From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU Mon Jul 6 13:13:38 1998 From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald) Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 09:13:38 EDT Subject: the meaning of "genetic relationship" Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- We have been discussing the concept of "mutual intelligibility", an interesting topic that seems crucial to Isidore Dyen's concept of "language" (technically, hololect = chain of mutually intelligible pairs of *dialects* -- or, after his last clarification, perhaps *idiolects*, or, preferrably, in my view, *lects*, in the sense suggested in the 1970s by CJ Bailey) and ultimately, in his view, to the concept of genetic relationship. About MI (mutual...), D writes: >What I >mean by mutual intelligibility for these purposes is being able >communicate with each other in their native dialect. This definition >produces a first (or native) language dialectology in which a language is >unitary. As I have been saying in previous messages on this topic, MI between dialects is a matter of degree. It seems to me that a quantitative leap, a lowering of MI, will occur in moving from a bunch of lects within a single (socially-delimited) dialect to another. That leap is similar but less than moving from one hololect to another. Basically, it all seems to be about moving from one vocabulary to another. It is true that some syntactic constructions can be misunderstood, or not understood across dialects, and some phonology can take getting used to even if vocabulary and syntax are familiar, but where there is shared vocabulary (recognised as shared vocabulary) there will be some degree of MI. Thus, if a German says to a monolingual English speaker under most circumstances "komm hier", the English speaker will understand, and, in fact, not even realise that s/he was spoken to in German. So there is some MI between German and English. I don't suppose (maybe I'm wrong) that D expects there to be a chain including English and German in a single hololect. I'm not sure this is important. There is certainly the quantitative leap I spoke of above. Presumably, the extent of the hololect is an empirical matter, so maybe E and G do belong to a single hololect although MI is minimal. I mention the above to indicate that I understand D's distinction between a "hololect" and what we usually call a "language" (socially defined). D continues: The term dialect is difficult; the term itself is used in such a >variety of ways, that in effect the definition a language given above >really appeals to the intuition in the matter of dialects. However it is >assumed that no two individuals whose speech-types are in the same >language are the same. Of course the term dialect is also applied to >collections of speech-types >that share a particular feature or some collection of features. [Here >'feature' is used for some relevant speech phenomenon, not in the >meaning it has in phonology.] In any case I believe it doesn't matter much >which definition of duialect you use. That's why I mentioned various terms like "dialect", "idiolect" and "lect" at the beginning of this message. Empirically there is a great difference between a (social) dialect and an (asocial) idiolect. Speakers of the same dialect are much more mutually intelligible than speakers of different dialects. Idiosyncratic speakers are no more intelligible within their dialects than outside of them on whatever points they're idiosyncratic on. The shared speech patterns of a single dialect even goes beyond what seems necessary for MI. Another rhetorical problem came up; by rhetoric I mean the way people express their points; it is a linguistically interesting thing about choices at the discourse level of linguistic analysis. D objected to my use of the word 'dogma', as follows: >I should add that I find the term 'dogma' a pejorative term. Of course I am aware that 'dogma' is sometimes taken to be pejorative, but in a discussion of linguistic complexity a while ago I wrote on this list that 'dogma' is not always a bad thing. In context I was saying that the dogma that all languages are of equal complexity is just that, since we do not know what we are talking about when we make that claim. (Not that it's wrong, just that we don't know what "equal complexity" means, or how to measure or conceptualise *global* complexity with respect to human languages -- and the notion that if something changes in a language, something else MUST change in order to "restore" that "constant" complexity is vacuous.) But I said the dogma is *good* because it alerts us to this problem when we hear somebody say or suggest that language A is more complex than language B. And I went on to say the dogma allows us to recognise an issue, so that the least we can respond to a claim of "inequality" in complexity is: "what do you mean?" And it invariably turns out that they mean something much more specific than "global complexity", e.g., "Chinese" is "complicated" because of its writing system, etc etc. Now, the "dogma" I was referring to in D's message is that languages don't mix -- and, I'm not sure because he didn't respond -- languages don't converge over an area (how could they without mutual intelligiblity -- and if they're separate hololects how can they be mutually...?), and maybe dialects don't either; they just either don't do anything or get more and more different from each other. OK, it sounds like I'm being sarcastic, but he really didn't respond and I can't anticipate how he deals with this. Anyway, again I don't think the dogma is totally misguided, but there is a better point in D's message to pursue to this, where he suggests that I will destroy the comparative method with my assumptions (or maybe it's: without assumptions like his.) Let's move on to that. >But if languages are permitted to mix, that is, if a language boundary between two languages is permitted to dissolve, then the kind of inferences that we make regarding the past hstory of a language must take the possibility of mixing into account. Yes. Why not? But NB, the language "boundary" between two languages never totally dissolves. It only dissolves on certain points. Note, for example, Gumperz's classic study of Marathi and Kannada in Kupwar. More or less the same grammar (including phonology) but different lexicons. >The consequence is that the hypothesis of a protolanguage becomes unavailable unless the possibility of mixture can be ruled out. Why? Mixture doesn't have to happen. But basically we ignore mixture/convergence according to the comparative method and concentrate on what can be accounted for without it. That's fine. But to then say "case closed", nothing else can happen, or ever does, and languages can't mix, that's like saying "you can't cross the street against the light. I mean, you CAN'T. Try it, you'll see you can't!" (But you can -- if you don't get run over.) In any case, there are two situations that test the limits of the comparative method (the one on which the genetic hypothesis is based), 1. two languages with the same grammar and different vocabularies; 2. two languages with the same vocabulary and different grammars. These are matters of degree, but at the extremes, 1. is reflected in the Kupwar Kannada-Marathi situation, among others (with few historical linguists exploring them instead of claiming they are "rare"), and 2. is reflected in such things as creolisation etc. The issue is very meaningful for the comparative method and reconstruction. Thus, for example, we have the case of Hittite, where some scholars, e.g., Lehmann, argue that it reflects a much more archaic grammar of IE than other surviving branches, while others argue that many of these features are due to convergence with non-IE languages of the area (which have similar features). The "dogma" against mixing does not help resolve this issue on way or the other. >That is the function of the assumption. In a first language dialectology applied through time, once a language has been formed, its being disjoint cannot be destroyed. If you are willing to give that up, I would say you are giving the power of the comparative method. A strange use of the word "assumption" to me. I'd say the comparative method works for what it works for, and it doesn't deserve any more power than that. Now, the idea that the disjoint(ed)ness of a language once it's formed can't be destroyed is another matter. But I'm reading "language" here as individual's linguistic system formed before a critical age. More on that later. To get beyond the English-German hololect, D writes: >The view is available that zero mutual intelligibility occurs. It is almost nonsensical to deny this, though it is not as obviously true as it seems (e.g., unidentifiable languages heard on the radio convey even less than those witnessed performed in public, according to my personal experience). The point remains that MI develops somehow under contact situations. D wants to disregard this by insisting that there is a strictly circumscribed item, call it a native (monolingual?) dialect (sociolinguists often call it a "vernacular") and that is the only thing that counts for *genetic* relationship. But note if you rule "mixing" (accomodation) out by definition, you simply choose to ignore the variety of ways in which languages change, both synchronically, and (relevantly) diachronically. What about areas where people generally grow up multilingually? What effect does that have on "genetic" relationship? (Interestingly, it varies, in Bantu East Africa genetic relationships can be demonstrated by conventional comparative methods, even for areas which are highly multilingual, but tree classification of Bantu languages in such areas and in general, is, for the most part, a hopeless mess.) I wrote: >>one might be tempted to assume that only through mutual intelligibility >> can dialects influence each other and changes spread from one dialect to >> another -- and there is no doubt some truth to this. .... D responded: >Without being disrespectful, let me suggest that you have used the term >'assume' above in the sense of 'conclude' or 'infer', not in its ological >sense. I don't object to l/ay terminology; I am not a logician. 1. huh? 2. what's "l/ay terminology"? Is it the vernacular? 3. I thought I meant "assume" (although a logical process leads to that assumption by ignoring certain facts). Elsewhere, D seems to use "assumption" to mean "postulate" (noun). To me an "assumption" can be like a "guess", and a guess is often based on a rational process, as suggested in the word "guestimate". In any case, assumptions, like guesses, can be wrong. Finally, D brings up a point which has long intrigued me, and we have some common ground: >I believe that you have begun to touch on the very important question that >deals with the time at which an individual can be said on the average to >be in control of his native language. If I suggest at the end of the first >decade of his life, I imagine I might attract some disbelief. For certain >purposes however, it strikes me as being not an unreasonable expectation. This is relevant to the "vernacular" which D insists is the object of genetic classification (to the exclusion of any other objects, it seems). As for disbelief, I think a "critical age" between 10-12 is widely accepted -- for PHONOLOGY (some put it even earlier, with some good evidence). But not for much of syntax and vocabulary. Since MI seems to depend crucially on vocabulary, there is some explaining to do here. At the same time, it may reduce "genetic relationship" largely to phonological evolution, something which would not surprise me in view of traditional practice, though not traditional belief. Structures that may be acquired well after the age of 10 are also subject to linguistic evolution, however, as is any non-universal feature of language (whatever the universal features of language turn out to be). Therefore, there is more to be said, esp about syntactic evolution. P.S. I get the sinking feeling that in the end D will say everything he was saying was ONLY relevant to the point of the term GENETIC relationship, and that everything I said could be true but not to the point. Whether or not genetic relationship is a big deal in the totality of ways in which languages can change might be considered a separate issue, the issue of *internal* change. We note that even with respect to borrowing there have been linguists like Jakobson who have proposed that languages can only borrow what could also result (?spontaneously) from internal change (what is consistent with its structure before the borrowing, or some such notion). That remains an interesting (!) idea, not always easy to distinguish from vacuity, and intended for borrowing beyond the arbitrariness of the lexicon. From Wouter.Kusters at let.uva.nl Tue Jul 7 16:03:26 1998 From: Wouter.Kusters at let.uva.nl (Wouter Kusters) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 12:03:26 EDT Subject: Workshop on Complexity in language contact, acquisition and change Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- NEWSLETTER 1. Workshop on Complexity in language contact, acquisition and change. 8 September 1998, Paris, France. In colaboration with the CNRS (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique), the LOT (Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics) is organizing some workshops to create a forum to encourage the discussion between researchers in linguistics from the Netherlands and France. One of the workshops is initiated by members of the University of Amsterdam and has as its subject: Complexity in language contact, acquisition and change. The workshop will take place on Tuesday the 8th of September, starting at 14.30 until approximately 20.00h. The theme Although there is a kind of dogma that all natural languages are equally complex, at least for certain subsystems of language there may well be differences in complexity. In discussions of processes of language change and first and second language acquisition the notion of complexity plays an important role. Especially in creole studies simplicity and complexity implicitly have been dominant issues in the debate, but are seldom properly scrutinized. In this workshop we want to discuss the role of complexity in these domains, including grammatical theory, first and second language acquisition, language change and language contact - in order to shed light on controversial problems invoked by the term complexity in linguistics in general. The structure of the workshop The workshop is organized around three themes: creole languages, language acquisition and language change. Each theme will be discussed by researchers from France and the Netherlands in 10 minutes presentations, inspired by the following propositions. After these short presentations there will be time for discussion in each session. 1. All languages have the same "costs/payment" balance, i.e. if a language becomes phonologically more simple, its morphological system will become more complex. [cf. Haugen 1976:286] 2. All complexity in languages resides in the lexicon. [cf. Aronoff 1995] 3. Languages spoken within small communities are more complex than languages of large communities. [cf. Whinnom 1980, Hymes 1971, Mühlhäusler 1996] 4. Language shift will in general lead to simplification, while borrowing will lead generally to more complex structures. [cf. Thomason & Kaufman 1988] 5. Complexity does not play a role in first language acquisition, but it does in second language acquisition. [cf. Trudgill 1992] 6. Grammaticalization leads to greater complexity. [Labov 1990, Bickerton 1981] Programme 14.30 Chair and Opening Pieter Muysken (University of Amsterdam/Leiden) 14.35: Introduction Hadewych van Rheeden (University of Amsterdam) Wouter Kusters (University of Amsterdam) 14.55: Language acquisition Elisabeth van der Linden (University of Amsterdam) Daniel Veronique (Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III) Colette Noyau (Université de Paris X) Peter Coopmans (University of Utrecht) 15.55: Break 16.15: Creoles Jacques Arends (University of Amsterdam) Adrienne Bruyn (University of Amsterdam) Karl Gadelii (University of Göteborg) Andree Tabouret-Keller (Université de Strasbourg) 17.15: Break Chair: To be announced 17.35: Language Change Marc van Oostendorp (University of Amsterdam/ Leiden) Fred Weerman (University of Utrecht) Colette Feuillard (Université René Descartes, Paris V) Muriel Norde (University of Amsterdam) Francoise Gadet (Université de Paris X) 19.00: General discussion. 20.00: Drinks and dinner. Please let us know if you are interested to join this workshop. If you need more information, just contact Wouter Kusters and/or Hadewych van Rheeden: wouter.kusters at let.uva.nl h.a.van.rheeden at let.uva.nl Another workshop will be held on Wednesday the 9th, on the subject of Competing principles in learners varieties, organized within the same joint programme of LOT and CNRS. These workshops are immediately followed by the Eurosla 8 Conference on Second language acquisition. For more information on the Eurosla 8 look at http://www.kun.nl/ttmb/news.html. In the next newsletter the exact location of the workshop will be announced. From isidore.dyen at yale.edu Thu Jul 9 21:49:00 1998 From: isidore.dyen at yale.edu (Isidore Dyen) Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 17:49:00 EDT Subject: the meaning of "genetic relationship" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Mon, 6 Jul 1998, bwald wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > We have been discussing the concept of "mutual intelligibility", an > interesting topic that seems crucial to Isidore Dyen's concept of > "language" (technically, hololect = chain of mutually intelligible pairs of > *dialects* -- or, after his last clarification, perhaps *idiolects*, or, > preferrably, in my view, *lects*, in the sense suggested in the 1970s by CJ > Bailey) and ultimately, in his view, to the concept of genetic > relationship. About MI (mutual...), D writes: > > >What I > >mean by mutual intelligibility for these purposes is being able > >communicate with each other in their native dialect. This definition > >produces a first (or native) language dialectology in which a language is > >unitary. > > As I have been saying in previous messages on this topic, MI between > dialects is a matter of degree. It seems to me that a quantitative leap, a > lowering of MI, will occur in moving from a bunch of lects within a single > (socially-delimited) dialect to another. That leap is similar but less > than moving from one hololect to another. Basically, it all seems to be > about moving from one vocabulary to another. It is true that some > syntactic constructions can be misunderstood, or not understood across > dialects, and some phonology can take getting used to even if vocabulary > and syntax are familiar, but where there is shared vocabulary (recognised > as shared vocabulary) there will be some degree of MI. Thus, if a German > says to a monolingual English speaker under most circumstances "komm hier", > the English speaker will understand, and, in fact, not even realise that > s/he was spoken to in German. So there is some MI between German and > English. I don't suppose (maybe I'm wrong) that D expects there to be a > chain including English and German in a single hololect. I'm not sure this > is important. There is certainly the quantitative leap I spoke of above. > Presumably, the extent of the hololect is an empirical matter, so maybe E > and G do belong to a single hololect although MI is minimal. I mention the > above to indicate that I understand D's distinction between a "hololect" > and what we usually call a "language" (socially defined). As I use the term mutual intelligibility as a criterion for distinguishing languages, it means in effect zero mutual intelligibility. There will probably always be found some accidental instances in which what might otherwise be taken to be different languages will provide a few sentences that are mutually intelligible. The example you cite is a good one and perhaps with some diligence you can add a few more. Such instances can perhaps lead to a refinement of the criterion. What is needed is a criterion that allows for cleancut separations and is objective. The difficulty is that the concept has not been studied after the fifties. Carping is obviously useless. One refinement that I have considered is the requirement that the intelligibiity depend on understanding through one's own structure. Although superficially that seems to be satisfied by your example, the structural requirement would soon show that it had really not been satisfied after the testing of mutual intelligibility had gone farther. > > D continues: > > The term dialect is difficult; the term itself is used in such a > >variety of ways, that in effect the definition a language given above > >really appeals to the intuition in the matter of dialects. However it is > >assumed that no two individuals whose speech-types are in the same > >language are the same. Of course the term dialect is also applied to > >collections of speech-types > >that share a particular feature or some collection of features. [Here > >'feature' is used for some relevant speech phenomenon, not in the > >meaning it has in phonology.] In any case I believe it doesn't matter much > >which definition of duialect you use. > > That's why I mentioned various terms like "dialect", "idiolect" and "lect" > at the beginning of this message. Empirically there is a great difference > between a (social) dialect and an (asocial) idiolect. Speakers of the same > dialect are much more mutually intelligible than speakers of different > dialects. Idiosyncratic speakers are no more intelligible within their > dialects than outside of them on whatever points they're idiosyncratic on. > The shared speech patterns of a single dialect even goes beyond what seems > necessary for MI. > > Another rhetorical problem came up; by rhetoric I mean the way people > express their points; it is a linguistically interesting thing about > choices at the discourse level of linguistic analysis. D objected to my > use of the word 'dogma', as follows: > > >I should add that I find the term 'dogma' a pejorative term. > > Of course I am aware that 'dogma' is sometimes taken to be pejorative, but > in a discussion of linguistic complexity a while ago I wrote on this list > that 'dogma' is not always a bad thing. In context I was saying that the > dogma that all languages are of equal complexity is just that, since we do > not know what we are talking about when we make that claim. (Not that it's > wrong, just that we don't know what "equal complexity" means, or how to > measure or conceptualise *global* complexity with respect to human > languages -- and the notion that if something changes in a language, > something else MUST change in order to "restore" that "constant" complexity > is vacuous.) But I said the dogma is *good* because it alerts us to this > problem when we hear somebody say or suggest that language A is more > complex than language B. And I went on to say the dogma allows us to > recognise an issue, so that the least we can respond to a claim of > "inequality" in complexity is: "what do you mean?" And it invariably > turns out that they mean something much more specific than "global > complexity", e.g., "Chinese" is "complicated" because of its writing > system, etc etc. There is an essential difference between a dogma and an assumption. A dogma is a teaching, an assumption is a proposition not subject to proof that is used as the basis for some collection of hypotheses. > > Now, the "dogma" I was referring to in D's message is that languages don't > mix -- and, I'm not sure because he didn't respond -- languages don't > converge over an area (how could they without mutual intelligiblity -- and > if they're separate hololects how can they be mutually...?), and maybe > dialects don't either; they just either don't do anything or get more and > more different from each other. OK, it sounds like I'm being sarcastic, > but he really didn't respond and I can't anticipate how he deals with this. > Anyway, again I don't think the dogma is totally misguided, but there is a > better point in D's message to pursue to this, where he suggests that I > will destroy the comparative method with my assumptions (or maybe it's: > without assumptions like his.) Let's move on to that. > > >But if languages > are permitted to mix, that is, if a language boundary between two > languages is permitted to dissolve, then the kind of inferences that we make > regarding the past hstory of a language must take the possibility of > mixing into account. > > Yes. Why not? But NB, the language "boundary" between two languages never > totally dissolves. It only dissolves on certain points. Note, for > example, Gumperz's classic study of Marathi and Kannada in Kupwar. More or > less the same grammar (including phonology) but different lexicons. If the language boundary between two languages never dissolves, different languages do not mix. > > >The consequence is that the hypothesis of a > protolanguage becomes unavailable unless the possibility of mixture can be > ruled out. > > Why? Mixture doesn't have to happen. But basically we ignore > mixture/convergence according to the comparative method and concentrate on > what can be accounted for without it. That's fine. But to then say "case > closed", nothing else can happen, or ever does, and languages can't mix, > that's like saying "you can't cross the street against the light. I mean, > you CAN'T. Try it, you'll see you can't!" (But you can -- if you don't > get run over.) > > In any case, there are two situations that test the limits of the > comparative method (the one on which the genetic hypothesis is based), 1. > two languages with the same grammar and different vocabularies; 2. two > languages with the same vocabulary and different grammars. These are > matters of degree, but at the extremes, 1. is reflected in the Kupwar > Kannada-Marathi situation, among others (with few historical linguists > exploring them instead of claiming they are "rare"), and 2. is reflected in > such things as creolisation etc. The issue is very meaningful for the > comparative method and reconstruction. Thus, for example, we have the case > of Hittite, where some scholars, e.g., Lehmann, argue that it reflects a > much more archaic grammar of IE than other surviving branches, while others > argue that many of these features are due to convergence with non-IE > languages of the area (which have similar features). The "dogma" against > mixing does not help resolve this issue on way or the other. It is not intended to. As an assumption it is not subject to proof. However if the assumption that languages do mix were to be more useful in tracing the history of languages, it would be the one to adopt. > > >That is the function of the assumption. In a first language > dialectology applied through time, once a language has been > formed, its being disjoint cannot be destroyed. If you are willing to give > that up, I would say you are giving the power of the comparative method. > > A strange use of the word "assumption" to me. I'd say the comparative > method works for what it works for, and it doesn't deserve any more power > than that. Now, the idea that the disjoint(ed)ness of a language once it's > formed can't be destroyed is another matter. But I'm reading "language" > here as individual's linguistic system formed before a critical age. More > on that later. > I believe my use of the term assumption is taken from logic. You are probably familiar with the fact that many disagreements between people (including scholars) are characterized by a lack of agreement on assumptions. You might want to think of an assumption as an axiom or postulate > To get beyond the English-German hololect, D writes: > > >The view is available that zero mutual intelligibility occurs. > > It is almost nonsensical to deny this, though it is not as obviously true > as it seems (e.g., unidentifiable languages heard on the radio convey even > less than those witnessed performed in public, according to my personal > experience). The point remains that MI develops somehow under contact > situations. D wants to disregard this by insisting that there is a > strictly circumscribed item, call it a native (monolingual?) dialect > (sociolinguists often call it a "vernacular") and that is the only thing > that counts for *genetic* relationship. But note if you rule "mixing" > (accomodation) out by definition, you simply choose to ignore the variety > of ways in which languages change, both synchronically, and (relevantly) > diachronically. What about areas where people generally grow up > multilingually? What effect does that have on "genetic" relationship? > (Interestingly, it varies, in Bantu East Africa genetic relationships can > be demonstrated by conventional comparative methods, even for areas which > are highly multilingual, but tree classification of Bantu languages in such > areas and in general, is, for the most part, a hopeless mess.) I believe there is a difference between what I call a first or native dialect or language and what sociolinguists call a vernacular or ought to be. I should guess that a vernacular is opposed to a standard dialect, whereas what I am talking about is what a person first learns; it might be something called a standard dialect. Generally what I have in mind is what people learn by the time they are ten. Some people grow up with more than one first languages. I heard a case reported in which it was claimed that a particular individual had no first language. But some people are also dumb or deaf or learning disabled and so on. Some individuals acquire two or more languages simultaneously as first languages and thus become part of the boundary between their languages. Co-linguistic dialects are different because their interactions are different; non-mutually intelligible dialects interact in the same way as different languages. Mutually intelligible dialects attract each other so that they tend to converge with persistent interaction, presumably to increase the rapidity of the intelligibility. Although neighboring languages also show structural convergence, the likelihood is that that is mediated by bilinguals > > I wrote: > >>one might be tempted to assume that only through mutual intelligibility > >> can dialects influence each other and changes spread from one dialect to > >> another -- and there is no doubt some truth to this. .... > > D responded: > >Without being disrespectful, let me suggest that you have used the term > >'assume' above in the sense of 'conclude' or 'infer', not in its ological > >sense. I don't object to l/ay terminology; I am not a logician. > > 1. huh? > 2. what's "l/ay terminology"? Is it the vernacular? > 3. I thought I meant "assume" (although a logical process leads to that > assumption by ignoring > certain facts). Elsewhere, D seems to use "assumption" to mean > "postulate" (noun). To me an > "assumption" can be like a "guess", and a guess is often based on a > rational process, as > suggested in the word "guestimate". In any case, assumptions, like > guesses, can be wrong. > > Finally, D brings up a point which has long intrigued me, and we have some > common ground: > > >I believe that you have begun to touch on the very important question that > >deals with the time at which an individual can be said on the average to > >be in control of his native language. If I suggest at the end of the first > >decade of his life, I imagine I might attract some disbelief. For certain > >purposes however, it strikes me as being not an unreasonable expectation. > > This is relevant to the "vernacular" which D insists is the object of > genetic classification (to the exclusion of any other objects, it seems). > As for disbelief, I think a "critical age" between 10-12 is widely accepted > -- for PHONOLOGY (some put it even earlier, with some good evidence). But > not for much of syntax and vocabulary. Since MI seems to depend crucially > on vocabulary, there is some explaining to do here. At the same time, it > may reduce "genetic relationship" largely to phonological evolution, > something which would not surprise me in view of traditional practice, > though not traditional belief. Structures that may be acquired well after > the age of 10 are also subject to linguistic evolution, however, as is any > non-universal feature of language (whatever the universal features of > language turn out to be). Therefore, there is more to be said, esp about > syntactic evolution. > > P.S. I get the sinking feeling that in the end D will say everything he > was saying was ONLY relevant to the point of the term GENETIC relationship, > and that everything I said could be true but not to the point. Whether or > not genetic relationship is a big deal in the totality of ways in which > languages can change might be considered a separate issue, the issue of > *internal* change. We note that even with respect to borrowing there have > been linguists like Jakobson who have proposed that languages can only > borrow what could also result (?spontaneously) from internal change (what > is consistent with its structure before the borrowing, or some such > notion). That remains an interesting (!) idea, not always easy to > distinguish from vacuity, and intended for borrowing beyond the > arbitrariness of the lexicon. > Genetic relationship is a big deal if you are interested in the past history of the human being. I am. From ratcliff at fs.tufs.ac.jp Fri Jul 10 12:46:15 1998 From: ratcliff at fs.tufs.ac.jp (Robert R. Ratcliffe) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 08:46:15 EDT Subject: historical explanation of language structure Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- This relates loosely to a discussion initiated, I believe, by Scott Delancey, a few months ago about the extent to which diachronic explanations are necessary to explain synchronic structures. It strikes me that there is a fundamental contradiction between the de-facto use of diachronic explanations in generative theory and the 'orthodox' generative assumptions about language change. It is well-known and uncontroversial that the underlying forms of classical Generative Phonology are often identical with reconstructed forms. Many critics of GG in the 60s and 70s saw this in itself as problem. But I'm willing to allow that ontology may recapitulate phylogeny as long as the theory of change and the theory of acquisition can be reconciled. But in GG they are not. Acquisition is assumed to involve simplification-- the child contructs the simplest grammar possible-- while the adoption of reconstructed forms as underlying forms implies a theory of change as grammar complication-- addition of rules. I'm particularly disturbed by the way in which non-linear or 'process' morphology (ablaut, reduplication, etc.) is handled. Many generativists seem to be powerfully attracted to a theory of language as consisting only of words or morphemes (which must be conventional, thus artifactual, acquired) and syntactic relations which are presumably universal. But in order to sustain this view process moprhology has to be explained away. (Hence we have books like the recent ones by Lieber or Stonham showing how all process morphology can be reduced to linear morphology). The conventional way of dealing with an ablaut (like man/men) in this kind of theory is by postulating a zero affix which triggers a phonological change. This is a de facto historical explanation. It is often (not always) the case that ablaut or apophony develops from affixational morphology, because an affix (which may later be lost) triggers a phonological change in the stem. But this type of de-facto historical exaplanation in a synchronic account is really a non-explanation or an anti-explanation. If the assumption is correct that the simplest, most natural grammar (the one closest to UG) is one which involves morphemes and linear order relations only, and if the assumption that language change is simplification is correct, then ablaut type change should be impossible. A child confronted with a pair like man/maener (or whatever it was in OE or Proto-Germanic, I am not a germanist) should simply factor out the 'noise' of the vowel change, identify the -er as a plural suffix and produce man/maner according to universal rules for combining morphemes. But in actual cases of language change it seems as often as not that it is the suffix which is factored out and the vowel contrast identified as the marker of plurality (or whatever semantic category), hence Eng. man/men. Thus either the theory that language change is simplification is incorrect, or the assumption that the simplest grammar is one which involves morphemes plus syntactic relations only is incorrect. (Of course both may be wrong.) If the latter assumption is incorrect then there is no motivation to search for deep-structure de-facto-historical explanations of process morphology. Thus while I am not yet ready to side with Paul, and say that there are no explanations of language phenomena except diachronic explanations, it seems to me there really hasn't been much progress in the direction of finding synchronic 'explanations', as opposed to synchronic descriptions, of language phenomena. Generative theory has failed to provide an adequate explanation of language change, yet generative theorists contiune to rely on explanations based in language change to explain synchronic language structure. