From bhk at hd1.vsnl.net.in Wed Dec 2 12:26:26 1998 From: bhk at hd1.vsnl.net.in (Bh.Krishnamurti) Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 07:26:26 EST Subject: Reversal of merger Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Recent postings on the above theme have not shown a genuine case of reversal of merger. 1. Most mergers create homonyms. In other words two or more words which contrast in a pair of phonemes will become homophonous when one of the phonemes merges with the other through sound change. After this event, no subsequent sound change will ever retrieve the two distinct words by recreating the lost contrast. If there are attested instances which appear to restore the lost contrast, that can happen through borrowing from an older or a different dialect which was not affected by the sound change in question. As an example, Early Telugu had CV.., and CrV... (C-= obstruent); a sound change occurred in Middle Telugu by which all instances of Cr- became C- (loss of r or merger of r with zero), pra:ta > pa:ta 'old', krotta > kotta 'new', gruDDu > guDDu 'eyeball' (which became homophonous with guDDu 'egg'). Some modern Telugu writers occasionally use the r-forms under the influence of the classical dialect but it is not a case of reversal of merger. The question is: Is there any language in which mergers which created homonyms were undone by a subsequent sound change. Henry Hoenigswald in his posting of Nov 27 clarified that in the neogrammarian framework, 'there is no room for reversal of merger by 'sound-change'..'there was either no merger, or there is more than one line of descent'. Here lines of descent refer to different lines of transmission, either inheritance or borrowing. 2. Reference has been made to the variability between merged and unmerged entities in the aftermath of a sound change. In all cases of lexical diffusion of a sound change, this happens normally. In certain Gondi dialects word initial s becomes h, and later h becomes 0. As we go through the affected lexical items, this two-step sound change is attested as s,s/h,h, h/0,0, in different words, in different social groups and in different areas. The variable items attest to the fact that the sound change is in progress. In the Southern dialects only 0 forms occur with the change totally accomplished and completely regular. This problem is treated in detail in a paper of mine which is published in *Language Variation and Change* 10:2.193-220. But please note a there is no case of reversal of a merger, i.e. s/h goes later to h and not to s, similarly, h/0 goest to 0 and not to h. 3. Phoneme-like units in expressives, in my view, do not belong to the normal phonlogical system of a language. Bh.K. ___________________________ Bhadriraju Krishnamurti H.No. 12-13-1233, "Bhaarati" Street 9, Tarnaka Hyderabad 500017 Telephone:40-7019665 From dever+ at pitt.edu Wed Dec 2 17:47:01 1998 From: dever+ at pitt.edu (Daniel L Everett) Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 12:47:01 EST Subject: Piraha Pronouns Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Folks, Claims about pronoun borrowing are controversial and purported cases are rare. Sally Thomason and I have recently written a very brief paper arguing that the pronouns of Piraha, an Amazonian language, were borrowed from Tupi-Guarani. In this paper, we also mention other cases of pronoun borrowing, from individual pronouns to entire pronoun systems (as in Piraha). This paper is posted on the Piraha webpage: http://amazonling.linguist.pitt.edu Your comments would be welcome. However, the main reason for posting this information to LinguistList is to ask if readers of LinguistList are aware of any other cases of pronoun borrowing, especially cases involving the borrowing of the entire pronominal system from one language to another. I will post a summary if there are cases not already listed in our paper. - Dan Everett From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Wed Dec 2 17:46:49 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 12:46:49 EST Subject: Reversal of merger In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.16.19981202123412.2817b236@hd1.vsnl.net.in> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Bh.Krishnamurti wrote: > Recent postings on the above theme have not shown a genuine case of > reversal of merger. > 1. Most mergers create homonyms. In other words two or more words > which contrast in a pair of phonemes will become homophonous when > one of the phonemes merges with the other through sound change. > After this event, no subsequent sound change will ever retrieve the > two distinct words by recreating the lost contrast. If there are > attested instances which appear to restore the lost contrast, that > can happen through borrowing from an older or a different dialect > which was not affected by the sound change in question. [snip of Telugu example] > The question is: Is there any language in which mergers which > created homonyms were undone by a subsequent sound change. Henry > Hoenigswald in his posting of Nov 27 clarified that in the > neogrammarian framework, 'there is no room for reversal of merger by > 'sound-change'.. Yes, in the Neogrammarian framework this is so. The irreversibility of mergers by sound change has been widely accepted for generations; it was formalized by Paul Garde in 1961, and Labov has dubbed it `Garde's principle' -- perhaps unfortunately, since `Garde's principle' was already in use for something quite different. However, none of the proposals in my provisional list contradicts this principle, since none of them proposes that a merger has been reversed merely by sound change. Every one of them concludes, for the particular case(s) for which it was proposed, either that no merger ever occurred or that a merger occurred and was then reversed by some means other than sound change. > 'there was either no merger, or there is more than one line of > descent'. Here lines of descent refer to different lines of > transmission, either inheritance or borrowing. Yes; agreed, at least for most cases that have been discussed. But some of the proposals in my list explicitly conclude either that no merger occurred or that a merger was reversed by the influence of a different line of descent. > 2. Reference has been made to the variability between merged and > unmerged entities in the aftermath of a sound change. In all cases > of lexical diffusion of a sound change, this happens normally. In > certain Gondi dialects word initial s becomes h, and later h becomes > 0. As we go through the affected lexical items, this two-step sound > change is attested as s,s/h,h, h/0,0, in different words, in > different social groups and in different areas. The variable items > attest to the fact that the sound change is in progress. In the > Southern dialects only 0 forms occur with the change totally > accomplished and completely regular. This problem is treated in > detail in a paper of mine which is published in *Language Variation > and Change* 10:2.193-220. But please note a there is no case of > reversal of a merger, i.e. s/h goes later to h and not to s, > similarly, h/0 goest to 0 and not to h. >>From this I cannot tell what instance of a potential merger is being examined. However, if there is a variable sound change of, say, /s/ to /h/, then surely there remains the possibility that the variation will eventually be resolved in favor of the original /s/, and that the variant in /h/ will disappear. Indeed, I believe I have seen some such cases reported in the literature, though I can't name one with certainty off the top of my head -- but see the Australian case below. And, if the variable change of /s/ to /h/ threatens a merger with a pre-existing /h/, then I see no reason why the original /s/ - /h/ contrast should not be restored in this manner -- even if that's not what happened in Gondi. A possibly relevant case here is the change of /h/ to zero in English. This has been pervasive in England for centuries, and it has gone to completion in most vernacular accents, which no longer contrast /h/ even variably with zero. This merger of /h/ with zero is continuing to spread in vernacular speech: for example, it has now reached areas of East Anglia which formerly retained a phoneme /h/. But it has not become general in England, since prestige varieties continue to retain many (not all) earlier instances of /h/, and hence we have a separate line of descent to consider. In Australia, though, things are different. There is evidence that the merger of /h/ with zero was widespread in 19th-century Australia. However, no doubt as a consequence of the influence of more prestigious varieties which had not undergone the merger, that merger has now been completely reversed in Australian English: today all Australian varieties exhibit a robust contrast between /h/ and zero. > 3. Phoneme-like units in expressives, in my view, do not belong to > the normal phonlogical system of a language. That depends. In some ancestral form of Basque, it is clear, the six palatal and palato-alveolar consonants (hereafter `palatal' consonants) never occurred in ordinary lexical items at all, but only in expressive variants of these, or in expressive formations generally. At this stage, it was true that the six consonants stood somewhat outside the ordinary phonological system. But then things changed. For one thing, phonemes identical in phonetic nature to some of these six occurred in some neighboring Romance languages, where they were ordinary phonemes with no special value. Some Romance words containing these segments were borrowed into Basque complete with their palatal segments. The resulting loan words therefore contained the expressive segments without possessing any expressive value. And, at this stage, it was perhaps no longer possible to maintain that the palatal segments in Basque still lay outside the ordinary phonological system, since they occurred in everyday words of non-expressive nature. At the same time, of course, the six segments still retained their expressive value in native words. Still later, in Michelena's account, the historical /j/ merged with the expressive segment [esh], notated , thereby producing a state of affairs in which some instances of were expressive while others were not. At this point, I think, it was hardly possible to maintain that the consonant still lay outside the ordinary phonological system, even though some instances of it still retained expressive value. Finally, please note that in none of my postings (apart from my endorsement of Michelena's account of the Basque case) have I been trying to argue that mergers either can or cannot be reversed by any means at all. My only purpose is to compile a list of the accounts of *apparent* reversals of merger which have been reported in the literature, whether or not these accounts posit any genuine reversal of merger. By the way, I now have a seventh proposal, thanks to Laura Wright. Simplifying somewhat, she suggests that a case of apparent merger may in fact represent no merger at all in speech, but merely a failure of the imperfect orthography to distinguish two phonemes which remained distinct in speech. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From mccay at redestb.es Wed Dec 2 17:46:34 1998 From: mccay at redestb.es (Alan R. King) Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 12:46:34 EST Subject: reversal of merger (Yiddish final consonants) (LONG) Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On the subject of other (possible) examples of merger reversal, I am pleased that the problem of Yiddish final consonants was brought up (B. Wald, Wed, 25 Nov 1998, "Re: reversal of merger"). I have long been interested in Yiddish, the original language of my grandparents' home, which I have studied privately off-and-on over a number of years. Though largely self-taught, I have occasionally attended university courses on Yiddish linguistics. I happen to have the personal satisfaction of having "guessed" the same solution to the word-final consonant "un-merger" problem which Kiparsky published according to Benji Wald's posting, without knowing (until today!) that anyone else had supported what I thought was a pretty unorthodox idea of "mine"; I might add that I was encouraged to make the last-mentioned self-assessment by the reaction of my Yiddish linguistics professor, to remain unnamed, who said, more or less, that he had never heard of such a nutty idea (though not his exact words). Yet it is the only solution which seemed, and seems, to take account of the data adequately, though I'd like to hear any alternative suggestions. I would therefore like to encourage that the present discussion be extended to cover in greater depth this fascinating problem. I would also personally appreciate it if someone would give the exact Kiparsky reference, or even send me a copy of the article if possible, as my own (short-term) access to libraries is very limited. Here is a summary and discussion of the facts for the benefit of all, hoping to have my blunders corrected as usual by more knowing parties. --- THE BASIC FACTS --- Modern Yiddish (which for most practical purposes corresponds to historical Eastern Yiddish, given the virtual extinction of historical varieties of Western Yiddish) is divided into three main dialects, all contiguous to each other in their historical (pre-holocaust) geographical domains, popularly known as "Lithuanian", "Polish" and "Ukrainian", and variously otherwise designated in the scholarly literature. In "Polish" Yiddish there is general devoicing of word-final stops and fricatives, but not in the other varieties, in which final voiced and voiceless consonants contrast. This devoicing is a historical innovation, so we might assume that "Polish" Yiddish also went through the change as a contact-induced phenomenon occurring in several languages spoken in or around the dialect's historical territory, while "Lithuanian" and "Ukrainian" Yiddish PRESERVED the historically older voicing contrast in word-final position. This seems to make a lot of sense at first sight, and I can personally testify that it is also a version that is sometimes taught in academia. But there is an interesting problem: ALL Eastern Yiddish dialects have VOICELESS final stops and fricatives corresponding to Old High German [OHG] voiced (or voiceless) consonants in certain words. (Proto-Yiddish is often treated more or less as a direct descendant of Old High German with additional non-Germanic elements incorporated.) As Benji said, the overall pattern seems to be that words that *universally* have devoiced final consonants in modern Yiddish are those that are morphologically invariable, as opposed to those entering into processes of inflection or derivation, both involving suffixation (nouns, adjectives, verbs) in which we find the split described above between "devoicing" and "non-devoicing" dialects. While some historical textual documentation might conceivably contribute evidence, this is for the most part a problem requiring diachronic reconstruction, given that pre-twentieth-century Yiddish orthography (which traditionally employs the so-called "Hebrew" alphabet) is generally "conservative" (i.e. "etymological") and strongly influenced by the German model; in consequence, final consonants are often represented as distinctively voiced and voiceless, but it cannot be concluded that genuine spoken pronunciations are thereby reflected. For example, the numeral 20 may be seen spelt as (in transcription) /cvancig/, even though the pan-dialectal Eastern Yiddish form ends in /k/; this does not constitute evidence for a Yiddish pronunciation with /g/. This orthographical practice continued into the twentieth century and in indeed still encountered sometimes. The following set of examples is given first of all in Standard Yiddish [SY], which is phonologically closest to "Lithuanian" Yiddish and reflects the type of dialect with a final voicing contrast; afterwards we will look at the corresponding set of forms in "Polish" Yiddish, with universal final devoicing. For SY lexical forms I will throughout take Uriel Weinreich's now-classic dictionary as the source. I will organise the sample forms into: (1) morphologically variable lexemes ending in a consonant that was VOICED in Proto-Eastern-Yiddish [PEY], or at least in a preceding stage such as OHG (except for final /z/, for which see the later discussion), with no suffix; (2) variable lexemes ending in a consonant that was VOICELESS in PEY or earlier; (3) the same voiced-final variable lexemes as in 1 with an inflectional or derivational SUFFIX; (4) the same voiceless-final variable lexemes as in 2 with a SUFFIX; and (5) INVARIABLE words which (except for /s/, see below) ended in a voiced consonant in PEY or before (now everywhere voiceless). For variety, my examples for (1-4) include some nouns and some verbs (adjectives are discussed later). Among the suffixes I have chosen to include plural morphemes and diminutive suffixes on nouns, plus the occasional non-diminutive derivational form, and the infinitive morpheme and occasionally a derivative suffix with verbs. The examples in (5) are preverbs or adverbs, representing words not taking suffixes; some other invariable word types will be introduced into the discussion later. I will use lexemes ending in /g/, /b/, /k/ and /p/, and also /z/ and /s/ so as to include a fricatives pair, but /d/ and /t/, /v/ and /f/ follow the same pattern except that there is a variable pan-dialectal tendency to devoice final /v/ (which doesn't occur in German-origin words), e.g. SY /'ganef/ < Hebrew /gan'na:v/ "thief", cf. plural /ga'novim/ < Hebrew /gan'na:vi:m/. Yiddish stops assimilate in voicing to a following consonant even across word boundaries, so the following examples should be understood to represent the citation or pre-pause forms. /y/ is [j]; /N/ is the velar nasal; /c/ is a sibilant affricate; /S/ a palato-alveolar fricative. Nasals and /l/ may be syllabic in Yiddish. STANDARD YIDDISH (1a) /veg/ "way, path" (1b) /vayb/ "woman, wife" (1c) (ix) /zog/ "(I) say" (1d) (ix) /hob/ "(I) have" (1e) /hoyz/ "house" (2a) /ek/ "end, corner" (2b) /kop/ "head" (2c) (ikh) /kuk/ "(I) look" (2d) (ikh) /khap/ "(I) catch, grab" (2e) /gas/ "street" (3a) /'vegN/ "plural of VEG" (3b) /'vaybl/ "diminutive of VAYB" (3c) /'zogN/ "infinitive of ZOG"; /'zoger/ "announcer (agent noun from ZOG)" (3d) /'hobm/ "infinitive of HOB"; /'lib-hober/ "lover, amateur (/lib/ "love" + agent noun from HOB)" (3e) /'hayzer/ "plural of HOYZ"; /'hayzl/ "diminutive of HOYZ" (4a) /'ekN/ "plural of EK" (4b) /'kepele/ "endearing form of KOP" (4c) /'kukN/ "infinitive of KUK"; /'on-kuker/ "sight-seer" (from /on/ "preverb" + agent noun from KUK)" (4d) /'khapm/ "infinitive of KHAP" (4e) /'gasn/ "plural of GAS"; /'gesl/ "diminutive of GAS" (5a) /a'vek/ "away" (cf. /veg/, (1a)) (5b) /a'rop/ "down" (cf. Modern High German "herab", with "b" in spelling - but /p/ in pronunciation) (5c) /a'roys/ "out" Now the corresponding "Polish" forms: "POLISH" YIDDISH (1a') /veyk/ (1b') /va:p/ (1c') /zuk/ (1d') /(h)op/ (1e') /ho:s/ (2a') /ek/ (2b') /kop/ (2c') /kik/ (2d') /khap/ (2e') /gas/ (3a) /'veygN/ (3b') /'va:bl/ (3c') /'zugN/, /'zuger/ (3d') /'hubm/, /'li:p-huber/ (3e') /'ha:zer/, /'ha:zl/ (4a') /'ekN/ (4b') /'kepele/ (4c') /'kikN/, /'u:n-kiker/ (4d') /'khapm/ (4e') /'gasn/, /'gesl/ (5a') /a'vek/ (5b') /a'rup/ (5c') /a'ro:s/ --- FURTHER FACTS --- (i) Semitic words Although Yiddish is classified as a Germanic language it possesses a significant lexical component of Semitic (Hebrew and/or Aramaic) origin. Semitic-origin lexemes, while often fully assimilated into and indeed differentially characteristic of Yiddish, often possess morphological paradigms distinct from those found with the Germanic-origin part of the lexicon. In other words, synchronically distinct paradigm classes "happen to" correspond to diachronically distinct sources (compare the "Semitic" /'ganef/ - /ga'novim/, mentioned above, with the other examples, all non-Semitic). Both kinds of paradigm in modern Yiddish, the "Germanic" and the "Semitic", apply the same rules for voice, which thus cut across both morphological subsystems. (ii) Final sibilants The case of word-final /z/ in words of Germanic origin is diachronically remarkable, since as far as I know such forms ended in /s/ in OHG and must have developed the voiced ending subsequently in those dialects which show it. The only obvious source for this would have been the suffixed forms in which the sibilant, intervocalic in Proto-Yiddish, was voiced to /z/. Compare both Modern German [haws] < OHG hu:s "house", plural [hojzer] and "Polish" Yiddish /ho:s/, /ha:zer/ with SY /hoyz/, /hayzer/. This type ending in /z/ in SY contrasts, I believe with diachronic regularity, with a type in /s/, e.g. /gas/ "street" : German /'gase/, plural /gasn/. This necessary assumption of a "reconstructed" final /z/ in non-"Polish" Yiddish words like /hoyz/ may be very significant - see below. (iii) Words like "montik", "tsvantsik" The distribution of voicing in final cononants across the Yiddish lexicon is not quite as cut-and-dried a matter as the above examples suggest, even though they are indeed representative of the usual patterns, if only because there are items whose analysis is open to possible debate. There are various words with voiceless final stops coming from OHG voiced stops, even though such words are not strictly invariable, or not quite anyway. Consider