers' adopting them and using them, eventually to the exclusion of other alternatives. Your academy or ministry of culture or big honcho can propose a deliberate innovation. But whether it will ever have any practical effect depends on the wisdom of the crowds. So in cases where the linguist doesn't have positive evidence of all members of a community wittingly and deliberately talking in lock-step, it is probably better to avoid the expression "deliberate change" and talk of 'deliberate innovations' and 'changes initiated by deliberate innovations' instead. --Henning Henning Andersen, UCLA References: Kristin Bakken's paper is in *Actualization. Linguistic Change in Progress*, ed. by Henning Andersen, 59-78. I discuss it in the introduction. The full text is available on request Send Histling-l mailing list submissions to histling-l at mailman.rice.edu To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to histling-l-request at mailman.rice.edu You can reach the person managing the list at histling-l-owner at mailman.rice.edu When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Histling-l digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: 'Reversed change' dialect borrowing (Sally Thomason) 2. Re: 'Reversed change' dialect borrowing (Sally Thomason) 3. Re: 'Reversed change' dialect borrowing (Brian Joseph) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 06:54:48 -0500 From: Sally Thomason Subject: Re: [Histling-l] 'Reversed change' dialect borrowing To: "Patrick McConvell" Cc: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu Message-ID: <4274.1201348488 at umich.edu> Patrick, Oh, I'd never claim that *all* reversed changes are deliberate; the reason I was focusing on deliberate ones is that that was what my paper was about. Elsewhere in the same paper I talk about correspondence rules (or what Jeff Heath has called borrowing routines) -- Alan Dench's Australian example from his salvage fieldwork in Western Australia is a wonderful instance. In his case the speakers were aware of what they were doing (at least when they were stimulated to think about it); but there too, there are no doubt cases where speakers apply correspondence rules without being aware of what they're doing. -- Sally ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 07:06:14 -0500 From: Sally Thomason Subject: Re: [Histling-l] 'Reversed change' dialect borrowing To: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu Message-ID: <4577.1201349174 at umich.edu> About Peter's comment: Well...I actually think we need to consider carefully whether we "agree that it's not exactly typical of what usually goes on". One thing that has struck me again and again over the past ten years or so, ever since I got interested in this whole issue of deliberate change, is that we merely *assume* that most changes are non-deliberate throughout their history. We have very little evidence on this point. I first heard about people making their dialects more different from the dialect of the guys next door when I read Peter's Dialects in Contact. But ever since I started giving talks here & there on deliberate change, people have come up with new examples for me; one such example was a case of deliberate dialect divergence from Peru -- the people told the fieldworker that they wanted to make sure they retained their differentness from the people just around the mountain from them, and so they deliberately distorted the pronunciation of their own words in a rule-governed way. I do still believe that most linguistic change must be non-deliberate. That's the easiest way to account for (for instance) regular sound change. But I also think that claims that the vast majority of linguistic change is subconscious are on shaky ground, as long as they lack evidence of any kind. (I admit that I haven't the faintest idea how one might go about gathering evidence.) -- Sally Thomason ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 09:51:20 -0500 (EST) From: Brian Joseph Subject: Re: [Histling-l] 'Reversed change' dialect borrowing To: thomason at umich.edu (Sally Thomason) Cc: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Greetings -- this discussion is most interesting, and I would like to add just a few observations; even if they are not directly on target, I think this is an appropriate forum to mention them and they are in any case provoked by the recent postings. First, even though no one has actually said this, so in a sense I am either responding to a straw man or preaching to the choir, let me note that this discussion shows why it is useful to be precise about what we mean by "sound change". In the cases brought out here, the event that was reversed was a Neogrammarian-style (i.e. regular and phonetically driven) sound change, what I like to call "sound change proper" or "sound change in the strict sense" (or even simply "Neogrammarian sound change") whereas the reversing event is a socially-driven change. Terminology is always tricky to be sure, but I would love it if the term "sound change" were restricted to "sound change proper" and some other term were invented for "changes in sounds that are not sound change (in the strict sense)". I often tell my classes that as paradoxically as it might seem, not every change in the sounds of a word is a matter of sound change (analogical change, clippings, tabu deformation, and so on are all the sorts of "other events" that can lead to changes in the pronunciation of a word that are not Neogrammarian sound change in the strict sense). Second, socially-driven events of change *can* show regularity (though they need not), but typically lack the phonetic basis that is a hallmark of Neogrammarian sound change. We see this sort of thing in hypercorrection all the time (Peter's. Finally, it reminds me of what I said at my ICHL presentation this past summer, namely that when we get right down to it, social factors can trump everything else in change (or everything except for the most basic immutable universal foundational aspects of language, to the extent there are any and if there are to the extent we can identify them). --Brian Brian D. Joseph The Ohio State University > About Peter's comment: > > Well...I actually think we need to consider > carefully whether we "agree that it's not exactly typical > of what usually goes on". One thing that has struck > me again and again over the past ten years or so, ever > since I got interested in this whole issue of > deliberate change, is that we merely *assume* that > most changes are non-deliberate throughout their > history. We have very little evidence on this point. > I first heard about people making their dialects > more different from the dialect of the guys next door > when I read Peter's Dialects in Contact. But ever > since I started giving talks here & there on deliberate > change, people have come up with new examples for me; > one such example was a case of deliberate dialect > divergence from Peru -- the people told the > fieldworker that they wanted to make sure they > retained their differentness from the people just > around the mountain from them, and so they deliberately > distorted the pronunciation of their own words in > a rule-governed way. > > I do still believe that most linguistic change must > be non-deliberate. That's the easiest way to account > for (for instance) regular sound change. But I > also think that claims that the vast majority of > linguistic change is subconscious are on shaky > ground, as long as they lack evidence of any kind. > (I admit that I haven't the faintest idea how one > might go about gathering evidence.) > > -- Sally Thomason ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l End of Histling-l Digest, Vol 13, Issue 6 ***************************************** ||||| Henning Andersen ||||| Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures ||||| University of California, Los Angeles ||||| P.O.Box 951502 ||||| Los Angeles, CA 90095-1502 ||||| Phone: +1-310-837-6743. Fax by appointment ||||| http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/slavic/faculty/andersen_h.html No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.12/1245 - Release Date: 26-1-2008 15:45 No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.12/1245 - Release Date: 26-1-2008 15:45 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From A.v.Kemenade at let.ru.nl Sun Dec 2 22:27:44 2007 From: A.v.Kemenade at let.ru.nl (Ans van Kemenade) Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2007 23:27:44 +0100 Subject: sound change Message-ID: Dear all, Who of the respondents over the past few days would be interested in turning this into a nice problem statement for a workshop at ICHL 19 (10-15 August 2009 at Nijmegen? Cheers, Ans Ans van Kemenade Radboud University Nijmegen, dept. of English Postbus 9103 6500 HD Nijmegen Tel. #31 (0)24 36 11422/12157 Fax. #31 (0)24 36 11882 HYPERLINK "http://www.ru.nl/facultyofarts/englishdept/"http://www.ru.nl/facultyofarts/ englishdept/ HYPERLINK "http://www.ru.nl/cls/"http://www.ru.nl/cls/ No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.12/1245 - Release Date: 26-1-2008 15:45 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From Hubert.Cuyckens at arts.kuleuven.be Sat Dec 1 12:55:57 2007 From: Hubert.Cuyckens at arts.kuleuven.be (Hubert Cuyckens) Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2007 13:55:57 +0100 Subject: Final CFP: New Reflections on Grammaticalization 4 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From caterina.mauri at unipv.it Sat Dec 15 17:43:57 2007 From: caterina.mauri at unipv.it (Caterina Mauri) Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2007 18:43:57 +0100 Subject: Call for manifestation of interest - Theme session proposal - SLE 2008, Italy Message-ID: ** WE APOLOGIZE FOR CROSS-POSTING ** Theme Session Proposal ? "What do languages code when they code realisness?" SLE 2008 ? Forl? * Call for manifestation of interest * Theme Session Proposal: "What do languages code when they code realisness?" Dear list members, this is a call for manifestation of interest in a theme session that we plan to organize within the next annual meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE), to be held in Forl?, Italy, September 17-20, 2008 (http://sle2008.sitlec.unibo.it). The SLE policy for workshops and theme sessions requires us to prepare a proposal, to be submitted to the SLE program committee no later than February 15, 2008. This proposal should contain a short description of the topic to be dealt with, along with an estimate of the schedule and the overall time required. The working title of our proposal is: "What do languages code when they code realisness?". An extended description of the topic is included at the end of this message. We feel that the theme we are going to propose might raise the interest of typologists (and theoretical linguists) who have been (or are) working on the coding of realisness and related issues. Besides the individual papers, we intend to devote some time to a general discussion of the theoretical and empirical issues arising from the presentations. In detail, the structure of the theme session we intend to submit should include: ? three invited contributions; ? up to 10/12 selected papers (20 minutes + discussion); ? a final slot (up to 60 minutes) for a general, round-table like discussion. What we ask you at this stage is to let us know as soon as possible if you are interested in contributing a paper to the theme session. Feel free to send a quick informal reply to this mail (just stating your willingness to submit a paper and specifying a possible topic for your contribution). Prospective contributors are also expected to send an abstract no later than February 1, 2008 (Friday). This tight schedule will leave us enough time to finalize the proposal to be submitted to the SLE committee. We should emphasize that there will be two stages: in the first stage, we will select papers which will be included in the proposal; in the second stage, the proposal as a whole will be evaluated by the SLE committee. Only upon acceptance of the entire theme session, every selected contribution will be considered officially "accepted" at the SLE conference. Convenors Caterina Mauri (University of Pavia, Italy) Andrea Sans? (Insubria University ? Como, Italy) Important dates (first stage): ? As soon as possible: informal e-mail with manifestation of interest ? 1st February 2008: abstract submission (see format below) ? 1st March 2008: notification of acceptance Important dates (second stage; the convenors will be looking after the finalization of the proposal): ? 15th February 2008: submission of the abstract for the theme session to the SLE committee ? 15th April 2008: submission of the full program (invited speakers + accepted abstracts + discussion time) to the SLE committee ? 31st May 2008: notification of acceptance Format of abstracts: The selection of abstracts will be made on the basis of quality and relatedness to the topic and objectives of the theme session. The submitted abstracts (in PDF) should be anonymous, up to 2 pages long (including references), and the authors are expected to provide an overview of the goal, methodology, and data of their research. Abstracts should be sent to both convenors to the following e-mail addresses: Caterina Mauri: caterina.mauri at unipv.it Andrea Sans?: asanso at gmail.com All the abstracts will be anonymously reviewed by the program committee of the theme session (see below) before the finalization of the proposal. More information about the theme session (list of selected papers, invited speakers, etc.) will be circulated amongst the prospective participants right before the submission of the proposal to the SLE committee. Please include the following data in the body of the mail: (i) Author(s); (ii) Title; (iii) Affiliation; (iv) Contacts. Scientific committee (TBC): Kasper Boye (University of Copenhagen); Isabelle Bril (LACITO, CNRS, Villejuif); Sonia Cristofaro (University of Pavia); Ferdinand de Haan (Arizona University) Anna Giacalone (University of Pavia); Caterina Mauri (University of Pavia); Andrea Sans? (Insubria University, Como); Johan van der Auwera (University of Antwerp). Invited speakers: Sonia Cristofaro (University of Pavia); Ferdinand de Haan (Arizona University); Johan van der Auwera (University of Antwerp) Publication: if the theme session is accepted it is our intention to publish a selection of the papers with an international publisher. Caterina Mauri, Andrea Sans? *************************************** Presentation of the theme session Working title: What do languages code when they code realisness? Theme description and topics Since Giv?n (1984: 285ff.) and Chung and Timberlake (1985: 241ff.), the terms realis and irrealis have gained increasing currency in cross-linguistic studies on modality as flexible cover terms for a number of moods traditionally labelled as 'indicative', 'subjunctive', 'optative', 'counterfactual', 'potential', 'hypothetical', etc. Some authors (e.g. Elliott 2000: 80) have gone a step further, speaking of 'reality status' (or 'realisness') as a grammatical category to full right, realized differently in different languages, with at least two values: realis (or neutral) and irrealis. These two values are characterized in terms of actualization vs. non-actualization of a given state of affairs. According to Elliott, a proposition is realis if it asserts that a state of affairs is an "actualized and certain fact of reality", whereas it is classified as irrealis if "it implies that a SoA belongs to the realm of the imagined or hypothetical, and as such it constitutes a potential or possible event but it is not an observable fact of reality" (Elliott 2000: 66-67). There are languages which obligatorily mark realisness in all finite clauses by means of a comprehensive (morphological or syntactic) system of markers, others where the system is partial and the realisness of a proposition needs to be indicated only in speci?c syntactic contexts, and ?nally there are languages in which the marking of realisness is merely optional. In other terms, realisness may be encoded by means of an array of morpho-syntactic strategies (simple affixation, portmanteau affixation, sentence particles, adverbs, etc.). Both the functional characterization and the formal aspects of realisness are controversial (Bybee et al 1994; Bybee 1998). On the one hand, the solidarities between realisness and other functional domains such as, for instance, tense, aspect, and evidentiality make it difficult to decide whether (and to what extent) realisness is an independent functional dimension (see, e.g. Fleischman 1995). On the other hand, there are certain states of affairs (e.g. habitual, directive, and future SoAs, etc.) that are coded by means of either realis or irrealis strategies across languages, in a largely unpredictable way. This variation may reflect the inherently hybrid reality status of these states of affairs: they may have occurred but their reference time is non-specific (e.g. habituals; Giv?n 1984: 285; Cristofaro 2004), they may have not yet occurred but they are either highly probable or expected with a high degree of certainty (e.g. directives, futures; Roberts 1990; Chafe 1995; Mithun 1995; Ogloblin 2005; Sun 2007), etc. Some of the factors that appear to have an influence on the cross-linguistic coding of realisness have been already hinted at in the typological literature. For instance, in some languages argument structure and referentiality/definiteness of arguments appear to be crucial to the choice of a realis or irrealis strategy (the presence of definite arguments entailing realis marking, whereas indefinite/non-specific arguments require irrealis marking). Furthermore, the deictic anchoring of the proposition to the speaker's here-and-now (in the sense of Fleischman 1989) may determine different realisness values for directives and futures in some languages (e.g. predictions, intentions or scheduled events are marked as realis, whereas other future SoAs are irrealis; second-person directives, which require the presence of the performer, are coded as realis more frequently than third-person directives). Yet, a complete picture of the range of factors affecting realisness is still missing. New insights into these factors and their interactions may come from a wider amount of cross-linguistic data, as well as a better understanding of the diachronic mechanisms leading to the emergence and establishing of realisness systems. This theme session aims to assess our current understanding of the realisness dimension in grammar and to plot the directions for future research. We invite abstracts for papers dealing with foundational/theoretical issues and/or taking an empirical, data-driven stance on the coding of realisness across languages. At the foundational/theoretical level, possible topics include (but are not limited to): ? the status of realisness in linguistic theory; ? interactions between realisness and other functional domains (tense, aspect, evidentiality, etc.); ? cross-linguistic variation in the classification of certain states of affairs as either realis or irrealis; ? factors affecting the realisness value of a state of affairs: argument structure; referentiality/definiteness of arguments; degree of deictic anchoring to the speaker's here-and-now; etc. At the empirical level, possible topics include (but are not limited to): ? in-depth investigations of realisness systems in single languages or language families; ? the areal dimension of realisness marking; ? realisness in languages without dedicated realis/irrealis markers; ? realisness as a relevant dimension in interclausal relations: disjunction (see, e.g., Mauri 2008), complementation (Ammann & van der Auwera 2004), switch reference, etc.; ? the diachronic origin and the grammaticalization of realis/irrealis markers as a key to understanding their functional properties and distribution. References Ammann, A., and J. van der Auwera. 2004. Complementizer-headed main clauses for volitional moods in the languages of South-Eastern Europe. A Balkanism? In: O. Tomi? (ed.), Balkan syntax and semantics, 293-314. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bybee, J. 1998. "Irrealis" as a grammatical category. Anthropological Linguistics 40 (2): 257-271. Bybee, J., R. Perkins, and W. Pagliuca. 1994. The evolution of grammar. Tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Bybee, J., and S. Fleischman (eds.). 