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Robert R. Ratcliffe Senior Lecturer, Arabic and Linguistics, Dept. of Linguistics and Information Science Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Nishigahara 4-51-21, Kita-ku Tokyo 114 Japan From isidore.dyen at yale.edu Mon Jul 13 11:43:57 1998 From: isidore.dyen at yale.edu (Isidore Dyen) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 07:43:57 EDT Subject: historical explanation of language structure In-Reply-To: <35A64AA7.9106298A@fs.tufs.ac.jp> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I am not sure it is advisable to horn in on this discussion, but I will anyway. It is my understanding that in science 'explanation' is tied to the question 'How?'. With that as a premise the how of a natural language is reasonably sought in its antecedents. Examination its state, no matter how stated (including pseudo-histories) are only kinds of analyses. Some scholars believe that pseudo-histories are illuminating because they sometimes resemble historical inferences, but historical inferences are qualitatively different from analyses, though analyses provide the basic data for historical inferences. I believe that you saw this point and I hope that my comments have helped. On Fri, 10 Jul 1998, Robert R. Ratcliffe wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > This relates loosely to a discussion initiated, I believe, by Scott > Delancey, a few months ago about the extent to which diachronic > explanations are necessary to explain synchronic structures. > > It strikes me that there is a fundamental contradiction between the > de-facto use of diachronic explanations in generative theory and the > 'orthodox' generative assumptions about language change. It is > well-known and uncontroversial that the underlying forms of classical > Generative Phonology are often identical with reconstructed forms. Many > critics of GG in the 60s and 70s saw this in itself as problem. But I'm > willing to allow that ontology may recapitulate phylogeny as long as the > theory of change and the theory of acquisition can be reconciled. But > in GG they are not. Acquisition is assumed to involve simplification-- > the child contructs the simplest grammar possible-- while the adoption > of reconstructed forms as underlying forms implies a theory of change as > grammar complication-- addition of rules. > > I'm particularly disturbed by the way in which non-linear or 'process' > morphology (ablaut, reduplication, etc.) is handled. Many generativists > seem to be powerfully attracted to a theory of language as consisting > only of words or morphemes (which must be conventional, thus > artifactual, acquired) and syntactic relations which are presumably > universal. But in order to sustain this view process moprhology has to > be explained away. (Hence we have books like the recent ones by Lieber > or Stonham showing how all process morphology can be reduced to linear > morphology). The conventional way of dealing with an ablaut (like > man/men) in this kind of theory is by postulating a zero affix which > triggers a phonological change. This is a de facto historical > explanation. It is often (not always) the case that ablaut or apophony > develops from affixational morphology, because an affix (which may later > be lost) triggers a phonological change in the stem. But this type of > de-facto historical exaplanation in a synchronic account is really a > non-explanation or an anti-explanation. If the assumption is correct > that the simplest, most natural grammar (the one closest to UG) is one > which involves morphemes and linear order relations only, and if the > assumption that language change is simplification is correct, then > ablaut type change should be impossible. A child confronted with a pair > like man/maener (or whatever it was in OE or Proto-Germanic, I am not a > germanist) should simply factor out the 'noise' of the vowel change, > identify the -er as a plural suffix and produce man/maner according to > universal rules for combining morphemes. But in actual cases of language > change it seems as often as not that it is the suffix which is factored > out and the vowel contrast identified as the marker of plurality (or > whatever semantic category), hence Eng. man/men. Thus either the theory > that language change is simplification is incorrect, or the assumption > that the simplest grammar is one which involves morphemes plus syntactic > relations only is incorrect. (Of course both may be wrong.) If the > latter assumption is incorrect then there is no motivation to search for > deep-structure de-facto-historical explanations of process morphology. > > Thus while I am not yet ready to side with Paul, and say that there > are no explanations of language phenomena except diachronic > explanations, it seems to me there really hasn't been much progress in > the direction of finding synchronic 'explanations', as opposed to > synchronic descriptions, of language phenomena. Generative theory has > failed to provide an adequate explanation of language change, yet > generative theorists contiune to rely on explanations based in language > change to explain synchronic language structure. > > > > > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > Robert R. Ratcliffe > Senior Lecturer, Arabic and Linguistics, > Dept. of Linguistics and Information Science > Tokyo University of Foreign Studies > Nishigahara 4-51-21, Kita-ku > Tokyo 114 Japan > From jacob.baltuch at euronet.be Mon Jul 13 11:44:33 1998 From: jacob.baltuch at euronet.be (Jacob Baltuch) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 07:44:33 EDT Subject: Q: I'm told Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- When did constructions like "he's given something" (where the subject of the passive corresponds to the indirect object of the active) enter the English language? 2. Are they any other IE languages that have them? (Apologies to readers of the INDOLOGY list who've seen already maybe too many postings on the topic) From ROGER at beattie.uct.ac.za Mon Jul 13 11:45:36 1998 From: ROGER at beattie.uct.ac.za (Lass, RG, Roger, Prof) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 07:45:36 EDT Subject: Latin pronunciation Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- In light of the various comments from John Hewson and others on this matter, I'd like to note the following: (1) I learned Latin from a German teacher, and while he TRIED to teach us 'classical' pronunciation, he never could get past the nominative sg in reciting paradigms: so for 'Caesar' he (and sometimes we) said [kaizar, tse:zeRis, tse:zeRi:, tse:zeRem], etc. My favourite was 'Ciceronis oratio de amicitia', which was [tsitseRo:nis oRa:tsio de amitsitsia]. (2) If you listen carefully to recordings of sacred music by German (or Austrian) as opposed to other nationalities of singers, you'll note for instance [ts] rather than [tS] in 'dona nobis pacem', etc. Very careful singers, like Emma Kirkby and the English ancient music tradition, adjust their Latin, using 'Italian' or 'German' pronunciation where called for. Roger Lass Roger Lass Department of Linguistics University of Cape Town Rondebosch 7700/South Africa Tel +(021) 650 3138 Fax +(021) 650 3726 From ph1u+ at andrew.cmu.edu Mon Jul 13 14:33:29 1998 From: ph1u+ at andrew.cmu.edu (Paul J Hopper) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 10:33:29 EDT Subject: Latin pronunciation In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Roger Lass' observation about learning Latin from German teachers reminded me of an experience I had in Gymnasium in Hannover: having learned Greek pronunciation from British teachers in England, I was convinced unquestioningly that whereas the aspirates [phi] and [theta] were fricatives, [chi] was a stop identical to [kappa]. When I got to Germany, i discovered I had been wrongly taught: in fact, [phi] and [chi] were fricatives, and [theta] was a stop identical to [tau]! Paul From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU Tue Jul 14 14:32:58 1998 From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:32:58 EDT Subject: the meaning of "genetic relationship" Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I wrote: >> Now we are getting to one of my favorite points, pointing out that >> preoccupation with genetic relationship to the exclusion of other factors >> in linguistic change carries with it the 19th century baggage of romantic >> nationalism ... Isidore Dyen responded: >The key word above is preoccupation, a loaded word. You continue to use >loaded words and they do interfere with the straightforward exchange of >views. There is no special privilege associated with genetic relationship >so that if you are not interested in it or do not believe it is worth >examining, forget it. Why go on about it? Genetic linguistics is a subject >on whose evaluation you disagree with. Just get on with your research. >That's what is important, we hope. Nothing more needs to be said about this, other than to say: it's good advice. I went on later: >> NB. In my original quote above I give the perspective of an interest in >> the mechanics of linguistic change -- an end in itself. Dyen's response >> takes the perspective of an interest in linguistic change as a tool for >> uncovering past history, which I take to mean social history -- a means to >> an end. My questions above accommodate to that end. ID respond: >It may help you to understand the importance of genetic linguistics, if >you start from the point that man is distinguished from other animals by >language. It seems to me to follow that as we trace the back the history >of the presently occurring languages we are dealing with the history of >the human being, though perhaps not completely, but an important >contribution to the total history. That's fine with me. Nevertheless, I maintain that tracing back the history of presently occurring languages is a quite different task from understanding how human language originated. So far the role of genetic linguistics toward the second issue is simply one of dismissing some of the more absurd theories of language origins. From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU Tue Jul 14 14:32:40 1998 From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:32:40 EDT Subject: historical explanation of language structure Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I read Ratcliff's message of July 10, 1998 with considerable interest, since I am much interested in the difference of methods in synchronic (esp GG, but really all synchronic descriptions) and diachronic analyses. They boil down to a data-base difference between *introspective judgments*, whether the analyst's own or those of another speaker, in the case of synchronic analyses, and documentary evidence -- usually necessarily written texts (since voice-recorded data is not old enough to have deep historical documentary value yet), in the case of diachronic. These are differences in the data bases of these approaches, and all further problems, hypotheses, theories, explanations, assumptions, etc. follow from them and respond to them. Both methods have well-known pitfalls. Documentary evidence is painfully incomplete. Linguistic methods of reconstruction arose to supplement the documented data. The * flags its undocumented status as data (NB data for something else). As we know, application of the comparative methods is often contentious, though they have proven useful on a large amount of data (though rarely larger than the data which must be excluded by the methods -- for various reasons). In the case of synchronics, the reliability of introspections is often contentious, again for various reasons, some of which remain unclear. The worst case is two synchronic linguists arguing about their own conflicting judgments to support their theoretical positions. A gentleman's agreement to accept both judgments as data, when it occurs, does not resolve the issue of what causes the disagreement, and what its implications are for both synchronic and diachronic analyses. Generally there are two choices, either we have hit indeterminacy in the shared grammar of the dissenting speakers, or one reflects an *innovation* that can be passed on to successive speakers (so indeterminacy means it isn't passed on, speakers don't form rules of the degree of determinacy to encompass the disagreement, and they are only fashioned ad hoc as the methods of synchronic analysis lead to considering the contested form for some analytical generalisation based on more secure data). Robert's point about ontology repeating phylogeny in synchronic analysis is tricky. The topic was much discussed in the 70s, with little to show for it, in my opinion. Mainly because few people were interested in sustaining the discussion. Obviously synchronic analysis contains some features directly relevant to historical analysis, because some speakers have grammars with changes in progress in them. It is a *shared* problem for synchronic and diachronic analyses to decide at what point in its development a change is no longer "in progress", or has no longer left a trace of its former status as a change in progress, accessible to the speaker, not just the analyst, in some way. With respect to the above point, Robert's consideration of various devices proposed synchronic analysis leads to consideration of the difference between the level of abstractness that these devices represent, and relatively transparent and straightforward analyses. Take the example of representing morphological umlaut as an abstract affix. Why this device? Already it is unclear. It could be because the particular language has comparable affixes, e.g., a morphological suffix for indicating plural, e.g., -er, which as a plural suffix synchronically triggers umlaut in German. That is a language-specific reason, closer to the concerns of diachronic analysis. But another possibility is that the affix is more abstract and that its position is arbitrary. The "parameters" approach, I would guess, would position the segment according to some language typology, but it remains unclear how to interpret the notion that "plurality" is a *segment*. History supports the notion that the German -er suffix itself is connected with umlaut, and that the process switched from phonetic to morphophonemic during a certain period of time. More difficult are English umlaut pairs, like "man/men" etc. If you want to consider the issue of where GG analyses stop being synchronic and start being diachronic (two separate issues according to what I said earlier), consider what its methods have in common with the comparative method. This is most obvious for morphophonemics (where the problem was immediately recognised), and more problematic for either morphology (e.g., Semitic vowel patterns)/syntax or low-level phonology. (Generally, GG methodology resembles internal reconstruction, not comparative reconstruction.) Finally, Robert's point against "all changes simplify (the grammar)" has been discussed many times in many guises on this list. If the simplification involves loss of information, it may cause decoding difficulties on the part of the hearer, burdened with interpreting the utterance. Hearer sanctions on speakers helps to contain them, but we're not sure why hearer sanctions are more effective in some cases than in others. The umlaut example is interesting because as a phonological process it seems to have started as a speaker-oriented simplification of articulatory gestures (minimizing articulatory movement from the vowel of one syllable to the next, i.e., a form of vowel harmony). It is unclear how this could cause difficulty for the hearer. On the contrary, it increases the cues to plural marking. With regard to first learners, an empirical source for determining "complexity", learners certainly regularise English umlaut plurals, but they also learn to suppress those regularisations as they become more mature (for most dialects). This is a hearer-oriented concession, but not obviously for reasons of decoding ease. Even more interesting is "was/were" instead of "beed" (i.e., be + ed). I am not aware of any evidence that "be+ed" is ever constructed by first learners. (it does not even seem to exist in African American vernacular, despite finite use of "invariant be".) It seems that for many speakers "was/were" is learned early, earlier than the -ed past tense marker, and immediately accepted as a portmanteau. If this is the case, as I think it is (and second language learners definitely follow suit), English speakers readily accept the historical conflation of two distinct verbs. Unusual is the acceptance of a distinct verb limited to a particular tense (past). The same is not true of "went", which has its stage "goed" in first learner speech (as in history). In the final analysis, the abstract plural *segment* that Robert mentions for some GGists may contain the claim that when speakers first learn that a "meaning" has a *transparent* formal marker, they immediately generalise it to all contexts, later withdrawing it in cases which cause social disapproval (often unconsciously). The past tense of "be" seems to contradict that assumption. Lexical conflation is clearly a possible change, as in the Victorian (?) prescriptive example: "men perspire, horses sweat, and women glow" (among others). However, the "be" vs. "was" case involves grammatical conditioning, not semantic or pragmatic. From laser at cogsci.uiuc.edu Tue Jul 14 14:32:14 1998 From: laser at cogsci.uiuc.edu (Peter Lasersohn) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:32:14 EDT Subject: Workshops and Conferences at the 1999 Linguistic Institute Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- WORKSHOPS AND CONFERENCES AT THE 1999 LSA LINGUISTIC INSTITUTE Linguistics for the 21st Century: Form and Function from Western and Nonwestern Perspectives The LSA Linguistic Institute has traditionally been a popular venue for workshops and conferences. The upcoming 1999 Institute will be held at the University of Illinois, June 21-July 30, 1999.  If you are interested in organizing a WORKSHOP or CONFERENCE at the 1999 Linguistic Institute, please contact us as soon as possible: Peter Lasersohn, Internal Associate Director Department of Linguistics, MC 168 4088 Foreign Languages Building 707 South Mathews Ave. Urbana, IL 61801 USA laser at cogsci.uiuc.edu (217) 244-3054 The infrastructure will be in place to host events that range from 10-500 participants. We expect dozens of events to be held here during the Institute, and popular dates and rooms will fill up fast, so please do not delay. Information on the web: About the Institute: http://www.cogsci.uiuc.edu/~lingi nst/1999 About the Linguistics Department at the University of Illinois: http://www.cogsci.uiuc.edu/linguistics About the University of Illinois and surrounding community: http://www.uiuc.edu From jacob.baltuch at euronet.be Tue Jul 14 14:31:49 1998 From: jacob.baltuch at euronet.be (Jacob Baltuch) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:31:49 EDT Subject: Q: I'm told Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > When did constructions like "he's given something" > enter the English language? Just in case this wasn't clear, I was asking about raising of IO to Su. From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Wed Jul 15 14:48:18 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:48:18 EDT Subject: I`m told Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- The construction in which an indirect object is raised to become the subject of a passive has been called the `indirect passive'. There is a historical study of the rise of this construction in English in chapter 6 of the following book: David Denison (1993), English Historical Syntax, London: Longman. Briefly, Denison reports that the indirect passive was unknown in Old English, that the first apparent examples appear in the early 13th century with certain verbs like `DO (somebody) good' and `LET (somebody) blood', that the first reasonably clear examples with verbs like GIVE and TELL appear in the late 14th century, and that these remained rare until the late 15th century, after which the construction spread to more and more verbs and became frequent. Documentation of the rise and spread of this construction is provided in sections 1967-1975 of F. Th. Visser (1963-1973), An Historical Syntax of the English Language, 4 vols., Leiden: E. J. Brill. Both Visser and Denison caution that the early examples are often somewhat doubtful and need to be interpreted cautiously. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH England larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From isidore.dyen at yale.edu Wed Jul 15 14:47:35 1998 From: isidore.dyen at yale.edu (Isidore Dyen) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:47:35 EDT Subject: the meaning of "genetic relationship" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Tue, 14 Jul 1998, bwald wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > I wrote: > > >> Now we are getting to one of my favorite points, pointing out that > >> preoccupation with genetic relationship to the exclusion of other factors > >> in linguistic change carries with it the 19th century baggage of romantic > >> nationalism ... > > Isidore Dyen responded: > > >The key word above is preoccupation, a loaded word. You continue to use > >loaded words and they do interfere with the straightforward exchange of > >views. There is no special privilege associated with genetic relationship > >so that if you are not interested in it or do not believe it is worth > >examining, forget it. Why go on about it? Genetic linguistics is a subject > >on whose evaluation you disagree with. Just get on with your research. > >That's what is important, we hope. > > Nothing more needs to be said about this, other than to say: it's good advice. > > I went on later: > > >> NB. In my original quote above I give the perspective of an interest in > >> the mechanics of linguistic change -- an end in itself. Dyen's response > >> takes the perspective of an interest in linguistic change as a tool for > >> uncovering past history, which I take to mean social history -- a means to > >> an end. My questions above accommodate to that end. > > ID respond: > > >It may help you to understand the importance of genetic linguistics, if > >you start from the point that man is distinguished from other animals by > >language. It seems to me to follow that as we trace the back the history > >of the presently occurring languages we are dealing with the history of > >the human being, though perhaps not completely, but an important > >contribution to the total history. > > That's fine with me. Nevertheless, I maintain that tracing back the > history of presently occurring languages is a quite different task from > understanding how human language originated. So far the role of genetic > linguistics toward the second issue is simply one of dismissing some of the > more absurd theories of language origins. It may help if you call them hypotheses concerning the origin of languages rather than theories. As I see it it is useful to distinguish theories from hypotheses. The latter are explanations. There is little doubt that languages originated and the question is how. The problem has a simple structure if it is set up properly. The first component is animal cries used as signals. The second component is the fact that all natural languages are characterized by a phonemic structure. What we need is a scenario (one type of hypopthesis) that gets us from a cry-structure to a phonemic structure. The scenario would be a lot simpler to construct if the most minimal element was meaningful. Since all languqages use syntactic devices to reduce the ambiguity of utterances, one can take it for granted that syntactic devices developed for organizing different sequences of different meaningful (call them) cries. Somehow phonemes were developed out of the mishmash that was going on at that stage. Perhaps you would like to take a hand in adding to this scenario, or to construct an absurd hypothesis of your own. > From anna-karin.strobel at swipnet.se Wed Jul 15 14:45:21 1998 From: anna-karin.strobel at swipnet.se (anna-karin.strobel) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:45:21 EDT Subject: referencesearching Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Hello, I wonder if anyone could be so kind to send me any references to any one of these languages. I have tried to locate references here in Sweden but I haven't managed to find anything explicit about these, or about the people who spoke/speak them. Be little flexible about the spelling though I had to translate some names from swedish myself, but as You can se I have put down some spellingvariations sometimes. Any germanic och romance language is okey but don't bather with slavic, greek, finno-ugric and turkic or anything else. • Curish, kurish, kurian, curian, - in Kurland in the Balts • jatvingian - in Poland and possible in southern Balticum • semgallien in the region semgallien in Balticum • selian, selic, - in the Balts somewhere • kamassian, camassian, camassican - in Russia until 1980ts, a samoyed language • tartessian - an language in Iberia in pre-rom ” lusitanian, lusitanic - a pre-rome language of Iberia • lyaconian - in Anatolia • trevian, treviscian - in eastern Gallia, a celtique language • mallorquin - the catalan dialect that is spoken in Andorra • talysh, talyshian, - in Azerbadjian • judeo-tat and muslim-tat in Azerbadjsan • gurbéti - who knows • pomac - in Greece and other Balcan countries • sarakatsanernian, saracatsian, saracatsanerian - a greec nomadic language in Bulgaria (I think) • traveller danish and its countemporeries in other countries as Sweden, Britain, Norway, Finland etc • elmyrian, elmyric - the pre-ancien language of Sicily • the various Channel Islands languages as aurignais, sarquis and the likes in Jersey and Guernsey • the brabant language of Brabant • the limbourgian dialect of Belgium • maronitian, maronitic arabic - the arabic language of Cyprus • olonetsian, olonetic, livvi, aunus - in Russia • kemi sami - in Sampmi in norther Scndinavia • monegasque in Monaco • the language of the town of Bonifacio in Corsica • the balearic dialect of catalan • corsu of Corsica • shuadit, judeprovencal - in Provence • zarphatic - in France Thanks very much, Steve Lando anna-karin.strobel at swipnet.se From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU Thu Jul 16 15:33:05 1998 From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald) Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 11:33:05 EDT Subject: the meaning of "genetic relationship" Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Isidore Dyen invites comments on the following suggestion: > There is little doubt that languages >originated and the question is how. The problem has a simple structure if >it is set up properly. The first component is animal cries used as >signals. The second component is the fact that all natural languages >are characterized by a phonemic structure. What we need is a scenario (one >type of hypopthesis) that gets us from a cry-structure to a phonemic >structure. I think this is a variant of the theory of language origin that Jespersen called something like the "yowee" theory. (as opposed to the "ding-dong" and "bow-wow" theories). The only hypothesis that sticks in my mind with regard to a transition is the quantum leap one about human neurological evolution intervening between cries and words/roots/grammar/etc. Focussing on phonemic structure reveals the difference between cries as sounds and language as sounds, but I also think of Martinet's "double articulation" principle about language. Cries are generally taken to be emotive, while vocabulary is taken as symbolic (I hesitate to use the term "representational"). Therefore, there is also a transition in creation of meanings that must be taken into account. It is unclear that cries correspond in any way to most words/roots, apart from sharing vocalisation. In view of the relation between gestures and meanings (e.g., beckoning and dismissive gestures, perhaps referential pointing more generally ), the same logic leads to consideration of the transition between "purposeful" non-vocal animal gestures and human gestures that seem to have linguistic equivalents, e.g., "come here", "go away/keep distant", "look at that", etc. To be sure, on the basis of the list of differences between human language and what is known of animal communication (which I forget, Hockett lists a bunch), of which referential displacement in human language is most striking, innatists deny a direct connection. They would say that constructing a scenario between cries and roots/words is impossible (not to deny a small overlap -- because human language can represent anything that humans can perceive or imagine, including emotive cries). ID goes on: The scenario would be a lot simpler to construct if the most >minimal element was meaningful. I remember Swadesh in the 1960s suggesting that roots were initially constructed as CVC syllables (and that animal cries can be analysed into such units). Abstracting from this notion, I suppose the notion of the syllable would have to evolve prior to phonemic inventory or structure. I guess then the margins and nuclei started to be analysed as separate units. That's as far as I would go with that idea. ID continues: Since all languqages use syntactic devices >to reduce the ambiguity of utterances, one can take it for granted that >syntactic devices developed for organizing different sequences >of different meaningful (call them) cries. As far as we know (I think), the isolation of "meaningful cries" (anything like the roots of human languages) for displaced reference is already a major step for the theory ID hints at. Somehow, this must be accounted for. If not by neurological development which allows the evolution of something qualitatively different from emotive (or "here-and-now") cries, then what? Similarly, syntactic sequencing remains mysterious in origin. ID's suggestion reminds me of Bickerton's speculative distinction between "pre-language" and "language", where, in "pre-language", thematic roles/case relations are not specified, cf. early stages of children's syntax, and there is a lot of "ambiguity". Recall Lois Bloom's 1969? study of "mommy sock" (18 month-old or thereabout), which, according to context might mean "(look at) mommy's sock", "mommy, gimme a sock", "mommy has a sock", etc. ID continues: Somehow phonemes were developed >out of the mishmash that was going on at that stage. Perhaps you would >like to take a hand in adding to this scenario, or to construct an absurd >hypothesis of your own. The efficiency element in constructing roots and words from phonemes is striking, and parallels the efficiency of using syntax to construct utterances out of words. I don't know what to make of that for the origins of language. I can only appreciate that somehow the same kinds of logic are involved on the syntactic and phonotactic levels, and that somehow this has something to do with "reality", as humans perceive it, not just with analytical tricks. I'll leave it to others to propose theories of language origins. I'll just consider them to the extent that I can understand them -- and criticise, if necessary. From mcv at wxs.nl Thu Jul 16 15:28:55 1998 From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 11:28:55 EDT Subject: referencesearching In-Reply-To: <199807141844.UAA05650@mb05.swip.net> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- "anna-karin.strobel" wrote: > Curish, kurish, kurian, curian, - in Kurland in the Balts > > jatvingian - in Poland and possible in southern Balticum > > semgallien in the region semgallien in Balticum > > selian, selic, - in the Balts somewhere Curonian, Semigallian and Selonian were Baltic languages closely related to Latgalian. They have merged now in the language known as Latvian. The other Baltic languages were Prussian, Yotvingian and Galindian (in modern Poland/Belarus, between/south of the Prussians and the Lithuanians), and Lithuanian (divided into Samogitians and Aukstaiciai). You might try [haven't read them]: CHRISTIAN S. STANG, Vergleichende Grammatik der Baltischen Sprachen (1966), JANIS ENDZELINS, Baltu kalbu garsai ir formos (1957; Eng. trans., Comparative Phonology and Morphology of the Baltic Languages, 1971) > kamassian, camassian, camassican - in Russia until 1980ts, a >samoyed language Indeed one of the Southern Samoyedic languages of the Ob area, all of them extinct except Selkup ("Ostyak Samoyed"). Some of the extinct languages are Kamas, Motor, Koibal, Karagas, Soyot and Taigi. > olonetsian, olonetic, livvi, aunus - in Russia Olonets (Aunus) is a dialect of Karelian, a Baltic Finnic language very close to Finnish. Liiv (Livonian) is another Baltic Finnic language, formerly spoken in Western (Kurland) and Northern (Vidzeme) Latvia, now only on the very tip of Kurland. > kemi sami - in Sampmi in norther Scndinavia I suppose that's the dialect of Saami spoken near the Kemi river in Finland. You might try: BJVRN COLLINDER et al., Survey of the Uralic Languages, 2nd, rev. ed. (1969). > tartessian - an language in Iberia in pre-rom Tartessos was a city in Southern Spain, presumably near the delta of the Guadalquivir, although the site has not been found yet. There are inscriptions in S. Spain (most of them, I believe, from the Algarve area rather than from the Tartessian/Turdetanian area) in a script similar to but different from the Iberian alphabet/syllabary. They are not well understood. Classical sources claim that the language of the Tartessians was different from Iberian. Quoting Larry Trask: The so-called "Tartessian" inscriptions (the name is arbitrary and meaningless) are discussed in chapters 4 and 5 of the following book: James M. Anderson (1988), Ancient Languages of the Hispanic Peninsula, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, ISBN 0-8191-6731-2 (hb), 0-8191-6732-0 (pb). The label is more properly applied to the inscriptions of southern Portugal; those in southern Spain are similar but not identical, and it is not clear that both represent the same language. > lusitanian, lusitanic - a pre-rome language of Iberia There are a couple of inscriptions from the Lusitanian area (N. Portugal, NE Castille), which are apparently not written in Celtic, but in another Indo-European language, dubbed "Lusitanian". The inscription from Cabego das Fraguas contains the words PORCOM and IFADEM which would indicate the non-Celtic preservation of PIE *p, and the development *bh > f (Celtic b, Italic f). See UNTERMANN, J. "Lusitanisch, Keltiberisch, Keltisch" (Actas del V Coloquio sobre Lenguas y Culturas prerromanas de la Penmnsula Ibirica, Vitoria 1987), or his Monumenta Linguarum Hispanicarum 1-3, Wiesbaden 1975-1990. > lyaconian - in Anatolia Lycaonia was inhabited by Anatolian Luwians in the 2nd mill. BC. We now that Lycian in the 1st mill. BC is descended from Luwian, and it seems likely that the aboriginal language of Lycaonia was from the same stock. As far as I know, there are no Lycaonian inscriptions. > trevian, treviscian - in eastern Gallia, a celtique language There's the tribe of the Treveri, in modern Luxemburg... > talysh, talyshian, - in Azerbadjian > > judeo-tat and muslim-tat in Azerbadjsan Talysh and Tat are Iranian languages of the Caspian group, some of them heavily influenced by standard Persian (Farsi). R. SCHMITT (ed.) Compendium linguarum iranicarum, Wiesbaden 1989, might contain some information. > gurbiti - who knows I don't... > pomac - in Greece and other Balcan countries > > sarakatsanernian, saracatsian, saracatsanerian - a greec nomadic >language in Bulgaria (I think) The Pomaks are apparently Bulgarians that converted to Islam after the Turkish invasion. I suspect the Sarakats[..] (~Sarracen?) might be the same people, or maybe Greeks converted to Islam? > traveller danish and its countemporeries in other countries as >Sweden, Britain, Norway, Finland etc Never heard of it... > elmyrian, elmyric - the pre-ancien language of Sicily Elymian is indeed one of the ancient languages of Sicily (together with Sican and Siculian). All I know about Elymian is that there are a couple of incriptions, one of them containing the word esmi or emi or the like, which if it means "I am", would indicate an Indo-European (but not an Italic) language. > the various Channel Islands languages as aurignais, sarquis and >the likes in Jersey and Guernsey Norman French dialects. > the brabant language of Brabant > > the limbourgian dialect of Belgium Dialects of Dutch. > maronitian, maronitic arabic - the arabic language of Cyprus The Christian Maronites of Lebanon speak standard Levantine Arabic. > monegasque in Monaco Apparently, some people in Monaco still speak an Italian (Ligurian) dialect, close to the dialect of Ventimiglia. A Ligurian colony was established in Monaco in the 11th c. (source: Pierre Bec, "La Langue Occitane" [Que sais-je? 1059]). > the language of the town of Bonifacio in Corsica > corsu of Corsica I don't know if the language of Bonifacio is a variety of corsu. Gerhard Rohlf's "Historische Grammatik der Italienischen Sprache und ihrer Mundarten" (1949, Bern) contains quite a few references to Corsican. > mallorquin - the catalan dialect that is spoken in Andorra Mallorqum is obviously the dialect of Catalan spoken on Mallorca. Andorr` itself is a variant of W. Catalan, not as remarkable as the dialects of Pallars, Ribagorga [which are in certain ways transitional between Catalan and Aragonese] or Vall d'Aran [a Gascon dialect]. > the balearic dialect of catalan Unfortunately, all the sources on Catalan I'm familiar with (such as Badia i Margarit's "Gram`tica histrrica catalana"), are in Catalan. > shuadit, judeprovencal - in Provence > > zarphatic - in France I don't know about zarphatic (unless it's a corruption of sephardic). Unlike judeo-espaqol (ladino, judezmo, etc.), I'm not aware of any special linguistic status for judaeo-provengal. ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From Georg at home.ivm.de Thu Jul 16 15:22:53 1998 From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg) Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 11:22:53 EDT Subject: referencesearching In-Reply-To: <199807141844.UAA05650@mb05.swip.net> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I see you are in endangered-languages-in-Europe-research (and some extinct ancient lgs. as well): Here are some items of possible use for you: >• kamassian, camassian, camassican - in Russia until 1980ts, a >samoyed language Kai Donner: Kamassisches Wörterbuch nebst Sprachproben und Hauptzügen der Grammatik, Helsinki: Societe Finno-Ougrienne 1944 a good source for lexical data (and a classic of loanword research) is: Aulis Joki: Die Lehnwörter des Sajansamojedischen, Helsinki, ibid. 1952 a good short sketch is: Péter Simoncsics: Kammassian, in: Daniel Abandolo: The Uralic Languages, London: Routledge 1998 (yes, that fresh !) >• tartessian - an language in Iberia in pre-rom > >” lusitanian, lusitanic - a pre-rome language of Iberia On both you may want to have a look at: Certainly you'll get newer references on these, but the older literature is accessible through U. Schmoll: Die Sprachen der vorkeltischen Indogermanen und das Keltiberische, Wiesbaden 1959 (I'm nothing less than an expert on these lgs, but I think it is fair to say that you should not expect too much in the way of actual attestation on these languages) >• lyaconian - in Anatolia I'm unsure, what that might be, maybe Lycian, then try Johannes Friedrich: Kleinasiatische Sprachdenkmäler, Berlin 1932 for the then-known corpus, and Günter Neumann: Lykisch, in: Handbuch der Orientalistik I, 2, 1/2, 2 (Altkleinasiatische Sprachen) 1969, 358-396; but Anatolian linguistics certainly did not come to a standstill after that >• trevian, treviscian - in eastern Gallia, a celtique language As far as I can tell, this is an unattested language (though the Celtic tribe of the Treveri is of course well known) >• talysh, talyshian, - in Azerbadjian >• judeo-tat and muslim-tat in Azerbadjsan Mostly, even almost exclusively, Russian literature, try the handbook-article: Pierre Lecoq: Les dialectes caspiens et les dialectes du nord-ouest de l'Iran, in: R. Schmitt (ed.): Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum, Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1989, 296-312; also some papers by G. Lazard, such as: Le dialecte taleshi de Masule (Gilan), Studia Iranica 7, 1978, 251-268 >• gurbéti - who knows I don't >• elmyrian, elmyric - the pre-ancien language of Sicily Rather Elymian: Try A. Zamboni: Il siculo (Elymian included) in: Lingue e dialetti dell'Italia antica, Padova 1978, 949-1012 >• maronitian, maronitic arabic - the arabic language of Cyprus Otto Jastrow: Gedanken zum zypriotischen Arabisch, ZDMG 127/1977, 258-286 A. Roth: Le verbe dans le parler arabe de Kormakiti (Chypre), Epeteris 7 (Levkosia 1973-75), 21-117 M. Tsiapera: A descriptive analysis of Cypriot Maronitic Arabic, The Hague/Paris 1969 >• olonetsian, olonetic, livvi, aunus - in Russia Mostly regarded as Karelian dialect, a possible source is Pertti Virtaranta: Die Dialekte des Karelischen, in Sovetskoe Finno-Ugrovedenie 1972/1, but don't expect to find there much sources in languages other than Russian or Finnish >• kemi sami - in Sampmi in norther Scndinavia I don't know this dialect designation, but you'll find a lot of information in: Pekka Sammallahti: Saamic, in the abovementioned Abondolo-book (43-95) >• the language of the town of Bonifacio in Corsica It's said to be Genovese Italian, but I don't know of any specialist literature. >• corsu of Corsica A good recent sketch is: Mathee Giacomo-Marcellesi: Corse, München-Newcastle 1997 Regards, St.G. Stefan Georg Heerstrasse 7 D-53111 Bonn FRG +49-228-69-13-32 From fcosw5 at mbm1.scu.edu.tw Sat Jul 18 13:24:32 1998 From: fcosw5 at mbm1.scu.edu.tw (Steven Schaufele) Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 09:24:32 EDT Subject: Latin pronunciation Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > convinced unquestioningly that whereas the aspirates [phi] and [theta] > were fricatives, [chi] was a stop identical to [kappa]. When I got to > Germany, i discovered I had been wrongly taught: in fact, [phi] and > [chi] were fricatives, and [theta] was a stop identical to [tau]! This, in turn, reminds me of my experience in learning Biblical Hebrew from a Rabbi whose native language was German. In his version, the oral stops represented by the letters `beth', `kaph', and `pe' could be spirantized to produce the phones /v/, /x/, and /f/ respectively, but the oral stops represented by the letters `gimel', `daleth', and `taw' couldn't be similarly spirantized (note that he also pronounced the letter `waw' exactly like the spirantized version of beth: /v/). Being a man of intelligence and great learning as well as great honesty, he admitted that, ideally, all six oral stops should be subject to spirantization, and that his inability to follow through on this was due entirely to his German-speaking roots. But in fact, anything deviating from this arch-Aschkenazic pronunciation was not acceptable in class! Best, Steven -- Steven Schaufele, Ph.D., Asst. Prof. of Linguistics, English Department Soochow University, Waishuanghsi Campus, Taipei 11102, Taiwan, ROC (886)(02)2881-9471 ext. 6504 fcosw5 at mbm1.scu.edu.tw http://www.prairienet.org/~fcosws/homepage.html ***O syntagmata linguarum liberemini humanarum!*** ***Nihil vestris privari nisi obicibus potestis!*** From isidore.dyen at yale.edu Sat Jul 18 22:02:25 1998 From: isidore.dyen at yale.edu (Isidore Dyen) Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 18:02:25 EDT Subject: the meaning of "genetic relationship" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Understanding is good, a critical attitude is good, remembering that science deals with how, not why, is better. On Thu, 16 Jul 1998, bwald wrote: > Isidore Dyen invites comments on the following suggestion: > > > There is little doubt that languages > >originated and the question is how. The problem has a simple structure if > >it is set up properly. The first component is animal cries used as > >signals. The second component is the fact that all natural languages > >are characterized by a phonemic structure. What we need is a scenario (one > >type of hypopthesis) that gets us from a cry-structure to a phonemic > >structure. > > I think this is a variant of the theory of language origin that Jespersen > called something like the "yowee" theory. (as opposed to the "ding-dong" > and "bow-wow" theories). The only hypothesis that sticks in my mind with > regard to a transition is the quantum leap one about human neurological > evolution intervening between cries and words/roots/grammar/etc. Focussing > on phonemic structure reveals the difference between cries as sounds and > language as sounds, but I also think of Martinet's "double articulation" > principle about language. Cries are generally taken to be emotive, while > vocabulary is taken as symbolic (I hesitate to use the term > "representational"). Therefore, there is also a transition in creation of > meanings that must be taken into account. It is unclear that cries > correspond in any way to most words/roots, apart from sharing vocalisation. > In view of the relation between gestures and meanings (e.g., beckoning and > dismissive gestures, perhaps referential pointing more generally ), the > same logic leads to consideration of the transition between "purposeful" > non-vocal animal gestures and human gestures that seem to have linguistic > equivalents, e.g., "come here", "go away/keep distant", "look at that", > etc. To be sure, on the basis of the list of differences between human > language and what is known of animal communication (which I forget, Hockett > lists a bunch), of which referential displacement in human language is most > striking, innatists deny a direct connection. They would say that > constructing a scenario between cries and roots/words is impossible (not to > deny a small overlap -- because human language can represent anything that > humans can perceive or imagine, including emotive cries). > > ID goes on: > The scenario would be a lot simpler to construct if the most > >minimal element was meaningful. > > I remember Swadesh in the 1960s suggesting that roots were initially > constructed as CVC syllables (and that animal cries can be analysed into > such units). Abstracting from this notion, I suppose the notion of the > syllable would have to evolve prior to phonemic inventory or structure. I > guess then the margins and nuclei started to be analysed as separate units. > That's as far as I would go with that idea. > > ID continues: > Since all languqages use syntactic devices > >to reduce the ambiguity of utterances, one can take it for granted that > >syntactic devices developed for organizing different sequences > >of different meaningful (call them) cries. > > As far as we know (I think), the isolation of "meaningful cries" (anything > like the roots of human languages) for displaced reference is already a > major step for the theory ID hints at. Somehow, this must be accounted > for. If not by neurological development which allows the evolution of > something qualitatively different from emotive (or "here-and-now") cries, > then what? Similarly, syntactic sequencing remains mysterious in origin. > ID's suggestion reminds me of Bickerton's speculative distinction between > "pre-language" and "language", where, in "pre-language", thematic > roles/case relations are not specified, cf. early stages of children's > syntax, and there is a lot of "ambiguity". Recall Lois Bloom's 1969? study > of "mommy sock" (18 month-old or thereabout), which, according to context > might mean "(look at) mommy's sock", "mommy, gimme a sock", "mommy has a > sock", etc. > > ID continues: > Somehow phonemes were developed > >out of the mishmash that was going on at that stage. Perhaps you would > >like to take a hand in adding to this scenario, or to construct an absurd > >hypothesis of your own. > > The efficiency element in constructing roots and words from phonemes is > striking, and parallels the efficiency of using syntax to construct > utterances out of words. I don't know what to make of that for the origins > of language. I can only appreciate that somehow the same kinds of logic > are involved on the syntactic and phonotactic levels, and that somehow this > has something to do with "reality", as humans perceive it, not just with > analytical tricks. I'll leave it to others to propose theories of language > origins. I'll just consider them to the extent that I can understand them > -- and criticise, if necessary. > > From C.Bowern at Student.anu.edu.au Mon Jul 20 11:01:37 1998 From: C.Bowern at Student.anu.edu.au (Claire Bowern) Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 07:01:37 EDT Subject: Dative Pronouns Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Does anyone know of a language where a dative pronoun becomes the nominative? I'm not really interested in languages where the dative and accusative fall together, and then that case becomes "nominative". I have an example from Pitta-Pitta (Pama-Nyungan) where the orginal 1sg dative *ngantya turns up as nominative, a new dative stem is invented and accusative is basically unaffected. I believe something similar happened in Frisian but I would like some more examples if possible. Thanks, Claire Bowern ANU From mfceprh at fs1.art.man.ac.uk Mon Jul 20 15:04:49 1998 From: mfceprh at fs1.art.man.ac.uk (Richard Hogg) Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 11:04:49 EDT Subject: Dative Pronouns In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19980720102827.00912b60@student.anu.edu.au> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On 20 Jul 98 at 7:01, Claire Bowern wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > Does anyone know of a language where a dative pronoun becomes the > nominative? I'm not really interested in languages where the dative and > accusative fall together, and then that case becomes "nominative". I have > an example from Pitta-Pitta (Pama-Nyungan) where the orginal 1sg dative > *ngantya turns up as nominative, a new dative stem is invented and > accusative is basically unaffected. I believe something similar happened in > Frisian but I would like some more examples if possible. > The intended Frisian reference may be to the 2nd pers. plural form jimme, which Markey 1981: 188 ("Frisian", Mouton) is a starting point (but no more than a starting point). Also of possible interest is the English phenomenon called "pronoun exchange" by the late Ossi Ihalainen, which gives sentences such as: Her (SUBJ) told I (OBJ) Such forms are traceable throughout western England and in a few varieties living forms remain even in this decade. See Ihalainen in Cambridge History Vol. 5 pp.230-1, together with a number of his articles on Somerset and West Country dialect. As Ihalainen points out, it is probable that "you" is the descendant of the old accusative/dative pronoun, which replaced nominative "ye" under complex circumstances. Richard Hogg *************************************************************************** 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 Roger.Wright at liverpool.ac.uk Mon Jul 20 15:04:28 1998 From: Roger.Wright at liverpool.ac.uk (Roger Wright) Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 11:04:28 EDT Subject: Dative Pronouns In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19980720102827.00912b60@student.anu.edu.au> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Yes. French (lui < ILLUI) RW >----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >Does anyone know of a language where a dative pronoun becomes the >nominative? I'm not really interested in languages where the dative and >accusative fall together, and then that case becomes "nominative". I have >an example from Pitta-Pitta (Pama-Nyungan) where the orginal 1sg dative >*ngantya turns up as nominative, a new dative stem is invented and >accusative is basically unaffected. I believe something similar happened in >Frisian but I would like some more examples if possible. From ratcliff at fs.tufs.ac.jp Tue Jul 21 10:29:50 1998 From: ratcliff at fs.tufs.ac.jp (Robert R. Ratcliffe) Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 06:29:50 EDT Subject: GG and change Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I am grateful to Isidore Dyen and Benji Wald for their responses to my recent posting on Generative Grammar and language change. Unfortunately, both of them seemed to be more or less in agreement with me. I was hoping to hear from someone more sympathetic to the GG program, who could perhaps offer a different perspective on the apparent contradictions I pointed out. I hope to come back at some point to Benji's interesting point about the different epistemological bases of synchronic and diachronic linguistics, but in the meantime let me try to broaden my original query. The point I want to raise is this: Historically, there has always been a link between historical linguistics and formal synchronic analysis. The latter is a necessary basis for the former. And in the nineteenth century, at least, the recognition that better tools and models were necessary for historical research provided impetus for the development of new fields of synchronic research like phonetics and dialectology. But if one takes seriously the generative claim that the goal of formal linguistic analysis is the discovery of an innate, biologically determined language faculty, then you sever the link between historical and formal linguistics. No one, I think, would wish to claim that language change is due to genetic mutation or change in human biology. The language faculty has, presumably (along with the rest of human biology), remained constant over the 10,000 years or so that historical linguists normally deal with. Therefore, there is no reason to expect that a theory of the language faculty (the ostensible goal of GG research) could be applied to explain language change. Hence the whole idea of a generative research program in historical linguistics seems fundamentally misguided from the outset. Hence it's not surprising to find that the work which has been done is full of logical contradictions and inconsistencies, such as I pointed out in my last posting. (Of course I was referring mostly to the older Kiparsky-King work of the 60's and 70's. I am not up to date on newer work, within OT or principles and parameters. I find it hard to read. Since I have convinced myself that it's based on false premises, it's like trying to read a theological treatise of a religion you don't believe in.) Anyway, I know there is research ongoing in GG and change, and I wonder how those involved in it reconcile these contradictions. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Robert R. Ratcliffe Senior Lecturer, Arabic and Linguistics, Dept. of Linguistics and Information Science Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Nishigahara 4-51-21, Kita-ku Tokyo 114 Japan From fcosw5 at mbm1.scu.edu.tw Tue Jul 21 10:30:31 1998 From: fcosw5 at mbm1.scu.edu.tw (Steven Schaufele) Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 06:30:31 EDT Subject: Dative Pronouns Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Roger Wright wrote: > > --------------------------Original message-------------------------- > > Yes. French (lui < ILLUI) > RW > But this isn't what Ms. Bowern was asking for, is it? As far as i know, Modern French `lui' is still technically a dative form, isn't it (`Ce livre, je le *lui* ai donn'e' = `This book, i gave it *to him*')? Or is there some colloquial usage of it as a possible subject that i'm not familiar with? Ms. Bowern also clearly said, `I'm not really interested in languages where the dative and accusative fall together, and then that case becomes "nominative".' Now, it's common knowledge that this is what happened in the case of the English `you', to which Richard Hogg refers; i presume that Ms. Bowern is aware of this and other cases like it, which is why she explicitly mentioned that she was *not* particularly interested in hearing about them. The `pronoun exchange' phenomenon that Mr. Hogg also mentions is rather more interesting in this respect. Best, Steven -- Steven Schaufele, Ph.D., Asst. Prof. of Linguistics, English Department Soochow University, Waishuanghsi Campus, Taipei 11102, Taiwan, ROC (886)(02)2881-9471 ext. 6504 fcosw5 at mbm1.scu.edu.tw http://www.prairienet.org/~fcosws/homepage.html ***O syntagmata linguarum liberemini humanarum!*** ***Nihil vestris privari nisi obicibus potestis!*** From C.Bowern at Student.anu.edu.au Wed Jul 22 10:42:31 1998 From: C.Bowern at Student.anu.edu.au (Claire Bowern) Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 06:42:31 EDT Subject: Dative Pronouns In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Perhaps I should give an outline of what I think happened in Pitta-Pitta (and another language of the family, Arabana-Wangkangurru) as an example. Steven Schaufele is right; I an interested in examples of the dative becoming nominative, not dative/accusative becoming nominative, since that is, in many contexts, practically equivalent to case loss, and that is certainly not the case in Pitta-Pitta. All distinctions are preserved. I have plenty of examples of dative and accusative falling together, and then becoming nominative, such as English and Akkadian. These are the stages I reconstruct for the pronoun changes in Pitta-Pitta. It only happens in the first person singular, nowhere else. The ergative is irrelevant but I put it in anyway for completeness. There are also all sorts of other local cases (about 10 cases in all). ng = velar nasal and nh, th, etc = lamino-dentals. ny, ty etc are lamino-palatals. nty is a homorganic cluster. r is a retroflex continuant. Stage (Erg) Nom Acc Dat I. ngathu nganyi nganha ngantya II. ngathu nganyi nganya ngantya (possibly reanalysis of the acc suffix as -a, not -nha. It's -a in 2nd person and ambiguous in 3rd person. There's also a lot of alternation between the two laminal series, nh etc and ny. The correspondence sets are awful (ie, pretty irregular) and it looks as though the distinction might be quite recent and diffusing. Some words in some close-by languages also have free variation between nh and ny, with ny the more archaic and found in songs and place names.) III. ngathu ngantya nganya nganyari Pitta-Pitta also has tense-based case marking. The original nominative (and the nominative in most of the other Karnic languages (the subgroup to which Pitta-Pitta belongs)), *nganyi turns up in a slightly altered form as the marker of a "subject" (ie, nominative and ergative) in the future tense and potential/obligative moods. I don't know where the -ri in the dative comes from. Interestingly, most of the local cases are built on the dative in other languages and other persons/numbers of Pitta-Pitta and the stems used are really messy; sometimes nganty-, sometimes ngany-. Anyway, in Pitta-Pitta I don't think we can say that the acc and dative fell together to give rise to the nominative, as in English or Akkadian. The new dative might have been innovated on the accusative stem but it still remains that the acc was basically unaffected and dative > nominative. The same thing seems to have happened in Arabana-Wangkangurru, which is the language spoken to the South of Pitta-Pitta (and associated dialects). By the way, these languages are mostly dead now but used to be spoken in the NE corner of South Australia and the SW corner of Queensland and into the Northern Territory. Hope this clears things up a bit. The "her told I" pronoun exchange is a nice example (thanks!), but can it be shown that 'her' is from the original OE dative, and not the ME acc/dat? And are these still cased forms or are they uninflecting? Regards, Claire. >>----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >>Does anyone know of a language where a dative pronoun becomes the >>nominative? I'm not really interested in languages where the dative and >>accusative fall together, and then that case becomes "nominative". I have >>an example from Pitta-Pitta (Pama-Nyungan) where the orginal 1sg dative >>*ngantya turns up as nominative, a new dative stem is invented and >>accusative is basically unaffected. I believe something similar happened in >>Frisian but I would like some more examples if possible. > > From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Wed Jul 22 20:07:03 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 16:07:03 EDT Subject: Q: `workaholic' Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Me again. Is there an accepted name for the slightly peculiar process in which a piece of a word is somewhat arbitrarily ripped out of it and then used as a kind of affix for forming new words? I'm thinking of cases like these: alcoholic --> -(o)holic --> workaholic, chocoholic, shopaholic,... Marathon --> -(a)thon --> telethon, bikeathon, danceathon,... panorama --> -(o)rama --> washorama, launderama,... Watergate --> -gate --> Irangate, Contragate, Whitewatergate,... Textbooks usually seem to class this as a variety of blending, but I doubt that this is reasonable. We might possibly regard `bikeathon' as a blend from `bike marathon', but I don't think `workaholic' can reasonably be regarded as a blend of `work alcoholic'. I think these morphs have simply become affixes, but affixes of very odd origin, since they do not appear to arise from straightforward instances of either reanalysis or back-formation. I mean, did anybody ever suppose that `alcoholic' consisted of `alc-' plus `-oholic'? All suggestions gratefully received. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH England larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From chogan+ at york.mt.cs.cmu.edu Thu Jul 23 10:05:09 1998 From: chogan+ at york.mt.cs.cmu.edu (chogan+ at york.mt.cs.cmu.edu) Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 06:05:09 EDT Subject: No subject Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > Me again. Is there an accepted name for the slightly peculiar process > in which a piece of a word is somewhat arbitrarily ripped out of it > and then used as a kind of affix for forming new words? > > I'm thinking of cases like these: > > alcoholic --> -(o)holic --> workaholic, chocoholic, shopaholic,... > etc. The article on "Derivation" by Robert Beard in _The Handbook of Morphology_ (Blackwell Publishers, 1998) has this to say: Analogical forms like workaholic, chocaholic and cheeseburger, fishburger, chickenburger differ from regular derivations in that they require prosodic identity. Genunine suffixes like -ing may be added to stems of any length or prosodic structure. Pseudo-derivates like chocaholic, however, must additionally fit the prosodic template of their analog, in this case, alcoholic: the output must contain four syllables with penultimate accent. Thus chocolaholic, shoppingaholic, and handiworkaholic do not work as well as chocaholic, shopaholic, and workaholic. When we begin to find acceptable violations of this extragrammatical principle like chickenburger, we usually find that the remainder, in this case burger, has become an independent back-formed word capable of undergoing regular compounding. (p. 57) So I guess it's an "analogical form". --chris From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU Thu Jul 23 10:05:30 1998 From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald) Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 06:05:30 EDT Subject: Q: `workaholic' Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Larry Trask writes: >...Is there an accepted name for the slightly peculiar process in which a piece of a word is somewhat arbitrarily ripped out of it and then used as a kind of affix for forming new words? >I'm thinking of cases like these: alcoholic --> -(o)holic --> workaholic, chocoholic, shopaholic,... Marathon --> -(a)thon --> telethon, bikeathon, danceathon,... [..., e.g., talkathon] panorama --> -(o)rama --> washorama, launderama,... >Watergate --> -gate --> Irangate, Contragate, Whitewatergate,... I'm not sure, but maybe this is the type that many dictionaries (and other sources) refer to as "STUMP COMPOUNDS". Current dictionary examples (not all assured longevity) include: infomercial, infotainment, docudrama, docutainment, hairtician, sitcom The idea of "stump" seems to be that they were not originally cut according to a historical morpheme boundary but according to some other (metrical or rhythmic) principle. Hence, "workaholic", like "gasahol" (or is it "gas*o*hol"?), does not presuppose a morphemic cut "alc" + "ohol" Meanwhile, the term "compounding" suggests that one or more "stumps" have grown semantic lives of their own and have come to have meanings that allow recombination, or at least allow analysis into separate meaningful elements, related to the morphemes they are stumped from. (True, compounds are usually considered to be formed from independent words, in current English, but the "stump" takes the precaution to suggest that each element is the "stump" of a "word". NB: the whole "gate" syndrome is a secondary phenomenon, since it has nothing to do semantically with the word "gate", but with political scandal since "Watergate", a proper name. Hence, Larry is quite right to include that type with the others.) If all the examples listed above deserve to be called "stump compounds", then they are of various types. "sitcom" is a compound of two stumps, neither of which occurs as an independent word, cf. or "fizz ed" (i.e., phys ed) -- but isn't there "Board of Ed"?. But in such cases, the BEGINNING of both words are stumped. In contrast, "docutainment" resembles a BLEND, where the stump preserves the beginning of the first word but the END of the second. Next, "HAIRtician" (an aesthetically displeasing word), like most of Larry's examples, e.g., "WORKaholic", has an INDEPENDENT word followed by a stump. Thus, it combines an independent word as a first element with a stump as second element. Nevertheless, Larry has double stumps in "chocoholic" and maybe "telethon" and/or "launderama". (True, "tele" is an isolable root, but in "telethon" it seems to be directly related to "television/televised/etc", rather than directly to the "tele" root. Similarly, "launderama" stumps at "laund", not the word "launder", though the "er" here can be considered an overlap blend shared by "laundER" and "ERama") The "info(mercial/tainment)" words are different again, because "info" exists independently as a stump, cf. "math(s)" (true, there is the morpheme "math" as in "polymath", but isn't "math" a stump for "mathematics", the British form "maths" saving the final -s of "...icS"). Thus, it combines the features of double stumps with WORD+stump. As anticipated above, a BLEND seems to be a specific kind of stump, where the first element stumps to the BEGINNING and the second stumps to the END. I can understand why some might then suggest that where the first element is a monosyllabic word (not stump-worthy) but the second stumps to the end the term "blend" is appropriate. Meanwhile, there is an unusual *semantic* step in "workaholic" that Larry alludes to by saying: >I don't think `workaholic' can reasonably be regarded as a blend of `work >alcoholic' The step is generalisation of "alcoholic" to any kind of "addict", hence, "workaholic" quite reasonably becomes "work addict". However, it does not seem that "alcoholic" as "addict" in general exists as an isolated entity. Are there any other cases like this? (It would not surprise since a humorous intent is obvious that would not appear in the straight-forward "work addict"; "gasohol" is similarly humorous, betraying the degree of seriousness with which it should be taken). Thus, the problem seems to be one of separating various processes that are collapsed in "workaholic", one involving semantic change of an element (for humorous purposes), and the other a purely formal stump compounding (or blending?) which retains the meanings of the unstumped sources. Now are the following stumps or blends, or both?: stagflation, workfare, gues(s)timate Somebody may have worked out a more detailed typology/terminology of all these kinds of words. If so, let's hear it. Also consider the types of "dognap", "carjack" etc. Now, as long as we're dealing with "compound" related phenoms (another independent stump), I have a question. It begins with the observation that in Middle English -er became an increasingly common type for certain purposes as earlier suffixes with the same meaning became phonetically disfunctional, cf. grasshopp-e became grasshopp-er by morphological replacement. Now it seems things are going "back" in the opposite direction. What's the "term", and, in fact, the phenomenon by which the derivational suffix -er has been getting lost or deleted in compounds so that we have such compounds as: barkeep, nosewipe, sodajerk, bellhop, carhop, bedsit, bellpull, bellpush, cocktease, keypunch, etc. where a final -er might be expected (and might even be attested earlier)? Does the process also apply to the case of "doorstop" and even "shortstop", where at least for "doorstop" we might assume it is related directly to "stop" as an alternative to "stopper" (hmm. maybe also "tease" for "teaser", cf. "he's such a tease(r)/jerk(*er)") -- Benji From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU Thu Jul 23 10:05:49 1998 From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald) Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 06:05:49 EDT Subject: GG and change Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Before I forget, I have some comments on Robert Ratcliff's last message. He states: >... if one takes seriously the generative