names of days of the week, some of which are compounds the (unstressed) second element of which is /-tik/, etymologically cognate to SY /tog/ ("Polish" Yiddish /tuk/) "day": SY /'montik/ "Monday", /'fraytik/ "Friday" etc. (cf. German "Montag", "Freitag"). These nouns are not quite invariable in Modern Yiddish as they have plurals, e.g. /'montikN/ "Mondays", yet /k/ is found, not /g/. Similarly with the numerals for multiples of ten, where the element corresponding to English "-ty" and German "-zig", with etymological /g/, is always /k/ in Yiddish: SY /'cvancik/ "twenty", /'zibecik/ "seventy", etc. (German "zwanzig", "siebzig"). Again, such forms can be suffixed, although this is rather rare; a folk song, in which the singer asks for change so as go on tipping the orchestra so they will go on playing and he may continue to dance, begins: Bayt zhe mir oys a finfuntsvantsiker oyf samerodne drayer. "Please give me change in threes for a twenty-fiver." where the compound numeral /finf-un-tsvantsik/, lit. "five-and-twenty" takes the nominal suffix /-er/ (cf. English "fiv-er", "tenn-er"). Suffixed forms like /'montik-N/ and /'cvancik-er/ may not have been diachronically relevant to the treatment of weekdays and multiples of ten as invariable words for several reasons. Maybe the suffixed forms were so rare as to be felt as peripheral; perhaps they didn't exist at the critical time and were (re-)generated later. (iv) Adjectives in "-ik" But this won't explain the fact that the frequent ending /-ik/ on adjectives, corresponding to /-ig/ in OHG and German, is always voiceless. Adjectives are inflected, and the usual pattern for assignment of voice to lexeme-final consonants applies; but compare what happens when the suffix is /-ik/ < /-ig/: STANDARD YIDDISH (6a) /klug/ "clever" (cf. German "klug") (6b) /'kluge/, /'kluger/, /'klugN/ "inflected forms of KLUG" (7a) /Stark/ "strong" (cf. German "stark") (7b) /'Starke/, /'Starker/, /'StarkN/ "inflected forms of SHTARK" (8a) /'milx-ik/ "dairy" (cf. German "-ig") (8b) /'milxike/, /'milxiker/, /'milxikN/ "inflected forms of MILXIK" "POLISH" YIDDISH (6a') /kli:k/ (6b') /'kli:ge/, /'kli:ger/, /'kli:gN/ (7a') /Stark/ (7b') /'Starke/, /'Starker/, /'StarkN/ (8a') /'mil(e)x-ik/ "dairy" (8b') /'mil(e)xike/, /'mil(e)xiker/, /'mil(e)xikN/ --- DISCUSSION --- The two approaches to accounting diachronically for the distribution of voicing in word-final stops and fricatives in Yiddish will be identified as Theory 1 [T1] and Theory 2 [T2]. T1, the account which seems to be widely assumed or implied and sometimes taught, is at first sight the simpler of the two; it simply states that THEORY 1 (i) OHG and Semitic final voiced stops and fricatives were inherited via PEY and continued into most modern Eastern Yiddish dialects. (ii) In "Polish" Yiddish word-final stops and fricatives are systematically devoiced. This theory does not yet address the problem of "exceptions" such as (5a) "avek", (5b) "arop", "montik" (and "montikn"), "tsvantsik" (and "tsvantsiker"), (8a) "milkhik" (and (8b) "milkhike" etc.), whose final consonants are voiceless in all modern Eastern Yiddish dialects although this is not predicted by T1. T2 is more complex in appearance, implying an effective merger reversal in dialects other than "Polish": THEORY 2 (i) Inherited original voiced stops and fricatives in word-final position were at some stage (Stage A) devoiced in *all* Eastern Yiddish dialects. (NOTE: Does that mean we should attribute the devoiced final consonants to PEY itself? I don't know.) (ii) At a later stage (Stage B) in all dialects except "Polish" Yiddish, word-final stops and fricatives were (re-)voiced WHEN AN UNDERLYING "VOICED" FEATURE WAS SYNCHRONICALLY RETRIEVABLE. In the "Polish" dialect the voicing of final stops and fricatives underwent no change after Stage A (i.e. they are all voiceless). Retrievability of the "underlying 'voiced' feature" depended principally on the co-existence of suffixed forms in which the suffix "shielded" the consonant from devoicing at Stage A, cf. (3a) "vegn", (3b) "vaybl", (3c) "zogn", "zoger", (3d) "hobn" etc. The "exceptions" itemized under T1 are thus explained by the synchronic IRRETRIEVABILITY of any "underlying 'voiced' feature" at Stage B. The retrievability principle invoked by T2 seems to make sense, whereas it is difficult to think of an equally plausible principle that would motivate the DEVOICING, in generally "non-devoicing dialects", in these same words within the framework of T1. For brevity's sake I referred to an "underlying feature" in the formulation of T2. I imagine this formulation will satisfy those who like to employ the concept of abstract underlying phonological forms, but I don't believe the concept is strictly necessary to provide a coherent account of the hypothesized events. An alternative is to refer merely to morpho-phonological alternation. It is well known that vast inflectional simplification has occurred in Yiddish, although the basic inflectional categories are maintained. Not only have the categories been reduced; the morphology of the surviving paradigms has furthermore been much simplified, by greatly generalizing some morphological markers and eliminating much original allomorphy. Within T2, the proposed Stage B changes in dialects other than "Polish" Yiddish can be seen simply as one further, wide-ranging morphological adjustment with a secondary phonological consequence. The phonological consequence is the (re-)introduction of a voicing contrast in word-final stops and fricatives. It just happens that the resulting post-Stage-B voicing distribution corresponds largely, though not entirely, to that reconstructed pre-Stage-A distribution. The motivation of the morphological adjustment in question is the elimination of voicing alternations that had arisen in the inflectional and derivational paradigms as a consequence of the Stage-A word-final devoicing. The voicing alternations are maintained in "Polish" Yiddish, which now has a more complex (and conservative) morphology than the other dialects in this one respect. Compare the "simplified" paradigms in Standard Yiddish (and non-"Polish" dialects) to that in "Polish" Yiddish, here given first since, according to T2, the latter represents the pan-Eastern-Yiddish situation before Stage B (from here on I will employ standard transcriptions): "POLISH" YIDDISH * Singular Plural veyk >>> veygn ek ekn mu:ntik mu:ntikn * First-person Infinitive zuk >>> zugn kik kikn * Predicative Masculine nominative singular kli:k >>> kli:ger shtark shtarker milkhik milkhiker * Base Diminutive va:p >>> va:bl kep kepele * Base Derivative zuk >>> zuger kik u:n u:nkiker tsvantsik tsvantsiker I have marked with >>> the suffixed pradigm forms which introduce complexity due to alternation between voiceless and voiced consonants. STANDARD YIDDISH * Singular Plural >>> veg vegn ek ekn montik montikn * First-person Infinitive >>> zog zogn kuk kukn * Predicative Masculine nominative singular >>> klug kluger shtark shtarker milkhik milkhiker * Base Diminutive >>> vayb vaybl kep kepele * Base Derivative >>> zog zoger kuk on onkuker tsvantsik tsvantsiker Here I have marked with >>> base forms which, according to T2, have been remodelled on the suffixed forms, thereby eliminating voicing alternations. The advantage, in terms of paradigm simplification, of the Stage B change is evident. In principle either the base form or the suffixed forms could have been generalized, e.g. either veg : vegn or *vek : *vekn would have served the purpose, but the second route would have wasted a phonemic distinction whereas the route taken, generalization of the suffixed forms, maximizes that distinction, while also, incidentally, regularizing the phonotactics (by eliminating the ban on word-final voiced stops and fricative). Some other points argue in favour of T2: (i) De-voicing in non-"Polish" dialects While in "Polish" there is systematic and exceptionless devoicing of final stops and fricatives, there is also "sporadic" devoicing in the other dialects, in forms such as those mentioned: "arop", "tsvantsik", "milkhik" etc. This is perhaps not decisive evidence for a *shared* devoicing of final consonants, but it is certainly at least plausible that a common development might be involved. The fact that, to a varying extent, the different items that devoice in non-"Polish" dialects are, or may be, precisely those for which the reverse route (reconstruction of the "original" voiced consonant) becomes obscured *after devoicing has occurred*, raises difficult questions if the T1 position is adhered to. Furthermore, there is no obvious motivation for the devoicing of (some) final consonants in these dialects under the T1 hypothesis: the phonological system remains unaffected by sporadic devoicing, and there is no advantage with respect to the complexity of inflectional or derivational paradigms, which are largely unaffected by the development. (ii) Final /s/ and /z/ If my understanding of the situation with final /s/ and /z/ is correct, then this may constitute one of the strongest arguments in support of T2. OHG (from which the Germanic component of Yiddish is descended) did not have /z/ in word-final position. Eastern Yiddish word-final /s/ or /z/ can have the following sources (@ = schwa; "sz" is for "ess-zett" in German, now pronounced like /s/ (and sometimes spelt "ss") but historically distinct): (a) a final VOICELESS sibilant in OHG, compare e.g. German "Haus", SY /hoyz/ "house"; German "Nusz", SY /nus/ "nut"; German "grosz", SY /groys/ "big"; German "heraus", SY /aroys/ "out"; (b) a VOICELESS sibilant followed by a word-final vowel in OHG (Yiddish lost the final vowel), e.g. German "Gasse", SY /gas/ "street"; (c) a VOICED sibilant followed by a word-final vowel in OHG, e.g. German "boese", SY /beyz/ "wicked"; (d) a non-Germanic-origin VOICELESS final sibilant (including /s/ from lenited Hebrew /t/): Hebrew /ko:s/ > SY /kos/ "cup"; Hebrew /b@'ri:th/ > Ashkenaz Hebrew, SY /bris/ "covenant, circumcision"; (e) a non-Germanic-origin VOICED final sibilant: Hebrew /b at ro:'gez/ > SY /broyges/ "angry"; Hebrew /k at ru:z/ > SY /kruz/ "decree". An ultimately important point here is that in Germanic items which originally ended in a simple /*s/ in OHG, like /hu:s/, the sibilant is voiced when it became intervocalic through suffixation, cf. German "Haus" /haws/, plural "Häuser" /hojzer/. In other Germanic items ("Nusz", "Gasse", "boese") and all non-Germanic words there was originally no such voicing alternation. Yet in non-"Polish" Yiddish, "house" is /hoyz/ (plural /hayzer/, diminutive /hayzl/), and similarly /moyz/ "mouse" (diminutive /mayzl/), and so on. We also find /z/ in words with original final /z/ in about the same conditions in which these dialects keep (or restore) a final voiced stop, thus e.g. "beyz" (nominative masculine singular "beyzer"), "kruz" (plural "kruzim"), and /s/ elsewhere, i.e. not only when the sibilant was originally voiceless, e.g. "nus" (diminutive "nisl"), "gas" (plural "gasn", diminutive "gesl"), "kos" (plural "koyses"), but also where the sibilant was originally voiced but suffixed forms are lacking, e.g. "aroys", "broyges". (However, the verbs /muz/ "must", infinitive /muzn/, and /loz/ "let, leave", infinitive "lozn", seem to be exceptions; etymologically I believe we should expect /s/ here (cf. German "mueszen", "laszen"). Or does OHG intervocalic /sz/ regularly give Yiddish /z/??) Thus /s/ and /z/ by and large follow the pattern for other consonants that enter into these kinds of modifications, BUT the form "hoyz" can ONLY be explained as an analogical form reshaped after suffixed forms such as "hayzer", "hayzl". If, as T1 claims, voicing of final consonants in most dialects is merely a continuation of the original situation, then these dialects ought to have "*hoys", not "hoyz". ("Polish" Yiddish, of course, has /ho:s/, but /ha:zer/ etc.) But once we admit that Stage-B-type analogical voicing occured in the non-"Polish" dialects in the case of final /s/ (where there is NO "merger-reversal" since the original form was voiceless), there is no longer much point in resisting the idea that the same process took place, not only in words like "hoyz", but also in those like "veg", "vayb", "zog" and "hob" (where there IS, on that supposition, a "merger-reversal" since the original forms indeed had final voiced consonants). I end with a tabulation of some of the sibilant-final examples, unsuffixed and suffixed, in Standard Yiddish, by way of summary of the present point. * Singular Plural hoyz hayzer gas gasn kos koyses bris brisn kruz kruzim * First-person Infinitive muz muzn "must" (cf. German "muss", "muessen") es esn "eat" (cf. German "esse", "essen") * Predicative Masculine nominative singular beyz beyzer "wicked" (cf. German "boese") groys groyser "big" (cf. German "gross") * Base Diminutive hoyz hayzl gas gesl nus nisl From hiho at guarany.cpd.unb.br Wed Dec 2 17:45:43 1998 From: hiho at guarany.cpd.unb.br (Hildo) Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 12:45:43 EST Subject: -ia Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Dear colleagues, I've been looking for information about the suffix -ia which occurs in names of lands like ITALIA, GERMANIA, ALBANIA, FRANCIA, ANGLIA, HISPANIA, etc. Apparently it is associated to the Germanic -land (England, Deutschland, Lapland, etc.). Could any of you give information about -ia's etymology? Did it mean originally something like "the land of..."? In Brazilian Portuguese it is productive until now, e.g., Brasilia and others. Please, any information could be sent directly to my private e.mail. hiho at unb.br OR hiho at guarany.cpd.unb.br With best regards Hildo Honorio do Couto. From johncharles.smith at st-catherines.oxford.ac.uk Thu Dec 3 22:36:57 1998 From: johncharles.smith at st-catherines.oxford.ac.uk (John Charles Smith) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 17:36:57 EST Subject: Borrowing of Pronouns Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- In a paper recently published in Oceanic Linguistics (37:1 (1998), pp. 65-84), Mark Donohue and I reach the following conclusion, which may be of relevance to Dan Everett's query, although the borrowing does not involve the whole pronominal system: "Having shown that we have [in many varieties of Malay] a loss of the otherwise near-universal (among Austronesian languages) opposition between inclusive and exclusive first-person nonsingular pronouns, we can speculate on the reasons why it happens to be Malay/Indonesian that is the language so affected. It has long been established that varieties of Malay are prone to borrow pronouns from other sources; witness 1SG saya (< Sanskrit) in Standard Malay/Indonesian [...], 2SG ose (< Portuguese) in Ambonese Malay, 1SG gua (< Hokkien (Min) Chinese) in Betawi, 2SG lu (< Hokkien (Min) Chinese) in both Betawi and Kupang Malay, and yu (< English) in the formal speech of educated people in many regions. It is worth noting that none of these source languages, nor any of the other languages that have had a strong influence on the linguistic history of Malay/Indonesian, maintains an inclusive/exclusive distinction in the nonsingular pronouns. It is speculative, but tempting, to suggest that we have a case here of a linguistic paradigm (lack of opposition between inclusive and exclusive forms of the first-person nonsingular pronoun) being borrowed, without the form itself being transmitted." John Charles Smith -- ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ + + + John Charles Smith College Phone +44 1865 271700 + + St. Catherine's College Direct Line +44 1865 271748 + + Oxford OX1 3UJ UK College Fax +44 1865 271768 + + + + http://www.stcatz.ox.ac.uk/ + + + ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ From jhewson at morgan.ucs.mun.ca Thu Dec 3 16:58:30 1998 From: jhewson at morgan.ucs.mun.ca (John Hewson) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 11:58:30 EST Subject: Reversal of merger In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Larry Trask wrote: > > A possibly relevant case here is the change of /h/ to zero in English. > This has been pervasive in England for centuries, and it has gone to > completion in most vernacular accents, which no longer contrast /h/ > even variably with zero. This merger of /h/ with zero is continuing to > spread in vernacular speech: for example, it has now reached areas of > East Anglia which formerly retained a phoneme /h/. But it has not > become general in England, since prestige varieties continue to retain > many (not all) earlier instances of /h/, and hence we have a separate > line of descent to consider. As a footnote, it is interesting that we have, in fact, massive hypercorrection. The _h_ that occurs in the spelling of heir, hour, honest, and honour (and add herb for Americans) was never pronounced, these being borrowings from Old French. Alongside these we have all the French borrowings with initial _h_ (never pronounced in French because it had already been lost in Classical Latin) which are pronounced with /h-/ in Standard English and in those dialects that have preserved phonemic /h/. A good example is _humble_, from Latin _humilem_, /umile(m)/ already in Caesar's time, and found in the sixteenth century Book of Common Prayer in such phrases as "an humble and contrite heart", now pronounced, by those still familiar with this liturgy, with both _an_ and /h-/! ******************************************************************************* John Hewson, FRSC tel: (709)737-8131 Henrietta Harvey Professor of Linguistics fax: (709)737-4000 Memorial University of Newfoundland St. John's NF, CANADA A1B 3X9 ******************************************************************************* From Georg at home.ivm.de Thu Dec 3 14:24:51 1998 From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 09:24:51 EST Subject: -ia In-Reply-To: <9812021600.AA08216@guarany.cpd.unb.br> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >I've been looking for information about the suffix -ia which occurs in names >of lands like ITALIA, GERMANIA, ALBANIA, FRANCIA, ANGLIA, HISPANIA, etc. >Apparently it is associated to the Germanic -land (England, Deutschland, >Lapland, etc.). No, I wouldn't think so. This suffix can be traced back to Greek, whence it spread via learned Latin into most European (and some non-European) languages. In Greek, (accented) -ia is used for abstract nouns (eleutheria "freedom" from eleutheros "free") and country names. E.g. you have /phryx/ "a Phrygian" - /phrygios/ "Phrygian" - /phrygia/ "Phrygia"; or /Lydos/ - /Lydios/ - /Lydia/. It can be viewed as a specialization of the feminine (to the masc. -ios) for abstract nouns. -ios itself is best described as a denominal adjective formant conveying the meaning of a most general "belonging-to-"relation (/hesperios/ "belonging to, taking place at the evening (hesperos)"; this one of the most widespread derivational suffixes in Greek, and it is of Indo-European age, attested at least in Gk., Latin (/patrius/ : /pater/), Indo-Aryan (skt. /pitryah/ : /pita:/), Slavic (oblg. /materjI/ : /mater-/), Iranian (av. /gao-ya-/ "bovine, which belongs to the cow"), Armenian (/kog-i/ "butter, lit. the same "cow-thing"), and probably elsewhere, too. Sorry, no "land" here. Best, Stefan Georg Heerstrasse 7 D-53111 Bonn FRG +49-228-69-13-32 From Roger.Wright at liverpool.ac.uk Thu Dec 3 14:24:14 1998 From: Roger.Wright at liverpool.ac.uk (Roger Wright) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 09:24:14 EST Subject: Reversal of merger In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Re: Reversal of Merger; Isn't this a bit of a non-problem? All changes take a long time to complete; that is, it is rare for an old feature to disappear quickly after a new feature comes in, and there is no real need for the old feature to disappear at all; in all changes there is a long time when both the old and the new are around, and both intelligible. So the "reversal" is merely the decision not to adopt the new variant as the usual one after all, but keep instead the old variant, which is still there in the speech-community. It isn't even archaism, just a choice between competing variants; speakers don't know which is the older and which is the newer, of course, and if they are usually more likely to choose the newer and thereby institute the "change" (if indeed they feel a need to choose either, rather than just keeping both) that is merely because the reasons, whatever they were, for having a new alternative at all are likely to be still there at a later time too. (I can give examples if asked.) If we can just accept the validity of the basic sociolinguistic observation that variation is normal, natural, inevitable, desirable and even necessary, particularly but not only while there is a sound change in progress, then most of this problem just disappears; it just means that (unsurprisingly) the merger wasn't yet universal, so the old feature was still around in some places, people and styles, universally intelligible and available, but necessarily only in the words that had changed that way and not in those that hadn't. (There could, of course, be a further development; since changes involve a stage of competing alternatives, the result could even be that some older forms, that happen to have had the feature all along that was "new" in the case of those words that have changed, might eventually change to include the feature that was found to begin with in those words that initiated the