From j.t.faarlund at inl.uio.no Tue Oct 1 11:59:54 2002 From: j.t.faarlund at inl.uio.no (Jan Terje Faarlund) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 07:59:54 EDT Subject: Age of various language families In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20021001014031.00a62100@130.237.171.193> Message-ID: At 01:53 01.10.2002 +0200, Mikael Parkvall wrote: >* Provided that we belive that languages do split, which time span is most >likely to produce a split -- five minutes or two millennia? > >* And once a split has occurred, what is most likely, that one single >isolate becomes extinct, or that all the dozens of daughters of a >proliferous mother dies out? > >I am not laying claim on any Absolute Truth, but put together, I think the >two rethorical questions above constitute -- an argument. And therefore, >until somebody has come up with a better argument, it makes sense to me to >assume that there is a correlation (albeit probably a weak one) between >age and the number of surviving daughters. > Of course there is a statistical correlation between age and the number of surviving daughters. Such a correlation would be interesting to linguists only to the extent that there is also proportionate correlation, so that we could predict the number of daughter languages from the time depth - or vice versa, with a reasonable degree of likelihood. My claim is that that would be possible only of languages were independent of the material condtions of their speakers. Since we cannot predict the frequency of genocides, migrations, or meteors, we cannot predict the proportionate correlaiton between splits and age. All we can say is what Mikael says himself: "Two millennia is more likely to produce a split than five minutes". I fail to see at what level that is an interesting observation. Jan Terje Professor Jan Terje Faarlund Universitetet i Oslo Institutt for nordistikk og litteraturvitskap Postboks 1013 Blindern N-0315 Oslo Norway Phone +47 22 85 69 49 (office) +47 22 12 39 66 (home) Fax +47 22 85 71 00 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paola.pasini3 at tin.it Tue Oct 1 21:46:57 2002 From: paola.pasini3 at tin.it (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Javier_E._D=EDaz_Vera?=) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 17:46:57 EDT Subject: new book Message-ID: A CHANGING WORLD OF WORDS: STUDIES IN ENGLISH HISTORICAL LEXICOGRAPHY, LEXICOLOGY AND SEMANTICS Series Title: Costerus Vol. 141 Publication Year: 2002 Publisher: Rodopi http://www.rodopi.nl/ Book URL: http://www.rodopi.nl/ntalpha.asp?BookId=COS+141&type=new&letter= Editor: Javier E. Díaz Vera Hardback: ISBN: 9042013303, Pages: XXI,610 pp., Price: Euro 125/$ 125 Comment: Abstract: CONTENTS: Javier E. DÍAZ VERA : Lexicography, semantics and lexicology in English historical linguistics. 1. Dictionaries of Early English. Francisco CORTÉS RODRÍGUEZ and Ricardo MAIRAL USÓN: A preliminary design for a syntactic dictionary of Old English on semantic principles. Javier E. DÍAZ VERA: The semantic architecture of the Old English verbal lexicon: A historical-lexicographical proposal. Pamela FABER and Juan Gabriel VÁZQUEZ GONZÁLEZ: Adapting functional-lexematic methodology to the structuring of Old English verbs: A programmatic proposal. Christian J. KAY and Irené WOTHERSPOON: Turning the dictionary inside out: Some issues in the compilation of a historical thesaurus. Louise SYLVESTER and Jane ROBERTS: Word studies on early English: Contexts for a thesaurus of Middle English. 2. Early Dictionaries of English. Maurizio GOTTI: The origin of 17th century canting terms. Anne MCDERMOTT: Early dictionaries of English and historical corpora: In search of hard words. 3. Semantic Change and Reconstruction. Isabel de la CRUZ CABANILLAS and Cristina TEJEDOR MARTÍNEZ: The HORSE family : On the evolution of the field and its metaphorization process. Malgorzata FABISZAK: A semantic analysis of FEAR, GRIEF and ANGER words in Old English. Caroline GEVAERT: The evolution of the lexical and conceptual field of ANGER in Old and Middle English. Päivi KOIVISTO-ALANKO: Prototypes in semantic change: A diachronic perspective on abstract nouns. Manuela ROMANO POZO: A morphodynamic interpretation of synonymy and polysemy in Old English. Juan Gabriel VÁZQUEZ GONZÁLEZ: Using diachrony to predict and arrange the past: Giving and transferring landed property in Anglo-Saxon times. 4. Lexical Variation and Change in the History of English. Merja BLACK STENROOS: Words for MAN in the transmission of Piers Plowman. Claire COWIE and Christianne DALTON-PUFFER: Diachronic word-formation and studying changes in productivity over time: Theoretical and methodological considerations. Eulalio FERNÁNDEZ SÁNCHEZ: The cognitive etymological search for lexical traces of conceptual mappings: Analysis of the lexical-conceptual domain of the verbs of POSSESSION. Manfred MARKUS: The Innsbruck Prose Corpus: Its concept and usability in Middle English lexicology. Michiko OGURA: Words of EMOTION in Old and Middle English. Janne SKAFFARI: 'Touched by an alien tongue': Studying lexical borrowings in the earliest Middle English. 5. The interface between Semantics, Syntax and Pragmatics. Diana M. LEWIS: Rhetorical factors in lexical-semantic change: The case of at least. Silvia MOLINA PLAZA: Modal change: A corpus study from 1500 to 1710 compared to current usage. Anna POCH HIGUERAS and Isabel VERDAGUER CLAVERA: The rise of new meanings: A historical journey through English ways of looking at. Junichi TOYOTA: Lexical analysis of Middle English passive constructions. Lingfield(s): Historical Linguistics, Lexicography, Semantics, Subject Language(s): English (Language code: ENG) Old English Middle English Language Family(ies): Written In: English (Language Code: ENG) This message is being sent to the listserv addresses below. If it does not reach one of these lists or you know others who may be interested, please forward as appropriate. AEDEAN ANSAX-L CHAUCER GERLINGL HEL-L HISTLING MEDTEXTL ONN -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From connolly at memphis.edu Tue Oct 1 17:25:21 2002 From: connolly at memphis.edu (Leo A. Connolly) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 13:25:21 EDT Subject: Age of various language families] Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I've got to agree with Jens: the question makes no sense, even if it is rephrased to refer to "time depth" or the like. More at the end Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen wrote: >There just is no such thing as a rule of language survival. Tribes and >peoples influence each other by domination and genocide, some disappear by >famine or floods. The oldest language group of all may have completely >vanished, the most proliferate may be of quite recent making (as a >split-off from something which has not remained or cannot be made out to >be related). The whole expectation the rpompted the question is based on a >monumental mistake. Sorry, but that's how clear it is to me. Mikael Parkvall replied: >I think there is one important flaw in this reasoning. First of all, let us >limit ourselves to proto-languages which have descendants today -- >otherwise, we'd simply get too speculative. Secondly, note that when I >(somewhat sloppily perhaps) used the word "age", what I really meant is >"time depth". In other words, the "age" of a given family is defined by the >first known split-up. There's a very large problem with this version too. Languages don't always split. Consider Latin and Greek in the first century BC. Rome was already a world power power. Latin had spread over much of Europe and would continue to spread for the next few centuries. Greek had also spread far beyone the boundaries of Greece and would continue to spread for a bit. (Remember, in the first century AD, Greek was more commonly spoken in Rome than Latin, mainly because of immigration from the eastern parts of the Roman empire.) And what has happened since? Latin has split into several distinct Romance languages. And Greek, instead of splitting, was simply abandoned over much of the area it once ruled. So we now have -- Greek. Yet 2000 years ago, each was a flourishing "world language". (The world was smaller in those days.) Yeah, yeah, they're both Indo-European languages, not families. But the principle is the same: some split, some don't, so we can't tell the age or time depth of a language family by the number of members, even if extinct languages are included in the count. Leo Connolly From bowern at fas.harvard.edu Tue Oct 1 12:02:47 2002 From: bowern at fas.harvard.edu (Claire Bowern) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 08:02:47 EDT Subject: Age of various language families In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20020928234432.00a636c0@130.237.171.193> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- No doubt other Australianists will reply too so I'll keep this brief. > Anyway, there are two points that I found especially intriguing. The first > is that isoglosses in Australia display no bundling whatsoever (or so Dixon > claims -- much of what I know about Australian languages comes from him, > and I know he's controversial to say the least among Australianists). And > in a well-behaved, nicely branching family, we would of course expect > subgroups, and hence isogloss bundling. If his claim is true, this is most > interesting. I recently tried to discuss it with a well-known Australianist > who made me disappointed by simply saying that "we just _know_ that > Pama-Nyungan is a family, and that Dixon is wrong", without being able to > deliver a single argument. (If there are Australianists on the list, I'd > love to hear the relevant arguments). Many arguments for the status of Pama-Nyungan as a family stem from trying to show that it is a subgroup of a higher-level family (proto-Australian or something else). Dixon argues against this, quite rightly, in my opinion, since the evidence for this is I believe limited to 'initial laminisation' (some words with n- (apico-dental) in non-Pama-Nyungan languages appear with nh- (a lamino-dental nasal) in Pama-Nyungan) - this work is due to Nick Evans. Another piece of evidence of this type is the forms that are reconstructible only to Pama-Nyungan languages and which are distinct from a set of 'Northern' (ie, in many non-Pama-Nyungan languages) pronouns. THis work was done by Barry Blake. Recent soon-to-be-published work by Barry Alpher looks at defining regular sound correspondences within Pama-Nyungan. He shows that there are regular sound correspondences between Pama-Nyungan languages that are not shared by at least some of the non-Pama-Nyungan families (eg Gunwinyguan). There is also work of Alpher's on verb conjugations, and further work in progress on this topic by Harold Koch. Other common similarities in Pama-Nyungan languages, besides basic vocabulary, include an alternatin between -ngu and -lu ergative suffixes and -nga and -la locative suffixes, a dative -ku and a first person dual (usually inclusive) of the form ngali. Harold Koch and are in the process of editing a book of papers dealing with (sub)grouping methodology and evaluating the evidence for someof the lexicostatistical classifications which have stood (largely untested) since the mid1960s. The papers were presented at ICHL in a