1995. Modality in grammar and discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Chafe, W. 1995. The realis-irrealis distinction in Caddo, the Northern Iroquoian languages, and English. In: Bybee & Fleischman (eds.) 1995, 349-365. Chung, S., and A. Timberlake. 1985. Tense, aspect, and mood. In: T. Shopen (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, Vol. III: Grammatical categories and the lexicon, 202-258. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cristofaro, S. 2004. Past habituals and irrealis. In: Y. A. Lander, V. A. Plungian, A. Yu. Urmanchieva (eds.), Irrealis and Irreality, 256-272. Moscow: Gnosis. Elliott, J. R. 2000. Realis and irrealis: Forms and concepts of the grammaticalisation of reality. Linguistic Typology 4: 55-90. Fleischman, S. 1989. Temporal distance: a basic linguistic metaphor. Studies in Language 13 (1): 1-50. Fleischman, S. 1995. Imperfective and irrealis. In: Bybee & Fleischman (eds.) 1995, 519-551. Giv?n, T. 1984. Syntax. A functional-typological introduction. Vol. 1. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Mauri, C. 2008. The irreality of alternatives. Towards a typology of disjunction. Studies in Language 32 (1): 22-55. Mithun, M. 1995. On the relativity of irreality. In: Bybee & Fleischman (eds.) 1995, 367-388. Ogloblin, A. K. 2005. Javanese. In: A. Adelaar, and N. P. Himmelmann (eds.), The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar, 590-624. London-New York: Routledge. Roberts, J. R. 1990. Modality in Amele and other Papuan languages. Journal of Linguistics 26: 363-401. Sun, J. T.-S. 2007. The irrealis category in rGyalrong. Language and Linguistics 8 (3): 797-819. _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From phonosemantics at earthlink.net Sat Dec 15 20:34:43 2007 From: phonosemantics at earthlink.net (jess tauber) Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2007 15:34:43 -0500 Subject: Role of ideophones in Bantu and Niger-Congo in historical linguistics Message-ID: Been oh so quiet here discussion-wise since that whole thing about He-who-shall-not-be-brought-up. Hope all noses have been successfully re-jointed. Since summer I've been back working on ideophones, finally doing that mass crosslinguistic survey that I'd been meaning to get to for decades now, after the suggestion by Johanna Nichols that I do some actual statistical analysis back while I was at UCB a long, long time ago. Currently Bantu and Niger-Congo are the focus. Despite claims by some that ideophones there are not reconstructable some in fact ARE- with the bases from which they are snipped going back to common Bantu. Because of this one cannot escape from historical changes- unusual in many cases for ideophones in other language families, but apparently not here. Even so there is a pattern underlying the ideophonic systems, so far as I can tell. Vowels generally fit the common crosslinguistic pattern, with for instance /a/ meaning 'flat(ly)', /o/ having to do with rounded volumes, and so on. Consonants (once you've peeled away the historical changes) also fit nicely- for instance many, many labial initial forms dealing with collapse against some firmer (though not necessarily dry) surface. Interestingly, the derivational extensions also appear to be in many cases iconically organized, a surprise. For instance 'locational' -am- has a far more specific reference than usually admitted- orientation at an angle less than normal/perpendicular to some reference plane segment. Other extensions also have more concrete spatial reference as well, some temporal. Indeed, the entire construction type, with ideophone/noun prefix, unidentifiable intervening segmental materials, and spatial/temporal suffix, looks a lot like the 'bipartite construction' so popular in Western North America, and Yahgan in South America. However, the senses are flipped. In Yahgan, for instance, the entire set of instrument/bodypart/manner prefixes feeds into the grammaticalization of voice, while in Bantu the spatio-temporal suffixes do. Yahgan pathway/location suffixes grammaticalize into TAM markers- while it may be the ideophones which serve this function, at least for some elements of aspect (other inflections being on the auxiliary). The American bipartite systems deal primarily with controlled activities, with a minority having to do with loss of control- yet so many ideophones in the Bantu languages appear to deal with loss or lack of control, in keeping with ideophones in many other families. The questions I have about the Bantu (and larger Niger-Congo) situation are- even through multiple historical changes, how can you keep the system iconically organized? Does this require constraints on allowable changes to keep them relatively transparent? Or does it mean that replacement is the norm, with new, more iconic forms pushing out old, opaque ones? Finally, are we dealing here not with 'grammaticalization' per se, but its evil twin, antigrammaticalization, which would explain the continuing use of these constructions in the creation of 'new' ideophones? How many other languages families are amenable to such analysis? Jess Tauber phonosemantics at earthlink.net _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Sun Dec 16 07:29:10 2007 From: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2007 08:29:10 +0100 Subject: sound replacement in loans Message-ID: Dear friends, Claire Bowern had suggested to post my following question (originally addressed to the LINGTYP list) to HISTLING, too.: Within the context of my research on Caucasian Albanian (Old Udi), I came across a rather remarkable instance of 'sound replacement' in loans: A palatal voiceless fricative () is (systematically?) replaced by a voiced pharyngeal stop. I wonder whether some of you have come across a parallel process in other languages...To be more concrete: What I have in mind are cases of replacement within loans (!), not sound changes within the history of a given language. That is, Language A has a in a term that is borrowed into Language B with a voiced pharyngeal (I write <%>) instead, say /asha/ in Language A (donor language) > /a%a/ in Language B (recipient language). [Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to give concrete examples from Caucasian Albanian, as long as the corresponding text (the so-called Caucasian Albanian Palimpsest) has not been edited. Sorry for this! But I have to respect the copyright of others....] Thanks for any suggestions.... Best wishes, Wolfgang -- ---------------------------------------------------------- *Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze * ---------------------------------------------------------- /Primary contact: / Institut f?r Allgemeine & Typologische Sprachwissenschaft Dept. II / F 13 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 M?nchen Tel.: 0049-(0)89-2180-2486 (Secretary) 0049-(0)89-2180-5343 (Office) Fax: 0049-(0)89-2180-5345 Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de /// Wolfgang.Schulze at lmu.de Web: http://www.als.lmu/de/mitarbeiter/index.php Personal homepage: http://www.wolfgangschulze.in-devir.com ---------------------------------------------------------- /Second contact: / Katedra Germanistik? Fakulta humanitn?ch vied Univerzita Mateja B?la / Bansk? Bystrica Tajovsk?ho 40 SK-97401 Bansk? Bystrica Tel: (00421)-(0)48-4465108 Fax: (00421)-(0)48-4465512 Email: Schulze at fhv.umb.sk Web: http://www.fhv.umb.sk/app/user.php?user=schulze ---------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From halldj at babel.ling.upenn.edu Sun Dec 16 19:19:11 2007 From: halldj at babel.ling.upenn.edu (Damien Hall) Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2007 14:19:11 -0500 Subject: sound replacement in loans In-Reply-To: <20071216073605.C59AADF055@amanita.mail.rice.edu> Message-ID: Dear Wolfgang I don't have any other specific examples of sound replacement within loans to give you, but I have one question. I don't know about any variety of Albanian, but it appears from Wikipedia that modern Albanian at least has a voiceless palatal fricative but not a voiced pharyngeal stop. So (if the Caucasian Albanian you're looking at is similar) the situation you're talking about is one where the language replaces a phoneme it has in its native inventory with one that seems to appear only in loanwords. Could you confirm (to me personally, if not to the whole list, if the question is na?ve) whether CA had the same or a similar consonant inventory to modern Albanian? If it is indeed the case that the language is replacing a phoneme it has in its native inventory with one that isn't in the native inventory, I really don't have any parallels to suggest! Is that the unusual case that you're asking for parallels to? Damien Hall University of Pennsylvania _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From rankin at ku.edu Sun Dec 16 20:17:06 2007 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2007 14:17:06 -0600 Subject: sound replacement in loans Message-ID: I understand the copyright constraints you are operating under, but I'm afraid that probably most of us would need a little more information in order to attempt to answer your query. If the example you have in mind is, say, polysyllabic and there are several attractive phonetic matches between your projected source and recipient words, the replacement of "sh" with "%" (the pharyngeal stop) would pose an interesting problem. If, however, the posited source and loan have approximately the form you give an example, e.g., VshV to V%V, then I might tend to question whether it is really a borrowing or merely a chance resemblance. Even if the semantic match is exact, the VCV is pretty short for us to be certain. The only case I can think of that is even close is a change within a single language: 15th century Spanish "sh" (written "x") evolving into modern Spanish /x/ varying dialectally with /h/. The velar or laryngeal is at least a little closer, but is never a stop. Best wishes, Robert L. Rankin University of Kansas ________________________________ From: histling-l-bounces at mailman.rice.edu on behalf of Wolfgang Schulze Sent: Sun 12/16/2007 1:29 AM To: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu Subject: [Histling-l] sound replacement in loans Dear friends, Claire Bowern had