change. That seems straightforward enough to the sociolinguists, I suppose, but not only to them; as Zonneveld said [A Formal Theory of Exceptions in Generative Phonology, Lisse, 1978], every sound change may in practice be competing against its exact opposite.) RW On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Larry Trask wrote: >----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Bh.Krishnamurti wrote: > >> Recent postings on the above theme have not shown a genuine case of >> reversal of merger. > >> 1. Most mergers create homonyms. In other words two or more words >> which contrast in a pair of phonemes will become homophonous when >> one of the phonemes merges with the other through sound change. >> After this event, no subsequent sound change will ever retrieve the >> two distinct words by recreating the lost contrast. If there are >> attested instances which appear to restore the lost contrast, that >> can happen through borrowing from an older or a different dialect >> which was not affected by the sound change in question. > >[snip of Telugu example] > >> The question is: Is there any language in which mergers which >> created homonyms were undone by a subsequent sound change. Henry >> Hoenigswald in his posting of Nov 27 clarified that in the >> neogrammarian framework, 'there is no room for reversal of merger by >> 'sound-change'.. > >Yes, in the Neogrammarian framework this is so. The irreversibility of >mergers by sound change has been widely accepted for generations; it was >formalized by Paul Garde in 1961, and Labov has dubbed it `Garde's >principle' -- perhaps unfortunately, since `Garde's principle' was >already in use for something quite different. > >However, none of the proposals in my provisional list contradicts this >principle, since none of them proposes that a merger has been reversed >merely by sound change. Every one of them concludes, for the particular >case(s) for which it was proposed, either that no merger ever occurred >or that a merger occurred and was then reversed by some means other than >sound change. > >> 'there was either no merger, or there is more than one line of >> descent'. Here lines of descent refer to different lines of >> transmission, either inheritance or borrowing. > >Yes; agreed, at least for most cases that have been discussed. But some >of the proposals in my list explicitly conclude either that no merger >occurred or that a merger was reversed by the influence of a different >line of descent. > >> 2. Reference has been made to the variability between merged and >> unmerged entities in the aftermath of a sound change. In all cases >> of lexical diffusion of a sound change, this happens normally. In >> certain Gondi dialects word initial s becomes h, and later h becomes >> 0. As we go through the affected lexical items, this two-step sound >> change is attested as s,s/h,h, h/0,0, in different words, in >> different social groups and in different areas. The variable items >> attest to the fact that the sound change is in progress. In the >> Southern dialects only 0 forms occur with the change totally >> accomplished and completely regular. This problem is treated in >> detail in a paper of mine which is published in *Language Variation >> and Change* 10:2.193-220. But please note a there is no case of >> reversal of a merger, i.e. s/h goes later to h and not to s, >> similarly, h/0 goest to 0 and not to h. > >>>From this I cannot tell what instance of a potential merger is being >examined. However, if there is a variable sound change of, say, /s/ to >/h/, then surely there remains the possibility that the variation will >eventually be resolved in favor of the original /s/, and that the >variant in /h/ will disappear. Indeed, I believe I have seen some such >cases reported in the literature, though I can't name one with certainty >off the top of my head -- but see the Australian case below. > >And, if the variable change of /s/ to /h/ threatens a merger with a >pre-existing /h/, then I see no reason why the original /s/ - /h/ >contrast should not be restored in this manner -- even if that's not >what happened in Gondi. > >A possibly relevant case here is the change of /h/ to zero in English. >This has been pervasive in England for centuries, and it has gone to >completion in most vernacular accents, which no longer contrast /h/ >even variably with zero. This merger of /h/ with zero is continuing to >spread in vernacular speech: for example, it has now reached areas of >East Anglia which formerly retained a phoneme /h/. But it has not >become general in England, since prestige varieties continue to retain >many (not all) earlier instances of /h/, and hence we have a separate >line of descent to consider. > >In Australia, though, things are different. There is evidence that the >merger of /h/ with zero was widespread in 19th-century Australia. >However, no doubt as a consequence of the influence of more prestigious >varieties which had not undergone the merger, that merger has now been >completely reversed in Australian English: today all Australian >varieties exhibit a robust contrast between /h/ and zero. > >> 3. Phoneme-like units in expressives, in my view, do not belong to >> the normal phonlogical system of a language. > >That depends. In some ancestral form of Basque, it is clear, the six >palatal and palato-alveolar consonants (hereafter `palatal' consonants) >never occurred in ordinary lexical items at all, but only in expressive >variants of these, or in expressive formations generally. At this >stage, it was true that the six consonants stood somewhat outside the >ordinary phonological system. But then things changed. > >For one thing, phonemes identical in phonetic nature to some of these >six occurred in some neighboring Romance languages, where they were >ordinary phonemes with no special value. Some Romance words containing >these segments were borrowed into Basque complete with their palatal >segments. The resulting loan words therefore contained the expressive >segments without possessing any expressive value. And, at this stage, >it was perhaps no longer possible to maintain that the palatal segments >in Basque still lay outside the ordinary phonological system, since they >occurred in everyday words of non-expressive nature. At the same time, >of course, the six segments still retained their expressive value in >native words. > >Still later, in Michelena's account, the historical /j/ merged with the >expressive segment [esh], notated , thereby producing a state of >affairs in which some instances of were expressive while others were >not. At this point, I think, it was hardly possible to maintain that >the consonant still lay outside the ordinary phonological system, >even though some instances of it still retained expressive value. > >Finally, please note that in none of my postings (apart from my >endorsement of Michelena's account of the Basque case) have I been >trying to argue that mergers either can or cannot be reversed by any >means at all. My only purpose is to compile a list of the accounts of >*apparent* reversals of merger which have been reported in the >literature, whether or not these accounts posit any genuine reversal of >merger. > >By the way, I now have a seventh proposal, thanks to Laura Wright. >Simplifying somewhat, she suggests that a case of apparent merger may in >fact represent no merger at all in speech, but merely a failure of the >imperfect orthography to distinguish two phonemes which remained >distinct in speech. > >Larry Trask >COGS >University of Sussex >Brighton BN1 9QH >UK > >larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk > From mcv at wxs.nl Thu Dec 3 14:20:35 1998 From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 09:20:35 EST Subject: reversal of merger (Yiddish final consonants) (LONG) In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19981202161448.006e7bd4@pop3.redestb.es> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- "Alan R. King" wrote: >In "Polish" Yiddish >there is general devoicing of word-final stops and fricatives, but not in >the other varieties ["Ukrainian", "Lithuanian"], in which final voiced and >voiceless consonants contrast. It is interesting to note that standard Ukrainian (as opposed to Polish, Russian and Bielorussian) also maintains the voiced-voiceless ditinction word-finally. Whether in Ukrainian this is an archaism or an innovation is hard to say (the spelling is obviously influenced by Russian, and there aren't that many undeclinable words in Slavic to begin with), but my guess would be that's it's a retention. I don't know about Lithuanian, but Latvian also does not devoice final voiced consonants. ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From jacob.baltuch at euronet.be Thu Dec 3 14:15:51 1998 From: jacob.baltuch at euronet.be (Jacob Baltuch) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 09:15:51 EST Subject: Q: Early Modern English (bibliographic suggestions) Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I'm interested in finding some basic references on Early Modern English (syntax, phonology) that also contain good bibliographical pointers to the rest of the litterature. I could only find the following titles which would seem to fit the bill (although since I haven't seen them, I don't know if they really do). I'd be interested to know what you think of them and if you can think of other suggestions (for J.J.Smith's book, which doesn't exist yet, that would presuppose someone familiar with its content is present on this list) Jeremy J. Smith, Essentials of early English, Routledge, (to appear in 1999) Manfred Gorlach, Introduction to early modern English, Cambridge UP, 1991 (a translation of Gorlach's book in German? why is it 100 pages longer?) George Stuart Gordon, Shakespeare's English, (publisher?), 1978 (in fact this seems to be merely a translation of a 1928 work?) Specifically for phonetics I could only find: Inge Kabell (and others), Studies in early modern English pronunciation, Atheneum, 1984 Helge Kokeritz, Shakespeare's pronunciation, Yale UP, 1953 Wilhelm Vietor, Shakespeare's pronunciation, AMS Press, 1973 (a translation of a 1906 book it seems) (and there was also a book by Jespersen whose reference I forgot) Thanks Jacob From jacob.baltuch at euronet.be Thu Dec 3 14:14:31 1998 From: jacob.baltuch at euronet.be (Jacob Baltuch) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 09:14:31 EST Subject: Q: speech synthesis and historical phonology Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I'll be grateful for any responses to the following questions: Has anyone ever seen any work drawing both on speech synthesis and historical phonology? Do historical phonologists show any interest in results and technologies from the field of speech synthesis? Can any see any use in them at all for their field? (If yes, I'd be interested in examples) Best Jacob From mccay at redestb.es Thu Dec 3 14:13:36 1998 From: mccay at redestb.es (Alan R. King) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 09:13:36 EST Subject: reversal of merger (general remarks) Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- The general drift of my argument when I casually introduced this issue with specific reference to the English /mate - meat - meet/ problem was that, of the various attempts at explanation of the "merger reversal", my hunch (merely a hunch) is that the ultimate decision is going to be in favour of a "sociolinguistic" explanation, i.e. one which crucially involves relations or interactions between competing, synchronically overlapping varieties (registers, styles...) and, at some stage, either the *substitution* of (some element of) one phonological subsystem for another within some variety (no doubt a prestige variety, given that it has come to our attention at all!), or alternatively the *displacement* in some range of functions (again including prestige functions, for the same reason) of one variety by another within the larger sociolinguistic picture. In other words, I suspect that the problem will be found to exemplify the need for historical linguistic explanation to encompass a consideration of "diachronic sociolinguistics", if such a thing can exist, and I don't see why on earth it shouldn't, except that data may often be lacking! :-) I'm not trying to be defeatist, only faithful to linguistic reality past and present. If I am right that merger reversal is a "sociolinguistic" process, similar processes are no doubt in progress all over the place right now, but without the historical perspective (particularly the "benefits" of distance) maybe they "look" different. First of all, from close up, general trends may tend to come first to our attention as individual variation. When I start to think I can easily come up with numerous examples of present-day processes involving substitution of specific dialect features (rather than out-and-out dialect substitution) in connection with various register alternations (often associated with various degrees of diglossia and so on), prescriptivistically motivated restructurings, "rectifications" endorsed by educational establishments often in conjunction with literacy training, etc. in which the sum effect is some sort of "restoration" of "lost" distinctions, in other words, in some sense, "merger reversal". In English, millions of native speakers learn (or try to learn) in school to restore /h/ as part of their phonology, and to differentiate between word-final /n/ and /N/ (i.e. -n versus -ng); in my time at least, there was still pressure (largely futile?) from school teachers to also "unmerge" /w-/ and /hw-/; for speakers of Cockney, there is similar unmerging of /f/ and /th/, and of /v/ and /dh/; and I'm sure the list could go on and on. Some Spanish (or Castilian) speakers of European varieties, where the standard or prestige norm is to keep the phonemes /s/ and /th/ distinct although these have merged in some dialects, probably similarly go through the "educational" process of "reversing" the merger. (The same is not true of the long lost /b/ versus /v/ distinction, which is scarcely ever realized in pronunciation (and then artificially and highly pedantically, at least if we're talking about native Castilian speakers). But just suppose the school establishment got it into their heads to "correct" this pronunciation "defect" on a large scale (stranger things *have* happened); I don't think it implausible that in that unlikely event, a future generation of Spanish speakers might actually start "unmerging" the two pseudo-phonemes in normal speech. Interestingly, the result would be anti-historical, since the present-day Spanish spelling, which keeps both letters, is badly unetymological in the way it has (re-)distributed them across the lexicon.) Obviously I'm not saying the social mechanisms for the *spread* of these phonological "restorations" were the same in the past as they tend to be now, just that the "restoration" phenomenon itself is presumably an ancient sociolinguistic kind of process, many modern variants of which may be observable all around us. On the subject of other (possible) examples of merger reversal, I am particularly happy that the problem of Yiddish final consonants has been brought up, as it has long interested me. I have posted a long contribution on the subject separately. The Michelena Basque example, which I'm glad to see Larry has now presented explicitly for the benefit of this discussion, is in my opinion another interesting and challenging issue which has not been very widely debated (understandably, since expertise in Basque is scarce and most Basque experts themselves/ourselves seem to have been preoccupied with more pressing problems), and which could perhaps both profit from fresh theoretical investigation and contribute to the body of existing theory. Any new suggestions? Alan From faber at haskins.yale.edu Fri Dec 4 12:22:31 1998 From: faber at haskins.yale.edu (Alice Faber) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 07:22:31 EST Subject: Q: speech synthesis and historical phonology Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Jacob Baltuch asks: >Has anyone ever seen any work drawing both on speech synthesis >and historical phonology? Do historical phonologists show any >interest in results and technologies from the field of speech >synthesis? Can any see any use in them at all for their field? >(If yes, I'd be interested in examples) Do you mean speech synthesis in particular, or instrumental phonetics in general? If the former, I'm not sure I see the application, except insofar as perception experiments using synthetic stimuli might shed light on particular phonetic confusions that might have in a particular instance given rise to a sound change. Speaking only for myself, now, I started off as a historical phonologist, working primarily on Semitic languages. As a result of trying to limit myself to phonetically plausible reconstructions of sound systems and phonological changes, I found myself very interested in questions of phonetic naturalness, and would have to describe my current work as more phonetics than historical phonology. I see a continuity in my work that others, perhaps, might not see. I view this kind of use of phonetic data in reconstruction as comparable to use of typological information; if you're reconstructing a phonological inventory that doesn't look like any attested modern inventory, you'd better have some pretty good evidence for bucking the typological trend. There are also phoneticians who see in the inventory of sound changes that have demonstrably taken place a "laboratory" for testing theories of phonetics. I'm thinking here primarily of Ohala, though he's certainly not the only one to make heavy use of such evidence. This is all relevant, of course, for the near merger/meat-mate/Basque discussion, which I haven't commented on because it overlaps so heavily with work that I should be putting the finishing touches on for submitting for publication. However, it's worth pointing out that in some of the instances under discussion, acoustic measurements have been made and perceptual judgements solicited. I know that some Histling-ers are familiar with much or all of that literature, but I'd be glad to provide references for anyone who isn't. The short version is that the results are not unambiguous and that, as Labov and others have shown, native speaker intuitions about whether they pronounce two words differently or not aren't always reliable. I'd love to see some instrumental data from Basque dialects in which the putative fricative merger took place; in my view, that's the most reliable way of knowing for sure that there was in fact a merger. Of course, the fact that the relevant dialect might have been spoken several hundred years ago would make that somewhat difficult, alas. [posted to histling & (I hope) mailed to original questioner] Alice Faber Haskins Laboratories http://www.haskins.yale.edu From mccay at redestb.es Fri Dec 4 12:23:06 1998 From: mccay at redestb.es (Alan R. King) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 07:23:06 EST Subject: reversal of merger (Yiddish) Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I (Alan King) wrote: >>In "Polish" Yiddish >>there is general devoicing of word-final stops and fricatives, but not in >>the other varieties ["Ukrainian", "Lithuanian"], in which final voiced and >>voiceless consonants contrast. Miguel Carrasquer Vidal replied: >It is interesting to note that standard Ukrainian (as opposed to >Polish, Russian and Bielorussian) also maintains the voiced-voiceless >ditinction word-finally. Whether in Ukrainian this is an archaism or >an innovation is hard to say (the spelling is obviously influenced by >Russian, and there aren't that many undeclinable words in Slavic to >begin with), but my guess would be that's it's a retention. I don't >know about Lithuanian, but Latvian also does not devoice final voiced >consonants. This is not to belittle Miguel's welcome observations, just to put them into full perspective. The traditional, popular dialect division names "Polish", "Lithuanian" and "Ukrainian" only reflect very partially indeed the full territorial reality of Yiddish in its original habitat. Each dialect was spoken across various national and linguistic borders (the former have constantly varied anyway!) and together they cover the whole area between Riga and Bucharest, Warsaw and Odessa. By no means all parts of "Ukrainian" Yiddish had contact with Ukrainian as a coterritorial language, nor of "Lithuanian" Yiddish with Lithuanian. Hence my scare quotes throughout, though it didn't point this out explicitly. Thus the question of contact or areal relations between Yiddish and the various non-Jewish East European languages is a pretty complex one. But yes, of course such comparisons are relevant, potentially highly so. In many ways across the lexicon and syntax, Slavic etc. influence on Eastern Yiddish is in evidence, providing yet another source of differentiation between Yiddish and German, even though Yiddish retains a majority of basic Germanic characteristics at all levels, of course. From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Fri Dec 4 12:25:18 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 07:25:18 EST Subject: Q: Early Modern English (bibliographic suggestions) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Thu, 3 Dec 1998, Jacob Baltuch wrote: > I'm interested in finding some basic references on Early Modern English > (syntax, phonology) that also contain good bibliographical pointers to > the rest of the litterature. I could only find the following titles which > would seem to fit the bill (although since I haven't seen them, I don't > know if they really do). [snip] There is a standard university textbook of Early Modern English, now in its second edition; this has a sizeable bibliography, though only a minority of the items in it are specifically about ENE: Charles Barber (1997), Early Modern English, 2nd ed., Edinburgh University Press. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From mfceprh at fs1.art.man.ac.uk Fri Dec 4 12:26:22 1998 From: mfceprh at fs1.art.man.ac.uk (Richard Hogg) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 07:26:22 EST Subject: Q: Early Modern English (bibliographic suggestions) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On 3 Dec 98 at 9:15, Jacob Baltuch wrote: > Original message---------------------------- >I'm interested in finding some > basic references on Early Modern English (syntax, phonology) that > also contain good bibliographical pointers to the rest of the > litterature. I could only find the following titles which would seem > to fit the bill (although since I haven't seen them, I don't know if > they really do). The bibliography is massive, I'm afraid. For the relative beginner an excellent start is: Barbara Strang, A History of English, 1970 (the best one-volume history) For the more specialist then: Eric Dobson English Pronunciation 1500-1700, 1968 is the starting point for phonology For syntax an excellent start can be made with my colleague David Denison's work: English Historical Syntax, 1993 which is packed with further references. And of course almost anything by Roger Lass with give you hours of fun! The problem is not that there's not enough, quite the reverse. > Jeremy J. Smith, Essentials of early English, Routledge, (to appear > in 1999) Jeremy has a first class work published in 1996, but my copy is at work and I can't remember the exact title (old age!!). You could get hold of that! Also most libraries should have: Michael Samuels, Linguistic Evolution, 1972 The Gorlach book is a straight translation according to the title page. > George Stuart Gordon, Shakespeare's English, (publisher?), 1978 (in > fact this seems to be merely a translation of a 1928 work?) I have never read this I'm afraid. > Specifically for phonetics I could only find: > > Inge Kabell (and others), Studies in early modern English > pronunciation, Atheneum, 1984 If my memory serves me (unlikely), this is the proceedings of the DEMEP symposium, but that work is also at work, so there are no guarantees. You might also note that volume 3 of The Cambridge History of the English is due out, we hope, in late 1999. Volume 4 is due out early in 1999: CHEL 3, 1476-1776, ed. Roger Lass CHEL 4, 1776-present day, ed. Suzanne Romaine (Vols 1 and 2 were published in 1992, Volume 5 in 1994. David Denison and I are edited "A History of English" for CUP, due circa 2001. Hope this helps. Richard (General Editor, Cambridge History of the English Language) *************************************************************************** Richard M. Hogg Tel: +44 (0)161-275-3164 Dept of English & American Studies Fax: +44 (0)161-275-3256 University of Manchester e-mail: r.m.hogg at man.ac.uk Oxford Road home: +44 (0)161-941-1931 Manchester M13 9PL web: http://www.art.man.english/staff/rmh/home.htm *************************************************************************** From mcv at wxs.nl Fri Dec 4 16:57:36 1998 From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 11:57:36 EST Subject: Q: speech synthesis and historical phonology In-Reply-To: <3672dab9.71229795@mail.wxs.nl> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) wrote: >They merge /x/ and /j/ there. Oops, and (as /S/). ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From faber at haskins.yale.edu Fri Dec 4 16:56:06 1998 From: faber at haskins.yale.edu (Alice Faber) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 11:56:06 EST Subject: Q: speech synthesis and historical phonology Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Miguel Carrasquer Vidal > Alice Faber wrote: > >I'd love to see > >some instrumental data from Basque dialects in which the putative fricative > >merger took place; in my view, that's the most reliable way of knowing for > >sure that there was in fact a merger. Of course, the fact that the relevant > >dialect might have been spoken several hundred years ago would make that > >somewhat difficult, alas. > > Not at all. One would merely have to change the destination of the > field trip from, say, gorgeous Donostia [San Sebastian] (occasional > strolls along the Concha beach, zuritos and tapas in the Old Town in > between collecting instrumental data), to the no less gorgeous > Pyrinees just north of Iruinea [Pamplona] (July/August, when the > villages tend to have their Fiesta Mayor would do nicely). They > merge /x/ and /j/ there. Of course it might be easier to get the funding for such a field trip in a less attractive time of year. All kidding aside, I'm not likely to get to Spain in the immediate future, but I do have access to excellent acoustic analysis software (and I know what to do with it), so if anyone else can record an appropriate data set, let's talk about it. > [I'm sorry, but it's cold in Amsterdam] 65 F and getting warmer here in Connecticut. (Sorry for gloating...we'll probably have 3 feet of snow in March). Alice Faber From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Fri Dec 4 16:54:54 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 11:54:54 EST Subject: Q: speech synthesis and historical phonology In-Reply-To: <98120318293023@haskins.yale.edu> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Fri, 4 Dec 1998, Alice Faber wrote: > The short version is that the results are not unambiguous and that, > as Labov and others have shown, native speaker intuitions about > whether they pronounce two words differently or not aren't always > reliable. I'd love to see some instrumental data from Basque > dialects in which the putative fricative merger took place; in my > view, that's the most reliable way of knowing for sure that there > was in fact a merger. Of course, the fact that the relevant dialect > might have been spoken several hundred years ago would make that > somewhat difficult, alas. Yes, there is no possibility of obtaining any data from the Gipuzkoan of several centuries ago, beyond what was written down. In the south of Gipuzkoa, there is a region in which the historical /j/ has merged with . Unfortunately, I know of no instrumental work on this variety. Observers of varying backgrounds have consistently reported the merger here. I myself used to know a native speaker of this variety, and he insisted that there was no difference for him between the two historically different segments, nor could I detect a difference myself in his speech. This is not ironclad proof, but it's all we've got. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From jrader at m-w.com Fri Dec 4 16:54:32 1998 From: jrader at m-w.com (Jim Rader) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 11:54:32 EST Subject: reversal of merger (Yiddish final consonants) Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- At least in Standard Lithuanian, voiced stops and fricatives are devoiced in Auslaut, so that has a final [k] and a final [s^]. Jim Rader > "Alan R. King" wrote: > > >In "Polish" Yiddish > >there is general devoicing of word-final stops and fricatives, but not in > >the other varieties ["Ukrainian", "Lithuanian"], in which final voiced and > >voiceless consonants contrast. > > It is interesting to note that standard Ukrainian (as opposed to > Polish, Russian and Bielorussian) also maintains the voiced-voiceless > ditinction word-finally. Whether in Ukrainian this is an archaism or > an innovation is hard to say (the spelling is obviously influenced by > Russian, and there aren't that many undeclinable words in Slavic to > begin with), but my guess would be that's it's a retention. I don't > know about Lithuanian, but Latvian also does not devoice final voiced > consonants. > > > ======================= > Miguel Carrasquer Vidal > mcv at wxs.nl > Amsterdam > From mcv at wxs.nl Fri Dec 4 16:54:13 1998 From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 11:54:13 EST Subject: Q: speech synthesis and historical phonology In-Reply-To: <98120318293023@haskins.yale.edu> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Alice Faber wrote: >I'd love to see >some instrumental data from Basque dialects in which the putative fricative >merger took place; in my view, that's the most reliable way of knowing for >sure that there was in fact a merger. Of course, the fact that the relevant >dialect might have been spoken several hundred years ago would make that >somewhat difficult, alas. Not at all. One would merely have to change the destination of the field trip from, say, gorgeous Donostia [San Sebastian] (occasional strolls along the Concha beach, zuritos and tapas in the Old Town in between collecting instrumental data), to the no less gorgeous Pyrinees just north of Iruinea [Pamplona] (July/August, when the villages tend to have their Fiesta Mayor would do nicely). They merge /x/ and /j/ there. [I'm sorry, but it's cold in Amsterdam] ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From bjarne.birkrem at iba.uio.no Fri Dec 4 16:53:43 1998 From: bjarne.birkrem at iba.uio.no (Bjarne Birkrem) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 11:53:43 EST Subject: Q: Early Modern English (bibliographic suggestions) Message-ID: A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 1199 bytes Desc: not available URL: From henryh at ling.upenn.edu Sat Dec 5 16:41:54 1998 From: henryh at ling.upenn.edu (Henry M. Hoenigswald) Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 11:41:54 EST Subject: Merger Reersed Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Yes, a non-problem is precisely what the whole thing is. By the way, the speakers' intuition is not a Harrisian pair test though it may be the inchoate form of one. That, however, doesn't help. Though the difficulties in administering a pair test are notorious, that is a blemish only if you believe that there 'is' a 'same' / 'different' dichotomy up in the heavens, a fact of nature waiting to be detected. If the pair test is inconclusive, that's what the language is like. No use blaming the intuition or the test. From DISTERH at UNIVSCVM.SC.EDU Sat Dec 12 11:57:02 1998 From: DISTERH at UNIVSCVM.SC.EDU (Dorothy Disterheft) Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 06:57:02 EST Subject: Historical Linguistics 1997 Message-ID: Historical Linguistics 1997 Selected Papers from ICHL XIII, Duesseldorf, 10-17 August 1997 Edited by Monika S. Schmid, Jennifer R. Austin and Dieter Stein "Historical Linguistics 1997" represents a rigorously reviewed selection of papers presented at the 13th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. The proceedings offer a window on the current state of the art in historical linguistics: They cover a wide range of different languages, different language families, and different approaches to the study of linguistic change, ranging from optimality theory, theories of grammaticalization and the invisible hand, treatments of language contact and creolization to the linguistic consequences of political correctness. Among the languages under discussion are Akkadian, Catalan, Dutch, Finnish, Japanese, Sranan, Western Malayo-Polynesian, Yiddish, and a variety of Romance and Native American languages. Contributions by: Arleta Adamska-Sa=AFaciak, Barry J. Blake, Adrienne Bruyn, Vit Bubenik, Kate Burridge, Michela Cennamo, Wallace Chafe, Bridget Drinka, Elaine Gold, Haike Jacobs, Thera de Jong, Fusa Katada, Jurgen Klausenburger, Ane Kleine, Bernd Kortmann, Arjan van Leuvensteijn, Martin Maiden, Kenjir=F4 Matsuda, Donka Minkova, Marianne Mithun, Salikoko S. Mufwene, Ellen F. Prince, Taru Salminen, Caroline Smits, Isabel Verdaguer & Anna Poch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Monika S. Schmid Anglistik III Geb. 23.21 Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet Duesseldorf Universitaetsstr. 1 40225 Duesseldorf phone: +(49)-211-81-13774 fax: +(49)-211-81-13026 http://ang3-11.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/~schmid/ From DISTERH at UNIVSCVM.SC.EDU Mon Dec 14 21:12:59 1998 From: DISTERH at UNIVSCVM.SC.EDU (Dorothy Disterheft) Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 16:12:59 EST Subject: HISTLING archives Message-ID: Dear colleagues, I am happy to announce that, through the generosity of Anthony Aristar and other folks at the LINGUIST list, the archives of HISTLING are now available on that website and may be searched. You may access the archives either by going directly to http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/histling.html or by going through the LINGUIST homepage at www.linguistlist.org. >From there, you will find the link to HISTLING under The Profession; click on Lists Archived and you will see HISTLING on the list. If you do not have web access, you may continue to search the archives by sending the commands described in the HISTLING information file to listserv at vm.sc.edu. As most of you already know, the Aristar, Dry, et al. team provide many valuable services to the linguistics profession. If you have chance to talk/write to them, please let them know how much we as historical linguists appreciate this latest good deed. Dorothy Disterheft Moderator, HISTLING Secretary, International Society for Historical Linguistics From llidop at gusun.georgetown.edu Mon Dec 14 23:19:30 1998 From: llidop at gusun.georgetown.edu (Paul Llido) Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 18:19:30 EST Subject: lexico-statistics Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Where may I get a reading list on lexico-statistics? I was introduced to it through SWADESH. Was SWADESH's list of universal words supported by research? Thanks for any reply, Paul *********************************************************************** **************************************************** Paul C. LLIDO * ******************************* e-mail: llidop at gusun.georgetown.edu * **** Georgetown University (Graduate School - Dept. of Linguistics) * *********************************************************************** From compling at juno.com Thu Dec 17 02:26:22 1998 From: compling at juno.com (C Hogan) Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 21:26:22 EST Subject: lexico-statistics Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >Where may I get a reading list on lexico-statistics? I was >introduced to it through SWADESH. I do have such a bibliography that I copied out of the following book: Embleton, Sheila. Statistics in Historical Linguistics. Quantitative Linguistics vol. 30. Bochum: Studienverlag. 1986. It is quite substantial; can you supply a FAX number that I can use to send it to you? Or maybe a snailmail address. btw, that book is itself pretty interesting: Embleton proposes an extended version of lexicostatistics that takes into account borrowing and other factors. Unfortunately there is absolutely no way that the necessary parameters could be estimated (a problem with the convential method as well). >Was SWADESH's list of universal >words supported by research? My understanding is that his words lists were supported by research, but that the number of languages he used wasn't nearly enough to be "conclusive". --chris ____________________ christopher m. hogan compling at juno.com pittsburgh, pa ___________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866] From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Thu Dec 17 02:28:36 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 21:28:36 EST Subject: lexico-statistics In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Well, no one else has replied to this, so I'll have a go. On Mon, 14 Dec 1998, Paul Llido wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > Where may I get a reading list on lexico-statistics? I was > introduced to it through SWADESH. Was SWADESH's list of universal words > supported by research? There is probably a lot more published work on glottochronology than on lexicostatistics per se. Moreover, some people use the two terms interchangeably, which I consider unfortunate: gc has a time element, while ls does not. First, Swadesh's own work. The following book contains a complete bibliography of Swadesh's published (and unpublished) work: Morris Swadesh. 1971. The Origin and Diversification of Language. Joel Sherzer (ed.) London: Routledge. Swadesh's publications on the topic began in 1950, I think, and you can follow his thinking through a series of publications. The classic article is this: Sarah C. Gudschinsky. 1956. `The ABCs of lexicostatistics (glottochronology)'. Word 12: 175-220. Discussion and references can be found in the following book: Sheila Embleton. 1986. Statistics in Historical Linguistics. Bochum: Brockmeyer. There are two recent encyclopedia articles which summarize the topic and present some of the most important references (sorry; I have stupidly lost the volume numbers): Sheila Embleton. 1992. `Historical linguistics: mathematical concepts'. In William Bright (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, vol. damn, pp. 131-135, Oxford: Oxford. William S.-Y. Wang. 1994. `Glottochronology, lexicostatistics, and other numerical methods'. In R. E. Asher and J. M. Y. Simpson (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, vol. damn, pp. 1445-1450, Oxford: Pergamon. As for the universal validity of Swadesh's lists, this has been very severely questioned on a number of grounds. People continue to use Swadesh's lists, since no other list appears to have a better claim to universality, but specialists in particular families or areas have sometimes drawn up their own lists. For example, somebody (I forget who) has drawn up a list of words appropriate for working with in southeast Asia. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu Thu Dec 17 18:19:40 1998 From: delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu (Scott DeLancey) Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 13:19:40 EST Subject: lexico-statistics In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, Larry Trask wrote: > As for the universal validity of Swadesh's lists, this has been very > severely questioned on a number of grounds. People continue to use > Swadesh's lists, since no other list appears to have a better claim to > universality, but specialists in particular families or areas have > sometimes drawn up their own lists. For example, somebody (I forget > who) has drawn up a list of words appropriate for working with in > southeast Asia. That's Jim Matisoff's CALMSEA (Culturally Appropriate Lexicostatistical Model for SouthEast Asia), presented in his Variational Semantics in Tibeto-Burman (ISHI, 1978). I don't know what kind of research may have gone into Swadesh's lists, but, as Matisoff points out, the 200-list contains, for example, both 'ice' and 'snow', which are hardly universal core vocabulary, as well as 'at' and 'in', which concepts are undoubtedly expressed in every language, but not universally by distinct words dedicated explicitly to those meanings, and words like 'cut', which have no single equivalent in many languages. Scott DeLancey Department of Linguistics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html From hubeyh at Montclair.edu Fri Dec 18 12:31:49 1998 From: hubeyh at Montclair.edu (H. M. Hubey) Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 07:31:49 EST Subject: lexico-statistics Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Larry Trask wrote: > -As for the universal validity of Swadesh's lists, this has been very > severely questioned on a number of grounds. People continue to use > Swadesh's lists, since no other list appears to have a better claim to > universality, but specialists in particular families or areas have > sometimes drawn up their own lists. For example, somebody (I forget > who) has drawn up a list of words appropriate for working with in > southeast Asia. The simplest way to cure this problem, using common sense, is to make the list longer. That is how the effect of errors is minimized. There are basically two principles in use: 1. Some words should not be used (i.e. high-tech words) 2. We should use words that likely existed very long ago. Both of these are the opposite sides of the same coin. If words like snow and ice are no good for the tropics then these words should not exist. If they exist then they were borrowed or the people possibly kept memories of the words alive. If they were all borrowed from related languages then they will resemble each other, but if the languages are being compared only to each other then it does not really matter. It would matter if we were comparing some of these languages to other language families (such as IE) from which they could have been borrowed. The basic concepts of statistics are based on this. The greater the sample the smaller the uncertainty in the result. The smaller the sample, the greater the uncertainty of the result. -- M. Hubey Email: hubeyh at Montclair.edu Backup:hubeyh at alpha.montclair.edu WWW Page: http://www.csam.montclair.edu/Faculty/Hubey.html From bhk at hd1.vsnl.net.in Wed Dec 2 12:26:26 1998 From: bhk at hd1.vsnl.net.in (Bh.Krishnamurti) Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 07:26:26 EST Subject: Reversal of merger Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Recent postings on the above theme have not shown a genuine case of reversal of merger. 