claim that the >goal of formal linguistic analysis is the discovery of an innate, >biologically determined language faculty, then you sever the link >between historical and formal linguistics. I would like to offer a different perspective. It is not about "severing the link", but about distinguishing between what is innate and thus presumably immutable, unchangeable, universal etc etc, VS. everything else in language. The "everything else" is what is relevant to historical linguistics, because it is what varies and changes within and across particular languages from one time to another. Therefore, the search to isolate what is innate or invariant in all languages also serves historical linguistics by revealing those aspects of language, or of any particular language, which are subject to change. The two programs complement each other, and work together. Stated differently, GG, and no doubt any serious synchronic framework for analysis which claims to be applicable to all observable (and "possible") human languages, seeks to provide the invariant parameters of language within which variation and change are possible -- and to which variation and change are *limited*. This is quite different from severing the link between historical and formal (i.e., "universal") linguistics. So, despite the difference in emphasis, synchronic linguistics continues its historic mission to provide a grounding for the study of linguistic change. One need not be misled by what some GGists claim they are trying to do (not to mention what they claim is "important"). It is no different from what historical linguists are trying to do when they compare two changes and say they reflect the SAME process of change. Having said that, then, it turns out that virtually every substantive proposal that GG has made for something invariant in language turns out to be too concrete, and the exceptions in some language or other show that those features of language are indeed subject to change. And so the search goes on, as proposals for concrete universals retreat into greater abstraction as the data from more and more languages accumulate. Each failed universal is an opportunity for the historical linguist to contemplate and try to determine how it is that languages can evolve in one way or the other. From gabriella_rblad at hotmail.com Thu Jul 23 10:06:21 1998 From: gabriella_rblad at hotmail.com (Gabriella Rundblad) Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 06:06:21 EDT Subject: Q: `workaholic' Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Hi Larry and the rest, >Is there an accepted name for the slightly peculiar process >in which a piece of a word is somewhat arbitrarily ripped out of it >and then used as a kind of affix for forming new words? I don't know if it is accepted or the best term available, but I've come across the term abstracted form: "Abstracted means the use of a part of a word or phrase in what seems to be the meaning it contributes to the expression, as when -gate acquires a meaning from appearance in Watergate, the Korea gate, etc." (Barnhart 1980: 3) Gabriella Gabriella Rundblad Department of English Language and Linguistics University of Sheffield Sheffield S10 2TN phone: +44 114 222 02 25 fax: +44 114 276 82 51 ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From mensch at spinfo.uni-koeln.de Thu Jul 23 10:06:52 1998 From: mensch at spinfo.uni-koeln.de (Guido Mensching) Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 06:06:52 EDT Subject: Q: `workaholic' In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- A German term for this phenomenon is "Kontaminativkompositum". This term is used by Seewald (1994:84-87) in order to describe French words like bureautique < bureau + informatique didacticiel < didactique + logiciel bandothe'que < bande + bibliote'hque (cf. also e'ducatique, graphiciel, iconothe'que). According to Seewald this phenomenon is a kind of mixture of composition and suffixation, and she considers elements like "-theque" and "-iel" as suffixes, though the derivational base may be mutilated like in "linguiciel" (linguistique + logiciel). In Zwanenburg (1990:75) the same phenomenon is called "telescopage". Bibliography: Seewald, Uta (1994) Maschinelle morphosemantische Analyse des Franzo"sischen "MORSE". Eine Untersuchung am Beispiel des Wortschatzes der Datenverarbeitung. Tu"bingen (= Sprache und Information. Beitra"ge zur philologischen und linguistischen Datenverarbeitung, Informatik und Informationswissenschaft, Bd. 26) Zwanenburg, Wiecher (1990): Franzo"sische Wortbildungslehre. In: Holtus e.a. (eds.): Lexikon der Romanistischen Linguistik vol. V,1 p. 72-77 With best regards, Guido Mensching ========================================================================= Guido Mensching --- Linguistic Data Processing --- University of Cologne mensch at spinfo.uni-koeln.de --- Tel. 49-221-4704430 --- FAX: 49-221-4705193 See http://www.spinfo.uni-koeln.de for information about our Department. ========================================================================= From jrader at m-w.com Thu Jul 23 19:18:00 1998 From: jrader at m-w.com (Jim Rader) Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 15:18:00 EDT Subject: Q: `workaholic' Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- A few comments on Larry Trask's original post and the followups by Benji Wald, Gabriella Rundblad, "chris" (sorry I can't fill out your full name), and Guido Mensching: I believe the more or less customary criteria for the term "stump compound" would only be met by , i.e., words shortened from compounds or multiword collocations by breaking off and combining (usually) initial elements--sometimes, as in the case of , more on an orthographic than phonetic foundation. Students of Russian word formation have used "stump compound" to refer to the blizzard of common and proper nouns conjured up by Russians in this manner since the beginning of the Soviet period; some of these have found their way into English, such as , , and (the latter a humorous play on names of state publishing organs, such as from ). Stump compounds are also well-attested from German, e.g., (Geheime Staatspolizei) and (Sturzkampfflug- zeug) from the Nazi period; some, such as (Hilfsfreiwillige), display other word-formation processes at work. To refer to formatives such as <-(a)holic>, <-o/arama>, and <-(a)thon>, Valerie Adams used the term "splinter"--though she called the words thus formed (, ) "blends" in line with previous terminology. Adams (in _An Introduction to Modern English Word Formation_, Longman, 1973, p. 142) says she took the term from a 1961 article by J.M. Berman, "Contribution on Blending," in the _Zeitschrift fuer Anglistik und Amerikanstik_ 9: 278-81. I guess I would define a splinter as a phonetic piece of a word that retains the meaning, or some facet of the meaning, of its source, and functions as a bound form joined to either words or other bound elements. As was pointed out in the quote from _The Handbook of Morphology_, rear-end formatives such as <-(a)holic> and <-o/arama> fit a prosodic template: the outcome works most successfully as a word if it fits the syllable count and accent pattern of the source the splinter was extracted from (I prefer "extracted" to "abstracted"). I suspect there is some interplay here between the interpretation--whether etymologically based or not--of the first syllables of , , and as neo-classical "combining forms" that end in orthographic or , phonetically schwa. Presumably there are also front-end splinters such as (in , ) and (in , ), though these may begin life as a species of stump compound in which the entire second element is retained ("parachute trooper"). Again, I think parsing (often unetymological) of these elements as Greco-Latin "combining forms" contributes to their success. is also a Greek-origin prefix, and a word such as is potentially ambiguous, there being evidence for its use both in the sense "medical technician" (in effect backformed from ) and (much rarer) "doctor parachuted into a remote area." The semantics of splinters are interesting and lexicographically challenging. As pointed out by Benji Wald, the <-(a)holic> words reflect a sort of humorous attenuation: the addiction of a chocoholic or shopaholic is not the addiction of an alcoholic. What I find interesting is the way that splinters, whether front-end or rear-end, retain the meaning, sometimes fractured or expanded, of the complete source word, e.g., is as it were a "combining form" of . This is similar to the process by which Greco-Latin "combining forms" are recycled with the meaning of a particular compound; hence, in means "photograph," not "light" (perhaps augmented by the clipped form = "photograph"), in means "petroleum industry",not "rock," etc., etc. To the best of my knowledge this process, which is quite productive in English, has little basis in the history of Greek or Latin word formation. A much better analogy is furnished by Chinese compounds such as , , etc., in which has the meaning of "China," not the literal sense "middle," which it retains in many other compounds. I like , but it will never float in English. Jim Rader > Me again. Is there an accepted name for the slightly peculiar process > in which a piece of a word is somewhat arbitrarily ripped out of it > and then used as a kind of affix for forming new words? > > I'm thinking of cases like these: > > alcoholic --> -(o)holic --> workaholic, chocoholic, shopaholic,... > > Marathon --> -(a)thon --> telethon, bikeathon, danceathon,... > > panorama --> -(o)rama --> washorama, launderama,... > > Watergate --> -gate --> Irangate, Contragate, Whitewatergate,... > > From mew1 at siu.edu Fri Jul 24 11:34:23 1998 From: mew1 at siu.edu (Margaret E. Winters) Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 07:34:23 EDT Subject: Trask query Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I sent this response off-list yesterday to Larry Trask - it might be of interest to others as well: I think you are looking at a reanalysis of morphology - a kind of folk etymology at work. I included a long story about 'alcoholic' in a recent paper in "Cognitive Linguistics" on analogical change and Kurylowicz (1997 last issue I think). I'd be surprised if there were a single term for the process since it seems to include at least reanalysis and sometimes the insertion of a (thematic???) vowel as in workaholic. I think there is a suprasegmental kind of identification here - I agree that people didn't consciously think of alcoholic as being alc + o + holic, but the stress pattern corresponds to others where this kind of segmentation was possible. Hope this helps - or at least doesn't hinder too much. Margaret Winters Margaret E. Winters Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs (Budget and Personnel) Southern Illinois University Carbondale, IL, 62901-4305 Phone: (618) 549-0106 (Home); (618) 536-5535 (Office) Fax: (618) 453-3400 mew1 at siu.edu From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Fri Jul 24 11:35:38 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 07:35:38 EDT Subject: Sum: `workaholic' Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- The other day I posted a query requesting a name for formations like `workaholic', `Camillagate' and `kissogram'. Textbooks often class these as blends, but they aren't, really: `workaholic' can't be reasonably analyzed as `work' plus `alcoholic'. Rather, a morphologically arbitrary piece is ripped out of an existing word like `alcoholic', `Watergate' and `telegram' and pressed into service as a kind of affix. One or two respondents suggested that this was just a form of reanalysis. Well, it is, sort of. But, in the most familiar cases of reanalysis, such as `hamburger' --> `cheeseburger' and `bikini' --> `monokini', there seems to be a perception that the remaining element (`ham-' or `bi-') is also a recognizable morpheme, which is not the case here. But maybe this is hairsplitting on my part. Another respondent argued for `metanalysis'. This term is only familiar to me as a label for boundary shifts, as in `an ewt' --> `a newt' and `a napron' --> `an apron'. But the suggestion is that we might generalize the term to cover false separations in general. Yet another suggestion was `stump compound'. But this term, in my experience, denotes a formation obtained by combining arbitrary initial stretches from the words in a phrase of identical meaning, as in `sitcom', `sci-fi', German `Gestapo' and Russian `Sovnarkom'. And that's not what we have here. There were other suggestions, some of them in print: `constellation' `local generalization' `morphologization' `remorphologization' `analogical form' `false separation' `pseudo-suffixation' `hybrid formation' `creative compounding' `meiosis' This last one, a biological metaphor, looks interesting but apparently hasn't appeared in print. However, there have been some further terms used in print for exactly the kind of formation I'm interested in. First, Otto Jespersen coined `secretion' in his 1922 book _Language_. I suppose this term deserves some kind of priority in English, but it hasn't been used much, and it's not ideal: the imagery, whatever it is, is opaque. Second, the term `abstracted form' has appeared in print to label these things, though I don't have the full reference. I'm guessing, though, that this label applies only to the detached piece, like <-(o)holic>, rather than to a full word constructed with it. Third, the term `Kontaminativkompositum' has been used in German. This translates as `contaminative compound'. But, apart from its length, this term has problems: things like `workaholic' are not strictly compounds, since they don't consist of free morphemes, and moreover I don't find it easy to see where the contamination resides. Fourth, the term `telescopage' has been used, presumably in French. This translates as `telescoping', but again the imagery seems wrong. As one respondent pointed out, `telescoping' would appear to be more appropriate for formations like `glitterati'. Maybe Jim Matisoff's term `morphanization' is another example. Fifth, Valerie Adams (and others?) have used the term `splinter' for the extracted and re-used piece (like <-(o)holic>). This suggests `splinter formation' for the final result or for the process of forming it, but apparently nobody has ever used this term. One respondent pointed out that English allows so many individual varieties of eccentric word-formation that it is very difficult to put them into neat pigeonholes. I'm afraid this is just true, and we'll probably never have a perfect terminology for all cases, but I would like to have an agreed term for this increasingly frequent type. Several people drew attention to the importance of prosodic features in these formations. Finally, many respondents passed on some very interesting examples from English, French, German, Russian, Croatian and Chinese (at least). My thanks to Joyce Tang Boyland, Margaret Winters, Tony Breed, Benji Wald, Richard Coates, Michael Cysouw, Guido Mensching, Chris Hogan, Gabriella Rundblad, Roger Lass, Chris Jeffery, Jim Rader, and Alemko Gluhak. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi Sat Jul 25 14:01:16 1998 From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting) Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 10:01:16 EDT Subject: Trask query In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19980723214738.006aa328@saluki-mail.siu.edu> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Fri, 24 Jul 1998, Margaret E. Winters wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > I think you are looking at a reanalysis of morphology - a kind of folk > etymology at work. I included a long story about 'alcoholic' in a recent > paper in "Cognitive Linguistics" on analogical change and Kurylowicz (1997 > last issue I think). I think that this is very close to the mark. Hock, Principles of Historical Linguistics, p. 176, treats this as four-part analogy based on "morphological reinterpretation." Being analogy, it requires an original form before it can occur. Thus, without Watergate, there could have been no Irangate or Camillagate, as without a model there is no way to reinterpret -gate as a morpheme meaning 'a government scandal involving a cover-up.' It would be interesting to check the U.S. news sources for the 1920's to see if or how often 'x Dome' was used in the same sense. Bob Whiting whiting at cc.helsinki.fi From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU Mon Jul 27 11:16:46 1998 From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald) Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 07:16:46 EDT Subject: Sum: `workaholic' Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I have a few questions pursuant to Larry's sum of the formation of 'workaholic'. First, I acknowledge Jim Rader's restriction of "stumping" to word/root condensation which preserves some initial stretch, as in #SITuation#COMedy, #AGITation#PROPaganda, etc. Second, I observe that examples of stump compounds were only given for languages that have a productive head-final compounding process, e.g., English, German, Russian, Chinese, but not French (for which examples approximating "workaholic" were given, cf. "discotheque", stumped to "disco" in English and then returned to French, if French did not stump it independently). I noted that English has numerous non-compound stumps, e.g., #MATHematics. It also tolerates homophony and shifts of grammatical category in stumping, e.g., #CON stumps CONtra, CONvict and CONfidence (as in con game/man). (NB #PAN stumps "panorama" used as a verb, cf. #CON = deceive < confidence). Third, much rarer in English is reduction of non-compound words to eliminate initial syllables (which have some degree of stress). hamburger > burger may be an example, if it can be shown that "ham" is not necessarily eliminated as a morpheme but simply as a convenience to reduction (according to Zipf's Law), cntr. frankfurter > frank (not *furter). Is "burger" an example of CLIPping? My questions are: What's CLIPping? How does it differ from STUMPing? (If the terms overlap, is that useful?) Are there typological constraints on languages which have stumping? (Why should there be if non-compounds can stump?) Are there typological constraints on languages which have "workaholic" formations? (Why should there be if "workaholic" formations are related to BLENDS? There are no typological constraints on the occurrence of blends, are there?) From jrader at m-w.com Mon Jul 27 18:40:14 1998 From: jrader at m-w.com (Jim Rader) Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 14:40:14 EDT Subject: Sum: `workaholic' Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I'm not familiar with "stumping" as a term and I'm not sure how Benji Wald would distinguish it from clipping. The standard taxonomies I know of--e.g., Hans Marchand's _The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word Formation_ (2nd. ed. 1969) and "The Taxonomy of Word making" by John Algeo (_Word_, 29:2, Aug. 1978) get by with just "clipping," however inadequately. Laurie Bauer (_English Word Formation_, CUP, 1983, p. 233) defines clipping as "the process whereby a lexeme (simplex or complex) is shortened, while still retaining the same meaning and still being a member of the same form class." Obviously, though, once a word derived by clipping exists, it may change grammatical class and undergo other modifications. Marchand calls formations of the type "clipping-compounds" and Algeo "clipped compounds." Marchand would presumably consider a "fore-clipping" (as opposed to a back-clipping like ), though he doesn't specifically discuss this word (at least in the 1st ed.--unfortunately I don't have the 2nd ed. at hand). Fore-clipping is certainly less common than back-clipping, though legitimate examples (, ) certainly exist. Whether there are typological constraints on languages that have these derivational devices is a good question. One thing that immediately comes to mind is that clipped formations may be prolific in the realm of proper names in languages that don't much resort to clipping otherwise; Slavic languages are an obvious example: shortenings (of old Greco-Latin and dithematic names), usually or originally with hypocoristic value and often with other phonetic/morphological modifications, are widespread and of considerable antiquity. Of particular interest to me is the derivational process by which 1) a simple or complex lexeme is clipped to a single syllable and 2) the suffix <-ie/-y> is added; an example is from "premature baby." This combination of clipping/suffixation also exists in German: , , , , many others. I'm not certain to what degree the process is indigenous to German or was borrowed from English. (Does it also exist in Dutch or Scandinavian languages?) The only discussion I know of these words in German (">Abi<, >Krimi<, >Sponti<: Substantive auf -i im heutigen Deutsch" by Albrecht Greule, in _Muttersprache_ Bd. 84 (1983): 207-217) doesn't deal with the relative chronologies in enough detail for one to decide. At any rate, there appears to be no constraint on doing this in German--though German is so typologically similar to English this fact is unsurprising. Jim Rader > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > I have a few questions pursuant to Larry's sum of the formation of 'workaholic'. > First, I acknowledge Jim Rader's restriction of "stumping" to word/root > condensation which preserves some initial stretch, as in #SITuation#COMedy, > #AGITation#PROPaganda, etc. Second, I observe that examples of stump > compounds were only given for languages that have a productive head-final > compounding process, e.g., English, German, Russian, Chinese, but not > French (for which examples approximating "workaholic" were given, cf. > "discotheque", stumped to "disco" in English and then returned to French, > if French did not stump it independently). I noted that English has > numerous non-compound stumps, e.g., #MATHematics. It also tolerates > homophony and shifts of grammatical category in stumping, e.g., #CON stumps > CONtra, CONvict and CONfidence (as in con game/man). (NB #PAN stumps > "panorama" used as a verb, cf. #CON = deceive < confidence). Third, much > rarer in English is reduction of non-compound words to eliminate initial > syllables (which have some degree of stress). hamburger > burger may be an > example, if it can be shown that "ham" is not necessarily eliminated as a > morpheme but simply as a convenience to reduction (according to Zipf's > Law), cntr. frankfurter > frank (not *furter). Is "burger" an example of > CLIPping? > > My questions are: > > What's CLIPping? How does it differ from STUMPing? > (If the terms overlap, is that useful?) > Are there typological constraints on languages which have stumping? > (Why should there be if non-compounds can stump?) > Are there typological constraints on languages which have "workaholic" > formations? > (Why should there be if "workaholic" formations are related to > BLENDS? There are > no typological constraints on the occurrence of blends, are there?) > From Cindy.Allen at anu.edu.au Wed Jul 29 10:54:07 1998 From: Cindy.Allen at anu.edu.au (Cynthia Allen) Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 06:54:07 EDT Subject: Q: I'm told Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >> When did constructions like "he's given something" >> enter the English language? > >Just in case this wasn't clear, I was asking about >raising of IO to Su. I have a whole chapter (chapter 9) in my 1995 Clarendon Press Book 'Case Marking and Reanalysis: Grammatical Relations from Old to Early Middle English'. In a nutshell, the first convincing example is from 1375: Item as for the Parke she is a lowyd (=allowed) Every yere a dere. This is from the Award of Dower by Sir Thomas Blount This construction appears immediately after the fixing of the order of two bare NP objects, and my belief about what happened here is that the old indirect object became reanalysed as simply an object once this happened, making it available to passivization. I devote Appenix A of my book to demonstrating that all the earlier examples which have been cited in the literature are either dubious or clearly just mis-analysed. Unfortunately, Visser is less helpful than usual here because (a) he got muddled in this section and (b) his dating of examples is not good because he does not distinguish between revised versions of earlier texts and the originals, giving only the date of the original, which often has a different (older) construction from the revised versions. Cynthia Allen Cynthia Allen Linguistics, Arts Faculty Australian National University Canberra, ACT 0200 Australia From jacob.baltuch at euronet.be Thu Jul 30 11:10:14 1998 From: jacob.baltuch at euronet.be (Jacob Baltuch) Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 07:10:14 EDT Subject: Q: I'm told Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Cynthia Allen wrote: >I have a whole chapter (chapter 9) in my 1995 Clarendon Press Book 'Case >Marking and Reanalysis: Grammatical Relations from Old to Early Middle >English'. In a nutshell, the first convincing example is from 1375: >Item as for the Parke she is a lowyd (=allowed) Every yere a dere. >This is from the Award of Dower by Sir Thomas Blount > >This construction appears immediately after the fixing of the order of two >bare NP objects, and my belief about what happened here is that the old >indirect object became reanalysed as simply an object once this happened, >making it available to passivization. So any language in which accusative & dative collapse together (both nouns and pronouns) and both direct and indirect objects are bare NPs in certain constructions would be liable to undergo this? On the other hand I seem to remember that Japanese has direct and indirect object take different postpositions (-(w)o vs. -ni if I remember correctly) and yet has indirect passives. From isidore.dyen at yale.edu Thu Jul 30 22:00:53 1998 From: isidore.dyen at yale.edu (Isidore Dyen) Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 18:00:53 EDT Subject: your mail In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I think that it might be important to add to the discussion that these forms are artificialloy constructed and in that respect fall in with words like AIDS or is it AIDs and CIA and G-man and the gamut that have sprung up in at least a partial connection with writing and thus differ from the types of analogical phenomena that appear in comparative studies. On Thu, 23 Jul 1998 chogan+ at york.mt.cs.cmu.edu wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > > Me again. Is there an accepted name for the slightly peculiar process > > in which a piece of a word is somewhat arbitrarily ripped out of it > > and then used as a kind of affix for forming new words? > > > > I'm thinking of cases like these: > > > > alcoholic --> -(o)holic --> workaholic, chocoholic, shopaholic,... > > etc. > > The article on "Derivation" by Robert Beard in _The Handbook of Morphology_ > (Blackwell Publishers, 1998) has this to say: > > Analogical forms like workaholic, chocaholic and cheeseburger, > fishburger, chickenburger differ from regular derivations > in that they require prosodic identity. Genunine suffixes > like -ing may be added to stems of any length or prosodic > structure. Pseudo-derivates like chocaholic, however, must > additionally fit the prosodic template of their analog, in > this case, alcoholic: the output must contain four syllables > with penultimate accent. Thus chocolaholic, shoppingaholic, > and handiworkaholic do not work as well as chocaholic, shopaholic, > and workaholic. When we begin to find acceptable violations > of this extragrammatical principle like chickenburger, we > usually find that the remainder, in this case burger, has become > an independent back-formed word capable of undergoing regular > compounding. (p. 57) > > So I guess it's an "analogical form". > > --chris > From isidore.dyen at yale.edu Thu Jul 30 22:01:18 1998 From: isidore.dyen at yale.edu (Isidore Dyen) Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 18:01:18 EDT Subject: GG and change In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- How about contemplating whether language change is inevitable. If it is not, theren should be some stable languages somewhere, If it is, then it must be inherent in all languages and thus a universal. On Thu, 23 Jul 1998, bwald wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > Before I forget, I have some comments on Robert Ratcliff's last message. > He states: > > >... if one takes seriously the generative claim that the > >goal of formal linguistic analysis is the discovery of an innate, > >biologically determined language faculty, then you sever the link > >between historical and formal linguistics. > > I would like to offer a different perspective. It is not about "severing > the link", but about distinguishing between what is innate and thus > presumably immutable, unchangeable, universal etc etc, VS. everything else > in language. The "everything else" is what is relevant to historical > linguistics, because it is what varies and changes within and across > particular languages from one time to another. Therefore, the search to > isolate what is innate or invariant in all languages also serves historical > linguistics by revealing those aspects of language, or of any particular > language, which are subject to change. The two programs complement each > other, and work together. > > Stated differently, GG, and no doubt any serious synchronic framework for > analysis which claims to be applicable to all observable (and "possible") > human languages, seeks to provide the invariant parameters of language > within which variation and change are possible -- and to which variation > and change are *limited*. This is quite different from severing the link > between historical and formal (i.e., "universal") linguistics. So, despite > the difference in emphasis, synchronic linguistics continues its historic > mission to provide a grounding for the study of linguistic change. One > need not be misled by what some GGists claim they are trying to do (not to > mention what they claim is "important"). It is no different from what > historical linguists are trying to do when they compare two changes and say > they reflect the SAME process of change. > > Having said that, then, it turns out that virtually every substantive > proposal that GG has made for something invariant in language turns out to > be too concrete, and the exceptions in some language or other show that > those features of language are indeed subject to change. And so the search > goes on, as proposals for concrete universals retreat into greater > abstraction as the data from more and more languages accumulate. Each > failed universal is an opportunity for the historical linguist to > contemplate and try to determine how it is that languages can evolve in one > way or the other. > From isidore.dyen at yale.edu Thu Jul 30 22:01:53 1998 From: isidore.dyen at yale.edu (Isidore Dyen) Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 18:01:53 EDT Subject: Morpheme replacement In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19971013163342.0d8f734c@bamse.ling.su.se> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- In general bound morphemes--i.e. affixes--are not a universal phenomenon. Consider Chinese, whichn has, I have been given to understand, just one, so that it is likely that there is a language with none. One can take a frequency of bound forms, but it is not likely to get anywhere, because the number of different instances varies considerably from language to language and so does their distribution among words. Lexicon is trouble enough. On Mon, 13 Oct 1997, Mikael Parkvall wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > If I remember correctly, the items on the Swadesh list were said by Swadesh > himself to be replaced at a rate of about 15 per milennium. Does anybody on > the list have any idea regarding the differences between various types of > items; in other words, would lexical morphemes be replaced at a higher rate > than grammatical ones (not just those on the Swadesh list, but also bound > morphemes), or vice versa? Or is there no difference at all between them? > > > Mikael Parkvall > parkvall at ling.su.se > From isidore.dyen at yale.edu Thu Jul 30 22:02:41 1998 From: isidore.dyen at yale.edu (Isidore Dyen) Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 18:02:41 EDT Subject: complexity measures In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- The point about the theory of the equicomplexity of languages is that an increase in simplicity must be offset by a an increase in complexity. I do not reckon that anybody is actually going to work the details out in a particular case, but there has rto be some way of preventing languages from increasing in complexity ad infinitum or similarly increasing in simplicity, or do they? On Sat, 17 Jan 1998, Larry Trask wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > I have received a number of further responses to my summary of the > responses to my original posting seeking a term, and I hope to post a > comprehensive reply to all of them on HISTLING within a couple of > days. But one point I can clear up right away. > > David Lightfoot writes: > > > I should have thought that if there is a simplification in some > > part of a system, there doesn't necessarily have to be compensating > > complexification elsewhere. > > Agreed. It was never my intention to suggest that a simplification > must necessarily be accompanied by a complexification, and I hope I > have not given that impression. My point was merely that this *often* > happens, and that a name for such a combination would be desirable. > > Larry Trask > COGS > University of Sussex > Brighton BN1 9QH > UK > > larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk > From j.t.faarlund at inl.uio.no Fri Jul 31 17:55:27 1998 From: j.t.faarlund at inl.uio.no (Jan Terje Faarlund) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 13:55:27 EDT Subject: GG and change Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- At 18:01 30.07.98 EDT, Isidore Dyan wrote: >----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > >How about contemplating whether language change is inevitable. If it is >not, theren should be some stable languages somewhere, If it is, then it >must be inherent in all languages and thus a universal. > I think you can find a stable language if you look in the following type of society: A society where no member ever changes profession or personal relationships, where there is no outside contact, no immigration, no births and no deaths. For languages spoken in other types of societies, change is of course inevitable, not because change is a universal of language, but because language after all is ALSO a cultural object transmitted through the behavior of biological individuals. The idea that change should be a universal is meaningless since language universals are based on generalizations over properties of *systems*. When a language changes, a system changes, and this new system must again obey whatever constraints are imposed by UG. Change in itself cannot be part of the system. The only interesting connection between universals and change is the fact that no change can lead to a result which violates UG. ******************************************** Professor Jan Terje Faarlund Universitetet i Oslo Institutt for nordistikk og litteraturvitskap Postboks 1013 Blindern N-0315 Oslo (Norway) Tel. (+47) 22 85 69 49 (office) (+47) 22 12 39 66 (home) Fax (+47) 22 85 71 00 From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU Mon Jul 6 13:13:38 1998 From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald) Date: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 