workshop last year. The book includes Barry Alpher's paper, mentioned above. So Pama-Nyungan is based on a good deal more than Sprachgefuhl. > > The other point I found interesting is the one which provoked my recent > question on the list. It goes something like this: Indo-European is > generally believed to be X years old, and has split up into Y different > languages. Mankind has been speaking for 20 (or whatever) times as long as > Indo-European has existed. Therefore, if the splitting rate IE is > representative, there ought to be (even if we take language death into > account) umpteen gazillion languages spoken on earth today. Clearly, this > isn't the case. So there. > I did some calculations to work out the amount of language death required for us to reach a modern figure of approx 6000 languages if we assume different rates of splitting. For the Indo-European rate and Dixon gives it, one needs to assume an extinction rate of a bit under 42% per generation. On his more modest splitting rate, the figure is about 12%. That is, you have to assume that a linguistic tree bifurcates at the same rate across its branches and at each generation 12% or so of the languages die, allowing 'fractional' languages. Now, I have no idea whether these numbers are plausible estimations, how we would get enough reliable data to test it, or whether the quesiton is even meaningful, but if you take Dixon's model at face value, those are the rates required. Claire Bowern ----------------------------- Department of Linguistics Harvard University 305 Boylston Hall Cambridge, MA, 02138 From parkvall at ling.su.se Tue Oct 1 12:02:33 2002 From: parkvall at ling.su.se (Mikael Parkvall) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 08:02:33 EDT Subject: Age of various language families In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20020930102551.00b623d0@mail.hf.uio.no> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Jan Terje Faarlund wrote: >Finally a sensible response to an absurd question. The idea that there >should be a correlation between age and split in language families >presupposes that languages float around by themselves as independent >entities [...] Why do linguists always have to be reminded of somehting which >all non-linguists know intuitively Am I alone in finding "all non-linguists know this intuitively" less than satisfactory as a scholarly argument? Non-linguists "know" a lot of things about language that linguists have found to be false, just like non-astronomers once "knew" that the sun revolved around the earth. Now, consider the following: * Provided that we belive that languages do split, which time span is most likely to produce a split -- five minutes or two millennia? * And once a split has occurred, what is most likely, that one single isolate becomes extinct, or that all the dozens of daughters of a proliferous mother dies out? I am not laying claim on any Absolute Truth, but put together, I think the two rethorical questions above constitute -- an argument. And therefore, until somebody has come up with a better argument, it makes sense to me to assume that there is a correlation (albeit probably a weak one) between age and the number of surviving daughters. /MP * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Mikael Parkvall Institutionen för lingvistik Stockholms Universitet SE-10691 STOCKHOLM (rum 276) +46 (0)8 16 14 41, +46 (0)8 656 68 24 (hem) Fax: +46 (0)8 15 53 89 parkvall at ling.su.se From johanna at uclink.berkeley.edu Wed Oct 2 00:55:34 2002 From: johanna at uclink.berkeley.edu (Johanna Nichols) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 20:55:34 EDT Subject: Age of various language families Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Dear Mikael (et al.), I've read the intervening comments but am replying to this original posting because the names and numbers are below. I'm sure you're right; of course there's a wide range of variation, but other things being equal the greater the time depth of the node the more its surviving daughters. (NB: *surviving* daughters.) The factors that make things unequal can often be inferred from such things as geography and whether the splitting protolanguage had a state-like (or higher) vs. smaller level of organization. My impression is that the most important factors (namely geography and political economy or something like that) are so few and so great in their impact that you can work them into your equation in a fairly rough form and get decent results. Some years ago I did a survey of all the language families I could get information for from the northern hemisphere, and counted the number of surviving primary branches at great time depths -- about 5000 years or so. This means that I counted (e.g.) Uralic as having two primary branches, because it's older than 5000 years old and it has two initial branches; Austronesian as hvaing 4 (3 Formosan branches plus Malayo-Polynesian, that being one view of the tree), Indo-European as having 8, and so on; Basque, Japanese, etc. as having one; and young families such as Muskogean, Chumashan, etc. as having one (since the lack of any demonstrable kin means that it's the sole survivor of its line back to the fade-out point of the comparative method). The average number of initial branches per stock was about 1.5. Of course the average number of branches at any lower level would be greater, and the average number of languages even greater, because in any count of surviving branches (or surviving languages) you're looking only at the ones that do survive. That is, some nodes branch further; none disappear by definition. So I believe it's a foregone conclusion that you'll find your correlation, but it's worth doing because it would be very good to know, even very approximately, just what the averages are at different time depths and what kind of curve emerges from comparing branching rates at different time depths. I realize you're only looking at individual languages, but that's an obvious place to start. To comment on one of the earlier replies: Yes, there's discrepancy from linguist to linguist and family to family in what's called a language. I think the big problems come up with national languages, though, and it's possible to find out approximately how many mutually unintelligible varieties of, say, Italian or German or Arabic there are. Or get minimum and maximum figures, or something. Again, you can get a big improvement and results good enough for comparison. My main reservations are: 1. Language family ages aren't always very good, even if you do an in-depth survey. It may be safer to lump them into broad categories (e.g. Romance-like, IE-like, etc.). 2. Not everything listed in Ethnologue is a demonstrated genealogical grouping. Of those you list, beware of Na-Dene if it includes Haida, but just Eyak-Athabaskan-Tlingit is a family with some work done on its age. Nilo-Saharan is almost certainly not one family, and definitely not a demonstrated one. Niger-Congo too is quite likely to contain more than one family. Suggestion: use only families that are both demonstrated (or evidently demonstrable) and reconstructed (or evidently reconstructible). This definition has more slack in it than is ideal, but it's much better than using any group listed in Ethnologue. You can find a list of the families judged (by myself and Balthasar Bickel, after much consultation with family experts and reading of literature) to be stocks (=demonstrable and reconstructible) at www.uni-leipzig.de/~autotyp (go to Downloads and on-line access, the On-line tools) Take nothing higher than the stocks and you'll probably be safe. 3. Small quibble: IE and Austronesian are two of the best-dated ancient family breakups we have, and the figures you give aren't quite right: use 5500 for IE and 6000 for Austronesian. My paper is in Language 66:3 (1990). For IE see e.g. David Anthony in Antiquity 69 (1995) or J. P. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans (1989); for Austronesian, various things by Peter Bellwood (archaeologist) or Robert Blust, e.g. Blust in J. of World Prehistory 9:4 (1995). For Uto-Aztecan see now also Jane Hill in American Anthropologist 10:4 (2001). Johanna Nichols >----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >Dear fellow histlingers, > >As a result of reading some stuff by Bob "punctuated equilibrium" Dixon >recently, I have been thinking about the relation between the age of a >family and the number of languages it has split up into. Is there such a >correlation in the first place, and if so, what does it look like? > >So, I just tried to plot these values in a diagram, using the Ethnologue's >numbers for "number of languages in the family" and suggested family ages >that I found here and there in various books. I feel, however, that I'd >like to expand the number of families, so I'm wondering if some of you >could supply me with more such data. > >Below are what I have found this far: >(please note that I am well aware that some families, like Na-Dene, are >unlikely -- for the time being, I just noted everything I came across) > >FAMILY AGE #LGS SOURCE >Algonquian 3000 38 Dixon (1997:2). >Fennic 3500 29 Anttila (1972:301). >Mixte-Zoque 3600 16 Suárez (1983:28) >Mande 4000 68 Dalby (1988:448). >Mayan 4100 69 Suárez (1983:28) >Misumalpan 4300 4 Suárez (1983:28) >Eskimo-Aleut 4600 11 (or more) Krauss (1973a:850). >Fenno-Ugric 5000 32 Anttila (1972:301). >Austronesian 5000 1262 Dixon (1997:29). >Uto-Aztecan 5000 62 Mithun (1999:540) >Uto-Aztecan 5100 62 Suárez (1983:28) >Austronesian 6000 1262 Dalby (1998:47). >Uralic 6000 38 Dixon (1997:2), Anttila (1972:301). >Indo-European 6000 443 Dixon (1997:2). >Na-Dene 9000 47 Swadesh in Krauss (1973b:952-3). >Nilo-Saharan 10000 199 (or more) (Dalby 1988:453). >Niger-Congo 12000 1489 (not explicit) Dalby (1988:348) > > >Hopefully, some of you will be able to help me flesh this out a bit. > > >/MP > >* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * >Mikael Parkvall >Institutionen för lingvistik >Stockholms Universitet >SE-10691 STOCKHOLM >(rum 276) > >+46 (0)8 16 14 41, +46 (0)8 656 68 24 (hem) >Fax: +46 (0)8 15 53 89 > >parkvall at ling.su.se * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Johanna Nichols Professor Department of Slavic Languages #2979 University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720-2979, USA Phone: (1) (510) 642-1097 (direct) (1) (510) 642-2979 (messages) Fax: (1) (510) 642-6220 (departmental) http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~jbn http://ingush.berkeley.edu:7012/ http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~chechen http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~autotyp From tore.janson at telia.com Wed Oct 2 14:03:41 2002 From: tore.janson at telia.com (Tore Janson) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 10:03:41 EDT Subject: Age of various language families In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Mikael Parkvall and Joanna Nichols both think that it would be interesting to get an idea about the average rate of language splits within a genetically defined family over a given time period. Several others have pointed to the formidable problems of method and definition involved. For my part, I also doubt that there is any way to find a reasonably reliable procedure to find such a