1. Most mergers create homonyms. In other words two or more words which contrast in a pair of phonemes will become homophonous when one of the phonemes merges with the other through sound change. After this event, no subsequent sound change will ever retrieve the two distinct words by recreating the lost contrast. If there are attested instances which appear to restore the lost contrast, that can happen through borrowing from an older or a different dialect which was not affected by the sound change in question. As an example, Early Telugu had CV.., and CrV... (C-= obstruent); a sound change occurred in Middle Telugu by which all instances of Cr- became C- (loss of r or merger of r with zero), pra:ta > pa:ta 'old', krotta > kotta 'new', gruDDu > guDDu 'eyeball' (which became homophonous with guDDu 'egg'). Some modern Telugu writers occasionally use the r-forms under the influence of the classical dialect but it is not a case of reversal of merger. The question is: Is there any language in which mergers which created homonyms were undone by a subsequent sound change. Henry Hoenigswald in his posting of Nov 27 clarified that in the neogrammarian framework, 'there is no room for reversal of merger by 'sound-change'..'there was either no merger, or there is more than one line of descent'. Here lines of descent refer to different lines of transmission, either inheritance or borrowing. 2. Reference has been made to the variability between merged and unmerged entities in the aftermath of a sound change. In all cases of lexical diffusion of a sound change, this happens normally. In certain Gondi dialects word initial s becomes h, and later h becomes 0. As we go through the affected lexical items, this two-step sound change is attested as s,s/h,h, h/0,0, in different words, in different social groups and in different areas. The variable items attest to the fact that the sound change is in progress. In the Southern dialects only 0 forms occur with the change totally accomplished and completely regular. This problem is treated in detail in a paper of mine which is published in *Language Variation and Change* 10:2.193-220. But please note a there is no case of reversal of a merger, i.e. s/h goes later to h and not to s, similarly, h/0 goest to 0 and not to h. 3. Phoneme-like units in expressives, in my view, do not belong to the normal phonlogical system of a language. Bh.K. ___________________________ Bhadriraju Krishnamurti H.No. 12-13-1233, "Bhaarati" Street 9, Tarnaka Hyderabad 500017 Telephone:40-7019665 From dever+ at pitt.edu Wed Dec 2 17:47:01 1998 From: dever+ at pitt.edu (Daniel L Everett) Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 12:47:01 EST Subject: Piraha Pronouns Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Folks, Claims about pronoun borrowing are controversial and purported cases are rare. Sally Thomason and I have recently written a very brief paper arguing that the pronouns of Piraha, an Amazonian language, were borrowed from Tupi-Guarani. In this paper, we also mention other cases of pronoun borrowing, from individual pronouns to entire pronoun systems (as in Piraha). This paper is posted on the Piraha webpage: http://amazonling.linguist.pitt.edu Your comments would be welcome. However, the main reason for posting this information to LinguistList is to ask if readers of LinguistList are aware of any other cases of pronoun borrowing, especially cases involving the borrowing of the entire pronominal system from one language to another. I will post a summary if there are cases not already listed in our paper. - Dan Everett From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Wed Dec 2 17:46:49 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 12:46:49 EST Subject: Reversal of merger In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.16.19981202123412.2817b236@hd1.vsnl.net.in> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Bh.Krishnamurti wrote: > Recent postings on the above theme have not shown a genuine case of > reversal of merger. > 1. Most mergers create homonyms. In other words two or more words > which contrast in a pair of phonemes will become homophonous when > one of the phonemes merges with the other through sound change. > After this event, no subsequent sound change will ever retrieve the > two distinct words by recreating the lost contrast. If there are > attested instances which appear to restore the lost contrast, that > can happen through borrowing from an older or a different dialect > which was not affected by the sound change in question. [snip of Telugu example] > The question is: Is there any language in which mergers which > created homonyms were undone by a subsequent sound change. Henry > Hoenigswald in his posting of Nov 27 clarified that in the > neogrammarian framework, 'there is no room for reversal of merger by > 'sound-change'.. Yes, in the Neogrammarian framework this is so. The irreversibility of mergers by sound change has been widely accepted for generations; it was formalized by Paul Garde in 1961, and Labov has dubbed it `Garde's principle' -- perhaps unfortunately, since `Garde's principle' was already in use for something quite different. However, none of the proposals in my provisional list contradicts this principle, since none of them proposes that a merger has been reversed merely by sound change. Every one of them concludes, for the particular case(s) for which it was proposed, either that no merger ever occurred or that a merger occurred and was then reversed by some means other than sound change. > 'there was either no merger, or there is more than one line of > descent'. Here lines of descent refer to different lines of > transmission, either inheritance or borrowing. Yes; agreed, at least for most cases that have been discussed. But some of the proposals in my list explicitly conclude either that no merger occurred or that a merger was reversed by the influence of a different line of descent. > 2. Reference has been made to the variability between merged and > unmerged entities in the aftermath of a sound change. In all cases > of lexical diffusion of a sound change, this happens normally. In > certain Gondi dialects word initial s becomes h, and later h becomes > 0. As we go through the affected lexical items, this two-step sound > change is attested as s,s/h,h, h/0,0, in different words, in > different social groups and in different areas. The variable items > attest to the fact that the sound change is in progress. In the > Southern dialects only 0 forms occur with the change totally > accomplished and completely regular. This problem is treated in > detail in a paper of mine which is published in *Language Variation > and Change* 10:2.193-220. But please note a there is no case of > reversal of a merger, i.e. s/h goes later to h and not to s, > similarly, h/0 goest to 0 and not to h. >>From this I cannot tell what instance of a potential merger is being examined. However, if there is a variable sound change of, say, /s/ to /h/, then surely there remains the possibility that the variation will eventually be resolved in favor of the original /s/, and that the variant in /h/ will disappear. Indeed, I believe I have seen some such cases reported in the literature, though I can't name one with certainty off the top of my head -- but see the Australian case below. And, if the variable change of /s/ to /h/ threatens a merger with a pre-existing /h/, then I see no reason why the original /s/ - /h/ contrast should not be restored in this manner -- even if that's not what happened in Gondi. A possibly relevant case here is the change of /h/ to zero in English. This has been pervasive in England for centuries, and it has gone to completion in most vernacular accents, which no longer contrast /h/ even variably with zero. This merger of /h/ with zero is continuing to spread in vernacular speech: for example, it has now reached areas of East Anglia which formerly retained a phoneme /h/. But it has not become general in England, since prestige varieties continue to retain many (not all) earlier instances of /h/, and hence we have a separate line of descent to consider. In Australia, though, things are different. There is evidence that the merger of /h/ with zero was widespread in 19th-century Australia. However, no doubt as a consequence of the influence of more prestigious varieties which had not undergone the merger, that merger has now been completely reversed in Australian English: today all Australian varieties exhibit a robust contrast between /h/ and zero. > 3. Phoneme-like units in expressives, in my view, do not belong to > the normal phonlogical system of a language. That depends. In some ancestral form of Basque, it is clear, the six palatal and palato-alveolar consonants (hereafter `palatal' consonants) never occurred in ordinary lexical items at all, but only in expressive variants of these, or in expressive formations generally. At this stage, it was true that the six consonants stood somewhat outside the ordinary phonological system. But then things changed. For one thing, phonemes identical in phonetic nature to some of these six occurred in some neighboring Romance languages, where they were ordinary phonemes with no special value. Some Romance words containing these segments were borrowed into Basque complete with their palatal segments. The resulting loan words therefore contained the expressive segments without possessing any expressive value. And, at this stage, it was perhaps no longer possible to maintain that the palatal segments in Basque still lay outside the ordinary phonological system, since they occurred in everyday words of non-expressive nature. At the same time, of course, the six segments still retained their expressive value in native words. Still later, in Michelena's account, the historical /j/ merged with the expressive segment [esh], notated , thereby producing a state of affairs in which some instances of were expressive while others were not. At this point, I think, it was hardly possible to maintain that the consonant still lay outside the ordinary phonological system, even though some instances of it still retained expressive value. Finally, please note that in none of my postings (apart from my endorsement of Michelena's account of the Basque case) have I been trying to argue that mergers either can or cannot be reversed by any means at all. My only purpose is to compile a list of the accounts of *apparent* reversals of merger which have been reported in the literature, whether or not these accounts posit any genuine reversal of merger. By the way, I now have a seventh proposal, thanks to Laura Wright. Simplifying somewhat, she suggests that a case of apparent merger may in fact represent no merger at all in speech, but merely a failure of the imperfect orthography to distinguish two phonemes which remained distinct in speech. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From mccay at redestb.es Wed Dec 2 17:46:34 1998 From: mccay at redestb.es (Alan R. King) Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 12:46:34 EST Subject: reversal of merger (Yiddish final consonants) (LONG) Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On the subject of other (possible) examples of merger reversal, I am pleased that the problem of Yiddish final consonants was brought up (B. Wald, Wed, 25 Nov 1998, "Re: reversal of merger"). I have long been interested in Yiddish, the original language of my grandparents' home, which I have studied privately off-and-on over a number of years. Though largely self-taught, I have occasionally attended university courses on Yiddish linguistics. I happen to have the personal satisfaction of having "guessed" the same solution to the word-final consonant "un-merger" problem which Kiparsky published according to Benji Wald's posting, without knowing (until today!) that anyone else had supported what I thought was a pretty unorthodox idea of "mine"; I might add that I was encouraged to make the last-mentioned self-assessment by the reaction of my Yiddish linguistics professor, to remain unnamed, who said, more or less, that he had never heard of such a nutty idea (though not his exact words). Yet it is the only solution which seemed, and seems, to take account of the data adequately, though I'd like to hear any alternative suggestions. I would therefore like to encourage that the present discussion be extended to cover in greater depth this fascinating problem. I would also personally appreciate it if someone would give the exact Kiparsky reference, or even send me a copy of the article if possible, as my own (short-term) access to libraries is very limited. Here is a summary and discussion of the facts for the benefit of all, hoping to have my blunders corrected as usual by more knowing parties. --- THE BASIC FACTS --- Modern Yiddish (which for most practical purposes corresponds to historical Eastern Yiddish, given the virtual extinction of historical varieties of Western Yiddish) is divided into three main dialects, all contiguous to each other in their historical (pre-holocaust) geographical domains, popularly known as "Lithuanian", "Polish" and "Ukrainian", and variously otherwise designated in the scholarly literature. In "Polish" Yiddish there is general devoicing of word-final stops and fricatives, but not in the other varieties, in which final voiced and voiceless consonants contrast. This devoicing is a historical innovation, so we might assume that "Polish" Yiddish also went through the change as a contact-induced phenomenon occurring in several languages spoken in or around the dialect's historical territory, while "Lithuanian" and "Ukrainian" Yiddish PRESERVED the historically older voicing contrast in word-final position. This seems to make a lot of sense at first sight, and I can personally testify that it is also a version that is sometimes taught in academia. But there is an interesting problem: ALL Eastern Yiddish dialects have VOICELESS final stops and fricatives corresponding to Old High German [OHG] voiced (or voiceless) consonants in certain words. (Proto-Yiddish is often treated more or less as a direct descendant of Old High German with additional non-Germanic elements incorporated.) As Benji said, the overall pattern seems to be that words that *universally* have devoiced final consonants in modern Yiddish are those that are morphologically invariable, as opposed to those entering into processes of inflection or derivation, both involving suffixation (nouns, adjectives, verbs) in which we find the split described above between "devoicing" and "non-devoicing" dialects. While some historical textual documentation might conceivably contribute evidence, this is for the most part a problem requiring diachronic reconstruction, given that pre-twentieth-century Yiddish orthography (which traditionally employs the so-called "Hebrew" alphabet) is generally "conservative" (i.e. "etymological") and strongly influenced by the German model; in consequence, final consonants are often represented as distinctively voiced and voiceless, but it cannot be concluded that genuine spoken pronunciations are thereby reflected. For example, the numeral 20 may be seen spelt as (in transcription) /cvancig/, even though the pan-dialectal Eastern Yiddish form ends in /k/; this does not constitute evidence for a Yiddish pronunciation with /g/. This orthographical practice continued into the twentieth century and in indeed still encountered sometimes. The following set of examples is given first of all in Standard Yiddish [SY], which is phonologically closest to "Lithuanian" Yiddish and reflects the type of dialect with a final voicing contrast; afterwards we will look at the corresponding set of forms in "Polish" Yiddish, with universal final devoicing. For SY lexical forms I will throughout take Uriel Weinreich's now-classic dictionary as the source. I will organise the sample forms into: (1) morphologically variable lexemes ending in a consonant that was VOICED in Proto-Eastern-Yiddish [PEY], or at least in a preceding stage such as OHG (except for final /z/, for which see the later discussion), with no suffix; (2) variable lexemes ending in a consonant that was VOICELESS in PEY or earlier; (3) the same voiced-final variable lexemes as in 1 with an inflectional or derivational SUFFIX; (4) the same voiceless-final variable lexemes as in 2 with a SUFFIX; and (5) INVARIABLE words which (except for /s/, see below) ended in a voiced consonant in PEY or before (now everywhere voiceless). For variety, my examples for (1-4) include some nouns and some verbs (adjectives are discussed later). Among the suffixes I have chosen to include plural morphemes and diminutive suffixes on nouns, plus the occasional non-diminutive derivational form, and the infinitive morpheme and occasionally a derivative suffix with verbs. The examples in (5) are preverbs or adverbs, representing words not taking suffixes; some other invariable word types will be introduced into the discussion later. I will use lexemes ending in /g/, /b/, /k/ and /p/, and also /z/ and /s/ so as to include a fricatives pair, but /d/ and /t/, /v/ and /f/ follow the same pattern except that there is a variable pan-dialectal tendency to devoice final /v/ (which doesn't occur in German-origin words), e.g. SY /'ganef/ < Hebrew /gan'na:v/ "thief", cf. plural /ga'novim/ < Hebrew /gan'na:vi:m/. Yiddish stops assimilate in voicing to a following consonant even across word boundaries, so the following examples should be understood to represent the citation or pre-pause forms. /y/ is [j]; /N/ is the velar nasal; /c/ is a sibilant affricate; /S/ a palato-alveolar fricative. Nasals and /l/ may be syllabic in Yiddish. STANDARD YIDDISH (1a) /veg/ "way, path" (1b) /vayb/ "woman, wife" (1c) (ix) /zog/ "(I) say" (1d) (ix) /hob/ "(I) have" (1e) /hoyz/ "house" (2a) /ek/ "end, corner" (2b) /kop/ "head" (2c) (ikh) /kuk/ "(I) look" (2d) (ikh) /khap/ "(I) catch, grab" (2e) /gas/ "street" (3a) /'vegN/ "plural of VEG" (3b) /'vaybl/ "diminutive of VAYB" (3c) /'zogN/ "infinitive of ZOG"; /'zoger/ "announcer (agent noun from ZOG)" (3d) /'hobm/ "infinitive of HOB"; /'lib-hober/ "lover, amateur (/lib/ "love" + agent noun from HOB)" (3e) /'hayzer/ "plural of HOYZ"; /'hayzl/ "diminutive of HOYZ" (4a) /'ekN/ "plural of EK" (4b) /'kepele/ "endearing form of KOP" (4c) /'kukN/ "infinitive of KUK"; /'on-kuker/ "sight-seer" (from /on/ "preverb" + agent noun from KUK)" (4d) /'khapm/ "infinitive of KHAP" (4e) /'gasn/ "plural of GAS"; /'gesl/ "diminutive of GAS" (5a) /a'vek/ "away" (cf. /veg/, (1a)) (5b) /a'rop/ "down" (cf. Modern High German "herab", with "b" in spelling - but /p/ in pronunciation) (5c) /a'roys/ "out" Now the corresponding "Polish" forms: "POLISH" YIDDISH (1a') /veyk/ (1b') /va:p/ (1c') /zuk/ (1d') /(h)op/ (1e') /ho:s/ (2a') /ek/ (2b') /kop/ (2c') /kik/ (2d') /khap/ (2e') /gas/ (3a) /'veygN/ (3b') /'va:bl/ (3c') /'zugN/, /'zuger/ (3d') /'hubm/, /'li:p-huber/ (3e') /'ha:zer/, /'ha:zl/ (4a') /'ekN/ (4b') /'kepele/ (4c') /'kikN/, /'u:n-kiker/ (4d') /'khapm/ (4e') /'gasn/, /'gesl/ (5a') /a'vek/ (5b') /a'rup/ (5c') /a'ro:s/ --- FURTHER FACTS --- (i) Semitic words Although Yiddish is classified as a Germanic language it possesses a significant lexical component of Semitic (Hebrew and/or Aramaic) origin. Semitic-origin lexemes, while often fully assimilated into and indeed differentially characteristic of Yiddish, often possess morphological paradigms distinct from those found with the Germanic-origin part of the lexicon. In other words, synchronically distinct paradigm classes "happen to" correspond to diachronically distinct sources (compare the "Semitic" /'ganef/ - /ga'novim/, mentioned above, with the other examples, all non-Semitic). Both kinds of paradigm in modern Yiddish, the "Germanic" and the "Semitic", apply the same rules for voice, which thus cut across both morphological subsystems. (ii) Final sibilants The case of word-final /z/ in words of Germanic origin is diachronically remarkable, since as far as I know such forms ended in /s/ in OHG and must have developed the voiced ending subsequently in those dialects which show it. The only obvious source for this would have been the suffixed forms in which the sibilant, intervocalic in Proto-Yiddish, was voiced to /z/. Compare both Modern German [haws] < OHG hu:s "house", plural [hojzer] and "Polish" Yiddish /ho:s/, /ha:zer/ with SY /hoyz/, /hayzer/. This type ending in /z/ in SY contrasts, I believe with diachronic regularity, with a type in /s/, e.g. /gas/ "street" : German /'gase/, plural /gasn/. This necessary assumption of a "reconstructed" final /z/ in non-"Polish" Yiddish words like /hoyz/ may be very significant - see below. (iii) Words like "montik", "tsvantsik" The distribution of voicing in final cononants across the Yiddish lexicon is not quite as cut-and-dried a matter as the above examples suggest, even though they are indeed representative of the usual patterns, if only because there are items whose analysis is open to possible debate. There are various words with voiceless final stops coming from OHG voiced stops, even though such words are not strictly invariable, or not quite anyway. Consider names of days of the week, some of