09:13:38 EDT Subject: the meaning of "genetic relationship" Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- We have been discussing the concept of "mutual intelligibility", an interesting topic that seems crucial to Isidore Dyen's concept of "language" (technically, hololect = chain of mutually intelligible pairs of *dialects* -- or, after his last clarification, perhaps *idiolects*, or, preferrably, in my view, *lects*, in the sense suggested in the 1970s by CJ Bailey) and ultimately, in his view, to the concept of genetic relationship. About MI (mutual...), D writes: >What I >mean by mutual intelligibility for these purposes is being able >communicate with each other in their native dialect. This definition >produces a first (or native) language dialectology in which a language is >unitary. As I have been saying in previous messages on this topic, MI between dialects is a matter of degree. It seems to me that a quantitative leap, a lowering of MI, will occur in moving from a bunch of lects within a single (socially-delimited) dialect to another. That leap is similar but less than moving from one hololect to another. Basically, it all seems to be about moving from one vocabulary to another. It is true that some syntactic constructions can be misunderstood, or not understood across dialects, and some phonology can take getting used to even if vocabulary and syntax are familiar, but where there is shared vocabulary (recognised as shared vocabulary) there will be some degree of MI. Thus, if a German says to a monolingual English speaker under most circumstances "komm hier", the English speaker will understand, and, in fact, not even realise that s/he was spoken to in German. So there is some MI between German and English. I don't suppose (maybe I'm wrong) that D expects there to be a chain including English and German in a single hololect. I'm not sure this is important. There is certainly the quantitative leap I spoke of above. Presumably, the extent of the hololect is an empirical matter, so maybe E and G do belong to a single hololect although MI is minimal. I mention the above to indicate that I understand D's distinction between a "hololect" and what we usually call a "language" (socially defined). D continues: The term dialect is difficult; the term itself is used in such a >variety of ways, that in effect the definition a language given above >really appeals to the intuition in the matter of dialects. However it is >assumed that no two individuals whose speech-types are in the same >language are the same. Of course the term dialect is also applied to >collections of speech-types >that share a particular feature or some collection of features. [Here >'feature' is used for some relevant speech phenomenon, not in the >meaning it has in phonology.] In any case I believe it doesn't matter much >which definition of duialect you use. That's why I mentioned various terms like "dialect", "idiolect" and "lect" at the beginning of this message. Empirically there is a great difference between a (social) dialect and an (asocial) idiolect. Speakers of the same dialect are much more mutually intelligible than speakers of different dialects. Idiosyncratic speakers are no more intelligible within their dialects than outside of them on whatever points they're idiosyncratic on. The shared speech patterns of a single dialect even goes beyond what seems necessary for MI. Another rhetorical problem came up; by rhetoric I mean the way people express their points; it is a linguistically interesting thing about choices at the discourse level of linguistic analysis. D objected to my use of the word 'dogma', as follows: >I should add that I find the term 'dogma' a pejorative term. Of course I am aware that 'dogma' is sometimes taken to be pejorative, but in a discussion of linguistic complexity a while ago I wrote on this list that 'dogma' is not always a bad thing. In context I was saying that the dogma that all languages are of equal complexity is just that, since we do not know what we are talking about when we make that claim. (Not that it's wrong, just that we don't know what "equal complexity" means, or how to measure or conceptualise *global* complexity with respect to human languages -- and the notion that if something changes in a language, something else MUST change in order to "restore" that "constant" complexity is vacuous.) But I said the dogma is *good* because it alerts us to this problem when we hear somebody say or suggest that language A is more complex than language B. And I went on to say the dogma allows us to recognise an issue, so that the least we can respond to a claim of "inequality" in complexity is: "what do you mean?" And it invariably turns out that they mean something much more specific than "global complexity", e.g., "Chinese" is "complicated" because of its writing system, etc etc. Now, the "dogma" I was referring to in D's message is that languages don't mix -- and, I'm not sure because he didn't respond -- languages don't converge over an area (how could they without mutual intelligiblity -- and if they're separate hololects how can they be mutually...?), and maybe dialects don't either; they just either don't do anything or get more and more different from each other. OK, it sounds like I'm being sarcastic, but he really didn't respond and I can't anticipate how he deals with this. Anyway, again I don't think the dogma is totally misguided, but there is a better point in D's message to pursue to this, where he suggests that I will destroy the comparative method with my assumptions (or maybe it's: without assumptions like his.) Let's move on to that. >But if languages are permitted to mix, that is, if a language boundary between two languages is permitted to dissolve, then the kind of inferences that we make regarding the past hstory of a language must take the possibility of mixing into account. Yes. Why not? But NB, the language "boundary" between two languages never totally dissolves. It only dissolves on certain points. Note, for example, Gumperz's classic study of Marathi and Kannada in Kupwar. More or less the same grammar (including phonology) but different lexicons. >The consequence is that the hypothesis of a protolanguage becomes unavailable unless the possibility of mixture can be ruled out. Why? Mixture doesn't have to happen. But basically we ignore mixture/convergence according to the comparative method and concentrate on what can be accounted for without it. That's fine. But to then say "case closed", nothing else can happen, or ever does, and languages can't mix, that's like saying "you can't cross the street against the light. I mean, you CAN'T. Try it, you'll see you can't!" (But you can -- if you don't get run over.) In any case, there are two situations that test the limits of the comparative method (the one on which the genetic hypothesis is based), 1. two languages with the same grammar and different vocabularies; 2. two languages with the same vocabulary and different grammars. These are matters of degree, but at the extremes, 1. is reflected in the Kupwar Kannada-Marathi situation, among others (with few historical linguists exploring them instead of claiming they are "rare"), and 2. is reflected in such things as creolisation etc. The issue is very meaningful for the comparative method and reconstruction. Thus, for example, we have the case of Hittite, where some scholars, e.g., Lehmann, argue that it reflects a much more archaic grammar of IE than other surviving branches, while others argue that many of these features are due to convergence with non-IE languages of the area (which have similar features). The "dogma" against mixing does not help resolve this issue on way or the other. >That is the function of the assumption. In a first language dialectology applied through time, once a language has been formed, its being disjoint cannot be destroyed. If you are willing to give that up, I would say you are giving the power of the comparative method. A strange use of the word "assumption" to me. I'd say the comparative method works for what it works for, and it doesn't deserve any more power than that. Now, the idea that the disjoint(ed)ness of a language once it's formed can't be destroyed is another matter. But I'm reading "language" here as individual's linguistic system formed before a critical age. More on that later. To get beyond the English-German hololect, D writes: >The view is available that zero mutual intelligibility occurs. It is almost nonsensical to deny this, though it is not as obviously true as it seems (e.g., unidentifiable languages heard on the radio convey even less than those witnessed performed in public, according to my personal experience). The point remains that MI develops somehow under contact situations. D wants to disregard this by insisting that there is a strictly circumscribed item, call it a native (monolingual?) dialect (sociolinguists often call it a "vernacular") and that is the only thing that counts for *genetic* relationship. But note if you rule "mixing" (accomodation) out by definition, you simply choose to ignore the variety of ways in which languages change, both synchronically, and (relevantly) diachronically. What about areas where people generally grow up multilingually? What effect does that have on "genetic" relationship? (Interestingly, it varies, in Bantu East Africa genetic relationships can be demonstrated by conventional comparative methods, even for areas which are highly multilingual, but tree classification of Bantu languages in such areas and in general, is, for the most part, a hopeless mess.) I wrote: >>one might be tempted to assume that only through mutual intelligibility >> can dialects influence each other and changes spread from one dialect to >> another -- and there is no doubt some truth to this. .... D responded: >Without being disrespectful, let me suggest that you have used the term >'assume' above in the sense of 'conclude' or 'infer', not in its ological >sense. I don't object to l/ay terminology; I am not a logician. 1. huh? 2. what's "l/ay terminology"? Is it the vernacular? 3. I thought I meant "assume" (although a logical process leads to that assumption by ignoring certain facts). Elsewhere, D seems to use "assumption" to mean "postulate" (noun). To me an "assumption" can be like a "guess", and a guess is often based on a rational process, as suggested in the word "guestimate". In any case, assumptions, like guesses, can be wrong. Finally, D brings up a point which has long intrigued me, and we have some common ground: >I believe that you have begun to touch on the very important question that >deals with the time at which an individual can be said on the average to >be in control of his native language. If I suggest at the end of the first >decade of his life, I imagine I might attract some disbelief. For certain >purposes however, it strikes me as being not an unreasonable expectation. This is relevant to the "vernacular" which D insists is the object of genetic classification (to the exclusion of any other objects, it seems). As for disbelief, I think a "critical age" between 10-12 is widely accepted -- for PHONOLOGY (some put it even earlier, with some good evidence). But not for much of syntax and vocabulary. Since MI seems to depend crucially on vocabulary, there is some explaining to do here. At the same time, it may reduce "genetic relationship" largely to phonological evolution, something which would not surprise me in view of traditional practice, though not traditional belief. Structures that may be acquired well after the age of 10 are also subject to linguistic evolution, however, as is any non-universal feature of language (whatever the universal features of language turn out to be). Therefore, there is more to be said, esp about syntactic evolution. P.S. I get the sinking feeling that in the end D will say everything he was saying was ONLY relevant to the point of the term GENETIC relationship, and that everything I said could be true but not to the point. Whether or not genetic relationship is a big deal in the totality of ways in which languages can change might be considered a separate issue, the issue of *internal* change. We note that even with respect to borrowing there have been linguists like Jakobson who have proposed that languages can only borrow what could also result (?spontaneously) from internal change (what is consistent with its structure before the borrowing, or some such notion). That remains an interesting (!) idea, not always easy to distinguish from vacuity, and intended for borrowing beyond the arbitrariness of the lexicon. From Wouter.Kusters at let.uva.nl Tue Jul 7 16:03:26 1998 From: Wouter.Kusters at let.uva.nl (Wouter Kusters) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 12:03:26 EDT Subject: Workshop on Complexity in language contact, acquisition and change Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- NEWSLETTER 1. Workshop on Complexity in language contact, acquisition and change. 8 September 1998, Paris, France. In colaboration with the CNRS (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique), the LOT (Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics) is organizing some workshops to create a forum to encourage the discussion between researchers in linguistics from the Netherlands and France. One of the workshops is initiated by members of the University of Amsterdam and has as its subject: Complexity in language contact, acquisition and change. The workshop will take place on Tuesday the 8th of September, starting at 14.30 until approximately 20.00h. The theme Although there is a kind of dogma that all natural languages are equally complex, at least for certain subsystems of language there may well be differences in complexity. In discussions of processes of language change and first and second language acquisition the notion of complexity plays an important role. Especially in creole studies simplicity and complexity implicitly have been dominant issues in the debate, but are seldom properly scrutinized. In this workshop we want to discuss the role of complexity in these domains, including grammatical theory, first and second language acquisition, language change and language contact - in order to shed light on controversial problems invoked by the term complexity in linguistics in general. The structure of the workshop The workshop is organized around three themes: creole languages, language acquisition and language change. Each theme will be discussed by researchers from France and the Netherlands in 10 minutes presentations, inspired by the following propositions. After these short presentations there will be time for discussion in each session. 1. All languages have the same "costs/payment" balance, i.e. if a language becomes phonologically more simple, its morphological system will become more complex. [cf. Haugen 1976:286] 2. All complexity in languages resides in the lexicon. [cf. Aronoff 1995] 3. Languages spoken within small communities are more complex than languages of large communities. [cf. Whinnom 1980, Hymes 1971, M?hlh?usler 1996] 4. Language shift will in general lead to simplification, while borrowing will lead generally to more complex structures. [cf. Thomason & Kaufman 1988] 5. Complexity does not play a role in first language acquisition, but it does in second language acquisition. [cf. Trudgill 1992] 6. Grammaticalization leads to greater complexity. [Labov 1990, Bickerton 1981] Programme 14.30 Chair and Opening Pieter Muysken (University of Amsterdam/Leiden) 14.35: Introduction Hadewych van Rheeden (University of Amsterdam) Wouter Kusters (University of Amsterdam) 14.55: Language acquisition Elisabeth van der Linden (University of Amsterdam) Daniel Veronique (Universit? de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III) Colette Noyau (Universit? de Paris X) Peter Coopmans (University of Utrecht) 15.55: Break 16.15: Creoles Jacques Arends (University of Amsterdam) Adrienne Bruyn (University of Amsterdam) Karl Gadelii (University of G?teborg) Andree Tabouret-Keller (Universit? de Strasbourg) 17.15: Break Chair: To be announced 17.35: Language Change Marc van Oostendorp (University of Amsterdam/ Leiden) Fred Weerman (University of Utrecht) Colette Feuillard (Universit? Ren? Descartes, Paris V) Muriel Norde (University of Amsterdam) Francoise Gadet (Universit? de Paris X) 19.00: General discussion. 20.00: Drinks and dinner. Please let us know if you are interested to join this workshop. If you need more information, just contact Wouter Kusters and/or Hadewych van Rheeden: wouter.kusters at let.uva.nl h.a.van.rheeden at let.uva.nl Another workshop will be held on Wednesday the 9th, on the subject of Competing principles in learners varieties, organized within the same joint programme of LOT and CNRS. These workshops are immediately followed by the Eurosla 8 Conference on Second language acquisition. For more information on the Eurosla 8 look at http://www.kun.nl/ttmb/news.html. In the next newsletter the exact location of the workshop will be announced. From isidore.dyen at yale.edu Thu Jul 9 21:49:00 1998 From: isidore.dyen at yale.edu (Isidore Dyen) Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 17:49:00 EDT Subject: the meaning of "genetic relationship" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Mon, 6 Jul 1998, bwald wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > We have been discussing the concept of "mutual intelligibility", an > interesting topic that seems crucial to Isidore Dyen's concept of > "language" (technically, hololect = chain of mutually intelligible pairs of > *dialects* -- or, after his last clarification, perhaps *idiolects*, or, > preferrably, in my view, *lects*, in the sense suggested in the 1970s by CJ > Bailey) and ultimately, in his view, to the concept of genetic > relationship. About MI (mutual...), D writes: > > >What I > >mean by mutual intelligibility for these purposes is being able > >communicate with each other in their native dialect. This definition > >produces a first (or native) language dialectology in which a language is > >unitary. > > As I have been saying in previous messages on this topic, MI between > dialects is a matter of degree. It seems to me that a quantitative leap, a > lowering of MI, will occur in moving from a bunch of lects within a single > (socially-delimited) dialect to another. That leap is similar but less > than moving from one hololect to another. Basically, it all seems to be > about moving from one vocabulary to another. It is true that some > syntactic constructions can be misunderstood, or not understood across > dialects, and some phonology can take getting used to even if vocabulary > and syntax are familiar, but where there is shared vocabulary (recognised > as shared vocabulary) there will be some degree of MI. Thus, if a German > says to a monolingual English speaker under most circumstances "komm hier", > the English speaker will understand, and, in fact, not even realise that > s/he was spoken to in German. So there is some MI between German and > English. I don't suppose (maybe I'm wrong) that D expects there to be a > chain including English and German in a single hololect. I'm not sure this > is important. There is certainly the quantitative leap I spoke of above. > Presumably, the extent of the hololect is an empirical matter, so maybe E > and G do belong to a single hololect although MI is minimal. I mention the > above to indicate that I understand D's distinction between a "hololect" > and what we usually call a "language" (socially defined). As I use the term mutual intelligibility as a criterion for distinguishing languages, it means in effect zero mutual intelligibility. There will probably always be found some accidental instances in which what might otherwise be taken to be different languages will provide a few sentences that are mutually intelligible. The example you cite is a good one and perhaps with some diligence you can add a few more. Such instances can perhaps lead to a refinement of the criterion. What is needed is a criterion that allows for cleancut separations and is objective. The difficulty is that the concept has not been studied after the fifties. Carping is obviously useless. One refinement that I have considered is the requirement that the intelligibiity depend on understanding through one's own structure. Although superficially that seems to be satisfied by your example, the structural requirement would soon show that it had really not been satisfied after the testing of mutual intelligibility had gone farther. > > D continues: > > The term dialect is difficult; the term itself is used in such a > >variety of ways, that in effect the definition a language given above > >really appeals to the intuition in the matter of dialects. However it is > >assumed that no two individuals whose speech-types are in the same > >language are the same. Of course the term dialect is also applied to > >collections of speech-types > >that share a particular feature or some collection of features. [Here > >'feature' is used for some relevant speech phenomenon, not in the > >meaning it has in phonology.] In any case I believe it doesn't matter much > >which definition of duialect you use. > > That's why I mentioned various terms like "dialect", "idiolect" and "lect" > at the beginning of this message. Empirically there is a great difference > between a (social) dialect and an (asocial) idiolect. Speakers of the same > dialect are much more mutually intelligible than speakers of different > dialects. Idiosyncratic speakers are no more intelligible within their > dialects than outside of them on whatever points they're idiosyncratic on. > The shared speech patterns of a single dialect even goes beyond what seems > necessary for MI. > > Another rhetorical problem came up; by rhetoric I mean the way people > express their points; it is a linguistically interesting thing about > choices at the discourse level of linguistic analysis. D objected to my > use of the word 'dogma', as follows: > > >I should add that I find the term 'dogma' a pejorative term. > > Of course I am aware that 'dogma' is sometimes taken to be pejorative, but > in a discussion of linguistic complexity a while ago I wrote on this list > that 'dogma' is not always a bad thing. In context I was saying that the > dogma that all languages are of equal complexity is just that, since we do > not know what we are talking about when we make that claim. (Not that it's > wrong, just that we don't know what "equal complexity" means, or how to > measure or conceptualise *global* complexity with respect to human > languages -- and the notion that if something changes in a language, > something else MUST change in order to "restore" that "constant" complexity > is vacuous.) But I said the dogma is *good* because it alerts us to this > problem when we hear somebody say or suggest that language A is more > complex than language B. And I went on to say the dogma allows us to > recognise an issue, so that the least we can respond to a claim of > "inequality" in complexity is: "what do you mean?" And it invariably > turns out that they mean something much more specific than "global > complexity", e.g., "Chinese" is "complicated" because of its writing > system, etc etc. There is an essential difference between a dogma and an assumption. A dogma is a teaching, an assumption is a proposition not subject to proof that is used as the basis for some collection of hypotheses. > > Now, the "dogma" I was referring to in D's message is that languages don't > mix -- and, I'm not sure because he didn't respond -- languages don't > converge over an area (how could they without mutual intelligiblity -- and > if they're separate hololects how can they be mutually...?), and maybe > dialects don't either; they just either don't do anything or get more and > more different from each other. OK, it sounds like I'm being sarcastic, > but he really didn't respond and I can't anticipate how he deals with this. > Anyway, again I don't think the dogma is totally misguided, but there is a > better point in D's message to pursue to this, where he suggests that I > will destroy the comparative method with my assumptions (or maybe it's: > without assumptions like his.) Let's move on to that. > > >But if languages > are permitted to mix, that is, if a language boundary between two > languages is permitted to dissolve, then the kind of inferences that we make > regarding the past hstory of a language must take the possibility of > mixing into account. > > Yes. Why not? But NB, the language "boundary" between two languages never > totally dissolves. It only dissolves on certain points. Note, for > example, Gumperz's classic study of Marathi and Kannada in Kupwar. More or > less the same grammar (including phonology) but different lexicons. If the language boundary between two languages never dissolves, different languages do not mix. > > >The consequence is that the hypothesis of a > protolanguage becomes unavailable unless the possibility of mixture can be > ruled out. > > Why? Mixture doesn't have to happen. But basically we ignore > mixture/convergence according to the comparative method and concentrate on > what can be accounted for without it. That's fine. But to then say "case > closed", nothing else can happen, or ever does, and languages can't mix, > that's like saying "you can't cross the street against the light. I mean, > you CAN'T. Try it, you'll see you can't!" (But you can -- if you don't > get run over.) > > In any case, there are two situations that test the limits of the > comparative method (the one on which the genetic hypothesis is based), 1. > two languages with the same grammar and different vocabularies; 2. two > languages with the same vocabulary and different grammars. These are > matters of degree, but at the extremes, 1. is reflected in the Kupwar > Kannada-Marathi situation, among others (with few historical linguists > exploring them instead of claiming they are "rare"), and 2. is reflected in > such things as creolisation etc. The issue is very meaningful for the > comparative method and reconstruction. Thus, for example, we have the case > of Hittite, where some scholars, e.g., Lehmann, argue that it reflects a > much more archaic grammar of IE than other surviving branches, while others > argue that many of these features are due to convergence with non-IE > languages of the area (which have similar features). The "dogma" against > mixing does not help resolve this issue on way or the other. It is not intended to. As an assumption it is not subject to proof. However if the assumption that languages do mix were to be more useful in tracing the history of languages, it would be the one to adopt. > > >That is the function of the assumption. In a first language > dialectology applied through time, once a language has been > formed, its being disjoint cannot be destroyed. If you are willing to give > that up, I would say you are giving the power of the comparative method. > > A strange use of the word "assumption" to me. I'd say the comparative > method works for what it works for, and it doesn't deserve any more power > than that. Now, the idea that the disjoint(ed)ness of a language once it's > formed can't be destroyed is another matter. But I'm reading "language" > here as individual's linguistic system formed before a critical age. More > on that later. > I believe my use of the term assumption is taken from logic. You are probably familiar with the fact that many disagreements between people (including scholars) are characterized by a lack of agreement on assumptions. You might want to think of an assumption as an axiom or postulate > To get beyond the English-German hololect, D writes: > > >The view is available that zero mutual intelligibility occurs. > > It is almost nonsensical to deny this, though it is not as obviously true > as it seems (e.g., unidentifiable languages heard on the radio convey even > less than those witnessed performed in public, according to my personal > experience). The point remains that MI develops somehow under contact > situations. D wants to disregard this by insisting that there is a > strictly circumscribed item, call it a native (monolingual?) dialect > (sociolinguists often call it a "vernacular") and that is the only thing > that counts for *genetic* relationship. But note if you rule "mixing" > (accomodation) out by definition, you simply choose to ignore the variety > of ways in which languages change, both synchronically, and (relevantly) > diachronically. What about areas where people generally grow up > multilingually? What effect does that have on "genetic" relationship? > (Interestingly, it varies, in Bantu East Africa genetic relationships can > be demonstrated by conventional comparative methods, even for areas which > are highly multilingual, but tree classification of Bantu languages in such > areas and in general, is, for the most part, a hopeless mess.) I believe there is a difference between what I call a first or native dialect or language and what sociolinguists call a vernacular or ought to be. I should guess that a vernacular is opposed to a standard dialect, whereas what I am talking about is what a person first learns; it might be something called a standard dialect. Generally what I have in mind is what people learn by the time they are ten. Some people grow up with more than one first languages. I heard a case reported in which it was claimed that a particular individual had no first language. But some people are also dumb or deaf or learning disabled and so on. Some individuals acquire two or more languages simultaneously as first languages and thus become part of the boundary between their languages. Co-linguistic dialects are different because their interactions are different; non-mutually intelligible dialects interact in the same way as different languages. Mutually intelligible dialects attract each other so that they tend to converge with persistent interaction, presumably to increase the rapidity of the intelligibility. Although neighboring languages also show structural convergence, the likelihood is that that is mediated by bilinguals > > I wrote: > >>one might be tempted to assume that only through mutual intelligibility > >> can dialects influence each other and changes spread from one dialect to > >> another -- and there is no doubt some truth to this. .... > > D responded: > >Without being disrespectful, let me suggest that you have used the term > >'assume' above in the sense of 'conclude' or 'infer', not in its ological > >sense. I don't object to l/ay terminology; I am not a logician. > > 1. huh? > 2. what's "l/ay terminology"? Is it the vernacular? > 3. I thought I meant "assume" (although a logical process leads to that > assumption by ignoring > certain facts). Elsewhere, D seems to use "assumption" to mean > "postulate" (noun). To me an > "assumption" can be like a "guess", and a guess is often based on a > rational process, as > suggested in the word "guestimate". In any case, assumptions, like > guesses, can be wrong. > > Finally, D brings up a point which has long intrigued me, and we have some > common ground: > > >I believe that you have begun to touch on the very important question that > >deals with the time at which an individual can be said on the average to > >be in control of his native language. If I suggest at the end of the first > >decade of his life, I imagine I might attract some disbelief. For certain > >purposes however, it strikes me as being not an unreasonable expectation. > > This is relevant to the "vernacular" which D insists is the object of > genetic classification (to the exclusion of any other objects, it seems). > As for disbelief, I think a "critical age" between 10-12 is widely accepted > -- for PHONOLOGY (some put it even earlier, with some good evidence). But > not for much of syntax and vocabulary. Since MI seems to depend crucially > on vocabulary, there is some explaining to do here. At the same time, it > may reduce "genetic relationship" largely to phonological evolution, > something which would not surprise me in view of traditional practice, > though not traditional belief. Structures that may be acquired well after > the age of 10 are also subject to linguistic evolution, however, as is any > non-universal feature of language (whatever the universal features of > language turn out to be). Therefore, there is more to be said, esp about > syntactic evolution. > > P.S. I get the sinking feeling that in the end D will say everything he > was saying was ONLY relevant to the point of the term GENETIC relationship, > and that everything I said could be true but not to the point. Whether or > not genetic relationship is a big deal in the totality of ways in which > languages can change might be considered a separate issue, the issue of > *internal* change. We note that even with respect to borrowing there have > been linguists like Jakobson who have proposed that languages can only > borrow what could also result (?spontaneously) from internal change (what > is consistent with its structure before the borrowing, or some such > notion). That remains an interesting (!) idea, not always easy to > distinguish from vacuity, and intended for borrowing beyond the > arbitrariness of the lexicon. > Genetic relationship is a big deal if you are interested in the past history of the human being. I am. From ratcliff at fs.tufs.ac.jp Fri Jul 10 12:46:15 1998 From: ratcliff at fs.tufs.ac.jp (Robert R. Ratcliffe) Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 08:46:15 EDT Subject: historical explanation of language structure Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- This relates loosely to a discussion initiated, I believe, by Scott Delancey, a few months ago about the extent to which diachronic explanations are necessary to explain synchronic structures. It strikes me that there is a fundamental contradiction between the de-facto use of diachronic explanations in generative theory and the 'orthodox' generative assumptions about language change. It is well-known and uncontroversial that the underlying forms of classical Generative Phonology are often identical with reconstructed forms. Many critics of GG in the 60s and 70s saw this in itself as problem. But I'm willing to allow that ontology may recapitulate phylogeny as long as the theory of change and the theory of acquisition can be reconciled. But in GG they are not. Acquisition is assumed to involve simplification-- the child contructs the simplest grammar possible-- while the adoption of reconstructed forms as underlying forms implies a theory of change as grammar complication-- addition of rules. I'm particularly disturbed by the way in which non-linear or 'process' morphology (ablaut, reduplication, etc.) is handled. Many generativists seem to be powerfully attracted to a theory of language as consisting only of words or morphemes (which must be conventional, thus artifactual, acquired) and syntactic relations which are presumably universal. But in order to sustain this view process moprhology has to be explained away. (Hence we have books like the recent ones by Lieber or Stonham showing how all process morphology can be reduced to linear morphology). The conventional way of dealing with an ablaut (like man/men) in this kind of theory is by postulating a zero affix which triggers a phonological change. This is a de facto historical explanation. It is often (not always) the case that ablaut or apophony develops from affixational morphology, because an affix (which may later be lost) triggers a phonological change in the stem. But this type of de-facto historical exaplanation in a synchronic account is really a non-explanation or an anti-explanation. If the assumption is correct that the simplest, most natural grammar (the one closest to UG) is one which involves morphemes and linear order relations only, and if the assumption that language change is simplification is correct, then ablaut type change should be impossible. A child confronted with a pair like man/maener (or whatever it was in OE or Proto-Germanic, I am not a germanist) should simply factor out the 'noise' of the vowel change, identify the -er as a plural suffix and produce man/maner according to universal rules for combining morphemes. But in actual cases of language change it seems as often as not that it is the suffix which is factored out and the vowel contrast identified as the marker of plurality (or whatever semantic category), hence Eng. man/men. Thus either the theory that language change is simplification is incorrect, or the assumption that the simplest grammar is one which involves morphemes plus syntactic relations only is incorrect. (Of course both may be wrong.) If the latter assumption is incorrect then there is no motivation to search for deep-structure de-facto-historical explanations of process morphology. Thus while I am not yet ready to side with Paul, and say that there are no explanations of language phenomena except diachronic explanations, it seems to me there really hasn't been much progress in the direction of finding synchronic 'explanations', as opposed to synchronic descriptions, of language phenomena. Generative theory has failed to provide an adequate explanation of language change, yet generative theorists contiune to rely on explanations based in language change to explain synchronic language structure. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Robert R. Ratcliffe Senior Lecturer, Arabic and Linguistics, Dept. of Linguistics and Information Science Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Nishigahara 4-51-21, Kita-ku Tokyo 114 Japan From isidore.dyen at yale.edu Mon Jul 13 11:43:57 1998 From: isidore.dyen at yale.edu (Isidore Dyen) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 07:43:57 EDT Subject: historical explanation of language structure In-Reply-To: <35A64AA7.9106298A@fs.tufs.ac.jp> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I am not sure it is advisable to horn in on this discussion, but I will anyway. It is my understanding that in science 'explanation' is tied to the question 'How?'. With that as a premise the how of a natural language is reasonably sought in its antecedents. Examination its state, no matter how stated (including pseudo-histories) are only kinds of analyses. Some scholars believe that pseudo-histories are illuminating because they sometimes resemble historical inferences, but historical inferences are qualitatively different from analyses, though analyses provide the basic data for historical inferences. I believe that you saw this point and I hope that my comments have helped. On Fri, 10 Jul 1998, Robert R. Ratcliffe wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > This relates loosely to a discussion initiated, I believe, by Scott > Delancey, a few months ago about the extent to which diachronic > explanations are necessary to explain synchronic structures. > > It strikes me that there is a fundamental contradiction between the > de-facto use of diachronic explanations in generative theory and the > 'orthodox' generative assumptions about language change. It is > well-known and uncontroversial that the underlying forms of classical > Generative Phonology are often identical with reconstructed forms. Many > critics of GG in the 60s and 70s saw this in itself as problem. But I'm > willing to allow that ontology may recapitulate phylogeny as long as the > theory of change and the theory of acquisition can be reconciled. But > in GG they are not. Acquisition is assumed to involve simplification-- > the child contructs the simplest grammar possible-- while the adoption > of reconstructed forms as underlying forms implies a theory of change as > grammar complication-- addition of rules. > > I'm particularly disturbed by the way in which non-linear or 'process' > morphology (ablaut, reduplication, etc.) is handled. Many generativists > seem to be powerfully attracted to a theory of language as consisting > only of words or morphemes (which must be conventional, thus > artifactual, acquired) and syntactic relations which are presumably > universal. But in order to sustain this view process moprhology has to > be explained away. (Hence we have books like the recent ones by Lieber > or Stonham showing how all process morphology can be reduced to linear > morphology). The conventional way of dealing with an ablaut (like > man/men) in this kind of theory is by postulating a zero affix which > triggers a phonological change. This is a de facto historical > explanation. It is often (not always) the case that ablaut or apophony > develops from affixational morphology, because an affix (which may later > be lost) triggers a phonological change in the stem. But this type of > de-facto historical exaplanation in a synchronic account is really a > non-explanation or an anti-explanation. If the assumption is correct > that the simplest, most natural grammar (the one closest to UG) is one > which involves morphemes and linear order relations only, and if the > assumption that language change is simplification is correct, then > ablaut type change should be impossible. A child confronted with a pair > like man/maener (or whatever it was in OE or Proto-Germanic, I am not a > germanist) should simply factor out the 'noise' of the vowel change, > identify the -er as a plural suffix and produce man/maner according to > universal rules for combining morphemes. But in actual cases of language > change it seems as often as not that it is the suffix which is factored > out and the vowel contrast identified as the marker of plurality (or > whatever semantic category), hence Eng. man/men. Thus either the theory > that language change is simplification is incorrect, or the assumption > that the simplest grammar is one which involves morphemes plus syntactic > relations only is incorrect. (Of course both may be wrong.) If the > latter assumption is incorrect then there is no motivation to search for > deep-structure de-facto-historical explanations of process morphology. > > Thus while I am not yet ready to side with Paul, and say that there > are no explanations of language phenomena except diachronic > explanations, it seems to me there really hasn't been much progress in > the direction of finding synchronic 'explanations', as opposed to > synchronic descriptions, of language phenomena. Generative theory has > failed to provide an adequate explanation of language change, yet > generative theorists contiune to rely on explanations based in language > change to explain synchronic language structure. > > > > > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > Robert R. Ratcliffe > Senior Lecturer, Arabic and Linguistics, > Dept. of Linguistics and Information Science > Tokyo University of Foreign Studies > Nishigahara 4-51-21, Kita-ku > Tokyo 114 Japan > From jacob.baltuch at euronet.be Mon Jul 13 11:44:33 1998 From: jacob.baltuch at euronet.be (Jacob Baltuch) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 07:44:33 EDT Subject: Q: I'm told Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- When did constructions like "he's given something" (where the subject of the passive corresponds to the indirect object of the active) enter the English language? 2. Are they any other IE languages that have them? (Apologies to readers of the INDOLOGY list who've seen already maybe too many postings on the topic) From ROGER at beattie.uct.ac.za Mon Jul 13 11:45:36 1998 From: ROGER at beattie.uct.ac.za (Lass, RG, Roger, Prof) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 07:45:36 EDT Subject: Latin pronunciation Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- In light of the various comments from John Hewson and others on this matter, I'd like to note the following: (1) I learned Latin from a German teacher, and while he TRIED to teach us 'classical' pronunciation, he never could get past the nominative sg in reciting paradigms: so for 'Caesar' he (and sometimes we) said [kaizar, tse:zeRis, tse:zeRi:, tse:zeRem], etc. My favourite was 'Ciceronis oratio de amicitia', which was [tsitseRo:nis oRa:tsio de amitsitsia]. (2) If you listen carefully to recordings of sacred music by German (or Austrian) as opposed to other nationalities of singers, you'll note for instance [ts] rather than [tS] in 'dona nobis pacem', etc. Very careful singers, like Emma Kirkby and the English ancient music tradition, adjust their Latin, using 'Italian' or 'German' pronunciation where called for. Roger Lass Roger Lass Department of Linguistics University of Cape Town Rondebosch 7700/South Africa Tel +(021) 650 3138 Fax +(021) 650 3726 From ph1u+ at andrew.cmu.edu Mon Jul 13 14:33:29 1998 From: ph1u+ at andrew.cmu.edu (Paul J Hopper) Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 10:33:29 EDT Subject: Latin pronunciation In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Roger Lass' observation about learning Latin from German teachers reminded me of an experience I had in Gymnasium in Hannover: having learned Greek pronunciation from British teachers in England, I was convinced unquestioningly that whereas the aspirates [phi] and [theta] were fricatives, [chi] was a stop identical to [kappa]. When I got to Germany, i discovered I had been wrongly taught: in fact, [phi] and [chi] were fricatives, and [theta] was a stop identical to [tau]! Paul From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU Tue Jul 14 14:32:58 1998 From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:32:58 EDT Subject: the meaning of "genetic relationship" Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I wrote: >> Now we are getting to one of my favorite points, pointing out that >> preoccupation with genetic relationship to the exclusion of other factors >> in linguistic change carries with it the 19th century baggage of romantic >> nationalism ... Isidore Dyen responded: >The key word above is preoccupation, a loaded word. You continue to use >loaded words and they do interfere with the straightforward exchange of >views. There is no special privilege associated with genetic relationship >so that if you are not interested in it or do not believe it is worth >examining, forget it. Why go on about it? Genetic linguistics is a subject >on whose evaluation you disagree with. Just get on with your research. >That's what is important, we hope. Nothing more needs to be said about this, other than to say: it's good advice. I went on later: >> NB. In my original quote above I give the perspective of an interest in >> the mechanics of linguistic change -- an end in itself. Dyen's response >> takes the perspective of an interest in linguistic change as a tool for >> uncovering past history, which I take to mean social history -- a means to >> an end. My questions above accommodate to that end. ID respond: >It may help you to understand the importance of genetic linguistics, if >you start from the point that man is distinguished from other animals by >language. It seems to me to follow that as we trace the back the history >of the presently occurring languages we are dealing with the history of >the human being, though perhaps not completely, but an important >contribution to the total history. That's fine with me. Nevertheless, I maintain that tracing back the history of presently occurring languages is a quite different task from understanding how human language originated. So far the role of genetic linguistics toward the second issue is simply one of dismissing some of the more absurd theories of language origins. From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU Tue Jul 14 14:32:40 1998 From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:32:40 EDT Subject: historical explanation of language structure Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I read Ratcliff's message of July 10, 1998 with considerable interest, since I am much interested in the difference of methods in synchronic (esp GG, but really all synchronic descriptions) and diachronic analyses. They boil down to a data-base difference between *introspective judgments*, whether the analyst's own or those of another speaker, in the case of synchronic analyses, and documentary evidence -- usually necessarily written texts (since voice-recorded data is not old enough to have deep historical documentary value yet), in the case of diachronic. These are differences in the data bases of these approaches, and all further problems, hypotheses, theories, explanations, assumptions, etc. follow from them and respond to them. Both methods have well-known pitfalls. Documentary evidence is painfully incomplete. Linguistic methods of reconstruction arose to supplement the documented data. The * flags its undocumented status as data (NB data for something else). As we know, application of the comparative methods is often contentious, though they have proven useful on a large amount of data (though rarely larger than the data which must be excluded by the methods -- for various reasons). In the case of synchronics, the reliability of introspections is often contentious, again for various reasons, some of which remain unclear. The worst case is two synchronic linguists arguing about their own conflicting judgments to support their theoretical positions. A gentleman's agreement to accept both judgments as data, when it occurs, does not resolve the issue of what causes the disagreement, and what its implications are for both synchronic and diachronic analyses. Generally there are two choices, either we have hit indeterminacy in the shared grammar of the dissenting speakers, or one reflects an *innovation* that can be passed on to successive speakers (so indeterminacy means it isn't passed on, speakers don't form rules of the degree of determinacy to encompass the disagreement, and they are only fashioned ad hoc as the methods of synchronic analysis lead to considering the contested form for some analytical generalisation based on more secure data). Robert's point about ontology repeating phylogeny in synchronic analysis is tricky. The topic was much discussed in the 70s, with little to show for it, in my opinion. Mainly because few people were interested in sustaining the discussion. Obviously synchronic analysis contains some features directly relevant to historical analysis, because some speakers have grammars with changes in progress in them. It is a *shared* problem for synchronic and diachronic analyses to decide at what point in its development a change is no longer "in progress", or has no longer left a trace of its former status as a change in progress, accessible to the speaker, not just the analyst, in some way. With respect to the above point, Robert's consideration of various devices proposed synchronic analysis leads to consideration of the difference between the level of abstractness that these devices represent, and relatively transparent and straightforward analyses. Take the example of representing morphological umlaut as an abstract affix. Why this device? Already it is unclear. It could be because the particular language has comparable affixes, e.g., a morphological suffix for indicating plural, e.g., -er, which as a plural suffix synchronically triggers umlaut in German. That is a language-specific reason, closer to the concerns of diachronic analysis. But another possibility is that the affix is more abstract and that its position is arbitrary. The "parameters" approach, I would guess, would position the segment according to some language typology, but it remains unclear how to interpret the notion that "plurality" is a *segment*. History supports the notion that the German -er suffix itself is connected with umlaut, and that the process switched from phonetic to morphophonemic during a certain period of time. More difficult are English umlaut pairs, like "man/men" etc. If you want to consider the issue of where GG analyses stop being synchronic and start being diachronic (two separate issues according to what I said earlier), consider what its methods have in common with the comparative method. This is most obvious for morphophonemics (where the problem was immediately recognised), and more problematic for either morphology (e.g., Semitic vowel patterns)/syntax or low-level phonology. (Generally, GG methodology resembles internal reconstruction, not comparative reconstruction.) Finally, Robert's point against "all changes simplify (the grammar)" has been discussed many times in many guises on this list. If the simplification involves loss of information, it may cause decoding difficulties on the part of the hearer, burdened with interpreting the utterance. Hearer sanctions on speakers helps to contain them, but we're not sure why hearer sanctions are more effective in some cases than in others. The umlaut example is interesting because as a phonological process it seems to have started as a speaker-oriented simplification of articulatory gestures (minimizing articulatory movement from the vowel of one syllable to the next, i.e., a form of vowel harmony). It is unclear how this could cause difficulty for the hearer. On the contrary, it increases the cues to plural marking. With regard to first learners, an empirical source for determining "complexity", learners certainly regularise English umlaut plurals, but they also learn to suppress those regularisations as they become more mature (for most dialects). This is a hearer-oriented concession, but not obviously for reasons of decoding ease. Even more interesting is "was/were" instead of "beed" (i.e., be + ed). I am not aware of any evidence that "be+ed" is ever constructed by first learners. (it does not even seem to exist in African American vernacular, despite finite use of "invariant be".) It seems that for many speakers "was/were" is learned early, earlier than the -ed past tense marker, and immediately accepted as a portmanteau. If this is the case, as I think it is (and second language learners definitely follow suit), English speakers readily accept the historical conflation of two distinct verbs. Unusual is the acceptance of a distinct verb limited to a particular tense (past). The same is not true of "went", which has its stage "goed" in first learner speech (as in history). In the final analysis, the abstract plural *segment* that Robert mentions for some GGists may contain the claim that when speakers first learn that a "meaning" has a *transparent* formal marker, they immediately generalise it to all contexts, later withdrawing it in cases which cause social disapproval (often unconsciously). The past tense of "be" seems to contradict that assumption. Lexical conflation is clearly a possible change, as in the Victorian (?) prescriptive example: "men perspire, horses sweat, and women glow" (among others). However, the "be" vs. "was" case involves grammatical conditioning, not semantic or pragmatic. From laser at cogsci.uiuc.edu Tue Jul 14 14:32:14 1998 From: laser at cogsci.uiuc.edu (Peter Lasersohn) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:32:14 EDT Subject: Workshops and Conferences at the 1999 Linguistic Institute Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- WORKSHOPS AND CONFERENCES AT THE 1999 LSA LINGUISTIC INSTITUTE Linguistics for the 21st Century: Form and Function from Western and Nonwestern Perspectives The LSA Linguistic Institute has traditionally been a popular venue for workshops and conferences. The upcoming 1999 Institute will be held at the University of Illinois, June 21-July 30, 1999.? If you are interested in organizing a WORKSHOP or CONFERENCE at the 1999 Linguistic Institute, please contact us as soon as possible: Peter Lasersohn, Internal Associate Director Department of Linguistics, MC 168 4088 Foreign Languages Building 707 South Mathews Ave. Urbana, IL 61801 USA laser at cogsci.uiuc.edu (217) 244-3054 The infrastructure will be in place to host events that range from 10-500 participants. We expect dozens of events to be held here during the Institute, and popular dates and rooms will fill up fast, so please do not delay. Information on the web: About the Institute: http://www.cogsci.uiuc.edu/~lingi nst/1999 About the Linguistics Department at the University of Illinois: http://www.cogsci.uiuc.edu/linguistics About the University of Illinois and surrounding community: http://www.uiuc.edu From jacob.baltuch at euronet.be Tue Jul 14 14:31:49 1998 From: jacob.baltuch at euronet.be (Jacob Baltuch) Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 10:31:49 EDT Subject: Q: I'm told Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > When did constructions like "he's given something" > enter the English language? Just in case this wasn't clear, I was asking about raising of IO to Su. From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Wed Jul 15 14:48:18 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:48:18 EDT Subject: I`m told Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- The construction in which an indirect object is raised to become the subject of a passive has been called the `indirect passive'. There is a historical study of the rise of this construction in English in chapter 6 of the following book: David Denison (1993), English Historical Syntax, London: Longman. Briefly, Denison reports that the indirect passive was unknown in Old English, that the first apparent examples appear in the early 13th century with certain verbs like `DO (somebody) good' and `LET (somebody) blood', that the first reasonably clear examples with verbs like GIVE and TELL appear in the late 14th century, and that these remained rare until the late 15th century, after which the construction spread to more and more verbs and became frequent. Documentation of the rise and spread of this construction is provided in sections 1967-1975 of F. Th. Visser (1963-1973), An Historical Syntax of the English Language, 4 vols., Leiden: E. J. Brill. Both Visser and Denison caution that the early examples are often somewhat doubtful and need to be interpreted cautiously. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH England larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From isidore.dyen at yale.edu Wed Jul 15 14:47:35 1998 From: isidore.dyen at yale.edu (Isidore Dyen) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:47:35 EDT Subject: the meaning of "genetic relationship" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Tue, 14 Jul 1998, bwald wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > I wrote: > > >> Now we are getting to one of my favorite points, pointing out that > >> preoccupation with genetic relationship to the exclusion of other factors > >> in linguistic change carries with it the 19th century baggage of romantic > >> nationalism ... > > Isidore Dyen responded: > > >The key word above is preoccupation, a loaded word. You continue to use > >loaded words and they do interfere with the straightforward exchange of > >views. There is no special privilege associated with genetic relationship > >so that if you are not interested in it or do not believe it is worth > >examining, forget it. Why go on about it? Genetic linguistics is a subject > >on whose evaluation you disagree with. Just get on with your research. > >That's what is important, we hope. > > Nothing more needs to be said about this, other than to say: it's good advice. > > I went on later: > > >> NB. In my original quote above I give the perspective of an interest in > >> the mechanics of linguistic change -- an end in itself. Dyen's response > >> takes the perspective of an interest in linguistic change as a tool for > >> uncovering past history, which I take to mean social history -- a means to > >> an end. My questions above accommodate to that end. > > ID respond: > > >It may help you to understand the importance of genetic linguistics, if > >you start from the point that man is distinguished from other animals by > >language. It seems to me to follow that as we trace the back the history > >of the presently occurring languages we are dealing with the history of > >the human being, though perhaps not completely, but an important > >contribution to the total history. > > That's fine with me. Nevertheless, I maintain that tracing back the > history of presently occurring languages is a quite different task from > understanding how human language originated. So far the role of genetic > linguistics toward the second issue is simply one of dismissing some of the > more absurd theories of language origins. It may help if you call them hypotheses concerning the origin of languages rather than theories. As I see it it is useful to distinguish theories from hypotheses. The latter are explanations. There is little doubt that languages originated and the question is how. The problem has a simple structure if it is set up properly. The first component is animal cries used as signals. The second component is the fact that all natural languages are characterized by a phonemic structure. What we need is a scenario (one type of hypopthesis) that gets us from a cry-structure to a phonemic structure. The scenario would be a lot simpler to construct if the most minimal element was meaningful. Since all languqages use syntactic devices to reduce the ambiguity of utterances, one can take it for granted that syntactic devices developed for organizing different sequences of different meaningful (call them) cries. Somehow phonemes were developed out of the mishmash that was going on at that stage. Perhaps you would like to take a hand in adding to this scenario, or to construct an absurd hypothesis of your own. > From anna-karin.strobel at swipnet.se Wed Jul 15 14:45:21 1998 From: anna-karin.strobel at swipnet.se (anna-karin.strobel) Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 10:45:21 EDT Subject: referencesearching Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Hello, I wonder if anyone could be so kind to send me any references to any one of these languages. I have tried to locate references here in Sweden but I haven't managed to find anything explicit about these, or about the people who spoke/speak them. Be little flexible about the spelling though I had to translate some names from swedish myself, but as You can se I have put down some spellingvariations sometimes. Any germanic och romance language is okey but don't bather with slavic, greek, finno-ugric and turkic or anything else. ? Curish, kurish, kurian, curian, - in Kurland in the Balts ? jatvingian - in Poland and possible in southern Balticum ? semgallien in the region semgallien in Balticum ? selian, selic, - in the Balts somewhere ? kamassian, camassian, camassican - in Russia until 1980ts, a samoyed language ? tartessian - an language in Iberia in pre-rom ? lusitanian, lusitanic - a pre-rome language of Iberia ? lyaconian - in Anatolia ? trevian, treviscian - in eastern Gallia, a celtique language ? mallorquin - the catalan dialect that is spoken in Andorra ? talysh, talyshian, - in Azerbadjian ? judeo-tat and muslim-tat in Azerbadjsan ? gurb?ti - who knows ? pomac - in Greece and other Balcan countries ? sarakatsanernian, saracatsian, saracatsanerian - a greec nomadic language in Bulgaria (I think) ? traveller danish and its countemporeries in other countries as Sweden, Britain, Norway, Finland etc ? elmyrian, elmyric - the pre-ancien language of Sicily ? the various Channel Islands languages as aurignais, sarquis and the likes in Jersey and Guernsey ? the brabant language of Brabant ? the limbourgian dialect of Belgium ? maronitian, maronitic arabic - the arabic language of Cyprus ? olonetsian, olonetic, livvi, aunus - in Russia ? kemi sami - in Sampmi in norther Scndinavia ? monegasque in Monaco ? the language of the town of Bonifacio in Corsica ? the balearic dialect of catalan ? corsu of Corsica ? shuadit, judeprovencal - in Provence ? zarphatic - in France Thanks very much, Steve Lando anna-karin.strobel at swipnet.se From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU Thu Jul 16 15:33:05 1998 From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald) Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 11:33:05 EDT Subject: the meaning of "genetic relationship" Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Isidore Dyen invites comments on the following suggestion: > There is little doubt that languages >originated and the question is how. The problem has a simple structure if >it is set up properly. The first component is animal cries used as >signals. The second component is the fact that all natural languages >are characterized by a phonemic structure. What we need is a scenario (one >type of hypopthesis) that gets us from a cry-structure to a phonemic >structure. I think this is a variant of the theory of language origin that Jespersen called something like the "yowee" theory. (as opposed to the "ding-dong" and "bow-wow" theories). The only hypothesis that sticks in my mind with regard to a transition is the quantum leap one about human neurological evolution intervening between cries and words/roots/grammar/etc. Focussing on phonemic structure reveals the difference between cries as sounds and language as sounds, but I also think of Martinet's "double articulation" principle about language. Cries are generally taken to be emotive, while vocabulary is taken as symbolic (I hesitate to use the term "representational"). Therefore, there is also a transition in creation of meanings that must be taken into account. It is unclear that cries correspond in any way to most words/roots, apart from sharing vocalisation. In view of the relation between gestures and meanings (e.g., beckoning and dismissive gestures, perhaps referential pointing more generally ), the same logic leads to consideration of the transition between "purposeful" non-vocal animal gestures and human gestures that seem to have linguistic equivalents, e.g., "come here", "go away/keep distant", "look at that", etc. To be sure, on the basis of the list of differences between human language and what is known of animal communication (which I forget, Hockett lists a bunch), of which referential displacement in human language is most striking, innatists deny a direct connection. They would say that constructing a scenario between cries and roots/words is impossible (not to deny a small overlap -- because human language can represent anything that humans can perceive or imagine, including emotive cries). ID goes on: The scenario would be a lot simpler to construct if the most >minimal element was meaningful. I remember Swadesh in the 1960s suggesting that roots were initially constructed as CVC syllables (and that animal cries can be analysed into such units). Abstracting from this notion, I suppose the notion of the syllable would have to evolve prior to phonemic inventory or structure. I guess then the margins and nuclei started to be analysed as separate units. That's as far as I would go with that idea. ID continues: Since all languqages use syntactic devices >to reduce the ambiguity of utterances, one can take it for granted that >syntactic devices developed for organizing different sequences >of different meaningful (call them) cries. As far as we know (I think), the isolation of "meaningful cries" (anything like the roots of human languages) for displaced reference is already a major step for the theory ID hints at. Somehow, this must be accounted for. If not by neurological development which allows the evolution of something qualitatively different from emotive (or "here-and-now") cries, then what? Similarly, syntactic sequencing remains mysterious in origin. ID's suggestion reminds me of Bickerton's speculative distinction between "pre-language" and "language", where, in "pre-language", thematic roles/case relations are not specified, cf. early stages of children's syntax, and there is a lot of "ambiguity". Recall Lois Bloom's 1969? study of "mommy sock" (18 month-old or thereabout), which, according to context might mean "(look at) mommy's sock", "mommy, gimme a sock", "mommy has a sock", etc. ID continues: Somehow phonemes were developed >out of the mishmash that was going on at that stage. Perhaps you would >like to take a hand in adding to this scenario, or to construct an absurd >hypothesis of your own. The efficiency element in constructing roots and words from phonemes is striking, and parallels the efficiency of using syntax to construct utterances out of words. I don't know what to make of that for the origins of language. I can only appreciate that somehow the same kinds of logic are involved on the syntactic and phonotactic levels, and that somehow this has something to do with "reality", as humans perceive it, not just with analytical tricks. I'll leave it to others to propose theories of language origins. I'll just consider them to the extent that I can understand them -- and criticise, if necessary. From mcv at wxs.nl Thu Jul 16 15:28:55 1998 From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal) Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 11:28:55 EDT Subject: referencesearching In-Reply-To: <199807141844.UAA05650@mb05.swip.net> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- "anna-karin.strobel" wrote: > Curish, kurish, kurian, curian, - in Kurland in the Balts > > jatvingian - in Poland and possible in southern Balticum > > semgallien in the region semgallien in Balticum > > selian, selic, - in the Balts somewhere Curonian, Semigallian and Selonian were Baltic languages closely related to Latgalian. They have merged now in the language known as Latvian. The other Baltic languages were Prussian, Yotvingian and Galindian (in modern Poland/Belarus, between/south of the Prussians and the Lithuanians), and Lithuanian (divided into Samogitians and Aukstaiciai). You might try [haven't read them]: CHRISTIAN S. STANG, Vergleichende Grammatik der Baltischen Sprachen (1966), JANIS ENDZELINS, Baltu kalbu garsai ir formos (1957; Eng. trans., Comparative Phonology and Morphology of the Baltic Languages, 1971) > kamassian, camassian, camassican - in Russia until 1980ts, a >samoyed language Indeed one of the Southern Samoyedic languages of the Ob area, all of them extinct except Selkup ("Ostyak Samoyed"). Some of the extinct languages are Kamas, Motor, Koibal, Karagas, Soyot and Taigi. > olonetsian, olonetic, livvi, aunus - in Russia Olonets (Aunus) is a dialect of Karelian, a Baltic Finnic language very close to Finnish. Liiv (Livonian) is another Baltic Finnic language, formerly spoken in Western (Kurland) and Northern (Vidzeme) Latvia, now only on the very tip of Kurland. > kemi sami - in Sampmi in norther Scndinavia I suppose that's the dialect of Saami spoken near the Kemi river in Finland. You might try: BJVRN COLLINDER et al., Survey of the Uralic Languages, 2nd, rev. ed. (1969). > tartessian - an language in Iberia in pre-rom Tartessos was a city in Southern Spain, presumably near the delta of the Guadalquivir, although the site has not been found yet. There are inscriptions in S. Spain (most of them, I believe, from the Algarve area rather than from the Tartessian/Turdetanian area) in a script similar to but different from the Iberian alphabet/syllabary. They are not well understood. Classical sources claim that the language of the Tartessians was different from Iberian. Quoting Larry Trask: The so-called "Tartessian" inscriptions (the name is arbitrary and meaningless) are discussed in chapters 4 and 5 of the following book: James M. Anderson (1988), Ancient Languages of the Hispanic Peninsula, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, ISBN 0-8191-6731-2 (hb), 0-8191-6732-0 (pb). The label is more properly applied to the inscriptions of southern Portugal; those in southern Spain are similar but not identical, and