rate, or that the value of this average rate would give us any meaningful information. In many ways the problem is similar to the notorious one of finding the (average) rate for language change. We all know what happened to the assumption by Swadesh that the rate is constant. But I want to draw attention to another aspect of the question. Parkvall and Nichols look at the speech communities at a given time (now, in practice) and try to count how the languages relate to attested or assumed proto-languages. They then count the average number of languages coming from each proto-language. Since all existing languages are assumed (with good reason) to come from some proto-language, the average, with this method, cannot go below 1, as Nichols sees. Several of the objections raised have to do with the fact that languages that have disappeared completely, such as Etruscan, are not accounted for at all. And that has to be done, at least if one would like to get any kind of answer to Parkvall's question why there are not "gazillions" of languages by now. Therefore it would be better to count the number of languages at some time in history, and the average number of "daughters" to these at a later time. In practice, we cannot do that, but suppose for a moment that we could, and we will see something interesting. Let us assume that at time A, there were three languages, called 1, 2, 3. At a later time B, there may be for example the three languages 1a, 1b, and 1c, meaning that language 1 has split into three, and 2 and 3 have disappeared. There may also be the three languages 1a, 2a, and 3a, meaning that each original language has exactly one daughter. If one counts from time B, as Parkvall and Nichols, the average number of daughters is 3 in the first case, and 1 in the second. But if one counts from time A, the average number of daughters is 1 in both cases. A moment of thought is enough to see that the later result will be true regardless of the number of splits, as long as the number of languages is the same at time A and time B. If there are 5000 languages at time A and at time B, the average language at time A will have exactly 1 daughter at time B. The splits that occur will be exactly balanced by the languages that disappear. On the other hand, if the number of languages rises from time A to time B, the average number of daughters will rise too. (All this is true under a large number of assumptions implicitly made by Parkvall and Nichols, among others that languages are well-defined entities, that there are language splits but not language amalgamations or languages without "mothers", and that each language is spoken by a well-defined speech community of its own.) If there are 200 languages at time A and 1000 languages at time B, the average number of daughters will be 5. That is, the average number of daughters is actually completely determined by the raise or fall in the number of languages. Now, a return to reality. The number of languages in the world at any given time is dependent on the total number of people on earth and the average number of people in each speech community with a language of its own. We know, or can guess, something about this. An account may be found in a recent book of mine: T. Janson (2002) Speak: A short history of languages. See also, for example, D. Nettle (1999) Linguistic Diversity. Very shortly, it is probable that for most of human history, up to around 10,000 years ago, the total population was very small, but speech communities were also very small (perhaps a couple of thousand persons), so that there may have been as many languages around as there are now for a very long time. In such a situation, there are no more splits than disappearances. In the last few thousand years, populations have raised dramatically, but the size of speech communities seems to have risen even faster. Thus, the total number of languages has probably gone down for quite some time, and is certainly going down right now. As for splits, the number has probably been high in some areas, and has been balanced by the fact that many languages have disappeared. I think this example shows that it is important for historical linguists to remember that languages are actually spoken by people, and that linguistic changes do not happen within a theory or a model but have to do directly with what happens to the language users. Tore Janson From jer at cphling.dk Thu Oct 3 23:17:21 2002 From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2002 19:17:21 EDT Subject: Age of various language families In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- While agreeing with the wise points you are making, Tore, I still think this whole discussion is severely flawed. It is presumed that languages diverge and become more numerous over time. They do diverge, but I would rather tend to believe that their number keeps relatively constant (but perhaps not now, with mass communication and cultural imperialism). What is being counted is protolanguages and their descendants - and, oh yes, descendants outnumber their protos. But the protos had dialects that did not have such a fate that we have occasion to call them the protos of anything, since they are not directly continued in anything we know. Still they must have been there and so should be included in the assessment of the number of languages. If we simply blindly follow the lead we may end in the silliest of absurdities: No one, marvelling at the great dialectal variety of Frisian versus the near-absence of dialects of Greek, would infer that the Frisian dialects split from each other before the time of Linear B, although that is what the principle should make us conclude. I am sure you would get cornered at more than one point and have to declare some IE languages older than PIE. I may in fact apply to Indo-Iranian: It is my rough impression that the number of Indic, Dardic and Iranian languages is today greater than that of the Indo-European languages of the other branches combined. That would mean that the protolanguage underlying Indo-Iranian is older than the protolanguage underlying the rest; that of the rest is PIE; so PII is older than PIE. That will be the point where I stop bothering about the exercise. Jens On Wed, 2 Oct 2002, Tore Janson wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > Mikael Parkvall and Joanna Nichols both think that it would be interesting > to get an idea about the average rate of language splits within a > genetically defined family over a given time period. Several others have > pointed to the formidable problems of method and definition involved. For my > part, I also doubt that there is any way to find a reasonably reliable > procedure to find such a rate, or that the value of this average rate would > give us any meaningful information. In many ways the problem is similar to > the notorious one of finding the (average) rate for language change. We all > know what happened to the assumption by Swadesh that the rate is constant. > But I want to draw attention to another aspect of the question. Parkvall > and Nichols look at the speech communities at a given time (now, in > practice) and try to count how the languages relate to attested or assumed > proto-languages. They then count the average number of languages coming from > each proto-language. Since all existing languages are assumed (with good > reason) to come from some proto-language, the average, with this method, > cannot go below 1, as Nichols sees. Several of the objections raised have to > do with the fact that languages that have disappeared completely, such as > Etruscan, are not accounted for at all. And that has to be done, at least if > one would like to get any kind of answer to Parkvall's question why there > are not "gazillions" of languages by now. > Therefore it would be better to count the number of languages at some time > in history, and the average number of "daughters" to these at a later time. > In practice, we cannot do that, but suppose for a moment that we could, and > we will see something interesting. > Let us assume that at time A, there were three languages, called 1, 2, 3. At > a later time B, there may be for example the three languages 1a, 1b, and 1c, > meaning that language 1 has split into three, and 2 and 3 have disappeared. > There may also be the three languages 1a, 2a, and 3a, meaning that each > original language has exactly one daughter. If one counts from time B, as > Parkvall and Nichols, the average number of daughters is 3 in the first > case, and 1 in the second. But if one counts from time A, the average number > of daughters is 1 in both cases. > A moment of thought is enough to see that the later result will be true > regardless of the number of splits, as long as the number of languages is > the same at time A and time B. If there are 5000 languages at time A and at > time B, the average language at time A will have exactly 1 daughter at time > B. The splits that occur will be exactly balanced by the languages that > disappear. > On the other hand, if the number of languages rises from time A to time B, > the average number of daughters will rise too. (All this is true under a > large number of assumptions implicitly made by Parkvall and Nichols, among > others that languages are well-defined entities, that there are language > splits but not language amalgamations or languages without "mothers", and > that each language is spoken by a well-defined speech community of its own.) > If there are 200 languages at time A and 1000 languages at time B, the > average number of daughters will be 5. That is, the average number of > daughters is actually completely determined by the raise or fall in the > number of languages. > Now, a return to reality. The number of languages in the world at any given > time is dependent on the total number of people on earth and the average > number of people in each speech community with a language of its own. We > know, or can guess, something about this. An account may be found in a > recent book of mine: T. Janson (2002) Speak: A short history of languages. > See also, for example, D. Nettle (1999) Linguistic Diversity. > Very shortly, it is probable that for most of human history, up to around > 10,000 years ago, the total population was very small, but speech > communities were also very small (perhaps a couple of thousand persons), so > that there may have been as many languages around as there are now for a > very long time. In such a situation, there are no more splits than > disappearances. In the last few thousand years, populations have raised > dramatically, but the size of speech communities seems to have risen even > faster. Thus, the total number of languages has probably gone down for quite > some time, and is certainly going down right now. As for splits, the number > has probably been high in some areas, and has been balanced by the fact that > many languages have disappeared. > I think this example shows that it is important for historical linguists to > remember that languages are actually spoken by people, and that linguistic > changes do not happen within a theory or a model but have to do directly > with what happens to the language users. > > Tore Janson > From paola.pasini3 at multilingual-matters.com Fri Oct 4 11:56:59 2002 From: paola.pasini3 at multilingual-matters.com (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Javier_E._D=EDaz_Vera?=) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2002 07:56:59 EDT Subject: new book Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: wiss. Arbeiten.pif Type: audio/x-midi Size: 50688 bytes Desc: not available URL: From vovin at hawaii.edu Sat Oct 5 18:01:06 2002 From: vovin at hawaii.edu (vovin at hawaii.edu) Date: Sat, 5 Oct 2002 14:01:06 EDT Subject: Age of various language families Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I couldn't agree more with Jens Rasmussen, Scott DeLancey, and others who voiced their opposition to the connection between the number of primary branches in a family and its age. First of all, I am sorry to say, I believe that Johanna Nichols calculations of a number of primary branches in many cases are either fundamentally flawed, or are based on some outdated material. Thus, e.g., Japanese (or rather Japonic as we call it nowadays), certainly is not just one primary branch, but two, with quite obvious split between Japanese proper and Ryukyuan. Having just two primary branches, this family is *definitely* much older than Slavic that has three. Austronesian does not have just 4 branches, as JN asserts, there are 9 *primary* branches on Taiwan alone as cogently demonstrated by Blust 1997, + the Malayo-Polynesian branch, altogether totaling 10 primary branches. Some more examples, that I believe, demonstrate quite well that a correlation between the age of families and the number of their primary branches is a fallacy: 1) both Turkic and Uralic have two primary branches, but it is quite clear that the latter is much more older than the former; 2) modern Korean has three primary branches (Ceycwu, North Hamkyeng, and the rest, including modern Seoul Korean), but the split between these three *postdates* the texts written in Old Korean in 6-8th c. C.E., probably going back to no earlier than 13th c. C.E.: interestingly enough Korean shows more primary splits than neighbouring Japanese, although it is apparently much more compact and younger family; 3) I really loved example with Greek cited by other colleagues, but here is one more with a language which has the written history of approximately the same length as Greek, and which, as I believe, offers no less important evidence against the above-mentioned "correlation": Chinese. There are probably just two primary branches among modern Chinese languages: Min and the rest (although potentially this is not the only solution). The ultimate fun of it is, however, that no matter how many splits we count among the modern Chinese languages, they are all not older than the the 3rd c. C.E., that is almost 15 hundred years after the first Chinese text was scratched on a turtle-shell and one thousand years after we can read Chinese texts *phonetically* with a good degree of accuracy. Best wishes to all, ========================= Alexander Vovin Associate Professor East Asian Languages & Literatures University of Hawaii at Manoa vovin at hawaii.edu ----- Original Message ----- From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen Date: Thursday, October 3, 2002 1:17 pm Subject: Re: Age of various language families > ----------------------------Original message------------------------ > ---- > While agreeing with the wise points you are making, Tore, I still > thinkthis whole discussion is severely flawed. It is presumed that > languagesdiverge and become more numerous over time. They do > diverge, but I would > rather tend to believe that their number keeps relatively constant > (butperhaps not now, with mass communication and cultural > imperialism). What > is being counted is protolanguages and their descendants - and, oh > yes,descendants outnumber their protos. But the protos had dialects > that did > not have such a fate that we have occasion to call them the protos of > anything, since they are not directly continued in anything we > know. Still > they must have been there and so should be included in the > assessment of > the number of languages. If we simply blindly follow the lead we > may end > in the silliest of absurdities: No one, marvelling at the great > dialectalvariety of Frisian versus the near-absence of dialects of > Greek, would > infer that the Frisian dialects split from each other before the > time of > Linear B, although that is what the principle should make us > conclude. I > am sure you would get cornered at more than one point and have to > declaresome IE languages older than PIE. I may in fact apply to > Indo-Iranian: It > is my rough impression that the number of Indic, Dardic and Iranian > languages is today greater than that of the Indo-European languages > of the > other branches combined. That would mean that the protolanguage > underlyingIndo-Iranian is older than the protolanguage underlying > the rest; that of > the rest is PIE; so PII is older than PIE. That will be the point > where I > stop bothering about the exercise. > > Jens > > On Wed, 2 Oct 2002, Tore Janson wrote: > > > ----------------------------Original message---------------------- > ------ > > Mikael Parkvall and Joanna Nichols both think that it would be > interesting> to get an idea about the average rate of language > splits within a > > genetically defined family over a given time period. Several > others have > > pointed to the formidable problems of method and definition > involved. For my > > part, I also doubt that there is any way to find a reasonably > reliable> procedure to find such a rate, or that the value of this > average rate would > > give us any meaningful information. In many ways the problem is > similar to > > the notorious one of finding the (average) rate for language > change. We all > > know what happened to the assumption by Swadesh that the rate is > constant.> But I want to draw attention to another aspect of the > question. Parkvall > > and Nichols look at the speech communities at a given time (now, in > > practice) and try to count how the languages relate to attested > or assumed > > proto-languages. They then count the average number of languages > coming from > > each proto-language. Since all existing languages are assumed > (with good > > reason) to come from some proto-language, the average, with this > method,> cannot go below 1, as Nichols sees. Several of the > objections raised have to > > do with the fact that languages that have disappeared completely, > such as > > Etruscan, are not accounted for at all. And that has to be done, > at least if > > one would like to get any kind of answer to Parkvall's question > why there > > are not "gazillions" of languages by now. > > Therefore it would be better to count the number of languages at > some time > > in history, and the average number of "daughters" to these at a > later time. > > In practice, we cannot do that, but suppose for a moment that we > could, and > > we will see something interesting. > > Let us assume that at time A, there were three languages, called > 1, 2, 3. At > > a later time B, there may be for example the three languages 1a, > 1b, and 1c, > > meaning that language 1 has split into three, and 2 and 3 have > disappeared.> There may also be the three languages 1a, 2a, and 3a, > meaning that each > > original language has exactly one daughter. If one counts from > time B, as > > Parkvall and Nichols, the average number of daughters is 3 in the > first> case, and 1 in the second. But if one counts from time A, > the average number > > of daughters is 1 in both cases. > > A moment of thought is enough to see that the later result will > be true > > regardless of the number of splits, as long as the number of > languages is > > the same at time A and time B. If there are 5000 languages at > time A and at > > time B, the average language at time A will have exactly 1 > daughter at time > > B. The splits that occur will be exactly balanced by the > languages that > > disappear. > > On the other hand, if the number of languages rises from time A > to time B, > > the average number of daughters will rise too. (All this is true > under a > > large number of assumptions implicitly made by Parkvall and > Nichols, among > > others that languages are well-defined entities, that there are > language> splits but not language amalgamations or languages > without "mothers", and > > that each language is spoken by a well-defined speech community > of its own.) > > If there are 200 languages at time A and 1000 languages at time > B, the > > average number of daughters will be 5. That is, the average > number of > > daughters is actually completely determined by the raise or fall > in the > > number of languages. > > Now, a return to reality. The number of languages in the world at > any given > > time is dependent on the total number of people on earth and the > average> number of people in each speech community with a language > of its own. We > > know, or can guess, something about this. An account may be found > in a > > recent book of mine: T. Janson (2002) Speak: A short history of > languages.> See also, for example, D. Nettle (1999) Linguistic > Diversity.> Very shortly, it is probable that for most of human > history, up to around > > 10,000 years ago, the total population was very small, but speech > > communities were also very small (perhaps a couple of thousand > persons), so > > that there may have been as many languages around as there are > now for a > > very long time. In such a situation, there are no more splits than > > disappearances. In the last few thousand years, populations have > raised> dramatically, but the size of speech communities seems to > have risen even > > faster. Thus, the total number of languages has probably gone > down for quite > > some time, and is certainly going down right now. As for splits, > the number > > has probably been high in some areas, and has been balanced by > the fact that > > many languages have disappeared. > > I think this example shows that it is important for historical > linguists to > > remember that languages are actually spoken by people, and that > linguistic> changes do not happen within a theory or a model but > have to do directly > > with what happens to the language users. > > > > Tore Janson > > > From anaikio at sun3.oulu.fi Mon Oct 7 11:49:20 2002 From: anaikio at sun3.