suggested to post my following question (originally addressed to the LINGTYP list) to HISTLING, too.: Within the context of my research on Caucasian Albanian (Old Udi), I came across a rather remarkable instance of 'sound replacement' in loans: A palatal voiceless fricative () is (systematically?) replaced by a voiced pharyngeal stop. I wonder whether some of you have come across a parallel process in other languages...To be more concrete: What I have in mind are cases of replacement within loans (!), not sound changes within the history of a given language. That is, Language A has a in a term that is borrowed into Language B with a voiced pharyngeal (I write <%>) instead, say /asha/ in Language A (donor language) > /a%a/ in Language B (recipient language). [Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to give concrete examples from Caucasian Albanian, as long as the corresponding text (the so-called Caucasian Albanian Palimpsest) has not been edited. Sorry for this! But I have to respect the copyright of others....] Thanks for any suggestions.... Best wishes, Wolfgang -- ---------------------------------------------------------- Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze ---------------------------------------------------------- Primary contact: Institut f?r Allgemeine & Typologische Sprachwissenschaft Dept. II / F 13 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 M?nchen Tel.: 0049-(0)89-2180-2486 (Secretary) 0049-(0)89-2180-5343 (Office) Fax: 0049-(0)89-2180-5345 Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de /// Wolfgang.Schulze at lmu.de Web: http://www.als.lmu/de/mitarbeiter/index.php Personal homepage: http://www.wolfgangschulze.in-devir.com ---------------------------------------------------------- Second contact: Katedra Germanistik? Fakulta humanitn?ch vied Univerzita Mateja B?la / Bansk? Bystrica Tajovsk?ho 40 SK-97401 Bansk? Bystrica Tel: (00421)-(0)48-4465108 Fax: (00421)-(0)48-4465512 Email: Schulze at fhv.umb.sk Web: http://www.fhv.umb.sk/app/user.php?user=schulze ---------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From mltarpent at hotmail.com Mon Dec 17 02:44:32 2007 From: mltarpent at hotmail.com (Marie-Lucie Tarpent) Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 02:44:32 +0000 Subject: sound replacement in loans In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I don't know anything about the languages in question, but how recent are the loans? If they are fairly old, could "sh" and "%" both have arisen from a common source which was neither? Also, the Spanish change "sh"> [x] is documented also in a French dialect (Poitou/Vend?e) and also in some Canadian French (e.g. Manitoba). My guess is that it arises from a retracted, even retroflexed pronunciation of the "sh" which produces an auditory effect similar to that of [x]. In these dialects both "sh" and "zh" have become velar fricatives, voiceless and voiced respectively. Getting back to the 2 languages considered, if "sh" is indeed the original in the donor language , it might have undergone extreme retroflexion in the borrowing language, and then be interpreted as a consonant involving the extreme back of the mouth, all the way to the pharynx. The development of the manner of articulation and the glottal state of this new consonant could be secondary to that of the new place of articulation. Marie-Lucie Tarpent Mount Saint Vincent University Halifax, Canada ---------------------------------------- > Subject: RE: [Histling-l] sound replacement in loans > Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2007 14:17:06 -0600 > From: rankin at ku.edu > To: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu > > I understand the copyright constraints you are operating under, but I'm afraid that probably most of us would need a little more information in order to attempt to answer your query. If the example you have in mind is, say, polysyllabic and there are several attractive phonetic matches between your projected source and recipient words, the replacement of "sh" with "%" (the pharyngeal stop) would pose an interesting problem. If, however, the posited source and loan have approximately the form you give an example, e.g, VshV to V%V, then I might tend to question whether it is really a borrowing or merely a chance resemblance. Even if the semantic match is exact, the VCV is pretty short for us to be certain. > > The only case I can think of that is even close is a change within a single language: 15th century Spanish "sh" (written "x") evolving into modern Spanish /x/ varying dialectally with /h/. The velar or laryngeal is at least a little closer, but is never a stop. > > Best wishes, > > Robert L. Rankin > University of Kansas > > ________________________________ > > From: histling-l-bounces at mailman.rice.edu on behalf of Wolfgang Schulze > Sent: Sun 12/16/2007 1:29 AM > To: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu > Subject: [Histling-l] sound replacement in loans > > > Dear friends, > Claire Bowern had suggested to post my following question (originally addressed to the LINGTYP list) to HISTLING, too.: > > Within the context of my research on Caucasian Albanian (Old Udi), I came across a rather remarkable instance of 'sound replacement' in loans: A palatal voiceless fricative () is (systematically?) replaced by a voiced pharyngeal stop. I wonder whether some of you have come across a parallel process in other languages...To be more concrete: What I have in mind are cases of replacement within loans (!), not sound changes within the history of a given language. That is, Language A has a in a term that is borrowed into Language B with a voiced pharyngeal (I write _________________________________________________________________ Use fowl language with Chicktionary. Click here to start playing! http://puzzles.sympatico.msn.ca/chicktionary/index.html?icid=htmlsig_______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From HardyF at gc.adventist.org Mon Dec 17 14:23:47 2007 From: HardyF at gc.adventist.org (Hardy, Frank) Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 09:23:47 -0500 Subject: Histling-l Digest, Vol 12, Issue 2 In-Reply-To: <20071216073606.0E112DF05C@amanita.mail.rice.edu> Message-ID: We have something similar to this in Hawaiian, where English "s" comes over into Hawaiian as /k/. A seasonally appropriate example of this is the word "Christmas" (Hawaiian /kalikimaka/), where "ch" = /k/, "r" = /l/, "t" = /k/, "m" = /m/, and "s" = /k/. This leads to a first hypothetical intermediate form *klikmak, where consonant substitutions have been done but nothing more. A second hypothetical intermediate form is *kalikimak, since no two consonants can appear immediately adjacent to each other. They must be separated by vowels. The final step in the derivation is to add an obligatory word-final vowel, thus /kalikimaka/, the correct surface form. This is not an isolated example within the language. English "s" routinely comes over into Hawaiian as /k/. The reason for this in Hawaiian might be different from the corresponding reason in Udi, however. Hawaiian only has 12 phonemically distinct sounds, and five of these are vowels. So with an inventory of only seven consonants (h, k, l, m, n, p, w) one's choices are extremely limited. One strategy would be to let a letter simply drop. (English "r" sometimes does this, although more frequently it corresponds to Hawaiian /l/.) In such a context it might be a matter of searching for something - anything - that could serve as a counter to maintain a foreign sound's place within a word, whether it makes sense phonologically or not. In Caucasian languages, by contrast, where there might be 48 or so distinct consonant sounds, the reason for choosing a sound with so little intuitive support would require a different level of explanation. -----Original Message----- From: histling-l-bounces at mailman.rice.edu [mailto:histling-l-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of histling-l-request at mailman.rice.edu Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2007 2:36 AM To: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu Subject: Histling-l Digest, Vol 12, Issue 2 Send Histling-l mailing list submissions to histling-l at mailman.rice.edu To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to histling-l-request at mailman.rice.edu You can reach the person managing the list at histling-l-owner at mailman.rice.edu When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Histling-l digest..." Today's Topics: 1. sound replacement in loans (Wolfgang Schulze) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2007 08:29:10 +0100 From: Wolfgang Schulze Subject: [Histling-l] sound replacement in loans To: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu Message-ID: <4764D3C6.7060207 at lrz.uni-muenchen.