it is not clear that both represent the same language. > lusitanian, lusitanic - a pre-rome language of Iberia There are a couple of inscriptions from the Lusitanian area (N. Portugal, NE Castille), which are apparently not written in Celtic, but in another Indo-European language, dubbed "Lusitanian". The inscription from Cabego das Fraguas contains the words PORCOM and IFADEM which would indicate the non-Celtic preservation of PIE *p, and the development *bh > f (Celtic b, Italic f). See UNTERMANN, J. "Lusitanisch, Keltiberisch, Keltisch" (Actas del V Coloquio sobre Lenguas y Culturas prerromanas de la Penmnsula Ibirica, Vitoria 1987), or his Monumenta Linguarum Hispanicarum 1-3, Wiesbaden 1975-1990. > lyaconian - in Anatolia Lycaonia was inhabited by Anatolian Luwians in the 2nd mill. BC. We now that Lycian in the 1st mill. BC is descended from Luwian, and it seems likely that the aboriginal language of Lycaonia was from the same stock. As far as I know, there are no Lycaonian inscriptions. > trevian, treviscian - in eastern Gallia, a celtique language There's the tribe of the Treveri, in modern Luxemburg... > talysh, talyshian, - in Azerbadjian > > judeo-tat and muslim-tat in Azerbadjsan Talysh and Tat are Iranian languages of the Caspian group, some of them heavily influenced by standard Persian (Farsi). R. SCHMITT (ed.) Compendium linguarum iranicarum, Wiesbaden 1989, might contain some information. > gurbiti - who knows I don't... > pomac - in Greece and other Balcan countries > > sarakatsanernian, saracatsian, saracatsanerian - a greec nomadic >language in Bulgaria (I think) The Pomaks are apparently Bulgarians that converted to Islam after the Turkish invasion. I suspect the Sarakats[..] (~Sarracen?) might be the same people, or maybe Greeks converted to Islam? > traveller danish and its countemporeries in other countries as >Sweden, Britain, Norway, Finland etc Never heard of it... > elmyrian, elmyric - the pre-ancien language of Sicily Elymian is indeed one of the ancient languages of Sicily (together with Sican and Siculian). All I know about Elymian is that there are a couple of incriptions, one of them containing the word esmi or emi or the like, which if it means "I am", would indicate an Indo-European (but not an Italic) language. > the various Channel Islands languages as aurignais, sarquis and >the likes in Jersey and Guernsey Norman French dialects. > the brabant language of Brabant > > the limbourgian dialect of Belgium Dialects of Dutch. > maronitian, maronitic arabic - the arabic language of Cyprus The Christian Maronites of Lebanon speak standard Levantine Arabic. > monegasque in Monaco Apparently, some people in Monaco still speak an Italian (Ligurian) dialect, close to the dialect of Ventimiglia. A Ligurian colony was established in Monaco in the 11th c. (source: Pierre Bec, "La Langue Occitane" [Que sais-je? 1059]). > the language of the town of Bonifacio in Corsica > corsu of Corsica I don't know if the language of Bonifacio is a variety of corsu. Gerhard Rohlf's "Historische Grammatik der Italienischen Sprache und ihrer Mundarten" (1949, Bern) contains quite a few references to Corsican. > mallorquin - the catalan dialect that is spoken in Andorra Mallorqum is obviously the dialect of Catalan spoken on Mallorca. Andorr` itself is a variant of W. Catalan, not as remarkable as the dialects of Pallars, Ribagorga [which are in certain ways transitional between Catalan and Aragonese] or Vall d'Aran [a Gascon dialect]. > the balearic dialect of catalan Unfortunately, all the sources on Catalan I'm familiar with (such as Badia i Margarit's "Gram`tica histrrica catalana"), are in Catalan. > shuadit, judeprovencal - in Provence > > zarphatic - in France I don't know about zarphatic (unless it's a corruption of sephardic). Unlike judeo-espaqol (ladino, judezmo, etc.), I'm not aware of any special linguistic status for judaeo-provengal. ======================= Miguel Carrasquer Vidal mcv at wxs.nl Amsterdam From Georg at home.ivm.de Thu Jul 16 15:22:53 1998 From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Ralf-Stefan Georg) Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 11:22:53 EDT Subject: referencesearching In-Reply-To: <199807141844.UAA05650@mb05.swip.net> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I see you are in endangered-languages-in-Europe-research (and some extinct ancient lgs. as well): Here are some items of possible use for you: >? kamassian, camassian, camassican - in Russia until 1980ts, a >samoyed language Kai Donner: Kamassisches W?rterbuch nebst Sprachproben und Hauptz?gen der Grammatik, Helsinki: Societe Finno-Ougrienne 1944 a good source for lexical data (and a classic of loanword research) is: Aulis Joki: Die Lehnw?rter des Sajansamojedischen, Helsinki, ibid. 1952 a good short sketch is: P?ter Simoncsics: Kammassian, in: Daniel Abandolo: The Uralic Languages, London: Routledge 1998 (yes, that fresh !) >? tartessian - an language in Iberia in pre-rom > >? lusitanian, lusitanic - a pre-rome language of Iberia On both you may want to have a look at: Certainly you'll get newer references on these, but the older literature is accessible through U. Schmoll: Die Sprachen der vorkeltischen Indogermanen und das Keltiberische, Wiesbaden 1959 (I'm nothing less than an expert on these lgs, but I think it is fair to say that you should not expect too much in the way of actual attestation on these languages) >? lyaconian - in Anatolia I'm unsure, what that might be, maybe Lycian, then try Johannes Friedrich: Kleinasiatische Sprachdenkm?ler, Berlin 1932 for the then-known corpus, and G?nter Neumann: Lykisch, in: Handbuch der Orientalistik I, 2, 1/2, 2 (Altkleinasiatische Sprachen) 1969, 358-396; but Anatolian linguistics certainly did not come to a standstill after that >? trevian, treviscian - in eastern Gallia, a celtique language As far as I can tell, this is an unattested language (though the Celtic tribe of the Treveri is of course well known) >? talysh, talyshian, - in Azerbadjian >? judeo-tat and muslim-tat in Azerbadjsan Mostly, even almost exclusively, Russian literature, try the handbook-article: Pierre Lecoq: Les dialectes caspiens et les dialectes du nord-ouest de l'Iran, in: R. Schmitt (ed.): Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum, Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1989, 296-312; also some papers by G. Lazard, such as: Le dialecte taleshi de Masule (Gilan), Studia Iranica 7, 1978, 251-268 >? gurb?ti - who knows I don't >? elmyrian, elmyric - the pre-ancien language of Sicily Rather Elymian: Try A. Zamboni: Il siculo (Elymian included) in: Lingue e dialetti dell'Italia antica, Padova 1978, 949-1012 >? maronitian, maronitic arabic - the arabic language of Cyprus Otto Jastrow: Gedanken zum zypriotischen Arabisch, ZDMG 127/1977, 258-286 A. Roth: Le verbe dans le parler arabe de Kormakiti (Chypre), Epeteris 7 (Levkosia 1973-75), 21-117 M. Tsiapera: A descriptive analysis of Cypriot Maronitic Arabic, The Hague/Paris 1969 >? olonetsian, olonetic, livvi, aunus - in Russia Mostly regarded as Karelian dialect, a possible source is Pertti Virtaranta: Die Dialekte des Karelischen, in Sovetskoe Finno-Ugrovedenie 1972/1, but don't expect to find there much sources in languages other than Russian or Finnish >? kemi sami - in Sampmi in norther Scndinavia I don't know this dialect designation, but you'll find a lot of information in: Pekka Sammallahti: Saamic, in the abovementioned Abondolo-book (43-95) >? the language of the town of Bonifacio in Corsica It's said to be Genovese Italian, but I don't know of any specialist literature. >? corsu of Corsica A good recent sketch is: Mathee Giacomo-Marcellesi: Corse, M?nchen-Newcastle 1997 Regards, St.G. Stefan Georg Heerstrasse 7 D-53111 Bonn FRG +49-228-69-13-32 From fcosw5 at mbm1.scu.edu.tw Sat Jul 18 13:24:32 1998 From: fcosw5 at mbm1.scu.edu.tw (Steven Schaufele) Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 09:24:32 EDT Subject: Latin pronunciation Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > convinced unquestioningly that whereas the aspirates [phi] and [theta] > were fricatives, [chi] was a stop identical to [kappa]. When I got to > Germany, i discovered I had been wrongly taught: in fact, [phi] and > [chi] were fricatives, and [theta] was a stop identical to [tau]! This, in turn, reminds me of my experience in learning Biblical Hebrew from a Rabbi whose native language was German. In his version, the oral stops represented by the letters `beth', `kaph', and `pe' could be spirantized to produce the phones /v/, /x/, and /f/ respectively, but the oral stops represented by the letters `gimel', `daleth', and `taw' couldn't be similarly spirantized (note that he also pronounced the letter `waw' exactly like the spirantized version of beth: /v/). Being a man of intelligence and great learning as well as great honesty, he admitted that, ideally, all six oral stops should be subject to spirantization, and that his inability to follow through on this was due entirely to his German-speaking roots. But in fact, anything deviating from this arch-Aschkenazic pronunciation was not acceptable in class! Best, Steven -- Steven Schaufele, Ph.D., Asst. Prof. of Linguistics, English Department Soochow University, Waishuanghsi Campus, Taipei 11102, Taiwan, ROC (886)(02)2881-9471 ext. 6504 fcosw5 at mbm1.scu.edu.tw http://www.prairienet.org/~fcosws/homepage.html ***O syntagmata linguarum liberemini humanarum!*** ***Nihil vestris privari nisi obicibus potestis!*** From isidore.dyen at yale.edu Sat Jul 18 22:02:25 1998 From: isidore.dyen at yale.edu (Isidore Dyen) Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 18:02:25 EDT Subject: the meaning of "genetic relationship" In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Understanding is good, a critical attitude is good, remembering that science deals with how, not why, is better. On Thu, 16 Jul 1998, bwald wrote: > Isidore Dyen invites comments on the following suggestion: > > > There is little doubt that languages > >originated and the question is how. The problem has a simple structure if > >it is set up properly. The first component is animal cries used as > >signals. The second component is the fact that all natural languages > >are characterized by a phonemic structure. What we need is a scenario (one > >type of hypopthesis) that gets us from a cry-structure to a phonemic > >structure. > > I think this is a variant of the theory of language origin that Jespersen > called something like the "yowee" theory. (as opposed to the "ding-dong" > and "bow-wow" theories). The only hypothesis that sticks in my mind with > regard to a transition is the quantum leap one about human neurological > evolution intervening between cries and words/roots/grammar/etc. Focussing > on phonemic structure reveals the difference between cries as sounds and > language as sounds, but I also think of Martinet's "double articulation" > principle about language. Cries are generally taken to be emotive, while > vocabulary is taken as symbolic (I hesitate to use the term > "representational"). Therefore, there is also a transition in creation of > meanings that must be taken into account. It is unclear that cries > correspond in any way to most words/roots, apart from sharing vocalisation. > In view of the relation between gestures and meanings (e.g., beckoning and > dismissive gestures, perhaps referential pointing more generally ), the > same logic leads to consideration of the transition between "purposeful" > non-vocal animal gestures and human gestures that seem to have linguistic > equivalents, e.g., "come here", "go away/keep distant", "look at that", > etc. To be sure, on the basis of the list of differences between human > language and what is known of animal communication (which I forget, Hockett > lists a bunch), of which referential displacement in human language is most > striking, innatists deny a direct connection. They would say that > constructing a scenario between cries and roots/words is impossible (not to > deny a small overlap -- because human language can represent anything that > humans can perceive or imagine, including emotive cries). > > ID goes on: > The scenario would be a lot simpler to construct if the most > >minimal element was meaningful. > > I remember Swadesh in the 1960s suggesting that roots were initially > constructed as CVC syllables (and that animal cries can be analysed into > such units). Abstracting from this notion, I suppose the notion of the > syllable would have to evolve prior to phonemic inventory or structure. I > guess then the margins and nuclei started to be analysed as separate units. > That's as far as I would go with that idea. > > ID continues: > Since all languqages use syntactic devices > >to reduce the ambiguity of utterances, one can take it for granted that > >syntactic devices developed for organizing different sequences > >of different meaningful (call them) cries. > > As far as we know (I think), the isolation of "meaningful cries" (anything > like the roots of human languages) for displaced reference is already a > major step for the theory ID hints at. Somehow, this must be accounted > for. If not by neurological development which allows the evolution of > something qualitatively different from emotive (or "here-and-now") cries, > then what? Similarly, syntactic sequencing remains mysterious in origin. > ID's suggestion reminds me of Bickerton's speculative distinction between > "pre-language" and "language", where, in "pre-language", thematic > roles/case relations are not specified, cf. early stages of children's > syntax, and there is a lot of "ambiguity". Recall Lois Bloom's 1969? study > of "mommy sock" (18 month-old or thereabout), which, according to context > might mean "(look at) mommy's sock", "mommy, gimme a sock", "mommy has a > sock", etc. > > ID continues: > Somehow phonemes were developed > >out of the mishmash that was going on at that stage. Perhaps you would > >like to take a hand in adding to this scenario, or to construct an absurd > >hypothesis of your own. > > The efficiency element in constructing roots and words from phonemes is > striking, and parallels the efficiency of using syntax to construct > utterances out of words. I don't know what to make of that for the origins > of language. I can only appreciate that somehow the same kinds of logic > are involved on the syntactic and phonotactic levels, and that somehow this > has something to do with "reality", as humans perceive it, not just with > analytical tricks. I'll leave it to others to propose theories of language > origins. I'll just consider them to the extent that I can understand them > -- and criticise, if necessary. > > From C.Bowern at Student.anu.edu.au Mon Jul 20 11:01:37 1998 From: C.Bowern at Student.anu.edu.au (Claire Bowern) Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 07:01:37 EDT Subject: Dative Pronouns Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Does anyone know of a language where a dative pronoun becomes the nominative? I'm not really interested in languages where the dative and accusative fall together, and then that case becomes "nominative". I have an example from Pitta-Pitta (Pama-Nyungan) where the orginal 1sg dative *ngantya turns up as nominative, a new dative stem is invented and accusative is basically unaffected. I believe something similar happened in Frisian but I would like some more examples if possible. Thanks, Claire Bowern ANU From mfceprh at fs1.art.man.ac.uk Mon Jul 20 15:04:49 1998 From: mfceprh at fs1.art.man.ac.uk (Richard Hogg) Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 11:04:49 EDT Subject: Dative Pronouns In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19980720102827.00912b60@student.anu.edu.au> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On 20 Jul 98 at 7:01, Claire Bowern wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > Does anyone know of a language where a dative pronoun becomes the > nominative? I'm not really interested in languages where the dative and > accusative fall together, and then that case becomes "nominative". I have > an example from Pitta-Pitta (Pama-Nyungan) where the orginal 1sg dative > *ngantya turns up as nominative, a new dative stem is invented and > accusative is basically unaffected. I believe something similar happened in > Frisian but I would like some more examples if possible. > The intended Frisian reference may be to the 2nd pers. plural form jimme, which Markey 1981: 188 ("Frisian", Mouton) is a starting point (but no more than a starting point). Also of possible interest is the English phenomenon called "pronoun exchange" by the late Ossi Ihalainen, which gives sentences such as: Her (SUBJ) told I (OBJ) Such forms are traceable throughout western England and in a few varieties living forms remain even in this decade. See Ihalainen in Cambridge History Vol. 5 pp.230-1, together with a number of his articles on Somerset and West Country dialect. As Ihalainen points out, it is probable that "you" is the descendant of the old accusative/dative pronoun, which replaced nominative "ye" under complex circumstances. Richard Hogg *************************************************************************** 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 Roger.Wright at liverpool.ac.uk Mon Jul 20 15:04:28 1998 From: Roger.Wright at liverpool.ac.uk (Roger Wright) Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 11:04:28 EDT Subject: Dative Pronouns In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19980720102827.00912b60@student.anu.edu.au> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Yes. French (lui < ILLUI) RW >----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >Does anyone know of a language where a dative pronoun becomes the >nominative? I'm not really interested in languages where the dative and >accusative fall together, and then that case becomes "nominative". I have >an example from Pitta-Pitta (Pama-Nyungan) where the orginal 1sg dative >*ngantya turns up as nominative, a new dative stem is invented and >accusative is basically unaffected. I believe something similar happened in >Frisian but I would like some more examples if possible. From ratcliff at fs.tufs.ac.jp Tue Jul 21 10:29:50 1998 From: ratcliff at fs.tufs.ac.jp (Robert R. Ratcliffe) Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 06:29:50 EDT Subject: GG and change Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I am grateful to Isidore Dyen and Benji Wald for their responses to my recent posting on Generative Grammar and language change. Unfortunately, both of them seemed to be more or less in agreement with me. I was hoping to hear from someone more sympathetic to the GG program, who could perhaps offer a different perspective on the apparent contradictions I pointed out. I hope to come back at some point to Benji's interesting point about the different epistemological bases of synchronic and diachronic linguistics, but in the meantime let me try to broaden my original query. The point I want to raise is this: Historically, there has always been a link between historical linguistics and formal synchronic analysis. The latter is a necessary basis for the former. And in the nineteenth century, at least, the recognition that better tools and models were necessary for historical research provided impetus for the development of new fields of synchronic research like phonetics and dialectology. But if one takes seriously the generative claim that the goal of formal linguistic analysis is the discovery of an innate, biologically determined language faculty, then you sever the link between historical and formal linguistics. No one, I think, would wish to claim that language change is due to genetic mutation or change in human biology. The language faculty has, presumably (along with the rest of human biology), remained constant over the 10,000 years or so that historical linguists normally deal with. Therefore, there is no reason to expect that a theory of the language faculty (the ostensible goal of GG research) could be applied to explain language change. Hence the whole idea of a generative research program in historical linguistics seems fundamentally misguided from the outset. Hence it's not surprising to find that the work which has been done is full of logical contradictions and inconsistencies, such as I pointed out in my last posting. (Of course I was referring mostly to the older Kiparsky-King work of the 60's and 70's. I am not up to date on newer work, within OT or principles and parameters. I find it hard to read. Since I have convinced myself that it's based on false premises, it's like trying to read a theological treatise of a religion you don't believe in.) Anyway, I know there is research ongoing in GG and change, and I wonder how those involved in it reconcile these contradictions. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Robert R. Ratcliffe Senior Lecturer, Arabic and Linguistics, Dept. of Linguistics and Information Science Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Nishigahara 4-51-21, Kita-ku Tokyo 114 Japan From fcosw5 at mbm1.scu.edu.tw Tue Jul 21 10:30:31 1998 From: fcosw5 at mbm1.scu.edu.tw (Steven Schaufele) Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 06:30:31 EDT Subject: Dative Pronouns Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Roger Wright wrote: > > --------------------------Original message-------------------------- > > Yes. French (lui < ILLUI) > RW > But this isn't what Ms. Bowern was asking for, is it? As far as i know, Modern French `lui' is still technically a dative form, isn't it (`Ce livre, je le *lui* ai donn'e' = `This book, i gave it *to him*')? Or is there some colloquial usage of it as a possible subject that i'm not familiar with? Ms. Bowern also clearly said, `I'm not really interested in languages where the dative and accusative fall together, and then that case becomes "nominative".' Now, it's common knowledge that this is what happened in the case of the English `you', to which Richard Hogg refers; i presume that Ms. Bowern is aware of this and other cases like it, which is why she explicitly mentioned that she was *not* particularly interested in hearing about them. The `pronoun exchange' phenomenon that Mr. Hogg also mentions is rather more interesting in this respect. Best, Steven -- Steven Schaufele, Ph.D., Asst. Prof. of Linguistics, English Department Soochow University, Waishuanghsi Campus, Taipei 11102, Taiwan, ROC (886)(02)2881-9471 ext. 6504 fcosw5 at mbm1.scu.edu.tw http://www.prairienet.org/~fcosws/homepage.html ***O syntagmata linguarum liberemini humanarum!*** ***Nihil vestris privari nisi obicibus potestis!*** From C.Bowern at Student.anu.edu.au Wed Jul 22 10:42:31 1998 From: C.Bowern at Student.anu.edu.au (Claire Bowern) Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 06:42:31 EDT Subject: Dative Pronouns In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Perhaps I should give an outline of what I think happened in Pitta-Pitta (and another language of the family, Arabana-Wangkangurru) as an example. Steven Schaufele is right; I an interested in examples of the dative becoming nominative, not dative/accusative becoming nominative, since that is, in many contexts, practically equivalent to case loss, and that is certainly not the case in Pitta-Pitta. All distinctions are preserved. I have plenty of examples of dative and accusative falling together, and then becoming nominative, such as English and Akkadian. These are the stages I reconstruct for the pronoun changes in Pitta-Pitta. It only happens in the first person singular, nowhere else. The ergative is irrelevant but I put it in anyway for completeness. There are also all sorts of other local cases (about 10 cases in all). ng = velar nasal and nh, th, etc = lamino-dentals. ny, ty etc are lamino-palatals. nty is a homorganic cluster. r is a retroflex continuant. Stage (Erg) Nom Acc Dat I. ngathu nganyi nganha ngantya II. ngathu nganyi nganya ngantya (possibly reanalysis of the acc suffix as -a, not -nha. It's -a in 2nd person and ambiguous in 3rd person. There's also a lot of alternation between the two laminal series, nh etc and ny. The correspondence sets are awful (ie, pretty irregular) and it looks as though the distinction might be quite recent and diffusing. Some words in some close-by languages also have free variation between nh and ny, with ny the more archaic and found in songs and place names.) III. ngathu ngantya nganya nganyari Pitta-Pitta also has tense-based case marking. The original nominative (and the nominative in most of the other Karnic languages (the subgroup to which Pitta-Pitta belongs)), *nganyi turns up in a slightly altered form as the marker of a "subject" (ie, nominative and ergative) in the future tense and potential/obligative moods. I don't know where the -ri in the dative comes from. Interestingly, most of the local cases are built on the dative in other languages and other persons/numbers of Pitta-Pitta and the stems used are really messy; sometimes nganty-, sometimes ngany-. Anyway, in Pitta-Pitta I don't think we can say that the acc and dative fell together to give rise to the nominative, as in English or Akkadian. The new dative might have been innovated on the accusative stem but it still remains that the acc was basically unaffected and dative > nominative. The same thing seems to have happened in Arabana-Wangkangurru, which is the language spoken to the South of Pitta-Pitta (and associated dialects). By the way, these languages are mostly dead now but used to be spoken in the NE corner of South Australia and the SW corner of Queensland and into the Northern Territory. Hope this clears things up a bit. The "her told I" pronoun exchange is a nice example (thanks!), but can it be shown that 'her' is from the original OE dative, and not the ME acc/dat? And are these still cased forms or are they uninflecting? Regards, Claire. >>----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >>Does anyone know of a language where a dative pronoun becomes the >>nominative? I'm not really interested in languages where the dative and >>accusative fall together, and then that case becomes "nominative". I have >>an example from Pitta-Pitta (Pama-Nyungan) where the orginal 1sg dative >>*ngantya turns up as nominative, a new dative stem is invented and >>accusative is basically unaffected. I believe something similar happened in >>Frisian but I would like some more examples if possible. > > From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Wed Jul 22 20:07:03 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 16:07:03 EDT Subject: Q: `workaholic' Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Me again. Is there an accepted name for the slightly peculiar process in which a piece of a word is somewhat arbitrarily ripped out of it and then used as a kind of affix for forming new words? I'm thinking of cases like these: alcoholic --> -(o)holic --> workaholic, chocoholic, shopaholic,... Marathon --> -(a)thon --> telethon, bikeathon, danceathon,... panorama --> -(o)rama --> washorama, launderama,... Watergate --> -gate --> Irangate, Contragate, Whitewatergate,... Textbooks usually seem to class this as a variety of blending, but I doubt that this is reasonable. We might possibly regard `bikeathon' as a blend from `bike marathon', but I don't think `workaholic' can reasonably be regarded as a blend of `work alcoholic'. I think these morphs have simply become affixes, but affixes of very odd origin, since they do not appear to arise from straightforward instances of either reanalysis or back-formation. I mean, did anybody ever suppose that `alcoholic' consisted of `alc-' plus `-oholic'? All suggestions gratefully received. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH England larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From chogan+ at york.mt.cs.cmu.edu Thu Jul 23 10:05:09 1998 From: chogan+ at york.mt.cs.cmu.edu (chogan+ at york.mt.cs.cmu.edu) Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 06:05:09 EDT Subject: No subject Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > Me again. Is there an accepted name for the slightly peculiar process > in which a piece of a word is somewhat arbitrarily ripped out of it > and then used as a kind of affix for forming new words? > > I'm thinking of cases like these: > > alcoholic --> -(o)holic --> workaholic, chocoholic, shopaholic,... > etc. The article on "Derivation" by Robert Beard in _The Handbook of Morphology_ (Blackwell Publishers, 1998) has this to say: Analogical forms like workaholic, chocaholic and cheeseburger, fishburger, chickenburger differ from regular derivations in that they require prosodic identity. Genunine suffixes like -ing may be added to stems of any length or prosodic structure. Pseudo-derivates like chocaholic, however, must additionally fit the prosodic template of their analog, in this case, alcoholic: the output must contain four syllables with penultimate accent. Thus chocolaholic, shoppingaholic, and handiworkaholic do not work as well as chocaholic, shopaholic, and workaholic. When we begin to find acceptable violations of this extragrammatical principle like chickenburger, we usually find that the remainder, in this case burger, has become an independent back-formed word capable of undergoing regular compounding. (p. 57) So I guess it's an "analogical form". --chris From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU Thu Jul 23 10:05:30 1998 From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald) Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 06:05:30 EDT Subject: Q: `workaholic' Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Larry Trask writes: >...Is there an accepted name for the slightly peculiar process in which a piece of a word is somewhat arbitrarily ripped out of it and then used as a kind of affix for forming new words? >I'm thinking of cases like these: alcoholic --> -(o)holic --> workaholic, chocoholic, shopaholic,... Marathon --> -(a)thon --> telethon, bikeathon, danceathon,... [..., e.g., talkathon] panorama --> -(o)rama --> washorama, launderama,... >Watergate --> -gate --> Irangate, Contragate, Whitewatergate,... I'm not sure, but maybe this is the type that many dictionaries (and other sources) refer to as "STUMP COMPOUNDS". Current dictionary examples (not all assured longevity) include: infomercial, infotainment, docudrama, docutainment, hairtician, sitcom The idea of "stump" seems to be that they were not originally cut according to a historical morpheme boundary but according to some other (metrical or rhythmic) principle. Hence, "workaholic", like "gasahol" (or is it "gas*o*hol"?), does not presuppose a morphemic cut "alc" + "ohol" Meanwhile, the term "compounding" suggests that one or more "stumps" have grown semantic lives of their own and have come to have meanings that allow recombination, or at least allow analysis into separate meaningful elements, related to the morphemes they are stumped from. (True, compounds are usually considered to be formed from independent words, in current English, but the "stump" takes the precaution to suggest that each element is the "stump" of a "word". NB: the whole "gate" syndrome is a secondary phenomenon, since it has nothing to do semantically with the word "gate", but with political scandal since "Watergate", a proper name. Hence, Larry is quite right to include that type with the others.) If all the examples listed above deserve to be called "stump compounds", then they are of various types. "sitcom" is a compound of two stumps, neither of which occurs as an independent word, cf. or "fizz ed" (i.e., phys ed) -- but isn't there "Board of Ed"?. But in such cases, the BEGINNING of both words are stumped. In contrast, "docutainment" resembles a BLEND, where the stump preserves the beginning of the first word but the END of the second. Next, "HAIRtician" (an aesthetically displeasing word), like most of Larry's examples, e.g., "WORKaholic", has an INDEPENDENT word followed by a stump. Thus, it combines an independent word as a first element with a stump as second element. Nevertheless, Larry has double stumps in "chocoholic" and maybe "telethon" and/or "launderama". (True, "tele" is an isolable root, but in "telethon" it seems to be directly related to "television/televised/etc", rather than directly to the "tele" root. Similarly, "launderama" stumps at "laund", not the word "launder", though the "er" here can be considered an overlap blend shared by "laundER" and "ERama") The "info(mercial/tainment)" words are different again, because "info" exists independently as a stump, cf. "math(s)" (true, there is the morpheme "math" as in "polymath", but isn't "math" a stump for "mathematics", the British form "maths" saving the final -s of "...icS"). Thus, it combines the features of double stumps with WORD+stump. As anticipated above, a BLEND seems to be a specific kind of stump, where the first element stumps to the BEGINNING and the second stumps to the END. I can understand why some might then suggest that where the first element is a monosyllabic word (not stump-worthy) but the second stumps to the end the term "blend" is appropriate. Meanwhile, there is an unusual *semantic* step in "workaholic" that Larry alludes to by saying: >I don't think `workaholic' can reasonably be regarded as a blend of `work >alcoholic' The step is generalisation of "alcoholic" to any kind of "addict", hence, "workaholic" quite reasonably becomes "work addict". However, it does not seem that "alcoholic" as "addict" in general exists as an isolated entity. Are there any other cases like this? (It would not surprise since a humorous intent is obvious that would not appear in the straight-forward "work addict"; "gasohol" is similarly humorous, betraying the degree of seriousness with which it should be taken). Thus, the problem seems to be one of separating various processes that are collapsed in "workaholic", one involving semantic change of an element (for humorous purposes), and the other a purely formal stump compounding (or blending?) which retains the meanings of the unstumped sources. Now are the following stumps or blends, or both?: stagflation, workfare, gues(s)timate Somebody may have worked out a more detailed typology/terminology of all these kinds of words. If so, let's hear it. Also consider the types of "dognap", "carjack" etc. Now, as long as we're dealing with "compound" related phenoms (another independent stump), I have a question. It begins with the observation that in Middle English -er became an increasingly common type for certain purposes as earlier suffixes with the same meaning became phonetically disfunctional, cf. grasshopp-e became grasshopp-er by morphological replacement. Now it seems things are going "back" in the opposite direction. What's the "term", and, in fact, the phenomenon by which the derivational suffix -er has been getting lost or deleted in compounds so that we have such compounds as: barkeep, nosewipe, sodajerk, bellhop, carhop, bedsit, bellpull, bellpush, cocktease, keypunch, etc. where a final -er might be expected (and might even be attested earlier)? Does the process also apply to the case of "doorstop" and even "shortstop", where at least for "doorstop" we might assume it is related directly to "stop" as an alternative to "stopper" (hmm. maybe also "tease" for "teaser", cf. "he's such a tease(r)/jerk(*er)") -- Benji From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU Thu Jul 23 10:05:49 1998 From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald) Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 06:05:49 EDT Subject: GG and change Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Before I forget, I have some comments on Robert Ratcliff's last message. He states: >... if one takes seriously the generative claim that the >goal of formal linguistic analysis