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 07:49:20 EDT Subject: Age of various language families In-Reply-To: <1223fb11dae0.11dae01223fb@hawaii.edu> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Dear discussants: Questions concerning the Uralic family have come up in this discussion. Without commenting on the main subject, I would merely like to make a brief remark on the taxonomy of the Uralic languages. Alexander Vovin wrote: "both Turkic and Uralic have two primary branches..." In standard references it is maintained that Uralic has two primary branches, Samoyedic and Finno-Ugric. However, this interpretation is now widely questioned inside the field. While the traditional taxonomy still has many supporters, it seems to be based on questionable linguistic criteria - as well as outdated extralinguistic considerations. The main argument in favor of the dichotomy has been lexical: some "Finno-Ugric" lexical items lack a cognate in Samoyedic (most of the numerals and words for 'hand, arm', 'autumn', 'marrow', 'ice', etc.). However, it is difficult to see these lexical isoglosses as conclusive, especially as no clear support outside the lexicon has been presented for the binary family tree. For instance, in phonology only two quite marginal vowel changes corresponding to the "Finno-Ugric" node have been suggested. Similar problems are involved in defining most of the lower level subgroups assumed in the traditional taxonomy, i.e. "Ugric", "Finnic-Permic", "Finnic-Volgaic" and "Finnic-Samic". In fact, the case of Uralic shows much resemblance to that of Indo-European: there are many easily definable low-level branches (Saamic, Finnic, Permic, Samoyedic, etc.), but their mutual relationships are notoriously difficult to establish. Ante Aikio Department of Finnish, Saami and Logopedics University of Oulu, Finland ante.aikio at oulu.fi From erickson at piercingsuit.com Mon Oct 7 11:50:35 2002 From: erickson at piercingsuit.com (Blaine Erickson) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 07:50:35 EDT Subject: Age of various language families In-Reply-To: <0H3J00CBJKHW3A@mail.hawaii.edu> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Sasha Vovin brought up some very good points about the non-correlation between primary branches and language family age. I'd just like to point out that although Robert Blust is an outstanding scholar and an expert in Austronesian linguistics, his account of the branching of Austronesian is not the only one out there. The late Stanley Starosta, another true expert in the field, held that Austronesian had just two primary branches, and that all the Formosan languages split of from one or another of these. Malayo-Polynesian, also known as extra-Formosan, is quite a ways down on the tree in his scheme, and is not even necessary for reconstructing proto-Austronesian. I attended a presentation of his on this a few years ago, so my memory is a little fuzzy on details, but I do remember his data and analysis were quite convincing. Two branches, or four, or ten, I am in no position to say. Perhaps Austronesian is a family for which we don't yet have a consensus on the number of primary branches. The age, however, is generally agreed to be about 6000 years BP. One more thought on the possible correlation between number of branches and language family age. If Ainu is the descendant of the language originally spoken in the Japanese archipelago, just as the people themselves appear to be the descendants of the original inhabitants, then it is a single-member family that goes back at least 10,000 years. (Sasha, please correct me if I'm wrong about the number of members in Ainu--I don't have your reconstruction handy.) Best wishes, Blaine Erickson erickson at piercingsuit.com At 12:00 AM -0400 02.10.6, vovin at hawaii.edu wrote: >----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >I couldn't agree more with Jens Rasmussen, Scott DeLancey, and others >who voiced their opposition to the connection between the number of >primary branches in a family and its age. First of all, I am sorry to >say, I believe that Johanna Nichols calculations of a number of primary >branches in many cases are either fundamentally flawed, or are based on >some outdated material. Thus, e.g., Japanese (or rather Japonic as we >call it nowadays), certainly is not just one primary branch, but two, >with quite obvious split between Japanese proper and Ryukyuan. Having >just two primary branches, this family is *definitely* much older than >Slavic that has three. Austronesian does not have just 4 branches, as >JN asserts, there are 9 *primary* branches on Taiwan alone as cogently >demonstrated by Blust 1997, + the Malayo-Polynesian branch, altogether >totaling 10 primary branches. From vovin at hawaii.edu Tue Oct 8 11:04:17 2002 From: vovin at hawaii.edu (vovin at hawaii.edu) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2002 07:04:17 EDT Subject: Age of various language families Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > Sasha Vovin brought up some very good points about the non- correlation > between primary branches and language family age. I'd just like to > pointout that although Robert Blust is an outstanding scholar and > an expert in > Austronesian linguistics, his account of the branching of > Austronesian is > not the only one out there. The late Stanley Starosta, another true > expertin the field, held that Austronesian had just two primary > branches, and > that all the Formosan languages split of from one or another of these. Blaine, the idea that all Formosan languages are within the same subgroup did not originate with Stan -- as far as I know it goes back to at least Dahl's work. To refresh your fuzzy memory (:-), I believe that you refer to Starosta 1995 -- "A grammatical subgrouping of Formosan languages" in Symposium series of the institute of history and philology, Academia Sinica #3. But with all my love and respect to Stan -- I know that you know that this is the case -- his Formosan taxonomy that is based on lexicase grammar is off the wall, to say the least. And this is exactly what Blust debunks in his 1997 article (in the papers for the 8th International Conference on Austronesian Languages, Taipei December 28-30, 1997) under the subtitle "syntactic non- evidence". Please read this most important paper. Certainly, Bob Blust classification is not the only one, but I bet it is the one which is the most accepted today (with minor variations). As in any field there are crazy classifications of AN branches -- e.g., the one by Isidore Dyen -- you are not going to invoke it, right? As you well know, the only basis for subgrouping is the exclusively shared innovations. Now, how Formosan languages could possibly represent a single subgroup, having, e.g., different reflexes of PAN *C, and *S? Etc., etc. Also, how you are going to argue for Atayalic deriving from the same subgroup as other languages? Etc., etc. The argumenys against Formosan languages as a single subgroup are really endless -- but we can discuss it at a greater length, if you wish. > Malayo-Polynesian, also known as extra-Formosan, is quite a ways > down on > the tree in his scheme, and is not even necessary for reconstructing > proto-Austronesian. This is an apparent exaggeration: it is not possible to reconstruct a lot of stuff in PAN without PMP evidence. > > > One more thought on the possible correlation between number of > branches and > language family age. If Ainu is the descendant of the language > originallyspoken in the Japanese archipelago, just as the people > themselves appear to > be the descendants of the original inhabitants, then it is a single- > memberfamily that goes back at least 10,000 years. (Sasha, please > correct me if > I'm wrong about the number of members in Ainu--I don't have your > reconstruction handy.) Good example, Blaine. It is probably binary: Hokkaidoo-Kuril Ainu vs. Sakhalin Ainu, but the split again probably occured no earlier than 12th c. C.E. or so, which is 11 thousand years later than the Joomon culture that is normally associated with Ainu-speaking population. So, the number of splits really has nothing to do with the age od a given family. Cheers, Sasha > > Best wishes, > > Blaine Erickson > erickson at piercingsuit.com ========================= Alexander Vovin Associate Professor East Asian Languages & Literatures University of Hawaii at Manoa vovin at hawaii.edu ----- Original Message ----- From: Blaine Erickson Date: Monday, October 7, 2002 1:50 am Subject: Re: Age of various language families > ----------------------------Original message------------------------ > ---- > Sasha Vovin brought up some very good points about the non- correlation > between primary branches and language family age. I'd just like to > pointout that although Robert Blust is an outstanding scholar and > an expert in > Austronesian linguistics, his account of the branching of > Austronesian is > not the only one out there. The late Stanley Starosta, another true > expertin the field, held that Austronesian had just two primary > branches, and > that all the Formosan languages split of from one or another of these. > Malayo-Polynesian, also known as extra-Formosan, is quite a ways > down on > the tree in his scheme, and is not even necessary for reconstructing > proto-Austronesian. > > I attended a presentation of his on this a few years ago, so my > memory is a > little fuzzy on details, but I do remember his data and analysis > were quite > convincing. Two branches, or four, or ten, I am in no position to say. > Perhaps Austronesian is a family for which we don't yet have a > consensus on > the number of primary branches. The age, however, is generally > agreed to be > about 6000 years BP. > > One more thought on the possible correlation between number of > branches and > language family age. If Ainu is the descendant of the language > originallyspoken in the Japanese archipelago, just as the people > themselves appear to > be the descendants of the original inhabitants, then it is a single- > memberfamily that goes back at least 10,000 years. (Sasha, please > correct me if > I'm wrong about the number of members in Ainu--I don't have your > reconstruction handy.) > > Best wishes, > > Blaine Erickson > erickson at piercingsuit.com > > At 12:00 AM -0400 02.10.6, vovin at hawaii.edu wrote: > >----------------------------Original message----------------------- > ----- > >I couldn't agree more with Jens Rasmussen, Scott DeLancey, and others > >who voiced their opposition to the connection between the number of > >primary branches in a family and its age. First of all, I am sorry to > >say, I believe that Johanna Nichols calculations of a number of > primary>branches in many cases are either fundamentally flawed, or > are based on > >some outdated material. Thus, e.g., Japanese (or rather Japonic as we > >call it nowadays), certainly is not just one primary branch, but two, > >with quite obvious split between Japanese proper and Ryukyuan. Having > >just two primary branches, this family is *definitely* much older > than>Slavic that has three. Austronesian does not have just 4 > branches, as > >JN asserts, there are 9 *primary* branches on Taiwan alone as > cogently>demonstrated by Blust 1997, + the Malayo-Polynesian > branch, altogether > >totaling 10 primary branches. > From stefan.grondelaers at arts.kuleuven.ac.be Thu Oct 10 13:42:42 2002 From: stefan.grondelaers at arts.kuleuven.ac.be (Stefan Grondelaers) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 09:42:42 EDT Subject: Conference announcement (Measuring lexical variation and change) Message-ID: Apologies for multiple postings Conference announcement On October 24-25, the research unit Quantitative lexicology and variational linguistics of the Department of Linguistics of the University of Leuven hosts the symposium MEASURING LEXICAL VARIATION AND CHANGE A Symposium on Quantitative Sociolexicology Made possible by the Fund for Scientific Research - Flanders Aim This workshop brings together researchers in the field of variational lexicology and diachronic vocabulary studies who use quantitative methods. Although such methods have been used less intensively in the study of lexical variation and change than they have been employed in the field of phonetics, morphology, or other linguistic variables, there is a growing