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Dear friends, Claire Bowern had suggested to post my following question (originally addressed to the LINGTYP list) to HISTLING, too.: Within the context of my research on Caucasian Albanian (Old Udi), I came across a rather remarkable instance of 'sound replacement' in loans: A palatal voiceless fricative () is (systematically?) replaced by a voiced pharyngeal stop. I wonder whether some of you have come across a parallel process in other languages...To be more concrete: What I have in mind are cases of replacement within loans (!), not sound changes within the history of a given language. That is, Language A has a in a term that is borrowed into Language B with a voiced pharyngeal (I write <%>) instead, say /asha/ in Language A (donor language) > /a%a/ in Language B (recipient language). [Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to give concrete examples from Caucasian Albanian, as long as the corresponding text (the so-called Caucasian Albanian Palimpsest) has not been edited. Sorry for this! But I have to respect the copyright of others....] Thanks for any suggestions.... Best wishes, Wolfgang -- ---------------------------------------------------------- *Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze * ---------------------------------------------------------- /Primary contact: / Institut f?r Allgemeine & Typologische Sprachwissenschaft Dept. II / F 13 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 M?nchen Tel.: 0049-(0)89-2180-2486 (Secretary) 0049-(0)89-2180-5343 (Office) Fax: 0049-(0)89-2180-5345 Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de /// Wolfgang.Schulze at lmu.de Web: http://www.als.lmu/de/mitarbeiter/index.php Personal homepage: http://www.wolfgangschulze.in-devir.com ---------------------------------------------------------- /Second contact: / Katedra Germanistik? Fakulta humanitn?ch vied Univerzita Mateja B?la / Bansk? Bystrica Tajovsk?ho 40 SK-97401 Bansk? Bystrica Tel: (00421)-(0)48-4465108 Fax: (00421)-(0)48-4465512 Email: Schulze at fhv.umb.sk Web: http://www.fhv.umb.sk/app/user.php?user=schulze ---------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/private/histling-l/attachments/20071216/5d8c5f25/attachment.html ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l End of Histling-l Digest, Vol 12, Issue 2 ***************************************** _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de Tue Dec 18 07:28:09 2007 From: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de (Wolfgang Schulze) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 08:28:09 +0100 Subject: sound replacement in loans In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear friends and colleagues, many thanks for your so helpful comments on my little query concerning a possible 'relationship' between [sh] and [%] (= voiced pharyngeal stop) in loans. Let me briefly clarify a bit the problem: The language in question is Caucasian Albanian (CA). Till recently, practically nothing had been known about this language spoken in Northern and Western Azerbaijan between roughly 300 and 900 AD. It is said to have been the 'official' language of the Christian Kingdom of (Caucasian) Albania (300-700 AD) also used in religious service. In 1996, Zaza Aleksidze from Tbilisi identified the lower layers of two Palimpsest manuscripts found in the St. Katharine monastery on Mt. Sinai (1975) as containing text in the so-called Caucasian Albanian script. So far, this script was known only fragmentarily (some very brief inscriptions and a Medieval alphabet list): The scirpt differs totally from Old Armenian and Old Georgian, although it clearly belongs into the 'same' context). The two manuscripts include some 120 pages with CA texts in their lower layers that, however, are heavily erased and mostly extremely difficult to read. Preliminary studies done by Zaza Aleksidze supported the hypothesis that we have to deal with an early variant of Udi, an Southeast Caucasian language nowadays spoken by some 5.000 people in Northern Azerbaijan and in the diaspora (basically Russian and Armenia). In 2003, Jost Gippert (Comparative Linguistics, U Frankfurt) and I have started to decipher and interpret the lower layer of the Palimpsests. The bulk of the work is now done (it took us more than four years to decipher the sound values, to restore the texts, and to translate them (the CA Palimpsests will be published in several volumes of /Monumenta Palaegraphica Medii Aevi/, Series Ibero-Caucasica at Brepols (Tournhout) in 2008). The texts include fragments of a early Christian lectionary and fragments of the Gospel of John. In sum, the texts document roughly 10.000 CA word tokens (that gives us about 1.000 lexical entries). The language has /nothing/ to do with Balkan Albanian: The resemblance of the two ethnonyms is coincidendal and due to the Ancient Greek interpretation of the local name *Alwan (as albanioi). CA clearly is East Caucasian, a so-to-say 'aunt' of Modern Nizh Udi. Thus the Palimpsest for the first time allows to describe the earlier stage of an East Caucasian language (probably 500-600 AD). For more details see Gippert & Schulze 2007. Some remarks on the Caucasian Albanian Palimpsest. In: /Iran and the Caucasus/ (11) 2007:201-212 and http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/Cauc_alb.htm (Attention! Page is not updated!). So far the background. Now let me briefly come back to my original question. As I have said earlier: I have to respect Jost Gippert's share in the copyright of the CA data and hence cannot give concrete examples. But let me 'paraphrase' them: In the CA texts there are at least three loans from language A that are marked for a [sh] in the donor language: CshVC, CVrshVC, and CVrshVCVC. In CA, the loans yield the form CV%VC, CV%VC, and CV%VCVC respectively. The last two examples may suggest the hypothesis that the cluster [rsh] is changed to [%], what would come close to what Marie-Lucie Tarpent has suggested: [sh] "/might have undergone extreme retroflexion in the borrowing language, and then be interpreted as a consonant involving the extreme back of the mouth, all the way to the pharynx. The development of the manner of articulation and the glottal state of this new consonant could be secondary to that of the new place of articulation./" In fact, some of the pharyngealized vowels in Modern Udi (as well as in CA) probably stem from old */Vr/, although the pharyngeal may likewise be original/old in other words. However, the first example (CshVC > CV%VC) shows that the shift from [sh] to [%] happened without the present of [r]. Naturally, we might argue that here the shift has taken place in analogy to the process [rsh] > [%]. But things become more difficult, if we consider some original, that is 'Lezgian' CA words that contain [%] and that may have cognate in Modern Udi containing [s'] (a dento-alveolar voiceless fricative [a so-called 'middle sibilant']). The three (?) relevant pairs do not argue in favor of the presence of *-rsh- in Pre-Udi/CA. Unfortunately, the data are too few to prove that [sh] in the donor language A is /systematically/ replaced by [%] in CA, but we do not have counter-examples. So, we start from the hypothesis that the process is quite 'regular' within the relationship between Language A (donor language) and CA. Well, that's just to put my question into the corresponding context. I will consider all your proposals in order to get closer to that puzzle - I guess all of them will help..... Best wishes, and many thanks again, Wolfgang -- ---------------------------------------------------------- *Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze * ---------------------------------------------------------- /Primary contact: / Institut f?r Allgemeine & Typologische Sprachwissenschaft Dept. II / F 13 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 D-80539 M?nchen Tel.: 0049-(0)89-2180-2486 (Secretary) 0049-(0)89-2180-5343 (Office) Fax: 0049-(0)89-2180-5345 Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de /// Wolfgang.Schulze at lmu.de Web: http://www.als.lmu/de/mitarbeiter/index.php Personal homepage: http://www.wolfgangschulze.in-devir.com ---------------------------------------------------------- /Second contact: / Katedra Germanistik? Fakulta humanitn?ch vied Univerzita Mateja B?la / Bansk? Bystrica Tajovsk?ho 40 SK-97401 Bansk? Bystrica Tel: (00421)-(0)48-4465108 Fax: (00421)-(0)48-4465512 Email: Schulze at fhv.umb.sk Web: http://www.fhv.umb.sk/app/user.php?user=schulze ---------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From hopper at cmu.edu Tue Dec 18 13:10:25 2007 From: hopper at cmu.edu (Paul Hopper) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 08:10:25 -0500 Subject: sound replacement in loans In-Reply-To: <47677689.2080600@lrz.uni-muenchen.de> Message-ID: Dear Wolfgang, If it turned out that a neighboring [r] was involved, it would add an interesting new dimension. Some years ago Geoff Nathan, of Southern Illinois University, did a study of "rhotics" in an attempt to explain why [r] develops such a wide variety of different phonetic manifestations, including things like the New York City labiodental flap, the Danish voiced uvular fricative, the Czech palatal fricative, etc. If I remember right, he concluded that the common element was that [r] is accompanied by pharyngeal constriction, and that the specific suprapharyngeal component was secondary. If this is so, there would then be no need to posit extreme retraction of the front of the tongue as being heard as pharyngeal, an explanation that I'm not comfortable with. I don't have a copy of this article, unfortunately, and my memory may not be reliable in the details. Thanks very much for the information about Caucasian Albanian. Paul > Dear friends and colleagues, many thanks for your so helpful comments on > my little query concerning a possible 'relationship' between [sh] and [%] > (= voiced pharyngeal stop) in loans. Let me briefly clarify a bit the > problem: The language in question is Caucasian Albanian (CA). Till > recently, practically nothing had been known about this language spoken in > Northern and Western Azerbaijan between roughly 300 and 900 AD. It is said > to have been the 'official' language of the Christian Kingdom of > (Caucasian) Albania (300-700 AD) also used in religious service. In 1996, > Zaza Aleksidze from Tbilisi identified the lower layers of two Palimpsest > manuscripts found in the St. Katharine monastery on Mt. Sinai (1975) as > containing text in the so-called Caucasian Albanian script. So far, this > script was known only fragmentarily (some very brief inscriptions and a > Medieval alphabet list): The scirpt differs totally from Old Armenian and > Old Georgian, although it clearly belongs into the 'same' context). The > two manuscripts include some 120 pages with CA texts in their lower layers > that, however, are heavily erased and mostly extremely difficult to read. > Preliminary studies done by Zaza Aleksidze supported the hypothesis that > we have to deal with an early variant of Udi, an Southeast Caucasian > language nowadays spoken by some 5.000 people in Northern Azerbaijan and > in the diaspora (basically Russian and Armenia). In 2003, Jost Gippert > (Comparative Linguistics, U Frankfurt) and I have started to decipher and > interpret the lower layer of the Palimpsests. The bulk of the work is now > done (it took us more than four years to decipher the sound values, to > restore the texts, and to translate them (the CA Palimpsests will be > published in several volumes of /Monumenta Palaegraphica Medii Aevi/, > Series Ibero-Caucasica at Brepols (Tournhout) in 2008). The texts include > fragments