which are compounds the (unstressed) second element of which is /-tik/, etymologically cognate to SY /tog/ ("Polish" Yiddish /tuk/) "day": SY /'montik/ "Monday", /'fraytik/ "Friday" etc. (cf. German "Montag", "Freitag"). These nouns are not quite invariable in Modern Yiddish as they have plurals, e.g. /'montikN/ "Mondays", yet /k/ is found, not /g/. Similarly with the numerals for multiples of ten, where the element corresponding to English "-ty" and German "-zig", with etymological /g/, is always /k/ in Yiddish: SY /'cvancik/ "twenty", /'zibecik/ "seventy", etc. (German "zwanzig", "siebzig"). Again, such forms can be suffixed, although this is rather rare; a folk song, in which the singer asks for change so as go on tipping the orchestra so they will go on playing and he may continue to dance, begins: Bayt zhe mir oys a finfuntsvantsiker oyf samerodne drayer. "Please give me change in threes for a twenty-fiver." where the compound numeral /finf-un-tsvantsik/, lit. "five-and-twenty" takes the nominal suffix /-er/ (cf. English "fiv-er", "tenn-er"). Suffixed forms like /'montik-N/ and /'cvancik-er/ may not have been diachronically relevant to the treatment of weekdays and multiples of ten as invariable words for several reasons. Maybe the suffixed forms were so rare as to be felt as peripheral; perhaps they didn't exist at the critical time and were (re-)generated later. (iv) Adjectives in "-ik" But this won't explain the fact that the frequent ending /-ik/ on adjectives, corresponding to /-ig/ in OHG and German, is always voiceless. Adjectives are inflected, and the usual pattern for assignment of voice to lexeme-final consonants applies; but compare what happens when the suffix is /-ik/ < /-ig/: STANDARD YIDDISH (6a) /klug/ "clever" (cf. German "klug") (6b) /'kluge/, /'kluger/, /'klugN/ "inflected forms of KLUG" (7a) /Stark/ "strong" (cf. German "stark") (7b) /'Starke/, /'Starker/, /'StarkN/ "inflected forms of SHTARK" (8a) /'milx-ik/ "dairy" (cf. German "-ig") (8b) /'milxike/, /'milxiker/, /'milxikN/ "inflected forms of MILXIK" "POLISH" YIDDISH (6a') /kli:k/ (6b') /'kli:ge/, /'kli:ger/, /'kli:gN/ (7a') /Stark/ (7b') /'Starke/, /'Starker/, /'StarkN/ (8a') /'mil(e)x-ik/ "dairy" (8b') /'mil(e)xike/, /'mil(e)xiker/, /'mil(e)xikN/ --- DISCUSSION --- The two approaches to accounting diachronically for the distribution of voicing in word-final stops and fricatives in Yiddish will be identified as Theory 1 [T1] and Theory 2 [T2]. T1, the account which seems to be widely assumed or implied and sometimes taught, is at first sight the simpler of the two; it simply states that THEORY 1 (i) OHG and Semitic final voiced stops and fricatives were inherited via PEY and continued into most modern Eastern Yiddish dialects. (ii) In "Polish" Yiddish word-final stops and fricatives are systematically devoiced. This theory does not yet address the problem of "exceptions" such as (5a) "avek", (5b) "arop", "montik" (and "montikn"), "tsvantsik" (and "tsvantsiker"), (8a) "milkhik" (and (8b) "milkhike" etc.), whose final consonants are voiceless in all modern Eastern Yiddish dialects although this is not predicted by T1. T2 is more complex in appearance, implying an effective merger reversal in dialects other than "Polish": THEORY 2 (i) Inherited original voiced stops and fricatives in word-final position were at some stage (Stage A) devoiced in *all* Eastern Yiddish dialects. (NOTE: Does that mean we should attribute the devoiced final consonants to PEY itself? I don't know.) (ii) At a later stage (Stage B) in all dialects except "Polish" Yiddish, word-final stops and fricatives were (re-)voiced WHEN AN UNDERLYING "VOICED" FEATURE WAS SYNCHRONICALLY RETRIEVABLE. In the "Polish" dialect the voicing of final stops and fricatives underwent no change after Stage A (i.e. they are all voiceless). Retrievability of the "underlying 'voiced' feature" depended principally on the co-existence of suffixed forms in which the suffix "shielded" the consonant from devoicing at Stage A, cf. (3a) "vegn", (3b) "vaybl", (3c) "zogn", "zoger", (3d) "hobn" etc. The "exceptions" itemized under T1 are thus explained by the synchronic IRRETRIEVABILITY of any "underlying 'voiced' feature" at Stage B. The retrievability principle invoked by T2 seems to make sense, whereas it is difficult to think of an equally plausible principle that would motivate the DEVOICING, in generally "non-devoicing dialects", in these same words within the framework of T1. For brevity's sake I referred to an "underlying feature" in the formulation of T2. I imagine this formulation will satisfy those who like to employ the concept of abstract underlying phonological forms, but I don't believe the concept is strictly necessary to provide a coherent account of the hypothesized events. An alternative is to refer merely to morpho-phonological alternation. It is well known that vast inflectional simplification has occurred in Yiddish, although the basic inflectional categories are maintained. Not only have the categories been reduced; the morphology of the surviving paradigms has furthermore been much simplified, by greatly generalizing some morphological markers and eliminating much original allomorphy. Within T2, the proposed Stage B changes in dialects other than "Polish" Yiddish can be seen simply as one further, wide-ranging morphological adjustment with a secondary phonological consequence. The phonological consequence is the (re-)introduction of a voicing contrast in word-final stops and fricatives. It just happens that the resulting post-Stage-B voicing distribution corresponds largely, though not entirely, to that reconstructed pre-Stage-A distribution. The motivation of the morphological adjustment in question is the elimination of voicing alternations that had arisen in the inflectional and derivational paradigms as a consequence of the Stage-A word-final devoicing. The voicing alternations are maintained in "Polish" Yiddish, which now has a more complex (and conservative) morphology than the other dialects in this one respect. Compare the "simplified" paradigms in Standard Yiddish (and non-"Polish" dialects) to that in "Polish" Yiddish, here given first since, according to T2, the latter represents the pan-Eastern-Yiddish situation before Stage B (from here on I will employ standard transcriptions): "POLISH" YIDDISH * Singular Plural veyk >>> veygn ek ekn mu:ntik mu:ntikn * First-person Infinitive zuk >>> zugn kik kikn * Predicative Masculine nominative singular kli:k >>> kli:ger shtark shtarker milkhik milkhiker * Base Diminutive va:p >>> va:bl kep kepele * Base Derivative zuk >>> zuger kik u:n u:nkiker tsvantsik tsvantsiker I have marked with >>> the suffixed pradigm forms which introduce complexity due to alternation between voiceless and voiced consonants. STANDARD YIDDISH * Singular Plural >>> veg vegn ek ekn montik montikn * First-person Infinitive >>> zog zogn kuk kukn * Predicative Masculine nominative singular >>> klug kluger shtark shtarker milkhik milkhiker * Base Diminutive >>> vayb vaybl kep kepele * Base Derivative >>> zog zoger kuk on onkuker tsvantsik tsvantsiker Here I have marked with >>> base forms which, according to T2, have been remodelled on the suffixed forms, thereby eliminating voicing alternations. The advantage, in terms of paradigm simplification, of the Stage B change is evident. In principle either the base form or the suffixed forms could have been generalized, e.g. either veg : vegn or *vek : *vekn would have served the purpose, but the second route would have wasted a phonemic distinction whereas the route taken, generalization of the suffixed forms, maximizes that distinction, while also, incidentally, regularizing the phonotactics (by eliminating the ban on word-final voiced stops and fricative). Some other points argue in favour of T2: (i) De-voicing in non-"Polish" dialects While in "Polish" there is systematic and exceptionless devoicing of final stops and fricatives, there is also "sporadic" devoicing in the other dialects, in forms such as those mentioned: "arop", "tsvantsik", "milkhik" etc. This is perhaps not decisive evidence for a *shared* devoicing of final consonants, but it is certainly at least plausible that a common development might be involved. The fact that, to a varying extent, the different items that devoice in non-"Polish" dialects are, or may be, precisely those for which the reverse route (reconstruction of the "original" voiced consonant) becomes obscured *after devoicing has occurred*, raises difficult questions if the T1 position is adhered to. Furthermore, there is no obvious motivation for the devoicing of (some) final consonants in these dialects under the T1 hypothesis: the phonological system remains unaffected by sporadic devoicing, and there is no advantage with respect to the complexity of inflectional or derivational paradigms, which are largely unaffected by the development. (ii) Final /s/ and /z/ If my understanding of the situation with final /s/ and /z/ is correct, then this may constitute one of the strongest arguments in support of T2. OHG (from which the Germanic component of Yiddish is descended) did not have /z/ in word-final position. Eastern Yiddish word-final /s/ or /z/ can have the following sources (@ = schwa; "sz" is for "ess-zett" in German, now pronounced like /s/ (and sometimes spelt "ss") but historically distinct): (a) a final VOICELESS sibilant in OHG, compare e.g. German "Haus", SY /hoyz/ "house"; German "Nusz", SY /nus/ "nut"; German "grosz", SY /groys/ "big"; German "heraus", SY /aroys/ "out"; (b) a VOICELESS sibilant followed by a word-final vowel in OHG (Yiddish lost the final vowel), e.g. German "Gasse", SY /gas/ "street"; (c) a VOICED sibilant followed by a word-final vowel in OHG, e.g. German "boese", SY /beyz/ "wicked"; (d) a non-Germanic-origin VOICELESS final sibilant (including /s/ from lenited Hebrew /t/): Hebrew /ko:s/ > SY /kos/ "cup"; Hebrew /b@'ri:th/ > Ashkenaz Hebrew, SY /bris/ "covenant, circumcision"; (e) a non-Germanic-origin VOICED final sibilant: Hebrew /b at ro:'gez/ > SY /broyges/ "angry"; Hebrew /k at ru:z/ > SY /kruz/ "decree". An ultimately important point here is that in Germanic items which originally ended in a simple /*s/ in OHG, like /hu:s/, the sibilant is voiced when it became intervocalic through suffixation, cf. German "Haus" /haws/, plural "H?user" /hojzer/. In other Germanic items ("Nusz", "Gasse", "boese") and all non-Germanic words there was originally no such voicing alternation. Yet in non-"Polish" Yiddish, "house" is /hoyz/ (plural /hayzer/, diminutive /hayzl/), and similarly /moyz/ "mouse" (diminutive /mayzl/), and so on. We also find /z/ in words with original final /z/ in about the same conditions in which these dialects keep (or restore) a final voiced stop, thus e.g. "beyz" (nominative masculine singular "beyzer"), "kruz" (plural "kruzim"), and /s/ elsewhere, i.e. not only when the sibilant was originally voiceless, e.g. "nus" (diminutive "nisl"), "gas" (plural "gasn", diminutive "gesl"), "kos" (plural "koyses"), but also where the sibilant was originally voiced but suffixed forms are lacking, e.g. "aroys", "broyges". (However, the verbs /muz/ "must", infinitive /muzn/, and /loz/ "let, leave", infinitive "lozn", seem to be exceptions; etymologically I believe we should expect /s/ here (cf. German "mueszen", "laszen"). Or does OHG intervocalic /sz/ regularly give Yiddish /z/??) Thus /s/ and /z/ by and large follow the pattern for other consonants that enter into these kinds of modifications, BUT the form "hoyz" can ONLY be explained as an analogical form reshaped after suffixed forms such as "hayzer", "hayzl". If, as T1 claims, voicing of final consonants in most dialects is merely a continuation of the original situation, then these dialects ought to have "*hoys", not "hoyz". ("Polish" Yiddish, of course, has /ho:s/, but /ha:zer/ etc.) But once we admit that Stage-B-type analogical voicing occured in the non-"Polish" dialects in the case of final /s/ (where there is NO "merger-reversal" since the original form was voiceless), there is no longer much point in resisting the idea that the same process took place, not only in words like "hoyz", but also in those like "veg", "vayb", "zog" and "hob" (where there IS, on that supposition, a "merger-reversal" since the original forms indeed had final voiced consonants). I end with a tabulation of some of the sibilant-final examples, unsuffixed and suffixed, in Standard Yiddish, by way of summary of the present point. * Singular Plural hoyz hayzer gas gasn kos koyses bris brisn kruz kruzim * First-person Infinitive muz muzn "must" (cf. German "muss", "muessen") es esn "eat" (cf. German "esse", "essen") * Predicative Masculine nominative singular beyz beyzer "wicked" (cf. German "boese") groys groyser "big" (cf. German "gross") * Base Diminutive hoyz hayzl gas gesl nus nisl From hiho at guarany.cpd.unb.br Wed Dec 2 17:45:43 1998 From: hiho at guarany.cpd.unb.br (Hildo) Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 12:45:43 EST Subject: -ia Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Dear colleagues, I've been looking for information about the suffix -ia which occurs in names of lands like ITALIA, GERMANIA, ALBANIA, FRANCIA, ANGLIA, HISPANIA, etc. Apparently it is associated to the Germanic -land (England, Deutschland, Lapland, etc.). Could any of you give information about -ia's etymology? Did it mean originally something like "the land of..."? In Brazilian Portuguese it is productive until now, e.g., Brasilia and others. Please, any information could be sent directly to my private e.mail. hiho at unb.br OR hiho at guarany.cpd.unb.br With best regards Hildo Honorio do Couto. From johncharles.smith at st-catherines.oxford.ac.uk Thu Dec 3 22:36:57 1998 From: johncharles.smith at st-catherines.oxford.ac.uk (John Charles Smith) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 17:36:57 EST Subject: Borrowing of Pronouns Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- In a paper recently published in Oceanic Linguistics (37:1 (1998), pp. 65-84), Mark Donohue and I reach the following conclusion, which may be of relevance to Dan Everett's query, although the borrowing does not involve the whole pronominal system: "Having shown that we have [in many varieties of Malay] a loss of the otherwise near-universal (among Austronesian languages) opposition between inclusive and exclusive first-person nonsingular pronouns, we can speculate on the reasons why it happens to be Malay/Indonesian that is the language so affected. It has long been established that varieties of Malay are prone to borrow pronouns from other sources; witness 1SG saya (< Sanskrit) in Standard Malay/Indonesian [...], 2SG ose (< Portuguese) in Ambonese Malay, 1SG gua (< Hokkien (Min) Chinese) in Betawi, 2SG lu (< Hokkien (Min) Chinese) in both Betawi and Kupang Malay, and yu (< English) in the formal speech of educated people in many regions. It is worth noting that none of these source languages, nor any of the other languages that have had a strong influence on the linguistic history of Malay/Indonesian, maintains an inclusive/exclusive distinction in the nonsingular pronouns. It is speculative, but tempting, to suggest that we have a case here of a linguistic paradigm (lack of opposition between inclusive and exclusive forms of the first-person nonsingular pronoun) being borrowed, without the form itself being transmitted." John Charles Smith -- ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ + + + John Charles Smith College Phone +44 1865 271700 + + St. Catherine's College Direct Line +44 1865 271748 + + Oxford OX1 3UJ UK College Fax +44 1865 271768 + + + + http://www.stcatz.ox.ac.uk/ + + + ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ From jhewson at morgan.ucs.mun.ca Thu Dec 3 16:58:30 1998 From: jhewson at morgan.ucs.mun.ca (John Hewson) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 11:58:30 EST Subject: Reversal of merger In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Larry Trask wrote: > > A possibly relevant case here is the change of /h/ to zero in English. > This has been pervasive in England for centuries, and it has gone to > completion in most vernacular accents, which no longer contrast /h/ > even variably with zero. This merger of /h/ with zero is continuing to > spread in vernacular speech: for example, it has now reached areas of > East Anglia which formerly retained a phoneme /h/. But it has not > become general in England, since prestige varieties continue to retain > many (not all) earlier instances of /h/, and hence we have a separate > line of descent to consider. As a footnote, it is interesting that we have, in fact, massive hypercorrection. The _h_ that occurs in the spelling of heir, hour, honest, and honour (and add herb for Americans) was never pronounced, these being borrowings from Old French. Alongside these we have all the French borrowings with initial _h_ (never pronounced in French because it had already been lost in Classical Latin) which are pronounced with /h-/ in Standard English and in those dialects that have preserved phonemic /h/. A good example is _humble_, from Latin _humilem_, /umile(m)/ already in Caesar's time, and found in the sixteenth century Book of Common Prayer in such phrases as "an humble and contrite heart", now pronounced, by those still familiar with this liturgy, with both _an_ and /h-/! ******************************************************************************* John Hewson, FRSC tel: (709)737-8131 Henrietta Harvey Professor of Linguistics fax: (709)737-4000 Memorial University of Newfoundland St. John's NF, CANADA A1B 3X9 ******************************************************************************* From Georg at home.ivm.de Thu Dec 3 14:24:51 1998 From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 09:24:51 EST Subject: -ia In-Reply-To: <9812021600.AA08216@guarany.cpd.unb.br> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >I've been looking for information about the suffix -ia which occurs in names >of lands like ITALIA, GERMANIA, ALBANIA, FRANCIA, ANGLIA, HISPANIA, etc. >Apparently it is associated to the Germanic -land (England, Deutschland, >Lapland, etc.). No, I wouldn't think so. This suffix can be traced back to Greek, whence it spread via learned Latin into most European (and some non-European) languages. In Greek, (accented) -ia is used for abstract nouns (eleutheria "freedom" from eleutheros "free") and country names. E.g. you have /phryx/ "a Phrygian" - /phrygios/ "Phrygian" - /phrygia/ "Phrygia"; or /Lydos/ - /Lydios/ - /Lydia/. It can be viewed as a specialization of the feminine (to the masc. -ios) for abstract nouns. -ios itself is best described as a denominal adjective formant conveying the meaning of a most general "belonging-to-"relation (/hesperios/ "belonging to, taking place at the evening (hesperos)"; this one of the most widespread derivational suffixes in Greek, and it is of Indo-European age, attested at least in Gk., Latin (/patrius/ : /pater/), Indo-Aryan (skt. /pitryah/ : /pita:/), Slavic (oblg. /materjI/ : /mater-/), Iranian (av. /gao-ya-/ "bovine, which belongs to the cow"), Armenian (/kog-i/ "butter, lit. the same "cow-thing"), and probably elsewhere, too. Sorry, no "land" here. Best, Stefan Georg Heerstrasse 7 D-53111 Bonn FRG +49-228-69-13-32 From Roger.Wright at liverpool.ac.uk Thu Dec 3 14:24:14 1998 From: Roger.Wright at liverpool.ac.uk (Roger Wright) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 09:24:14 EST Subject: Reversal of merger In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Re: Reversal of Merger; Isn't this a bit of a non-problem? All changes take a long time to complete; that is, it is rare for an old feature to disappear quickly after a new feature comes in, and there is no real need for the old feature to disappear at all; in all changes there is a long time when both the old and the new are around, and both intelligible. So the "reversal" is merely the decision not to adopt the new variant as the usual one after all, but keep instead the old variant, which is still there in the speech-community. It isn't even archaism, just a choice between competing variants; speakers don't know which is the older and which is the newer, of course, and if they are usually more likely to choose the newer and thereby institute the "change" (if indeed they feel a need to choose either, rather than just keeping both) that is merely because the reasons, whatever they were, for having a new alternative at all are likely to be still there at a later time too. (I can give examples if asked.) If we can just accept the validity of the basic sociolinguistic observation that variation is normal, natural, inevitable, desirable and even necessary, particularly but not only while there is a sound change in progress, then most of this problem just disappears; it just means that (unsurprisingly) the merger wasn't yet universal, so the old feature was still around in some places, people and styles, universally intelligible and available, but necessarily only in the words that had changed that way and not in those that hadn't. (There could, of course, be a further development; since changes involve a stage of competing alternatives, the result could even be that some older forms, that happen to have had the feature all along that was "new" in the case of those words that have changed, might eventually change to include the feature that was found to begin with in those words that initiated the change. That seems straightforward