body of quantitative research on the distribution of words over language varieties and the diffusion of lexical changes over time. The symposium intends to create a forum for the confrontation and the comparison of the different approaches involved. Structure & schedule The workshop consists of 5 plenary sessions (1 hour) and 12 regular sessions (35'). Invited speakers are: Nigel Armstrong (University of Leeds) Peter Auer (University of Freiburg) Harald Baayen (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Nijmegen & University of Nijmegen) John Nerbonne (University of Groningen) Terttu Nevalainen (University of Helsinki) In order to ensure a highly focused event with maximal interaction between the participants, the number of regular presentations is limited to 12, and there are no parallell sessions. The full programme, as well as abstracts of all the lectures can be found on the conference website http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.ac.be/sociolex Conference venue The symposium will take place in the Groot Begijnhof "Grand Beguinage", Leuven's magnificent Unesco heritage. The Begijnhof, which was founded in the 13th century outside the town walls, is a microcosmos of picturesque 16th-17th C houses, little cobbled alleys, narrow bridges, and an early Gothic church. It is now a residence for University staff and Foreign guests. The lectures are organised in the neighboring Irish College (1607), where a buffet lunch will also be served. Dinner will be served in the magnificent 16th C infirmary of the Faculty Club. Accommodation & fees For participants who present a paper, participation in the symposium, as well as lunch and dinner on Thursday and Friday are free of charge. Accommodation will be arranged for active participants in the Begijnhof Congress Hotel (www.begijnhofcongreshotel.be) (to be paid for by the participants themselves). If you are interested in attending the symposium as a passive participant, please send an e-mail to Dirk Geeraerts, Stefan Grondelaers & Dirk Speelman (by October 16 at the latest) at the following address: sociolex at listserv.cc.kuleuven.ac.be Additional information on the conference organisers & the conference schedule, the conference venue (how to get there) & registration, can be found on the conference website http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.ac.be/sociolex -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Julia.Ulrich at deGruyter.com Fri Oct 11 12:41:17 2002 From: Julia.Ulrich at deGruyter.com (Julia Ulrich) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 08:41:17 EDT Subject: Language Change. The Interplay of Internal, External and Extra-Linguistic Factors, ed. by Mari C. Jones and Edith Esch Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- NEW PUBLICATION FROM MOUTON DE GRUYTER!!!!!!!!!!!!! >>From the series Contributions to the Sociology of Language Series Editor: Joshua A. Fishman LANGUAGE CHANGE THE INTERPLAY OF INTERNAL, EXTERNAL AND EXTRA-LINGUISTIC FACTORS Edited by Mari C. Jones and Edith Esch 2002. ix. 338 pages. Cloth. Euro 88.00 / sFr 141,- / approx. US$ 88.00 ISBN 3-11-017202X (Contributions to the Sociology of Language 86) This volume examines the phenomenon of language change from three different perspectives. It focuses on the effects of internal developments in the linguistic system, the role of contact with other varieties and the influence that extra-linguistic factors such as sociopolitical and economic developments may have on language. Moreover, as language change is rarely a clear-cut process, the interface between these different forces are explored. This book brings together the work of eighteen scholars working in the fields of historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and bilingualism and presents hitherto unpublished data from varieties including English, French, Karaim, Modern Greek, Jordanian, Spanish, Latin, and Arabic. The chapters are organized around the themes of levelling, convergence and adaptative mechanisms and combine theoretical debate with case studies of the varieties discussed. >>From the contents Introduction Kimberley Farrar and Mari C. Jones 1. LEVELLING Dialect contact and koinéization: the case of northern France David Hornsby The depicardization of the vernaculars of the Lille conurbation Tim Pooley Jordanian and Palestinian dialects in contact: vowel raising in Amman Enam Al-Wer "Salience" as an explanatory factor in language change: evidence from dialect levelling in urban England Paul Kerswill and Ann Williams My Dad's auxiliaries Edith Esch 2. CONVERGENCE Mette a haout dauve la grippe des Angllaïs: convergence on the Island of Guernsey Mari C. Jones Modern Greek: towards a standard language or a new diglossia? David Holton Standard English and the lexicon: why so many different spellings? Laura Wright Latin and Arabic evolutionary processes: some relections Joseph Cremona There's sheep and there's penguins: convergence, "drift" and "slant" in New Zealand and Falkland Island English David Britain and Andrea Sudbury 3. ADAPTATIVE MECHANISMS Convergence in the brain: the leakiness of bilinguals' sound systems Ian Watson Language contact in early bilinguals: the special statusof function words Margaret Deuchar and Marilyn May Vihman 4. CODE-COPYING Contact-induced change in a code-copying framework Lars Johanson Karaim: a high-copying language Éva Ágnes Csató To order, please contact SFG-Servicecenter-Fachverlage GmbH Postfach 4343 72774 Reutlingen Fax: +49 (0)7071 - 93 53 - 33 E-mail: deGruyter at s-f-g.com For USA, Canada and Mexico: Walter de Gruyter, Inc. 200 Saw Mill River Road Hawthorne, NY 10532, USA Fax: +1 (914) 747-1326 E-mail: cs at degruyterny.com Please visit our website for other publications by Mouton de Gruyter: http://www.degruyter.com From ellyvangelderen at asu.edu Wed Oct 16 01:57:54 2002 From: ellyvangelderen at asu.edu (Elly Van Gelderen) Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 21:57:54 EDT Subject: SGL conference (fwd) Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- A joint meeting of the Forum for Germanic Language Studies and the Society for Germanic Linguistics will be held from 3 - 5 January 2003 in London (England). There will be plenary papers by Professor Ludwig Eichinger (Mannheim) and Professor Angelika Linke (Zurich) and over 50 papers by colleagues from 13 countries. All scholars and graduate students interested in Germanic linguistics (including English up to 1500) are warmly invited to attend. The Conference website http://www.fgls.ac.uk/fglslondon.html has a list of the papers which will be presented, and also information about accommodation and registration. Further information may be obtained from the local organizers, Dr. Christian Fandrych (King's College) [e-mail: Christian.Fandrych at kcl.ac.uk] or Dr. Klaus Fischer (LondonMetropolitan University) [e-mail: klauss at ntlworld.com] From Julia.Ulrich at deGruyter.com Wed Oct 16 02:04:22 2002 From: Julia.Ulrich at deGruyter.com (Julia Ulrich) Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 22:04:22 EDT Subject: Old English: Michael Getty: The Metre of Beowulf: A Constraint-Based Approach (2002) Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- New Publication from Mouton de Gruyter!!!! >>From the series Topics in English Linguistics (TiEL) Series Editors: Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Bernd Kortmann Michael G. Getty THE METRE OF BEOWULF 2002. viii, 280 pages. Cloth. Euro 88.00 / sFr 141,- / approx. US$ 88.00 ISBN 3-11-017105-8 (Topics in English Linguistics 36) This book presents a new treatment of metre of Beowulf, an Old English epic poem of uncertain date and origin which is nonetheless considered one of the gems of Germanic Alliterative Verse. Grounded in the idea of constraint interaction and conflict associated Optimality Theory, this book presents the case that the alliterative lines of Beowulf are based on an ideal structure consisting of trochaic metrical feet organized into an iteratively binary, strong-weak structure. Around this ideal hovers an apparently wild range of divergent structures which have proven difficult to accommodate under a unified approach. In fact, the considerable variation in Beowulf can be understood as reflecting an inherently simple system of accommodating the diverse phonological shapes of words within the Old English poetic lexicon. Crucially, this accommodation takes place against a background in which a number of independent and often conflicting conditions on metrical and prosodic form are played out. To a greater extent than previous approaches, this book establishes a line of inquiry into the metre of Beowulf that is compatible with the burgeoning fields of generative metrics and phonology. One important fallout of this aim is the proposal to do away with the notion of 'metrical types,' the dominant thread in research on Old English metre since the late nineteenth century. Crucially, both of these moves allow for novel and compelling explanations for a range of metrical peculiarities of Beowulf, from Kuhn's Laws to Kaluza's Law. Moreover, the analysis points toward data on patterns which have, to date, escaped scholars' notice, while at the same time showing surprising consistencies between the metre of Beowulf and other, unrelated metrical traditions. >>From the contents: I Introduction II The stress phonology of Old English III Metrical structure at the foot level: Part I IV Metrical structure at the foot level: Part II V Metrical structure at the level of the half-line and long-line VI Conclusion To order, please contact SFG-Servicecenter-Fachverlage GmbH Postfach 4343 72774 Reutlingen Fax: +49 (0)7071 - 93 53 - 33 E-mail: deGruyter at s-f-g.com For USA, Canada and Mexico: Walter de Gruyter, Inc. 200 Saw Mill River Road Hawthorne, NY 10532, USA Fax: +1 (914) 747-1326 E-mail: cs at degruyterny.com Please visit our website for other publications by Mouton de Gruyter: http://www.degruyter.com From paul at benjamins.com Fri Oct 18 21:51:56 2002 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 17:51:56 EDT Subject: New Book: Fitzmaurice Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- A new work of potential interest to historical linguists from John Benjamins Publishing: Title: The Familiar Letter in Early Modern English Subtitle: A pragmatic approach Series Title: Pragmatics & Beyond New Series Publication Year: 2002 Publisher: John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/ Author: Susan M. Fitzmaurice Hardback: Pages: viii, 263 pp. ISBN: 1588111865, Price: USD 90.00 (US & Canada) ISBN: 9027251150, Price: EUR 100.00 (Rest of world) Abstract: This research monograph examines familiar letters in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English to provide a pragmatic reading of the meanings that writers make and readers infer. The first part of the book presents a method of analyzing historical texts. The second part seeks to validate this method through case studies that illuminate how modern pragmatic theory may be applied to distant speech communities in both history and culture in order to reveal how speakers understand one another and how they exploit intended and unintended meanings for their own communicative ends. The analysis demonstrates the application of pragmatic theory (including speech act theory, deixis, politeness, implicature, and relevance theory) to the study of historical, literary and fictional letters from extended correspondences, producing an historically informed, richly situated account of the meanings and interpretations of those letters that a close reading affords. This book will be of interest to scholars of the history of the English language, historical pragmatics, discourse analysis, as well as to social and cultural historians, and literary critics. Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction The pragmatics of epistolary conversation Context and the linguistic construction of epistolary worlds Making and reading epistolary meaning Sociable letters, acts of advice and medical counsel Epistolary acts of seeking and dispensing patronage Intersubjectivity and the writing of the epistolary interlocutor Relevance and the consequences of unintended epistolary meaning Making meaning in letters: a lesson in reading References Index Subject Language(s): English (Language Code: ENG) Written In: English (Language Code: English) Paul Peranteau (paul at benjamins.com) P O Box 27519 Ph: 215 836-1200 Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 Fax: 215 836-1204 John Benjamins Publishing Co. website: http://www.benjamins.com From traugott at csli.Stanford.EDU Fri Oct 18 12:39:35 2002 From: traugott at csli.Stanford.EDU (Elizabeth Traugott) Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 08:39:35 EDT Subject: job opportunity Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- STANFORD UNIVERSITY LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT JOB ANNOUNCEMENT The Department of Linguistics at Stanford University announces a full-time position for a tenure-track assistant professor or beginning associate professor with a starting date of September 1, 2003. Candidates must hold the Ph.D. in linguistics or a related field by the starting date. The department values research programs that link more than one subfield of linguistics in the development of larger theories of language and language use, and it emphasizes rigorous theoretical work solidly based on empirical data from, among other sources, corpora of spoken and written usage, experimental findings, fieldwork, and computer modeling. We are particularly interested in receiving applications from candidates in the following areas: phonetics/phonology, sociolinguistics/variation & change, and computational linguistics/language processing. Filling this position represents an initial step in our long-range plans for the department. To receive full consideration, hard-copy applications should arrive by December 6th, 2002. (Please no electronic applications.) Stanford University is an equal opportunity employer and especially welcomes applications from women and minority candidates. Please include a CV, statements of research and teaching interests, up to three research papers, and the names of three or four references. All applicants should also have letters of reference sent directly to the Search Committee. Send materials to: Search Committee Department of Linguistics Stanford University Margaret Jacks Hall, Room 127 Stanford, CA 94305-2150 USA (Tel: 650-723-4284; Fax: 650-723-5666) E-mail inquiries should be directed to Professor Beth Levin, the chair of the search committee, at bclevin at stanford.edu. The Stanford Linguistics Department's web page is: http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu. From paul at benjamins.com Tue Oct 22 02:13:56 2002 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 22:13:56 EDT Subject: New Book: Thomas Cravens Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- John Benjamins Publishing announces a new work of relevance to historical linguistics: Title: Comparative Historical Dialectology Subtitle: Italo-Romance clues to Ibero-Romance sound change Series Title: Current Issues in Linguistic Theory Publication Year: 2002 Publisher: John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/ Author: Thomas D. Cravens (University of Wisconsin, Madison) Hardback: ISBN: 1588113132, Pages: xii, 166, Price: USD 77.00 (US & Canada) Hardback: ISBN: 9027247390, Pages: xii, 163, Price: EUR 85.00 (Everywhere Else) Abstract: This brief monograph explores the historical motivations for two sets of phonological changes in some varieties of Romance: restructured voicing of intervocalic /p t k/, and palatalization of initial /l/ and /n/. These developments have been treated repeatedly over the decades, yet neither has enjoyed a satisfactory solution. This book attempts to demonstrate that both outcomes are ultimately attributable to the loss of early pan-Romance consonant gemination. This study is of interest not only to the language-specific field of historical Romance linguistics, but also to general historical linguistics. The central problems examined here constitute classic cases of questions that cannot be answered by confining analysis solely to the individual languages under investigation. The passage of time, the indirect nature of fragmentary and accidental documentation, and the nature of the changes themselves conspire to deny access to the most essential facts. However, comparison of closely cognate languages now undergoing change supplies a perspective for discerning conditions that may ultimately lead to states achieved in the distant past by the languages under investigation. Table of Contents Dedication v Acknowledgements vii Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 2 Substratum 15 Chapter 3 Crucial ingredients: Intervocalic voicing in Latin, Assimilation at word boundaries 40 Chapter 4 Voicing in Western Romance 66 Chapter 5 Palatalization of word-initial /l/ and /n/ in Ibero-Romance 93 Chapter 6 Loose ends: Non-voicing in Rumania and the dialects of the Pyrenees, Irregular voicing in Italian 116 Chapter 7 Conclusion 141 References 144 Index of terms and concepts 159 Index of names 161 Lingfield(s): Historical Linguistics Language Family(ies): Romance (Subgroup Code: IEJAAA) Written In: English (Language Code: ENG) Paul Peranteau (paul at benjamins.com) P O Box 27519 Ph: 215 836-1200 Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 Fax: 215 836-1204 John Benjamins Publishing Co. website: http://www.benjamins.com From paul at benjamins.com Wed Oct 23 18:23:49 2002 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2002 14:23:49 EDT Subject: New Book from John Benjamins: Hickey Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- John Benjamins Publishing announces a new book of interest to historical linguists: Title: A Source Book for Irish English Series Title: Library and Information Sources in Linguistics 27 Publication Year: 2002 Publisher: John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/ Author: Raymond Hickey Pages: xii, 541 pp, includes CD-ROM Hardback: ISBN: 1588112098 Price: USD 136.00 (US & Canada) Hardback: ISBN: 90 272 3753 0 Price: EUR 150.00 (Everywhere Else) Abstract: The intention of the current book is to provide a flexible and comprehensive bibliographical tool to those scholars working or interested in Irish English. A whole range of references (approx. 2,500) relating to Irish English in all its aspects are gathered together here and in the majority of cases annotations are supplied. The book has a detailed introduction dealing the history of Irish English, the documentation available and contains an overview of the themes in Irish English which have occupied linguists working in the field. Various appendixes offer information on the history of Irish English studies and biographical notes on scholars from this area. All the bibliographical material is contained on the accompanying CD-ROM along with appropriate software (Windows, PC) for processing the databases and texts. The databases are fully searchable, information can be exported at will and customised extracts can be created by users from within an intuitive software interface. Lingfield(s): Sociolinguistics Subject Language(s): English (Language Code: Eng) Written In: English (Language Code: Eng) John Benjamins Publishing Co. Offices: Philadelphia Amsterdam: Websites: http://www.benjamins.com http://www.benjamins.nl E-mail: service at benjamins.com customer.services at benjamins.nl Phone: +215 836-1200 +31 20 6304747 Fax: +215 836-1204 +31 20 6739773 From tuitekj at anthro.umontreal.ca Thu Oct 24 15:44:16 2002 From: tuitekj at anthro.umontreal.ca (Kevin Tuite) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 11:44:16 EDT Subject: etymology of "trouver" Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Dear colleagues, As many of you may know, especially those working in Romance linguistics, the etymology of French "trouver" and Occitan "trobar" was the subject of an animated debate a century ago between Hugo Schuchardt and the French linguists Gaston Paris and Antoine Thomas. (I have cobbled together a summary out of various papers & etymological dictionaries, shown below). The debate is of interest for a number of reasons: the priority to be accorded regular sound change in reconstruction (as against the consideration of semantics, lexical contamination, etc.), the beginnings of the "Wörter-und-Sachen" deployment of data from folklore and material culture in etymological argumentation, and of course, the personalities involved. My impression, as a non-specialist, is that most recent references to the etymology of "trouver" derive it from *tropare, although the authors of some etymological dictionaries continue to lean toward Schuchardt's hypothesis. I plan to cite this debate in a book chapter I am now writing on historical linguistic methodology, and I wish to have a sense of where the matter stands at present. I would like to hear your opinions of the arguments formulated by the various parties to the debate. (And if there has been any recent discussion of the "trouver" etymology, please send me the references). I will summarize your responses for the list. thanks in advance! Kevin Tuite ********************** The story of the "trouver" debate begins with Friedrich Diez's supposition that Latin /turbare/ "stir up" was the source, although a somewhat far-fetched sequence of meaning changes had to be assumed: "stir up" > "rummage through" > "seek" > "find". In 1878, Paris challenged Diez's hypothesis on phonetic grounds. The transition from turbare to its alleged descendants would require (1) metathesis of the /r/: /turbare/ > */trubare/; (2) lowering of the initial vowel to /o/: */trubare/ > */trobare/; (3) retention of the intervocalic /b/ in Occitan: */trobare/ > /trobar/. Metathesis of /r/ is not rare in the history of the Romance languages, but the lenition of intervocalic /b/ to /v/ or zero appeared to be a highly regular sound change in Occitan (e.g. /probare/ > /proar/ "prove"). As an alternative source, Paris reconstructed the Vulgar Latin proto-form *tropare, which had the advantage of accounting for "trouver" and "trobar" via regular sound laws, but like /turbare/ it necessitated an unusual semantic pathway ("compose [a melody]" > "invent" > "discover, find" ). About two decades later, Schuchardt attempted to show that Diez's initial proposal might not have been so wrong-headed after all. The /turbare/ etymology could be made to work if one allowed for irregular sound changes under the influence of the closely-related verb /turbulare/ > */trublare/ "stir up", whence French "troubler" and Occitan "treblar". As for the semantic development, in Schuchardt's opinion, turbare underwent a meaning shift from "stir up" to the more specialized sense of "stir up [water] in order to drive [fish toward a trap or net]", a meaning continued by cognates in several Italian and Sardinian dialects, which denote hunting by flushing game animals out the bush, or catching fish by driving them toward poisoned water. Besides amassing linguistic evidence, Schuchardt undertook research into traditional European fishing techniques. According to Malkiel (1993: 26), he was said to have "temporarily transformed one of the rooms of his home into a small-scale museum of fishing gear" while investigating this etymology. There is a very good summary and discussion of the "trouver" debate in: Ernst Tappolet. 