of a early Christian lectionary and fragments of the Gospel of > John. In sum, the texts document roughly 10.000 CA word tokens (that gives > us about 1.000 lexical entries). The language has /nothing/ to do with > Balkan Albanian: The resemblance of the two ethnonyms is coincidendal and > due to the Ancient Greek interpretation of the local name *Alwan (as > albanioi). CA clearly is East Caucasian, a so-to-say 'aunt' of Modern Nizh > Udi. Thus the Palimpsest for the first time allows to describe the earlier > stage of an East Caucasian language (probably 500-600 AD). For more > details see Gippert & Schulze 2007. Some remarks on the Caucasian Albanian > Palimpsest. In: /Iran and the Caucasus/ (11) 2007:201-212 and > http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/Cauc_alb.htm (Attention! Page is not > updated!). So far the background. Now let me briefly come back to my > original question. As I have said earlier: I have to respect Jost > Gippert's share in the copyright of the CA data and hence cannot give > concrete examples. But let me 'paraphrase' them: In the CA texts there are > at least three loans from language A that are marked for a [sh] in the > donor language: CshVC, CVrshVC, and CVrshVCVC. In CA, the loans yield the > form CV%VC, CV%VC, and CV%VCVC respectively. The last two examples may > suggest the hypothesis that the cluster [rsh] is changed to [%], what > would come close to what Marie-Lucie Tarpent has suggested: [sh] "/might > have undergone extreme retroflexion in the borrowing language, and then be > interpreted as a consonant involving the extreme back of the mouth, all > the way to the pharynx. The development of the manner of articulation and > the glottal state of this new consonant could be secondary to that of the > new place of articulation./" In fact, some of the pharyngealized vowels in > Modern Udi (as well as in CA) probably stem from old */Vr/, although the > pharyngeal may likewise be original/old in other words. However, the first > example (CshVC > CV%VC) shows that the shift from [sh] to [%] happened > without the present of [r]. Naturally, we might argue that here the shift > has taken place in analogy to the process [rsh] > [%]. But things become > more difficult, if we consider some original, that is 'Lezgian' CA words > that contain [%] and that may have cognate in Modern Udi containing [s'] > (a dento-alveolar voiceless fricative [a so-called 'middle sibilant']). > The three (?) relevant pairs do not argue in favor of the presence of > *-rsh- in Pre-Udi/CA. Unfortunately, the data are too few to prove that > [sh] in the donor language A is /systematically/ replaced by [%] in CA, > but we do not have counter-examples. So, we start from the hypothesis that > the process is quite 'regular' within the relationship between Language A > (donor language) and CA. Well, that's just to put my question into the > corresponding context. I will consider all your proposals in order to get > closer to that puzzle - I guess all of them will help..... Best wishes, and > many thanks again, Wolfgang > > -- > > ---------------------------------------------------------- > > *Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze * > > ---------------------------------------------------------- > > /Primary contact: > > / > > Institut f?r Allgemeine & Typologische Sprachwissenschaft > > Dept. II / F 13 > > > > Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen > > > Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 > > > D-80539 M?nchen > > > > Tel.: 0049-(0)89-2180-2486 (Secretary) > > 0049-(0)89-2180-5343 (Office) > > Fax: 0049-(0)89-2180-5345 > > > Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de > /// Wolfgang.Schulze at lmu.de > > > Web: http://www.als.lmu/de/mitarbeiter/index.php > > Personal homepage: http://www.wolfgangschulze.in-devir.com > > ---------------------------------------------------------- > > /Second contact: / > > Katedra Germanistik? > > > > Fakulta humanitn?ch vied > > > Univerzita Mateja B?la / Bansk? Bystrica > > Tajovsk?ho 40 > > > SK-97401 Bansk? Bystrica > > > Tel: (00421)-(0)48-4465108 > > > Fax: (00421)-(0)48-4465512 > > > Email: Schulze at fhv.umb.sk > > > Web: http://www.fhv.umb.sk/app/user.php?user=schulze > > ---------------------------------------------------------- > > > > _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list > Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu > https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l > _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From rankin at ku.edu Tue Dec 18 15:44:06 2007 From: rankin at ku.edu (Rankin, Robert L) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 09:44:06 -0600 Subject: sound replacement in loans Message-ID: To Paul's examples of rhotic/pharyngeal manifestations you can add inland Salish. My late colleague, Dale Kinkade, had numerous recordings of Salish pharyngeals. He pointed out, and my ears agreed, that these consonants had a strong rhotic "flavor" about them. I realize this evidence is anecdotal, but it at least concurs with with the hypothesis that rhotics involve pharyngeal constriction. The phonetics literature may explore this issue more thoroughly. Bob Rankin ________________________________ From: histling-l-bounces at mailman.rice.edu on behalf of Paul Hopper Sent: Tue 12/18/2007 7:10 AM To: Wolfgang.Schulze at lmu.de Cc: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu Subject: Re: [Histling-l] sound replacement in loans Dear Wolfgang, If it turned out that a neighboring [r] was involved, it would add an interesting new dimension. Some years ago Geoff Nathan, of Southern Illinois University, did a study of "rhotics" in an attempt to explain why [r] develops such a wide variety of different phonetic manifestations, including things like the New York City labiodental flap, the Danish voiced uvular fricative, the Czech palatal fricative, etc. If I remember right, he concluded that the common element was that [r] is accompanied by pharyngeal constriction, and that the specific suprapharyngeal component was secondary. If this is so, there would then be no need to posit extreme retraction of the front of the tongue as being heard as pharyngeal, an explanation that I'm not comfortable with. I don't have a copy of this article, unfortunately, and my memory may not be reliable in the details. Thanks very much for the information about Caucasian Albanian. Paul > Dear friends and colleagues, many thanks for your so helpful comments on > my little query concerning a possible 'relationship' between [sh] and [%] > (= voiced pharyngeal stop) in loans. Let me briefly clarify a bit the > problem: The language in question is Caucasian Albanian (CA). Till > recently, practically nothing had been known about this language spoken in > Northern and Western Azerbaijan between roughly 300 and 900 AD. It is said > to have been the 'official' language of the Christian Kingdom of > (Caucasian) Albania (300-700 AD) also used in religious service. In 1996, > Zaza Aleksidze from Tbilisi identified the lower layers of two Palimpsest > manuscripts found in the St. Katharine monastery on Mt. Sinai (1975) as > containing text in the so-called Caucasian Albanian script. So far, this > script was known only fragmentarily (some very brief inscriptions and a > Medieval alphabet list): The scirpt differs totally from Old Armenian and > Old Georgian, although it clearly belongs into the 'same' context). The > two manuscripts include some 120 pages with CA texts in their lower layers > that, however, are heavily erased and mostly extremely difficult to read. > Preliminary studies done by Zaza Aleksidze supported the hypothesis that > we have to deal with an early variant of Udi, an Southeast Caucasian > language nowadays spoken by some 5.000 people in Northern Azerbaijan and > in the diaspora (basically Russian and Armenia). In 2003, Jost Gippert > (Comparative Linguistics, U Frankfurt) and I have started to decipher and > interpret the lower layer of the Palimpsests. The bulk of the work is now > done (it took us more than four years to decipher the sound values, to > restore the texts, and to translate them (the CA Palimpsests will be > published in several volumes of /Monumenta Palaegraphica Medii Aevi/, > Series Ibero-Caucasica at Brepols (Tournhout) in 2008). The texts include > fragments of a early Christian lectionary and fragments of the Gospel of > John. In sum, the texts document roughly 10.000 CA word tokens (that gives > us about 1.000 lexical entries). The language has /nothing/ to do with > Balkan Albanian: The resemblance of the two ethnonyms is coincidendal and > due to the Ancient Greek interpretation of the local name *Alwan (as > albanioi). CA clearly is East Caucasian, a so-to-say 'aunt' of Modern Nizh > Udi. Thus the Palimpsest for the first time allows to describe the earlier > stage of an East Caucasian language (probably 500-600 AD). For more > details see Gippert & Schulze 2007. Some remarks on the Caucasian Albanian > Palimpsest. In: /Iran and the Caucasus/ (11) 2007:201-212 and > http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~wschulze/Cauc_alb.htm (Attention! Page is not > updated!). So far the background. Now let me briefly come back to my > original question. As I have said earlier: I have to respect Jost > Gippert's share in the copyright of the CA data and hence cannot give > concrete examples. But let me 'paraphrase' them: In the CA texts there are > at least three loans from language A that are marked for a [sh] in the > donor language: CshVC, CVrshVC, and CVrshVCVC. In CA, the loans yield the > form CV%VC, CV%VC, and CV%VCVC respectively. The last two examples may > suggest the hypothesis that the cluster [rsh] is changed to [%], what > would come close to what Marie-Lucie Tarpent has suggested: [sh] "/might > have undergone extreme retroflexion in the borrowing language, and then be > interpreted as a consonant involving the extreme back of the mouth, all > the way to the pharynx. The development of the manner of articulation and > the glottal state of this new consonant could be secondary to that of the > new place of articulation./" In fact, some of the pharyngealized vowels in > Modern Udi (as well as in CA) probably stem from old */Vr/, although