is the discovery of an innate, >biologically determined language faculty, then you sever the link >between historical and formal linguistics. I would like to offer a different perspective. It is not about "severing the link", but about distinguishing between what is innate and thus presumably immutable, unchangeable, universal etc etc, VS. everything else in language. The "everything else" is what is relevant to historical linguistics, because it is what varies and changes within and across particular languages from one time to another. Therefore, the search to isolate what is innate or invariant in all languages also serves historical linguistics by revealing those aspects of language, or of any particular language, which are subject to change. The two programs complement each other, and work together. Stated differently, GG, and no doubt any serious synchronic framework for analysis which claims to be applicable to all observable (and "possible") human languages, seeks to provide the invariant parameters of language within which variation and change are possible -- and to which variation and change are *limited*. This is quite different from severing the link between historical and formal (i.e., "universal") linguistics. So, despite the difference in emphasis, synchronic linguistics continues its historic mission to provide a grounding for the study of linguistic change. One need not be misled by what some GGists claim they are trying to do (not to mention what they claim is "important"). It is no different from what historical linguists are trying to do when they compare two changes and say they reflect the SAME process of change. Having said that, then, it turns out that virtually every substantive proposal that GG has made for something invariant in language turns out to be too concrete, and the exceptions in some language or other show that those features of language are indeed subject to change. And so the search goes on, as proposals for concrete universals retreat into greater abstraction as the data from more and more languages accumulate. Each failed universal is an opportunity for the historical linguist to contemplate and try to determine how it is that languages can evolve in one way or the other. From gabriella_rblad at hotmail.com Thu Jul 23 10:06:21 1998 From: gabriella_rblad at hotmail.com (Gabriella Rundblad) Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 06:06:21 EDT Subject: Q: `workaholic' Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Hi Larry and the rest, >Is there an accepted name for the slightly peculiar process >in which a piece of a word is somewhat arbitrarily ripped out of it >and then used as a kind of affix for forming new words? I don't know if it is accepted or the best term available, but I've come across the term abstracted form: "Abstracted means the use of a part of a word or phrase in what seems to be the meaning it contributes to the expression, as when -gate acquires a meaning from appearance in Watergate, the Korea gate, etc." (Barnhart 1980: 3) Gabriella Gabriella Rundblad Department of English Language and Linguistics University of Sheffield Sheffield S10 2TN phone: +44 114 222 02 25 fax: +44 114 276 82 51 ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From mensch at spinfo.uni-koeln.de Thu Jul 23 10:06:52 1998 From: mensch at spinfo.uni-koeln.de (Guido Mensching) Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 06:06:52 EDT Subject: Q: `workaholic' In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- A German term for this phenomenon is "Kontaminativkompositum". This term is used by Seewald (1994:84-87) in order to describe French words like bureautique < bureau + informatique didacticiel < didactique + logiciel bandothe'que < bande + bibliote'hque (cf. also e'ducatique, graphiciel, iconothe'que). According to Seewald this phenomenon is a kind of mixture of composition and suffixation, and she considers elements like "-theque" and "-iel" as suffixes, though the derivational base may be mutilated like in "linguiciel" (linguistique + logiciel). In Zwanenburg (1990:75) the same phenomenon is called "telescopage". Bibliography: Seewald, Uta (1994) Maschinelle morphosemantische Analyse des Franzo"sischen "MORSE". Eine Untersuchung am Beispiel des Wortschatzes der Datenverarbeitung. Tu"bingen (= Sprache und Information. Beitra"ge zur philologischen und linguistischen Datenverarbeitung, Informatik und Informationswissenschaft, Bd. 26) Zwanenburg, Wiecher (1990): Franzo"sische Wortbildungslehre. In: Holtus e.a. (eds.): Lexikon der Romanistischen Linguistik vol. V,1 p. 72-77 With best regards, Guido Mensching ========================================================================= Guido Mensching --- Linguistic Data Processing --- University of Cologne mensch at spinfo.uni-koeln.de --- Tel. 49-221-4704430 --- FAX: 49-221-4705193 See http://www.spinfo.uni-koeln.de for information about our Department. ========================================================================= From jrader at m-w.com Thu Jul 23 19:18:00 1998 From: jrader at m-w.com (Jim Rader) Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 15:18:00 EDT Subject: Q: `workaholic' Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- A few comments on Larry Trask's original post and the followups by Benji Wald, Gabriella Rundblad, "chris" (sorry I can't fill out your full name), and Guido Mensching: I believe the more or less customary criteria for the term "stump compound" would only be met by , i.e., words shortened from compounds or multiword collocations by breaking off and combining (usually) initial elements--sometimes, as in the case of , more on an orthographic than phonetic foundation. Students of Russian word formation have used "stump compound" to refer to the blizzard of common and proper nouns conjured up by Russians in this manner since the beginning of the Soviet period; some of these have found their way into English, such as , , and (the latter a humorous play on names of state publishing organs, such as from ). Stump compounds are also well-attested from German, e.g., (Geheime Staatspolizei) and (Sturzkampfflug- zeug) from the Nazi period; some, such as (Hilfsfreiwillige), display other word-formation processes at work. To refer to formatives such as <-(a)holic>, <-o/arama>, and <-(a)thon>, Valerie Adams used the term "splinter"--though she called the words thus formed (, ) "blends" in line with previous terminology. Adams (in _An Introduction to Modern English Word Formation_, Longman, 1973, p. 142) says she took the term from a 1961 article by J.M. Berman, "Contribution on Blending," in the _Zeitschrift fuer Anglistik und Amerikanstik_ 9: 278-81. I guess I would define a splinter as a phonetic piece of a word that retains the meaning, or some facet of the meaning, of its source, and functions as a bound form joined to either words or other bound elements. As was pointed out in the quote from _The Handbook of Morphology_, rear-end formatives such as <-(a)holic> and <-o/arama> fit a prosodic template: the outcome works most successfully as a word if it fits the syllable count and accent pattern of the source the splinter was extracted from (I prefer "extracted" to "abstracted"). I suspect there is some interplay here between the interpretation--whether etymologically based or not--of the first syllables of , , and as neo-classical "combining forms" that end in orthographic or , phonetically schwa. Presumably there are also front-end splinters such as (in , ) and (in , ), though these may begin life as a species of stump compound in which the entire second element is retained ("parachute trooper"). Again, I think parsing (often unetymological) of these elements as Greco-Latin "combining forms" contributes to their success. is also a Greek-origin prefix, and a word such as is potentially ambiguous, there being evidence for its use both in the sense "medical technician" (in effect backformed from ) and (much rarer) "doctor parachuted into a remote area." The semantics of splinters are interesting and lexicographically challenging. As pointed out by Benji Wald, the <-(a)holic> words reflect a sort of humorous attenuation: the addiction of a chocoholic or shopaholic is not the addiction of an alcoholic. What I find interesting is the way that splinters, whether front-end or rear-end, retain the meaning, sometimes fractured or expanded, of the complete source word, e.g., is as it were a "combining form" of . This is similar to the process by which Greco-Latin "combining forms" are recycled with the meaning of a particular compound; hence, in means "photograph," not "light" (perhaps augmented by the clipped form = "photograph"), in means "petroleum industry",not "rock," etc., etc. To the best of my knowledge this process, which is quite productive in English, has little basis in the history of Greek or Latin word formation. A much better analogy is furnished by Chinese compounds such as , , etc., in which has the meaning of "China," not the literal sense "middle," which it retains in many other compounds. I like , but it will never float in English. Jim Rader > Me again. Is there an accepted name for the slightly peculiar process > in which a piece of a word is somewhat arbitrarily ripped out of it > and then used as a kind of affix for forming new words? > > I'm thinking of cases like these: > > alcoholic --> -(o)holic --> workaholic, chocoholic, shopaholic,... > > Marathon --> -(a)thon --> telethon, bikeathon, danceathon,... > > panorama --> -(o)rama --> washorama, launderama,... > > Watergate --> -gate --> Irangate, Contragate, Whitewatergate,... > > From mew1 at siu.edu Fri Jul 24 11:34:23 1998 From: mew1 at siu.edu (Margaret E. Winters) Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 07:34:23 EDT Subject: Trask query Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I sent this response off-list yesterday to Larry Trask - it might be of interest to others as well: I think you are looking at a reanalysis of morphology - a kind of folk etymology at work. I included a long story about 'alcoholic' in a recent paper in "Cognitive Linguistics" on analogical change and Kurylowicz (1997 last issue I think). I'd be surprised if there were a single term for the process since it seems to include at least reanalysis and sometimes the insertion of a (thematic???) vowel as in workaholic. I think there is a suprasegmental kind of identification here - I agree that people didn't consciously think of alcoholic as being alc + o + holic, but the stress pattern corresponds to others where this kind of segmentation was possible. Hope this helps - or at least doesn't hinder too much. Margaret Winters Margaret E. Winters Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs (Budget and Personnel) Southern Illinois University Carbondale, IL, 62901-4305 Phone: (618) 549-0106 (Home); (618) 536-5535 (Office) Fax: (618) 453-3400 mew1 at siu.edu From larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk Fri Jul 24 11:35:38 1998 From: larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk (Larry Trask) Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 07:35:38 EDT Subject: Sum: `workaholic' Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- The other day I posted a query requesting a name for formations like `workaholic', `Camillagate' and `kissogram'. Textbooks often class these as blends, but they aren't, really: `workaholic' can't be reasonably analyzed as `work' plus `alcoholic'. Rather, a morphologically arbitrary piece is ripped out of an existing word like `alcoholic', `Watergate' and `telegram' and pressed into service as a kind of affix. One or two respondents suggested that this was just a form of reanalysis. Well, it is, sort of. But, in the most familiar cases of reanalysis, such as `hamburger' --> `cheeseburger' and `bikini' --> `monokini', there seems to be a perception that the remaining element (`ham-' or `bi-') is also a recognizable morpheme, which is not the case here. But maybe this is hairsplitting on my part. Another respondent argued for `metanalysis'. This term is only familiar to me as a label for boundary shifts, as in `an ewt' --> `a newt' and `a napron' --> `an apron'. But the suggestion is that we might generalize the term to cover false separations in general. Yet another suggestion was `stump compound'. But this term, in my experience, denotes a formation obtained by combining arbitrary initial stretches from the words in a phrase of identical meaning, as in `sitcom', `sci-fi', German `Gestapo' and Russian `Sovnarkom'. And that's not what we have here. There were other suggestions, some of them in print: `constellation' `local generalization' `morphologization' `remorphologization' `analogical form' `false separation' `pseudo-suffixation' `hybrid formation' `creative compounding' `meiosis' This last one, a biological metaphor, looks interesting but apparently hasn't appeared in print. However, there have been some further terms used in print for exactly the kind of formation I'm interested in. First, Otto Jespersen coined `secretion' in his 1922 book _Language_. I suppose this term deserves some kind of priority in English, but it hasn't been used much, and it's not ideal: the imagery, whatever it is, is opaque. Second, the term `abstracted form' has appeared in print to label these things, though I don't have the full reference. I'm guessing, though, that this label applies only to the detached piece, like <-(o)holic>, rather than to a full word constructed with it. Third, the term `Kontaminativkompositum' has been used in German. This translates as `contaminative compound'. But, apart from its length, this term has problems: things like `workaholic' are not strictly compounds, since they don't consist of free morphemes, and moreover I don't find it easy to see where the contamination resides. Fourth, the term `telescopage' has been used, presumably in French. This translates as `telescoping', but again the imagery seems wrong. As one respondent pointed out, `telescoping' would appear to be more appropriate for formations like `glitterati'. Maybe Jim Matisoff's term `morphanization' is another example. Fifth, Valerie Adams (and others?) have used the term `splinter' for the extracted and re-used piece (like <-(o)holic>). This suggests `splinter formation' for the final result or for the process of forming it, but apparently nobody has ever used this term. One respondent pointed out that English allows so many individual varieties of eccentric word-formation that it is very difficult to put them into neat pigeonholes. I'm afraid this is just true, and we'll probably never have a perfect terminology for all cases, but I would like to have an agreed term for this increasingly frequent type. Several people drew attention to the importance of prosodic features in these formations. Finally, many respondents passed on some very interesting examples from English, French, German, Russian, Croatian and Chinese (at least). My thanks to Joyce Tang Boyland, Margaret Winters, Tony Breed, Benji Wald, Richard Coates, Michael Cysouw, Guido Mensching, Chris Hogan, Gabriella Rundblad, Roger Lass, Chris Jeffery, Jim Rader, and Alemko Gluhak. Larry Trask COGS University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QH UK larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk From whiting at cc.helsinki.fi Sat Jul 25 14:01:16 1998 From: whiting at cc.helsinki.fi (Robert Whiting) Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 10:01:16 EDT Subject: Trask query In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19980723214738.006aa328@saluki-mail.siu.edu> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Fri, 24 Jul 1998, Margaret E. Winters wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > I think you are looking at a reanalysis of morphology - a kind of folk > etymology at work. I included a long story about 'alcoholic' in a recent > paper in "Cognitive Linguistics" on analogical change and Kurylowicz (1997 > last issue I think). I think that this is very close to the mark. Hock, Principles of Historical Linguistics, p. 176, treats this as four-part analogy based on "morphological reinterpretation." Being analogy, it requires an original form before it can occur. Thus, without Watergate, there could have been no Irangate or Camillagate, as without a model there is no way to reinterpret -gate as a morpheme meaning 'a government scandal involving a cover-up.' It would be interesting to check the U.S. news sources for the 1920's to see if or how often 'x Dome' was used in the same sense. Bob Whiting whiting at cc.helsinki.fi From bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU Mon Jul 27 11:16:46 1998 From: bwald at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (bwald) Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 07:16:46 EDT Subject: Sum: `workaholic' Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I have a few questions pursuant to Larry's sum of the formation of 'workaholic'. First, I acknowledge Jim Rader's restriction of "stumping" to word/root condensation which preserves some initial stretch, as in #SITuation#COMedy, #AGITation#PROPaganda, etc. Second, I observe that examples of stump compounds were only given for languages that have a productive head-final compounding process, e.g., English, German, Russian, Chinese, but not French (for which examples approximating "workaholic" were given, cf. "discotheque", stumped to "disco" in English and then returned to French, if French did not stump it independently). I noted that English has numerous non-compound stumps, e.g., #MATHematics. It also tolerates homophony and shifts of grammatical category in stumping, e.g., #CON stumps CONtra, CONvict and CONfidence (as in con game/man). (NB #PAN stumps "panorama" used as a verb, cf. #CON = deceive < confidence). Third, much rarer in English is reduction of non-compound words to eliminate initial syllables (which have some degree of stress). hamburger > burger may be an example, if it can be shown that "ham" is not necessarily eliminated as a morpheme but simply as a convenience to reduction (according to Zipf's Law), cntr. frankfurter > frank (not *furter). Is "burger" an example of CLIPping? My questions are: What's CLIPping? How does it differ from STUMPing? (If the terms overlap, is that useful?) Are there typological constraints on languages which have stumping? (Why should there be if non-compounds can stump?) Are there typological constraints on languages which have "workaholic" formations? (Why should there be if "workaholic" formations are related to BLENDS? There are no typological constraints on the occurrence of blends, are there?) From jrader at m-w.com Mon Jul 27 18:40:14 1998 From: jrader at m-w.com (Jim Rader) Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 14:40:14 EDT Subject: Sum: `workaholic' Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I'm not familiar with "stumping" as a term and I'm not sure how Benji Wald would distinguish it from clipping. The standard taxonomies I know of--e.g., Hans Marchand's _The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word Formation_ (2nd. ed. 1969) and "The Taxonomy of Word making" by John Algeo (_Word_, 29:2, Aug. 1978) get by with just "clipping," however inadequately. Laurie Bauer (_English Word Formation_, CUP, 1983, p. 233) defines clipping as "the process whereby a lexeme (simplex or complex) is shortened, while still retaining the same meaning and still being a member of the same form class." Obviously, though, once a word derived by clipping exists, it may change grammatical class and undergo other modifications. Marchand calls formations of the type "clipping-compounds" and Algeo "clipped compounds." Marchand would presumably consider a "fore-clipping" (as opposed to a back-clipping like ), though he doesn't specifically discuss this word (at least in the 1st ed.--unfortunately I don't have the 2nd ed. at hand). Fore-clipping is certainly less common than back-clipping, though legitimate examples (, ) certainly exist. Whether there are typological constraints on languages that have these derivational devices is a good question. One thing that immediately comes to mind is that clipped formations may be prolific in the realm of proper names in languages that don't much resort to clipping otherwise; Slavic languages are an obvious example: shortenings (of old Greco-Latin and dithematic names), usually or originally with hypocoristic value and often with other phonetic/morphological modifications, are widespread and of considerable antiquity. Of particular interest to me is the derivational process by which 1) a simple or complex lexeme is clipped to a single syllable and 2) the suffix <-ie/-y> is added; an example is from "premature baby." This combination of clipping/suffixation also exists in German: , , , , many others. I'm not certain to what degree the process is indigenous to German or was borrowed from English. (Does it also exist in Dutch or Scandinavian languages?) The only discussion I know of these words in German (">Abi<, >Krimi<, >Sponti<: Substantive auf -i im heutigen Deutsch" by Albrecht Greule, in _Muttersprache_ Bd. 84 (1983): 207-217) doesn't deal with the relative chronologies in enough detail for one to decide. At any rate, there appears to be no constraint on doing this in German--though German is so typologically similar to English this fact is unsurprising. Jim Rader > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > I have a few questions pursuant to Larry's sum of the formation of 'workaholic'. > First, I acknowledge Jim Rader's restriction of "stumping" to word/root > condensation which preserves some initial stretch, as in #SITuation#COMedy, > #AGITation#PROPaganda, etc. Second, I observe that examples of stump > compounds were only given for languages that have a productive head-final > compounding process, e.g., English, German, Russian, Chinese, but not > French (for which examples approximating "workaholic" were given, cf. > "discotheque", stumped to "disco" in English and then returned to French, > if French did not stump it independently). I noted that English has > numerous non-compound stumps, e.g., #MATHematics. It also tolerates > homophony and shifts of grammatical category in stumping, e.g., #CON stumps > CONtra, CONvict and CONfidence (as in con game/man). (NB #PAN stumps > "panorama" used as a verb, cf. #CON = deceive < confidence). Third, much > rarer in English is reduction of non-compound words to eliminate initial > syllables (which have some degree of stress). hamburger > burger may be an > example, if it can be shown that "ham" is not necessarily eliminated as a > morpheme but simply as a convenience to reduction (according to Zipf's > Law), cntr. frankfurter > frank (not *furter). Is "burger" an example of > CLIPping? > > My questions are: > > What's CLIPping? How does it differ from STUMPing? > (If the terms overlap, is that useful?) > Are there typological constraints on languages which have stumping? > (Why should there be if non-compounds can stump?) > Are there typological constraints on languages which have "workaholic" > formations? > (Why should there be if "workaholic" formations are related to > BLENDS? There are > no typological constraints on the occurrence of blends, are there?) > From Cindy.Allen at anu.edu.au Wed Jul 29 10:54:07 1998 From: Cindy.Allen at anu.edu.au (Cynthia Allen) Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1998 06:54:07 EDT Subject: Q: I'm told Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >> When did constructions like "he's given something" >> enter the English language? > >Just in case this wasn't clear, I was asking about >raising of IO to Su. I have a whole chapter (chapter 9) in my 1995 Clarendon Press Book 'Case Marking and Reanalysis: Grammatical Relations from Old to Early Middle English'. In a nutshell, the first convincing example is from 1375: Item as for the Parke she is a lowyd (=allowed) Every yere a dere. This is from the Award of Dower by Sir Thomas Blount This construction appears immediately after the fixing of the order of two bare NP objects, and my belief about what happened here is that the old indirect object became reanalysed as simply an object once this happened, making it available to passivization. I devote Appenix A of my book to demonstrating that all the earlier examples which have been cited in the literature are either dubious or clearly just mis-analysed. Unfortunately, Visser is less helpful than usual here because (a) he got muddled in this section and (b) his dating of examples is not good because he does not distinguish between revised versions of earlier texts and the originals, giving only the date of the original, which often has a different (older) construction from the revised versions. Cynthia Allen Cynthia Allen Linguistics, Arts Faculty Australian National University Canberra, ACT 0200 Australia From jacob.baltuch at euronet.be Thu Jul 30 11:10:14 1998 From: jacob.baltuch at euronet.be (Jacob Baltuch) Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 07:10:14 EDT Subject: Q: I'm told Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Cynthia Allen wrote: >I have a whole chapter (chapter 9) in my 1995 Clarendon Press Book 'Case >Marking and Reanalysis: Grammatical Relations from Old to Early Middle >English'. In a nutshell, the first convincing example is from 1375: >Item as for the Parke she is a lowyd (=allowed) Every yere a dere. >This is from the Award of Dower by Sir Thomas Blount > >This construction appears immediately after the fixing of the order of two >bare NP objects, and my belief about what happened here is that the old >indirect object became reanalysed as simply an object once this happened, >making it available to passivization. So any language in which accusative & dative collapse together (both nouns and pronouns) and both direct and indirect objects are bare NPs in certain constructions would be liable to undergo this? On the other hand I seem to remember that Japanese has direct and indirect object take different postpositions (-(w)o vs. -ni if I remember correctly) and yet has indirect passives. From isidore.dyen at yale.edu Thu Jul 30 22:00:53 1998 From: isidore.dyen at yale.edu (Isidore Dyen) Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 18:00:53 EDT Subject: your mail In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I think that it might be important to add to the discussion that these forms are artificialloy constructed and in that respect fall in with words like AIDS or is it AIDs and CIA and G-man and the gamut that have sprung up in at least a partial connection with writing and thus differ from the types of analogical phenomena that appear in comparative studies. On Thu, 23 Jul 1998 chogan+ at york.mt.cs.cmu.edu wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > > Me again. Is there an accepted name for the slightly peculiar process > > in which a piece of a word is somewhat arbitrarily ripped out of it > > and then used as a kind of affix for forming new words? > > > > I'm thinking of cases like these: > > > > alcoholic --> -(o)holic --> workaholic, chocoholic, shopaholic,... > > etc. > > The article on "Derivation" by Robert Beard in _The Handbook of Morphology_ > (Blackwell Publishers, 1998) has this to say: > > Analogical forms like workaholic, chocaholic and cheeseburger, > fishburger, chickenburger differ from regular derivations > in that they require prosodic identity. Genunine suffixes > like -ing may be added to stems of any length or prosodic > structure. Pseudo-derivates like chocaholic, however, must > additionally fit the prosodic template of their analog, in > this case, alcoholic: the output must contain four syllables > with penultimate accent. Thus chocolaholic, shoppingaholic, > and handiworkaholic do not work as well as chocaholic, shopaholic, > and workaholic. When we begin to find acceptable violations > of this extragrammatical principle like chickenburger, we > usually find that the remainder, in this case burger, has become > an independent back-formed word capable of undergoing regular > compounding. (p. 57) > > So I guess it's an "analogical form". > > --chris > From isidore.dyen at yale.edu Thu Jul 30 22:01:18 1998 From: isidore.dyen at yale.edu (Isidore Dyen) Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 18:01:18 EDT Subject: GG and change In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- How about contemplating whether language change is inevitable. If it is not, theren should be some stable languages somewhere, If it is, then it must be inherent in all languages and thus a universal. On Thu, 23 Jul 1998, bwald wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > Before I forget, I have some comments on Robert Ratcliff's last message. > He states: > > >... if one takes seriously the generative claim that the > >goal of formal linguistic analysis is the discovery of an innate, > >biologically determined language faculty, then you sever the link > >between historical and formal linguistics. > > I would like to offer a different perspective. It is not about "severing > the link", but about distinguishing between what is innate and thus > presumably immutable, unchangeable, universal etc etc, VS. everything else > in language. The "everything else" is what is relevant to historical > linguistics, because it is what varies and changes within and across > particular languages from one time to another. Therefore, the search to > isolate what is innate or invariant in all languages also serves historical > linguistics by revealing those aspects of language, or of any particular > language, which are subject to change. The two programs complement each > other, and work together. > > Stated differently, GG, and no doubt any serious synchronic framework for > analysis which claims to be applicable to all observable (and "possible") > human languages, seeks to provide the invariant parameters of language > within which variation and change are possible -- and to which variation > and change are *limited*. This is quite different from severing the link > between historical and formal (i.e., "universal") linguistics. So, despite > the difference in emphasis, synchronic linguistics continues its historic > mission to provide a grounding for the study of linguistic change. One > need not be misled by what some GGists claim they are trying to do (not to > mention what they claim is "important"). It is no different from what > historical linguists are trying to do when they compare two changes and say > they reflect the SAME process of change. > > Having said that, then, it turns out that virtually every substantive > proposal that GG has made for something invariant in language turns out to > be too concrete, and the exceptions in some language or other show that > those features of language are indeed subject to change. And so the search > goes on, as proposals for concrete universals retreat into greater > abstraction as the data from more and more languages accumulate. Each > failed universal is an opportunity for the historical linguist to > contemplate and try to determine how it is that languages can evolve in one > way or the other. > From isidore.dyen at yale.edu Thu Jul 30 22:01:53 1998 From: isidore.dyen at yale.edu (Isidore Dyen) Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 18:01:53 EDT Subject: Morpheme replacement In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19971013163342.0d8f734c@bamse.ling.su.se> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- In general bound morphemes--i.e. affixes--are not a universal phenomenon. Consider Chinese, whichn has, I have been given to understand, just one, so that it is likely that there is a language with none. One can take a frequency of bound forms, but it is not likely to get anywhere, because the number of different instances varies considerably from language to language and so does their distribution among words. Lexicon is trouble enough. On Mon, 13 Oct 1997, Mikael Parkvall wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > If I remember correctly, the items on the Swadesh list were said by Swadesh > himself to be replaced at a rate of about 15 per milennium. Does anybody on > the list have any idea regarding the differences between various types of > items; in other words, would lexical morphemes be replaced at a higher rate > than grammatical ones (not just those on the Swadesh list, but also bound > morphemes), or vice versa? Or is there no difference at all between them? > > > Mikael Parkvall > parkvall at ling.su.se > From isidore.dyen at yale.edu Thu Jul 30 22:02:41 1998 From: isidore.dyen at yale.edu (Isidore Dyen) Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1998 18:02:41 EDT Subject: complexity measures In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- The point about the theory of the equicomplexity of languages is that an increase in simplicity must be offset by a an increase in complexity. I do not reckon that anybody is actually going to work the details out in a particular case, but there has rto be some way of preventing languages from increasing in complexity ad infinitum or similarly increasing in simplicity, or do they? On Sat, 17 Jan 1998, Larry Trask wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > I have received a number of further responses to my summary of the > responses to my original posting seeking a term, and I hope to post a > comprehensive reply to all of them on HISTLING within a couple of > days. But one point I can clear up right away. > > David Lightfoot writes: > > > I should have thought that if there is a simplification in some > > part of a system, there doesn't necessarily have to be compensating > > complexification elsewhere. > > Agreed. It was never my intention to suggest that a simplification > must necessarily be accompanied by a complexification, and I hope I > have not given that impression. My point was merely that this *often* > happens, and that a name for such a combination would be desirable. > > Larry Trask > COGS > University of Sussex > Brighton BN1 9QH > UK > > larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk > From j.t.faarlund at inl.uio.no Fri Jul 31 17:55:27 1998 From: j.t.faarlund at inl.uio.no (Jan Terje Faarlund) Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1998 13:55:27 EDT Subject: GG and change Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- At 18:01 30.07.98 EDT, Isidore Dyan wrote: >----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > >How about contemplating whether language change is inevitable. If it is >not, theren should be some stable languages somewhere, If it is, then it >must be inherent in all languages and thus a universal. > I think you can find a stable language if you look in the following type of society: A society where no member ever changes profession or personal relationships, where there is no outside contact, no immigration, no births and no deaths. For languages spoken in other types of societies, change is of course inevitable, not because change is a universal of language, but because language after all is ALSO a cultural object transmitted through the behavior of biological individuals. The idea that change should be a universal is meaningless since language universals are based on generalizations over properties of *systems*. When a language changes, a system changes, and this new system must again obey whatever constraints are imposed by UG. Change in itself cannot be part of the system. The only interesting connection between universals and change is the fact that no change can lead to a result which violates UG. ******************************************** Professor Jan Terje Faarlund Universitetet i Oslo Institutt for nordistikk og litteraturvitskap Postboks 1013 Blindern N-0315 Oslo (Norway) Tel. (+47) 22 85 69 49 (office) (+47) 22 12 39 66 (home) Fax (+47) 22 85 71 00