enough to the sociolinguists, I suppose, but not only to them; as Zonneveld said [A Formal Theory of Exceptions in Generative Phonology, Lisse, 1978], every sound change may in practice be competing against its exact opposite.) RW On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Larry Trask wrote: >----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >On Wed, 2 Dec 1998, Bh.Krishnamurti wrote: > >> Recent postings on the above theme have not shown a genuine case of >> reversal of merger. > >> 1. Most mergers create homonyms. In other words two or more words >> which contrast in a pair of phonemes will become homophonous when >> one of the phonemes merges with the other through sound change. >> After this event, no subsequent sound change will ever retrieve the >> two distinct words by recreating the lost contrast. If there are >> attested instances which appear to restore the lost contrast, that >> can happen through borrowing from an older or a different dialect >> which was not affected by the sound change in question. > >[snip of Telugu example] > >> The question is: Is there any language in which mergers which >> created homonyms were undone by a subsequent sound change. Henry >> Hoenigswald in his posting of Nov 27 clarified that in the >> neogrammarian framework, 'there is no room for reversal of merger by >> 'sound-change'.. > >Yes, in the Neogrammarian framework this is so. The irreversibility of >mergers by sound change has been widely accepted for generations; it was >formalized by Paul Garde in 1961, and Labov has dubbed it `Garde's >principle' -- perhaps unfortunately, since `Garde's principle' was >already in use for something quite different. > >However, none of the proposals in my provisional list contradicts this >principle, since none of them proposes that a merger has been reversed >merely by sound change. Every one of them concludes, for the particular >case(s) for which it was proposed, either that no merger ever occurred >or that a merger occurred and was then reversed by some means other than >sound change. > >> 'there was either no merger, or there is more than one line of >> descent'. Here lines of descent refer to different lines of >> transmission, either inheritance or borrowing. > >Yes; agreed, at least for most cases that have been discussed. But some >of the proposals in my list explicitly conclude either that no merger >occurred or that a merger was reversed by the influence of a different >line of descent. > >> 2. Reference has been made to the variability between merged and >> unmerged entities in the aftermath of a sound change. In all cases >> of lexical diffusion of a sound change, this happens normally. In >> certain Gondi dialects word initial s becomes h, and later h becomes >> 0. As we go through the affected lexical items, this two-step sound >> change is attested as s,s/h,h, h/0,0, in different words, in >> different social groups and in different areas. The variable items >> attest to the fact that the sound change is in progress. In the >> Southern dialects only 0 forms occur with the change totally >> accomplished and completely regular. This problem is treated in >> detail in a paper of mine which is published in *Language Variation >> and Change* 10:2.193-220. But please note a there is no case of >> reversal of a merger, i.e. s/h goes later to h and not to s, >> similarly, h/0 goest to 0 and not to h. > >>>From this I cannot tell what instance of a potential merger is being >examined. However, if there is a variable sound change of, say, /s/ to >/h/, then surely there remains the possibility that the variation will >eventually be resolved in favor of the original /s/, and that the >variant in /h/ will disappear. Indeed, I believe I have seen some such >cases reported in the literature, though I can't name one with certainty >off the top of my head -- but see the Australian case below. > >And, if the variable change of /s/ to /h/ threatens a merger with a >pre-existing /h/, then I see no reason why the original /s/ - /h/ >contrast should not be restored in this manner -- even if that's not >what happened in Gondi. > >A possibly relevant case here is the change of /h/ to zero in English. >This has been pervasive in England for centuries, and it has gone to >completion in most vernacular accents, which no longer contrast /h/ >even variably with zero. This merger of /h/ with zero is continuing to >spread in vernacular speech: for example, it has now reached areas of >East Anglia which formerly retained a phoneme /h/. But it has not >become general in England, since prestige varieties continue to retain >many (not all) earlier instances of /h/, and hence we have a separate >line of descent to consider. > >In Australia, though, things are different. There is evidence that the >merger of /h/ with zero was widespread in 19th-century Australia. >However, no doubt as a consequence of the influence of more prestigious >varieties which had not undergone the merger, that merger has now been >completely reversed in Australian English: today all Australian >varieties exhibit a robust contrast between /h/ and zero. > >> 3. Phoneme-like units in expressives, in my view, do not belong to >> the normal phonlogical system of a language. > >That depends. In some ancestral form of Basque, it is clear, the six >palatal and palato-alveolar consonants (hereafter `palatal' consonants) >never occurred in ordinary lexical items at all, but only in expressive >variants of these, or in expressive formations generally. At this >stage, it was true that the six consonants stood somewhat outside the >ordinary phonological system. But then things changed. > >For one thing, phonemes identical in phonetic nature to some of these >six occurred in some neighboring Romance languages, where they were >ordinary phonemes with no special value. Some Romance words containing >these segments were borrowed into Basque complete with their palatal >segments. The resulting loan words therefore contained the expressive >segments without possessing any expressive value. And, at this stage, >it was perhaps no longer possible to maintain that the palatal segments >in Basque still lay outside the ordinary phonological system, since they >occurred in everyday words of non-expressive nature. At the same time, >of course, the six segments still retained their expressive value in >native words. > >Still later, in Michelena's account, the historical /j/ merged with the >expressive segment [esh], notated , thereby producing a state of >affairs in which some instances of were expressive while others were >not. At this point, I think, it was hardly possible to maintain that >the consonant still lay outside the ordinary phonological system, >even though some instances of it still retained expressive value. > >Finally, please note that in none of my postings (apart from my >endorsement of Michelena's account of the Basque case) have I been >trying to argue that mergers either can or cannot be reversed by any >means at all. My only purpose is to compile a list of the accounts of >*apparent* reversals of merger which have been reported in the >literature, whether or not these accounts posit any genuine reversal of >merger. > >By the way, I now have a seventh proposal, thanks to Laura Wright. >Simplifying somewhat, she suggests that a case of apparent merger may in >fact represent no merger at all in speech, but merely a failure of the >imperfect orthography to distinguish two phonemes which remained >distinct in speech. > >Larry Trask >COGS >University of Sussex >Brighton BN1 9QH >UK > >larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk > From mcv at wxs.nl Thu Dec 3 14:20:35 1998 From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 09:20:35 EST Subject: reversal of merger (Yiddish final consonants) (LONG) In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19981202161448.006e7bd4@pop3.redestb.es> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- "Alan R. King" wrote: >In "Polish" Yiddish >there is general devoicing of word-final stops and fricatives, but not in >the other varieties ["Ukrainian", "Lithuanian"], in which final voiced and >voiceless consonants contrast. It is interesting to note that standard Ukrainian (as opposed to Polish, Russian and Bielorussian) also maintains the voiced-voiceless ditinction word-finally. Whether in Ukrainian this is an archaism or an innovation is hard to say (the spelling is obviously influenced by Russian, and there aren't that many undeclinable words in Slavic to begin with), but my guess would be that's it's a retention. I don't know about Lithuanian, but Latvian also does not devoice final voiced consonants. ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From jacob.baltuch at euronet.be Thu Dec 3 14:15:51 1998 From: jacob.baltuch at euronet.be (Jacob Baltuch) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 09:15:51 EST Subject: Q: Early Modern English (bibliographic suggestions) Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I'm interested in finding some basic references on Early Modern English (syntax, phonology) that also contain good bibliographical pointers to the rest of the litterature. I could only find the following titles which would seem to fit the bill (although since I haven't seen them, I don't know if they really do). I'd be interested to know what you think of them and if you can think of other suggestions (for J.J.Smith's book, which doesn't exist yet, that would presuppose someone familiar with its content is present on this list) Jeremy J. Smith, Essentials of early English, Routledge, (to appear in 1999) Manfred Gorlach, Introduction to early modern English, Cambridge UP, 1991 (a translation of Gorlach's book in German? why is it 100 pages longer?) George Stuart Gordon, Shakespeare's English, (publisher?), 1978 (in fact this seems to be merely a translation of a 1928 work?) Specifically for phonetics I could only find: Inge Kabell (and others), Studies in early modern English pronunciation, Atheneum, 1984 Helge Kokeritz, Shakespeare's pronunciation, Yale UP, 1953 Wilhelm Vietor, Shakespeare's pronunciation, AMS Press, 1973 (a translation of a 1906 book it seems) (and there was also a book by Jespersen whose reference I forgot) Thanks Jacob From jacob.baltuch at euronet.be Thu Dec 3 14:14:31 1998 From: jacob.baltuch at euronet.be (Jacob Baltuch) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 09:14:31 EST Subject: Q: speech synthesis and historical phonology Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I'll be grateful for any responses to the following questions: Has anyone ever seen any work drawing both on speech synthesis and historical phonology? Do historical phonologists show any interest in results and technologies from the field of speech synthesis? Can any see any use in them at all for their field? (If yes, I'd be interested in examples) Best Jacob From mccay at redestb.es Thu Dec 3 14:13:36 1998 From: mccay at redestb.es (Alan R. King) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 1998 09:13:36 EST Subject: reversal of merger (general remarks) Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- The general drift of my argument when I casually introduced this issue with specific reference to the English /mate - meat - meet/ problem was that, of the various attempts at explanation of the "merger reversal", my hunch (merely a hunch) is that the ultimate decision is going to be in favour of a "sociolinguistic" explanation, i.e. one which crucially involves relations or interactions between competing, synchronically overlapping varieties (registers, styles...) and, at some stage, either the *substitution* of (some element of) one phonological subsystem for another within some variety (no doubt a prestige variety, given that it has come to our attention at all!), or alternatively the *displacement* in some range of functions (again including prestige functions, for the same reason) of one variety by another within the larger sociolinguistic picture. In other words, I suspect that the problem will be found to exemplify the need for historical linguistic explanation to encompass a consideration of "diachronic sociolinguistics", if such a thing can exist, and I don't see why on earth it shouldn't, except that data may often be lacking! :-) I'm not trying to be defeatist, only faithful to linguistic reality past and present. If I am right that merger reversal is a "sociolinguistic" process, similar processes are no doubt in progress all over the place right now, but without the historical perspective (particularly the "benefits" of distance) maybe they "look" different. First of all, from close up, general trends may tend to come first to our attention as individual variation. When I start to think I can easily come up with numerous examples of present-day processes involving substitution of specific dialect features (rather than out-and-out dialect substitution) in connection with various register alternations (often associated with various degrees of diglossia and so on), prescriptivistically motivated restructurings, "rectifications" endorsed by educational establishments often in conjunction with literacy training, etc. in which the sum effect is some sort of "restoration" of "lost" distinctions, in other words, in some sense, "merger reversal". In English, millions of native speakers learn (or try to learn) in school to restore /h/ as part of their phonology, and to differentiate between word-final /n/ and /N/ (i.e. -n versus -ng); in my time at least, there was still pressure (largely futile?) from school teachers to also "unmerge" /w-/ and /hw-/; for speakers of Cockney, there is similar unmerging of /f/ and /th/, and of /v/ and /dh/; and I'm sure the list could go on and on. Some Spanish (or Castilian) speakers of European varieties, where the standard or prestige norm is to keep the phonemes /s/ and /th/ distinct although these have merged in some dialects, probably similarly go through the "educational" process of "reversing" the merger. (The same is not true of the long lost /b/ versus /v/ distinction, which is scarcely ever realized in pronunciation (and then artificially and highly pedantically, at least if we're talking about native Castilian speakers). But just suppose the school establishment got it into their heads to "correct" this pronunciation "defect" on a large scale (stranger things *have* happened); I don't think it implausible that in that unlikely event, a future generation of Spanish speakers might actually start "unmerging" the two pseudo-phonemes in normal speech. Interestingly, the result would be anti-historical, since the present-day Spanish spelling, which keeps both letters, is badly unetymological in the way it has (re-)distributed them across the lexicon.) Obviously I'm not saying the social mechanisms for the *spread* of these phonological "restorations" were the same in the past as they tend to be now, just that the "restoration" phenomenon itself is presumably an ancient sociolinguistic kind of process, many modern variants of which may be observable all around us. On the subject of other (possible) examples of merger reversal, I am particularly happy that the problem of Yiddish final consonants has been brought up, as it has long interested me. I have posted a long contribution on the subject separately. The Michelena Basque example, which I'm glad to see Larry has now presented explicitly for the benefit of this discussion, is in my opinion another interesting and challenging issue which has not been very widely debated (understandably, since expertise in Basque is scarce and most Basque experts themselves/ourselves seem to have been preoccupied with more pressing problems), and which could perhaps both profit from fresh theoretical investigation and contribute to the body of existing theory. Any new suggestions? Alan From faber at haskins.yale.edu Fri Dec 4 12:22:31 1998 From: faber at haskins.yale.edu (Alice Faber) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 07:22:31 EST Subject: Q: speech synthesis and historical phonology Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Jacob Baltuch asks: >Has anyone ever seen any work drawing both on speech synthesis >and historical phonology? Do historical phonologists show any >interest in results and technologies from the field of speech >synthesis? Can any see any use in them at all for their field? >(If yes, I'd be interested in examples) Do you mean speech synthesis in particular, or instrumental phonetics in general? If the former, I'm not sure I see the application, except insofar as perception experiments using synthetic stimuli might shed light on particular phonetic confusions that might have in a particular instance given rise to a sound change. Speaking only for myself, now, I started off as a historical phonologist, working primarily on Semitic languages. As a result of trying to limit myself to phonetically plausible reconstructions of sound systems and phonological changes, I found myself very interested in questions of phonetic naturalness, and would have to describe my current work as more phonetics than historical phonology. I see a continuity in my work that others, perhaps, might not see. I view this kind of use of phonetic data in reconstruction as comparable to use of typological information; if you're reconstructing a phonological inventory that doesn't look like any attested modern inventory, you'd better have some pretty good evidence for bucking the typological trend. There are also phoneticians who see in the inventory of sound changes that have demonstrably taken place a "laboratory" for testing theories of phonetics. I'm thinking here primarily of Ohala, though he's certainly not the only one to make heavy use of such evidence. This is all relevant, of course, for the near merger/meat-mate/Basque discussion, which I haven't commented on because it overlaps so heavily with work that I should be putting the finishing touches on for submitting for publication. However, it's worth pointing out that in some of the instances under discussion, acoustic measurements have been made and perceptual judgements solicited. I know that some Histling-ers are familiar with much or all of that literature, but I'd be glad to provide references for anyone who isn't. The short version is that the results are not unambiguous and that, as Labov and others have shown, native speaker intuitions about whether they pronounce two words differently or not aren't always reliable. I'd love to see some instrumental data from Basque dialects in which the putative fricative merger took place; in my view, that's the most reliable way of knowing for sure that there was in fact a merger. Of course, the fact that the relevant dialect might have been spoken several hundred years ago would make that somewhat difficult, alas. [posted to histling & (I hope) mailed to original questioner] Alice Faber Haskins Laboratories http://www.haskins.yale.edu From mccay at redestb.es Fri Dec 4 12:23:06 1998 From: mccay at redestb.es (Alan R. King) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 07:23:06 EST Subject: reversal of merger (Yiddish) Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I (Alan King) wrote: >>In "Polish" Yiddish >>there is general devoicing of word-final stops and fricatives, but not in >>the other varieties ["Ukrainian", "Lithuanian"], in which final voiced and >>voiceless consonants contrast. Miguel Carrasquer Vidal replied: >It is interesting to note that standard Ukrainian (as opposed to >Polish, Russian and Bielorussian) also maintains the voiced-voiceless >ditinction word-finally. Whether in Ukrainian this is an archaism or >an innovation is hard to say (the spelling is obviously influenced by >Russian, and there aren't that many undeclinable words in Slavic to >begin with), but my guess would be that's it's a retention. I don't >know about Lithuanian, but Latvian also does not devoice final voiced >consonants. This is not to belittle Miguel's welcome observations, just to put them into full perspective. The traditional, popular dialect division names "Polish", "Lithuanian" and "Ukrainian" only reflect very partially indeed the full territorial reality of Yiddish in its original habitat. Each dialect was spoken across various national and linguistic borders (the former have constantly varied anyway!) and together they cover the whole area between Riga and Bucharest, Warsaw and Odessa. By no means all parts of "Ukrainian" Yiddish had contact with Ukrainian as a coterritorial language, nor of "Lithuanian" Yiddish with Lithuanian. Hence my scare quotes throughout, though it didn't point this out explicitly. Thus the question of contact or areal relations between Yiddish and the various non-Jewish East European languages is a pretty complex one. But yes, of course such comparisons are relevant, potentially highly so. In many ways across the lexicon and syntax, Slavic etc. influence on Eastern Yiddish is in evidence, providing yet another source of differentiation between Yiddish and German, even though Yiddish retains a majority of basic Germanic characteristics at all levels, of course. From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Fri Dec 4 12:25:18 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 07:25:18 EST Subject: Q: Early Modern English (bibliographic suggestions) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Thu, 3 Dec 1998, Jacob Baltuch wrote: > I'm interested in finding some basic references on Early Modern English > (syntax, phonology) that also contain good bibliographical pointers to > the rest of the litterature. I could only find the following titles which > would seem to fit the bill (although since I haven't seen them, I don't > know if they really do). [snip] There is a standard university textbook of Early Modern English, now in its second edition; this has a sizeable bibliography, though only a minority of the items in it are specifically about ENE: Charles Barber (1997), Early Modern English, 2nd ed., Edinburgh University Press. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From mfceprh at fs1.art.man.ac.uk Fri Dec 4 12:26:22 1998 From: mfceprh at fs1.art.man.ac.uk (Richard Hogg) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 07:26:22 EST Subject: Q: Early Modern English (bibliographic suggestions) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On 3 Dec 98 at 9:15, Jacob Baltuch wrote: > Original message---------------------------- >I'm interested in finding some > basic references on Early Modern English (syntax, phonology) that > also contain good bibliographical pointers to the rest of the > litterature. I could only find the following titles which would seem > to fit the bill (although since I haven't seen them, I don't know if > they really do). The bibliography is massive, I'm afraid. For the relative beginner an excellent start is: Barbara Strang, A History of English, 1970 (the best one-volume history) For the more specialist then: Eric Dobson English Pronunciation 1500-1700, 1968 is the starting point for phonology For syntax an excellent start can be made with my colleague David Denison's work: English Historical Syntax, 1993 which is packed with further references. And of course almost anything by Roger Lass with give you hours of fun! The problem is not that there's not enough, quite the reverse. > Jeremy J. Smith, Essentials of early English, Routledge, (to appear > in 1999) Jeremy has a first class work published in 1996, but my copy is at work and I can't remember the exact title (old age!!). You could get hold of that! Also most libraries should have: Michael Samuels, Linguistic Evolution, 1972 The Gorlach book is a straight translation according to the title page. > George Stuart Gordon, Shakespeare's English, (publisher?), 1978 (in > fact this seems to be merely a translation of a 1928 work?) I have never read this I'm afraid. > Specifically for phonetics I could only find: > > Inge Kabell (and others), Studies in early modern English > pronunciation, Atheneum, 1984 If my memory serves me (unlikely), this is the proceedings of the DEMEP symposium, but that work is also at work, so there are no guarantees. You might also note that volume 3 of The Cambridge History of the English is due out, we hope, in late 1999. Volume 4 is due out early in 1999: CHEL 3, 1476-1776, ed. Roger Lass CHEL 4, 1776-present day, ed. Suzanne Romaine (Vols 1 and 2 were published in 1992, Volume 5 in 1994. David Denison and I are edited "A History of English" for CUP, due circa 2001. Hope this helps. Richard (General Editor, Cambridge History of the English Language) *************************************************************************** Richard M. Hogg Tel: +44 (0)161-275-3164 Dept of English & American Studies Fax: +44 (0)161-275-3256 University of Manchester e-mail: r.m.hogg at man.ac.uk Oxford Road home: +44 (0)161-941-1931 Manchester M13 9PL web: http://www.art.man.english/staff/rmh/home.htm *************************************************************************** From mcv at wxs.nl Fri Dec 4 16:57:36 1998 From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 11:57:36 EST Subject: Q: speech synthesis and historical phonology In-Reply-To: <3672dab9.71229795@mail.wxs.nl> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) wrote: >They merge /x/ and /j/ there. Oops, and (as /S/). ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From faber at haskins.yale.edu Fri Dec 4 16:56:06 1998 From: faber at haskins.yale.edu (Alice Faber) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 11:56:06 EST Subject: Q: speech synthesis and historical phonology Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Miguel Carrasquer Vidal > Alice Faber wrote: > >I'd love to see > >some instrumental data from Basque dialects in which the putative fricative > >merger took place; in my view, that's the most reliable way of knowing for > >sure that there was in fact a merger. Of course, the fact that the relevant > >dialect might have been spoken several hundred years ago would make that > >somewhat difficult, alas. > > Not at all. One would merely have to change the destination of the > field trip from, say, gorgeous Donostia [San Sebastian] (occasional > strolls along the Concha beach, zuritos and tapas in the Old Town in > between collecting instrumental data), to the no less gorgeous > Pyrinees just north of Iruinea [Pamplona] (July/August, when the > villages tend to have their Fiesta Mayor would do nicely). They > merge /x/ and /j/ there. Of course it might be easier to get the funding for such a field trip in a less attractive time of year. All kidding aside, I'm not likely to get to Spain in the immediate future, but I do have access to excellent acoustic analysis software (and I know what to do with it), so if anyone else can record an appropriate data set, let's talk about it. > [I'm sorry, but it's cold in Amsterdam] 65 F and getting warmer here in Connecticut. (Sorry for gloating...we'll probably have 3 feet of snow in March). Alice Faber From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Fri Dec 4 16:54:54 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 11:54:54 EST Subject: Q: speech synthesis and historical phonology In-Reply-To: <98120318293023@haskins.yale.edu> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Fri, 4 Dec 1998, Alice Faber wrote: > The short version is that the results are not unambiguous and that, > as Labov and others have shown, native speaker intuitions about > whether they pronounce two words differently or not aren't always > reliable. I'd love to see some instrumental data from Basque > dialects in which the putative fricative merger took place; in my > view, that's the most reliable way of knowing for sure that there > was in fact a merger. Of course, the fact that the relevant dialect > might have been spoken several hundred years ago would make that > somewhat difficult, alas. Yes, there is no possibility of obtaining any data from the Gipuzkoan of several centuries ago, beyond what was written down. In the south of Gipuzkoa, there is a region in which the historical /j/ has merged with . Unfortunately, I know of no instrumental work on this variety. Observers of varying backgrounds have consistently reported the merger here. I myself used to know a native speaker of this variety, and he insisted that there was no difference for him between the two historically different segments, nor could I detect a difference myself in his speech. This is not ironclad proof, but it's all we've got. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From jrader at m-w.com Fri Dec 4 16:54:32 1998 From: jrader at m-w.com (Jim Rader) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 11:54:32 EST Subject: reversal of merger (Yiddish final consonants) Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- At least in Standard Lithuanian, voiced stops and fricatives are devoiced in Auslaut, so that has a final [k] and a final [s^]. Jim Rader > "Alan R. King" wrote: > > >In "Polish" Yiddish > >there is general devoicing of word-final stops and fricatives, but not in > >the other varieties ["Ukrainian", "Lithuanian"], in which final voiced and > >voiceless consonants contrast. > > It is interesting to note that standard Ukrainian (as opposed to > Polish, Russian and Bielorussian) also maintains the voiced-voiceless > ditinction word-finally. Whether in Ukrainian this is an archaism or > an innovation is hard to say (the spelling is obviously influenced by > Russian, and there aren't that many undeclinable words in Slavic to > begin with), but my guess would be that's it's a retention. I don't > know about Lithuanian, but Latvian also does not devoice final voiced > consonants. > > > ======================= > Miguel Carrasquer Vidal > mcv at wxs.nl > Amsterdam > From mcv at wxs.nl Fri Dec 4 16:54:13 1998 From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 11:54:13 EST Subject: Q: speech synthesis and historical phonology In-Reply-To: <98120318293023@haskins.yale.edu> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Alice Faber wrote: >I'd love to see >some instrumental data from Basque dialects in which the putative fricative >merger took place; in my view, that's the most reliable way of knowing for >sure that there was in fact a merger. Of course, the fact that the relevant >dialect might have been spoken several hundred years ago would make that >somewhat difficult, alas. Not at all. One would merely have to change the destination of the field trip from, say, gorgeous Donostia [San Sebastian] (occasional strolls along the Concha beach, zuritos and tapas in the Old Town in between collecting instrumental data), to the no less gorgeous Pyrinees just north of Iruinea [Pamplona] (July/August, when the villages tend to have their Fiesta Mayor would do nicely). They merge /x/ and /j/ there. [I'm sorry, but it's cold in Amsterdam] ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From bjarne.birkrem at iba.uio.no Fri Dec 4 16:53:43 1998 From: bjarne.birkrem at iba.uio.no (Bjarne Birkrem) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 11:53:43 EST Subject: Q: Early Modern English (bibliographic suggestions) Message-ID: A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 1199 bytes Desc: not available URL: From henryh at ling.upenn.edu Sat Dec 5 16:41:54 1998 From: henryh at ling.upenn.edu (Henry M. Hoenigswald) Date: Sat, 5 Dec 1998 11:41:54 EST Subject: Merger Reersed Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Yes, a non-problem is precisely what the whole thing is. By the way, the speakers' intuition is not a Harrisian pair test though it may be the inchoate form of one. That, however, doesn't help. Though the difficulties in administering a pair test are notorious, that is a blemish only if you believe that there 'is' a 'same' / 'different' dichotomy up in the heavens, a fact of nature waiting to be detected. If the pair test is inconclusive, that's what the language is like. No use blaming the intuition or the test. From DISTERH at UNIVSCVM.SC.EDU Sat Dec 12 11:57:02 1998 From: DISTERH at UNIVSCVM.SC.EDU (Dorothy Disterheft) Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 06:57:02 EST Subject: Historical Linguistics 1997 Message-ID: Historical Linguistics 1997 Selected Papers from ICHL XIII, Duesseldorf, 10-17 August 1997 Edited by Monika S. Schmid, Jennifer R. Austin and Dieter Stein "Historical Linguistics 1997" represents a rigorously reviewed selection of papers presented at the 13th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. The proceedings offer a window on the current state of the art in historical linguistics: They cover a wide range of different languages, different language families, and different approaches to the study of linguistic change, ranging from optimality theory, theories of grammaticalization and the invisible hand, treatments of language contact and creolization to the linguistic consequences of political correctness. Among the languages under discussion are Akkadian, Catalan, Dutch, Finnish, Japanese, Sranan, Western Malayo-Polynesian, Yiddish, and a variety of Romance and Native American languages. Contributions by: Arleta Adamska-Sa=AFaciak, Barry J. Blake, Adrienne Bruyn, Vit Bubenik, Kate Burridge, Michela Cennamo, Wallace Chafe, Bridget Drinka, Elaine Gold, Haike Jacobs, Thera de Jong, Fusa Katada, Jurgen Klausenburger, Ane Kleine, Bernd Kortmann, Arjan van Leuvensteijn, Martin Maiden, Kenjir=F4 Matsuda, Donka Minkova, Marianne Mithun, Salikoko S. Mufwene, Ellen F. Prince, Taru Salminen, Caroline Smits, Isabel Verdaguer & Anna Poch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Monika S. Schmid Anglistik III Geb. 23.21 Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet Duesseldorf Universitaetsstr. 1 40225 Duesseldorf phone: +(49)-211-81-13774 fax: +(49)-211-81-13026 http://ang3-11.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/~schmid/ From DISTERH at UNIVSCVM.SC.EDU Mon Dec 14 21:12:59 1998 From: DISTERH at UNIVSCVM.SC.EDU (Dorothy Disterheft) Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 16:12:59 EST Subject: HISTLING archives Message-ID: Dear colleagues, I am happy to announce that, through the generosity of Anthony Aristar and other folks at the LINGUIST list, the archives of HISTLING are now available on that website and may be searched. You may access the archives either by going directly to http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/histling.html or by going through the LINGUIST homepage at www.linguistlist.org. >From there, you will find the link to HISTLING under The Profession; click on Lists Archived and you will see HISTLING on the list. If you do not have web access, you may continue to search the archives by sending the commands described in the HISTLING information file to listserv at vm.sc.edu. As most of you already know, the Aristar, Dry, et al. team provide many valuable services to the linguistics profession. If you have chance to talk/write to them, please let them know how much we as historical linguists appreciate this latest good deed. Dorothy Disterheft Moderator, HISTLING Secretary, International Society for Historical Linguistics From llidop at gusun.georgetown.edu Mon Dec 14 23:19:30 1998 From: llidop at gusun.georgetown.edu (Paul Llido) Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 18:19:30 EST Subject: lexico-statistics Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Where may I get a reading list on lexico-statistics? I was introduced to it through SWADESH. Was SWADESH's list of universal words supported by research? Thanks for any reply, Paul *********************************************************************** **************************************************** Paul C. LLIDO * ******************************* e-mail: llidop at gusun.georgetown.edu * **** Georgetown University (Graduate School - Dept. of Linguistics) * *********************************************************************** From compling at juno.com Thu Dec 17 02:26:22 1998 From: compling at juno.com (C Hogan) Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 21:26:22 EST Subject: lexico-statistics Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >Where may I get a reading list on lexico-statistics? I was >introduced to it through SWADESH. I do have such a bibliography that I copied out of the following book: Embleton, Sheila. Statistics in Historical Linguistics. Quantitative Linguistics vol. 30. Bochum: Studienverlag. 1986. It is quite substantial; can you supply a FAX number that I can use to send it to you? Or maybe a snailmail address. btw, that book is itself pretty interesting: Embleton proposes an extended version of lexicostatistics that takes into account borrowing and other factors. Unfortunately there is absolutely no way that the necessary parameters could be estimated (a problem with the convential method as well). >Was SWADESH's list of universal >words supported by research? My understanding is that his words lists were supported by research, but that the number of languages he used wasn't nearly enough to be "conclusive". --chris ____________________ christopher m. hogan compling at juno.com pittsburgh, pa ___________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866] From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Thu Dec 17 02:28:36 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1998 21:28:36 EST Subject: lexico-statistics In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Well, no one else has replied to this, so I'll have a go. On Mon, 14 Dec 1998, Paul Llido wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > Where may I get a reading list on lexico-statistics? I was > introduced to it through SWADESH. Was SWADESH's list of universal words > supported by research? There is probably a lot more published work on glottochronology than on lexicostatistics per se. Moreover, some people use the two terms interchangeably, which I consider unfortunate: gc has a time element, while ls does not. First, Swadesh's own work. The following book contains a complete bibliography of Swadesh's published (and unpublished) work: Morris Swadesh. 1971. The Origin and Diversification of Language. Joel Sherzer (ed.) London: Routledge. Swadesh's publications on the topic began in 1950, I think, and you can follow his thinking through a series of publications. The classic article is this: Sarah C. Gudschinsky. 1956. `The ABCs of lexicostatistics (glottochronology)'. Word 12: 175-220. Discussion and references can be found in the following book: Sheila Embleton. 1986. Statistics in Historical Linguistics. Bochum: Brockmeyer. There are two recent encyclopedia articles which summarize the topic and present some of the most important references (sorry; I have stupidly lost the volume numbers): Sheila Embleton. 1992. `Historical linguistics: mathematical concepts'. In William Bright (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, vol. damn, pp. 131-135, Oxford: Oxford. William S.-Y. Wang. 1994. `Glottochronology, lexicostatistics, and other numerical methods'. In R. E. Asher and J. M. Y. Simpson (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, vol. damn, pp. 1445-1450, Oxford: Pergamon. As for the universal validity of Swadesh's lists, this has been very severely questioned on a number of grounds. People continue to use Swadesh's lists, since no other list appears to have a better claim to universality, but specialists in particular families or areas have sometimes drawn up their own lists. For example, somebody (I forget who) has drawn up a list of words appropriate for working with in southeast Asia. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu Thu Dec 17 18:19:40 1998 From: delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu (Scott DeLancey) Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 13:19:40 EST Subject: lexico-statistics In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, Larry Trask wrote: > As for the universal validity of Swadesh's lists, this has been very > severely questioned on a number of grounds. People continue to use > Swadesh's lists, since no other list appears to have a better claim to > universality, but specialists in particular families or areas have > sometimes drawn up their own lists. For example, somebody (I forget > who) has drawn up a list of words appropriate for working with in > southeast Asia. That's Jim Matisoff's CALMSEA (Culturally Appropriate Lexicostatistical Model for SouthEast Asia), presented in his Variational Semantics in Tibeto-Burman (ISHI, 1978). I don't know what kind of research may have gone into Swadesh's lists, but, as Matisoff points out, the 200-list contains, for example, both 'ice' and 'snow', which are hardly universal core vocabulary, as well as 'at' and 'in', which concepts are undoubtedly expressed in every language, but not universally by distinct words dedicated explicitly to those meanings, and words like 'cut', which have no single equivalent in many languages. Scott DeLancey Department of Linguistics University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403, USA delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html From hubeyh at Montclair.edu Fri Dec 18 12:31:49 1998 From: hubeyh at Montclair.edu (H. M. Hubey) Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 07:31:49 EST Subject: lexico-statistics Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Larry Trask wrote: > -As for the universal validity of Swadesh's lists, this has been very > severely questioned on a number of grounds. People continue to use > Swadesh's lists, since no other list appears to have a better claim to > universality, but specialists in particular families or areas have > sometimes drawn up their own lists. For example, somebody (I forget > who) has drawn up a list of words appropriate for working with in > southeast Asia. The simplest way to cure this problem, using common sense, is to make the list longer. That is how the effect of errors is minimized. There are basically two principles in use: 1. Some words should not be used (i.e. high-tech words) 2. We should use words that likely existed very long ago. Both of these are the opposite sides of the same coin. If words like snow and ice are no good for the tropics then these words should not exist. If they exist then they were borrowed or the people possibly kept memories of the words alive. If they were all borrowed from related languages then they will resemble each other, but if the languages are being compared only to each other then it does not really matter. It would matter if we were comparing some of these languages to other language families (such as IE) from which they could have been borrowed. The basic concepts of statistics are based on this. The greater the sample the smaller the uncertainty in the result. The smaller the sample, the greater the uncertainty of the result. -- M. Hubey Email: hubeyh at Montclair.edu Backup:hubeyh at alpha.montclair.edu WWW Page: http://www.csam.montclair.edu/Faculty/Hubey.html