the > pharyngeal may likewise be original/old in other words. However, the first > example (CshVC > CV%VC) shows that the shift from [sh] to [%] happened > without the present of [r]. Naturally, we might argue that here the shift > has taken place in analogy to the process [rsh] > [%]. But things become > more difficult, if we consider some original, that is 'Lezgian' CA words > that contain [%] and that may have cognate in Modern Udi containing [s'] > (a dento-alveolar voiceless fricative [a so-called 'middle sibilant']). > The three (?) relevant pairs do not argue in favor of the presence of > *-rsh- in Pre-Udi/CA. Unfortunately, the data are too few to prove that > [sh] in the donor language A is /systematically/ replaced by [%] in CA, > but we do not have counter-examples. So, we start from the hypothesis that > the process is quite 'regular' within the relationship between Language A > (donor language) and CA. Well, that's just to put my question into the > corresponding context. I will consider all your proposals in order to get > closer to that puzzle - I guess all of them will help..... Best wishes, and > many thanks again, Wolfgang > > -- > > ---------------------------------------------------------- > > *Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze * > > ---------------------------------------------------------- > > /Primary contact: > > / > > Institut f?r Allgemeine & Typologische Sprachwissenschaft > > Dept. II / F 13 > > > > Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen > > > Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 > > > D-80539 M?nchen > > > > Tel.: 0049-(0)89-2180-2486 (Secretary) > > 0049-(0)89-2180-5343 (Office) > > Fax: 0049-(0)89-2180-5345 > > > Email: W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de > /// Wolfgang.Schulze at lmu.de > > > Web: http://www.als.lmu/de/mitarbeiter/index.php > > Personal homepage: http://www.wolfgangschulze.in-devir.com > > ---------------------------------------------------------- > > /Second contact: / > > Katedra Germanistik? > > > > Fakulta humanitn?ch vied > > > Univerzita Mateja B?la / Bansk? Bystrica > > Tajovsk?ho 40 > > > SK-97401 Bansk? Bystrica > > > Tel: (00421)-(0)48-4465108 > > > Fax: (00421)-(0)48-4465512 > > > Email: Schulze at fhv.umb.sk > > > Web: http://www.fhv.umb.sk/app/user.php?user=schulze > > ---------------------------------------------------------- > > > > _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list > Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu > https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l > _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From geoffnathan at wayne.edu Tue Dec 18 16:47:24 2007 From: geoffnathan at wayne.edu (Geoffrey S. Nathan) Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2007 11:47:24 -0500 Subject: sound replacement in loans In-Reply-To: <1809.71.182.208.45.1197983425.squirrel@71.182.208.45> Message-ID: Paul Hopper wrote: > Dear Wolfgang, > > If it turned out that a neighboring [r] was involved, it would add an interesting new dimension. Some years ago Geoff Nathan, of Southern Illinois University, did a study of "rhotics" in an attempt to explain why [r] develops such a wide variety of different phonetic manifestations, including things like the New York City labiodental flap, the Danish voiced uvular fricative, the Czech palatal fricative, etc. If I remember right, he concluded that the common element was that [r] is accompanied by pharyngeal constriction, and that the specific suprapharyngeal component was secondary. If this is so, there would then be no need to posit extreme retraction of the front of the tongue as being heard as pharyngeal, an explanation that I'm not comfortable with. > > I don't have a copy of this article, unfortunately, and my memory may not be reliable in the details. > > Thanks very much for the information about Caucasian Albanian. > > Paul > > > And it turns out I'm listening in on this conversation ;-) . Yes, Paul, you remember correctly that Vanna Condax and I gave a paper at LSA about five thousand years ago entitled 'It sounds like some kind of 'r'--why?'. Alas, we never published it. We actually argued that a perturbation in F3 was a constant mark of 'r-ness', but we didn't carry it much further, and I now think that's not correct. Because shortly thereafter Mona Lindau published a paper on kinds of /r/: Lindau, Mona: 1985, ?The Story of /r/?, in V.A. Fromkin (ed.), /Phonetic Linguistics: Essays in Honor of Peter Ladefoged/, Academic Press, Orlando. These days I'd say that there is a radial prototype category, with a central or prototypical member (defined as a perceptual ideal--see my paper on sonority), probably an alveolar trill, with extensions in various directions so that both the retroflex r-colored vowel in 'heard' and the uvular trill are 'kinds of /r/' without necessarily sharing any single feature in common. And yes, I've also heard people say that some West Coast Salish languages have 'five or six r's', which turn out to be various pharyngeals with the usual Salish set of secondary articulations--labialized, glottalized etc. I'm not so sure about the connection between pharyngeals and F3, however, and I agree with Paul that the retraction story is a little far-fetched. But this is late in the semester and I'm running full-speed and dropping behind, so that will have to be all for now. Other references on sound prototypes available on request, or see my phonology article in the just now out Handbook of Cognitive Grammar, Oxford University Press. Geoff -- Geoffrey S. Nathan Faculty Liaison, Computing and Information Technology, and Associate Professor of English, Linguistics Program Phone Numbers (313) 577-1259 or (313) 577-8621 Wayne State University Detroit, MI, 48202 _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From jsalmons at wisc.edu Fri Dec 28 17:35:03 2007 From: jsalmons at wisc.edu (Joseph Salmons) Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2007 11:35:03 -0600 Subject: GLAC-14 Call for Papers Message-ID: Dear HistLingers, Just a reminder that the deadline for submission of abstracts for the 14th Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference, to be held in Madison is JANUARY 4, 2008. See the Call for Papers below for details. Best regards, The GLAC-14 Organizing Committee GLAC 14 The 14th Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference University of Wisconsin?Madison May 1 ? 4, 2008 Call for Papers Abstract Deadline: Friday, 4 January, 2008 Faculty, students, and independent scholars are invited to submit abstracts for 20- or 30-minute papers (plus 10 minutes of discussion) on any linguistic or philological aspect of any historical or modern Germanic language or dialect, including English (especially to the Early Modern period) and the extra-territorial varieties. Papers from any linguistic subfield?including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, language acquisition, contact, and change?and from a wide range of theoretical approaches are welcome. Please specify whether you would prefer a 20-minute or a 30- minute slot for your presentation, or would be willing to accept either as available. Please submit a single-spaced one-page abstract (in .doc or .rtf format, or .pdf if the file includes special characters or complex formatting) online at our website (see below). Include a title but no author information in the abstract itself. All abstracts will undergo anonymous review. The deadline for submissions is January 4, 2008. Notifications of acceptance will be distributed by February 4, 2008. For overseas colleagues who need notification of acceptance before February 2008 for the sake of funding requests: please note that you need an early decision and submit prior to the January deadline. We will expedite notification. Submit abstracts to: jsalmons at wisc.edu GLAC 14 Website: http://mki.wisc.edu/GLAC/GLAC14.htm _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From A.v.Kemenade at let.ru.nl Sun Dec 2 22:25:35 2007 From: A.v.Kemenade at let.ru.nl (Ans van Kemenade) Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2007 23:25:35 +0100 Subject: all that sound change In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear all, Who of the respondents over the past few days would care to organise a workshop on this at ICHL 19? Cheers, Ans van Kemenade Ans van Kemenade Radboud University Nijmegen, dept. of English Postbus 9103 6500 HD Nijmegen Tel. #31 (0)24 36 11422/12157 Fax. #31 (0)24 36 11882 HYPERLINK "http://www.ru.nl/facultyofarts/englishdept/"http://www.ru.nl/facultyofarts/ englishdept/ HYPERLINK "http://www.ru.nl/cls/"http://www.ru.nl/cls/ Van: histling-l-bounces at mailman.rice.edu [mailto:histling-l-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] Namens Henning Andersen Verzonden: zondag 27 januari 2008 21:26 Aan: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu Onderwerp: [Histling-l] 'reversed change' and 'deliberate change' Hi all, Regarding 'reversals'. Brian's suggestion that we distinguish between true sound change and socially driven changes reminds me of Kristin Bakken's (2001) paper "Patterns of restitution of sound change", which I edited a few years ago. In my discussion of the paper (2001: 8-9, 15-16) I went so far as to suggest a terminological distinction: "There are restorations, in which the loss of a constraint (say, through phonological reanalysis) allows underlying representations to resurface. Restorations are typically grammatically conditioned in that 'original' morpheme shapes are restored only in environments where they were subject to alternation. .." "Distinct from such changes are restitutions, such as those exemplified in Bakken's paper, which ensue from contact with a closely related language variety (dialect or sociolect) with pronunciation norms that happen to be phonologically more conservative in some respect. ... in reality such restitutions ... do not differ from other phoneme substitutions in individual lexemes that may occur through dialect contact .... Such a set of restitutions or substitutions is not a phonological change--or even a single change in the sense of a bounded, internally coherent historical event in the given community's tradition of speaking. It is, properly speaking, just a subset of a series of individual replacements of local word shapes with borrowed ones, part of a smaller or larger relexification, motivated by the individual word shapes' greater utility in interdialectal communication and hence defined in pragmatic and semantic terms. The progression of such a relexification begins as an elaboration of speakers' grammars, as elements of a local tradition of speaking are matched with marked covariants appropriate for specified pragmatic purposes. It runs to completion lexeme by lexeme, as the traditional elements one by one fall into disuse, superseded by the borrowed, more widely used, more viable alternatives. .." Regarding 'deliberate change' It is mostly valuable to draw the distinction between innovation and change. Evidently individuals can enter deliberately made innovations into usage. But whether deliberate innovations result in change depends on other speakers' adopting them and using them, eventually to the exclusion of other alternatives. Your academy or ministry of culture or big honcho can propose a deliberate innovation. But whether it will ever have any practical effect depends on the wisdom of the crowds. So in cases where the linguist doesn't have positive evidence of all members of a community wittingly and deliberately talking in lock-step, it is probably better to avoid the expression "deliberate change" and talk of 'deliberate innovations' and 'changes initiated by deliberate innovations' instead. --Henning Henning Andersen, UCLA References: Kristin Bakken's paper is in *Actualization. Linguistic Change in Progress*, ed. by Henning Andersen, 59-78. I discuss it in the introduction. The full text is available on request Send Histling-l mailing list submissions to histling-l at mailman.rice.edu To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to histling-l-request at mailman.rice.edu You can reach the person managing the list at histling-l-owner at mailman.rice.edu When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Histling-l digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: 'Reversed change' dialect borrowing (Sally Thomason) 2. Re: 'Reversed change' dialect borrowing (Sally Thomason) 3. Re: 'Reversed change' dialect borrowing (Brian Joseph) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 06:54:48 -0500 From: Sally Thomason Subject: Re: [Histling-l] 'Reversed change' dialect borrowing To: "Patrick McConvell" Cc: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu Message-ID: <4274.1201348488 at umich.edu> Patrick, Oh, I'd never claim that *all* reversed changes are deliberate; the reason I was focusing on deliberate ones is that that was what my paper was about. Elsewhere in the same paper I talk about correspondence rules (or what Jeff Heath has called borrowing routines) -- Alan Dench's Australian example from his salvage fieldwork in Western Australia is a wonderful instance. In his case the speakers were aware of what they were doing (at least when they were stimulated to think about it); but there too, there are no doubt cases where speakers apply correspondence rules without being aware of what they're doing. -- Sally ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 07:06:14 -0500 From: Sally Thomason Subject: Re: [Histling-l] 'Reversed change' dialect borrowing To: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu Message-ID: <4577.1201349174 at umich.edu> About Peter's comment: Well...I actually think we need to consider carefully whether we "agree that it's not exactly typical of what usually goes on". One thing that has struck me again and again over the past ten years or so, ever since I got interested in this whole issue of deliberate change, is that we merely *assume* that most changes are non-deliberate throughout their history. We have very little evidence on this point. I first heard about people making their dialects more different from the dialect of the guys next door when I read Peter's Dialects in Contact. But ever since I started giving talks here & there on deliberate change, people have come up with new examples for me; one such example was a case of deliberate dialect divergence from Peru -- the people told the fieldworker that they wanted to make sure they retained their differentness from the people just around the mountain from them, and so they deliberately distorted the pronunciation of their own words in a rule-governed way. I do still believe that most linguistic change must be non-deliberate. That's the easiest way to account for (for instance) regular sound change. But I also think that claims that the vast majority of linguistic change is subconscious are on shaky ground, as long as they lack evidence of any kind. (I admit that I haven't the faintest idea how one might go about gathering evidence.) -- Sally Thomason ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 09:51:20 -0500 (EST) From: Brian Joseph Subject: Re: [Histling-l] 'Reversed change' dialect borrowing To: thomason at umich.edu (Sally Thomason) Cc: histling-l at mailman.rice.edu Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Greetings -- this discussion is most interesting, and I would like to add just a few observations; even if they are not directly on target, I think this is an appropriate forum to mention them and they are in any case provoked by the recent postings. First, even though no one has actually said this, so in a sense I am either responding to a straw man or preaching to the choir, let me note that this discussion shows why it is useful to be precise about what we mean by "sound change". In the cases brought out here, the event that was reversed was a Neogrammarian-style (i.e. regular and phonetically driven) sound change, what I like to call "sound change proper" or "sound change in the strict sense" (or even simply "Neogrammarian sound change") whereas the reversing event is a socially-driven change. Terminology is always tricky to be sure, but I would love it if the term "sound change" were restricted to "sound change proper" and some other term were invented for "changes in sounds that are not sound change (in the strict sense)". I often tell my classes that as paradoxically as it might seem, not every change in the sounds of a word is a matter of sound change (analogical change, clippings, tabu deformation, and so on are all the sorts of "other events" that can lead to changes in the pronunciation of a word that are not Neogrammarian sound change in the strict sense). Second, socially-driven events of change *can* show regularity (though they need not), but typically lack the phonetic basis that is a hallmark of Neogrammarian sound change. We see this sort of thing in hypercorrection all the time (Peter's. Finally, it reminds me of what I said at my ICHL presentation this past summer, namely that when we get right down to it, social factors can trump everything else in change (or everything except for the most basic immutable universal foundational aspects of language, to the extent there are any and if there are to the extent we can identify them). --Brian Brian D. Joseph The Ohio State University > About Peter's comment: > > Well...I actually think we need to consider > carefully whether we "agree that it's not exactly typical > of what usually goes on". One thing that has struck > me again and again over the past ten years or so, ever > since I got interested in this whole issue of > deliberate change, is that we merely *assume* that > most changes are non-deliberate throughout their > history. We have very little evidence on this point. > I first heard about people making their dialects > more different from the dialect of the guys next door > when I read Peter's Dialects in Contact. But ever > since I started giving talks here & there on deliberate > change, people have come up with new examples for me; > one such example was a case of deliberate dialect > divergence from Peru -- the people told the > fieldworker that they wanted to make sure they > retained their differentness from the people just > around the mountain from them, and so they deliberately > distorted the pronunciation of their own words in > a rule-governed way. > > I do still believe that most linguistic change must > be non-deliberate. That's the easiest way to account > for (for instance) regular sound change. But I > also think that claims that the vast majority of > linguistic change is subconscious are on shaky > ground, as long as they lack evidence of any kind. > (I admit that I haven't the faintest idea how one > might go about gathering evidence.) > > -- Sally Thomason ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l End of Histling-l Digest, Vol 13, Issue 6 ***************************************** ||||| Henning Andersen ||||| Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures ||||| University of California, Los Angeles ||||| P.O.Box 951502 ||||| Los Angeles, CA 90095-1502 ||||| Phone: +1-310-837-6743. Fax by appointment ||||| http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/slavic/faculty/andersen_h.html No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.12/1245 - Release Date: 26-1-2008 15:45 No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.12/1245 - Release Date: 26-1-2008 15:45 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l From A.v.Kemenade at let.ru.nl Sun Dec 2 22:27:44 2007 From: A.v.Kemenade at let.ru.nl (Ans van Kemenade) Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2007 23:27:44 +0100 Subject: sound change Message-ID: Dear all, Who of the respondents over the past few days would be interested in turning this into a nice problem statement for a workshop at ICHL 19 (10-15 August 2009 at Nijmegen? Cheers, Ans Ans van Kemenade Radboud University Nijmegen, dept. of English Postbus 9103 6500 HD Nijmegen Tel. #31 (0)24 36 11422/12157 Fax. #31 (0)24 36 11882 HYPERLINK "http://www.ru.nl/facultyofarts/englishdept/"http://www.ru.nl/facultyofarts/ englishdept/ HYPERLINK "http://www.ru.nl/cls/"http://www.ru.nl/cls/ No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.12/1245 - Release Date: 26-1-2008 15:45 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Histling-l mailing list Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu https://mailman.rice.edu/mailman/listinfo/histling-l