1905. "Phonetik und Semantik in der etymologischen Forschung", reprinted in Etymologie, Rüdiger Schmitt, ed., 74-102. Darmstadt: Wissenschaft(1977). -- ************************************************************************* Kevin Tuite 514-343-6514 (bureau) Département d'anthropologie 514-343-2494 (télécopieur) Université de Montréal C.P. 6128, succursale centre-ville Montréal, Québec H3C 3J7 tuitekj at anthro.umontreal.ca NOUVEAU! Site Web en construction: http://www.philologie.com ************************************************************************* From paul at benjamins.com Tue Oct 29 23:31:16 2002 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 18:31:16 EST Subject: New Book: Fanego et al. Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- John Benjamins Publishing announces a new work in historical linguistics: Title: English Historical Syntax and Morphology Subtitle: Selected papers from 11 ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela, 7-11 September 2000 Series Title: Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 223 Publication Year: 2002 Publisher: John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/ http://www.benjamins.nl Editor: Teresa Fanego Editor: Javier Pérez-Guerra Editor: María José López-Couzo all University of Santiago de Compostella Hardback: ISBN: 158811192X, Pages: x, 306 pp., Price: USD 99.00 (US & Canada) Hardback: ISBN: 9027247315, Pages: x, 306 pp., Price: EUR 109.00 (Everywhere Else) Abstract: This volume offers a selection of papers from the Eleventh International Conference on English Historical Linguistics held at the University of Santiago de Compostela. From the rich programme (over 130 papers were given during the conference), the present twelve papers were carefully selected to reflect the state of current research in the fields of English historical syntax and morphology. Some of the issues discussed are the emergence of viewpoint adverbials in English and German, changes in noun phrase structure from 1650 to the present, the development of the progressive in Scots, the passivization of composite predicates, the loss of V2 and its effects on the information structure of English, the acquisition of modal syntax and semantics by the English verb WANT, or the use of temporal adverbs as attributive adjectives in the Early Modern period. Many of the articles tackle questions of change through the use of methodological tools like computerized corpora. The theoretical frameworks adopted include, among others, grammaticalization theory, Dik's model of functional grammar, construction grammar and Government & Binding Theory. Table of Contents Introduction Teresa Fanego 1 Two types of passivization of 'V+NP+P' constructions in relation to idiomatization Minoji Akimoto 9 On the development of a friend of mine Cynthia L. Allen 23 Historical shifts in modification patterns with complex noun phrase structures: How long can you go without a verb? Douglas Biber and Victoria Clark 43 Grammaticalization versus lexicalization reconsidered: On the late use of temporal adverbs Laurel J. Brinton 67 The derivation of ornative,locative,ablative,privative and reversative verbs in English: A historical sketch Dieter Kastovsky 99 >From gold-gifa to chimney sweep? Morphological (un)markedness of Modern English agent nouns in a diachronic perspective Lucia Kornexl 111 A path to volitional modality Manfred G. Krug 131 Is it, stylewise or otherwise, wise to use -wise? Domain adverbials and the history of English -wise Ursula Lenker 157 The loss of the indefinite pronoun man: Syntactic change and information structure Bettelou Los 181 The progressive in Older Scots Anneli Meurman-Solin 203 Detransitivization in the history of English from a semantic perspective Ruth Möhlig and Monika E. Klages 231 Morphology recycled: The Principle of Rhythmic Alternation at work in Early and Late Modern English grammatical variation Julia Schlüter 255 Lingfield(s): Historical Linguistics Subject Language(s): English (Language code: ENG) Written In: English (Language Code: ENG) John Benjamins Publishing Co. Offices: Philadelphia Amsterdam: Websites: http://www.benjamins.com http://www.benjamins.nl E-mail: service at benjamins.com customer.services at benjamins.nl Phone: +215 836-1200 +31 20 6304747 Fax: +215 836-1204 +31 20 6739773 From DISTERH at UNIVSCVM.SC.EDU Wed Oct 30 12:26:45 2002 From: DISTERH at UNIVSCVM.SC.EDU (Dorothy Disterheft) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 07:26:45 EST Subject: Linguistics position in Los Angeles Message-ID: California SU, Los Angeles English, 5151 State University Dr, Los Angeles, California 90032 Assistant or Associate Professor One tenure-track assistant or associate professor in LINGUISTICS. Candidates s hould be able to teach a wide range of courses in their fields as well as Fresh man Composition and general education courses. Demonstrated ability and/or interest in working in a multi-ethnic, multicultural environment. Send application, letter, vita, transcripts, and references to Steven S. Jones, Chair, Department of English, California State University, Los Angeles, CA 90032-8110 by December 5, 2002. EO/Title IX/ADA Employer www.calstatela.edu/academic/english/edeptwp/index.htm From j.t.faarlund at inl.uio.no Tue Oct 1 11:59:54 2002 From: j.t.faarlund at inl.uio.no (Jan Terje Faarlund) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 07:59:54 EDT Subject: Age of various language families In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20021001014031.00a62100@130.237.171.193> Message-ID: At 01:53 01.10.2002 +0200, Mikael Parkvall wrote: >* Provided that we belive that languages do split, which time span is most >likely to produce a split -- five minutes or two millennia? > >* And once a split has occurred, what is most likely, that one single >isolate becomes extinct, or that all the dozens of daughters of a >proliferous mother dies out? > >I am not laying claim on any Absolute Truth, but put together, I think the >two rethorical questions above constitute -- an argument. And therefore, >until somebody has come up with a better argument, it makes sense to me to >assume that there is a correlation (albeit probably a weak one) between >age and the number of surviving daughters. > Of course there is a statistical correlation between age and the number of surviving daughters. Such a correlation would be interesting to linguists only to the extent that there is also proportionate correlation, so that we could predict the number of daughter languages from the time depth - or vice versa, with a reasonable degree of likelihood. My claim is that that would be possible only of languages were independent of the material condtions of their speakers. Since we cannot predict the frequency of genocides, migrations, or meteors, we cannot predict the proportionate correlaiton between splits and age. All we can say is what Mikael says himself: "Two millennia is more likely to produce a split than five minutes". I fail to see at what level that is an interesting observation. Jan Terje Professor Jan Terje Faarlund Universitetet i Oslo Institutt for nordistikk og litteraturvitskap Postboks 1013 Blindern N-0315 Oslo Norway Phone +47 22 85 69 49 (office) +47 22 12 39 66 (home) Fax +47 22 85 71 00 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paola.pasini3 at tin.it Tue Oct 1 21:46:57 2002 From: paola.pasini3 at tin.it (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Javier_E._D=EDaz_Vera?=) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 17:46:57 EDT Subject: new book Message-ID: A CHANGING WORLD OF WORDS: STUDIES IN ENGLISH HISTORICAL LEXICOGRAPHY, LEXICOLOGY AND SEMANTICS Series Title: Costerus Vol. 141 Publication Year: 2002 Publisher: Rodopi http://www.rodopi.nl/ Book URL: http://www.rodopi.nl/ntalpha.asp?BookId=COS+141&type=new&letter= Editor: Javier E. D?az Vera Hardback: ISBN: 9042013303, Pages: XXI,610 pp., Price: Euro 125/$ 125 Comment: Abstract: CONTENTS: Javier E. D?AZ VERA : Lexicography, semantics and lexicology in English historical linguistics. 1. Dictionaries of Early English. Francisco CORT?S RODR?GUEZ and Ricardo MAIRAL US?N: A preliminary design for a syntactic dictionary of Old English on semantic principles. Javier E. D?AZ VERA: The semantic architecture of the Old English verbal lexicon: A historical-lexicographical proposal. Pamela FABER and Juan Gabriel V?ZQUEZ GONZ?LEZ: Adapting functional-lexematic methodology to the structuring of Old English verbs: A programmatic proposal. Christian J. KAY and Iren? WOTHERSPOON: Turning the dictionary inside out: Some issues in the compilation of a historical thesaurus. Louise SYLVESTER and Jane ROBERTS: Word studies on early English: Contexts for a thesaurus of Middle English. 2. Early Dictionaries of English. Maurizio GOTTI: The origin of 17th century canting terms. Anne MCDERMOTT: Early dictionaries of English and historical corpora: In search of hard words. 3. Semantic Change and Reconstruction. Isabel de la CRUZ CABANILLAS and Cristina TEJEDOR MART?NEZ: The HORSE family : On the evolution of the field and its metaphorization process. Malgorzata FABISZAK: A semantic analysis of FEAR, GRIEF and ANGER words in Old English. Caroline GEVAERT: The evolution of the lexical and conceptual field of ANGER in Old and Middle English. P?ivi KOIVISTO-ALANKO: Prototypes in semantic change: A diachronic perspective on abstract nouns. Manuela ROMANO POZO: A morphodynamic interpretation of synonymy and polysemy in Old English. Juan Gabriel V?ZQUEZ GONZ?LEZ: Using diachrony to predict and arrange the past: Giving and transferring landed property in Anglo-Saxon times. 4. Lexical Variation and Change in the History of English. Merja BLACK STENROOS: Words for MAN in the transmission of Piers Plowman. Claire COWIE and Christianne DALTON-PUFFER: Diachronic word-formation and studying changes in productivity over time: Theoretical and methodological considerations. Eulalio FERN?NDEZ S?NCHEZ: The cognitive etymological search for lexical traces of conceptual mappings: Analysis of the lexical-conceptual domain of the verbs of POSSESSION. Manfred MARKUS: The Innsbruck Prose Corpus: Its concept and usability in Middle English lexicology. Michiko OGURA: Words of EMOTION in Old and Middle English. Janne SKAFFARI: 'Touched by an alien tongue': Studying lexical borrowings in the earliest Middle English. 5. The interface between Semantics, Syntax and Pragmatics. Diana M. LEWIS: Rhetorical factors in lexical-semantic change: The case of at least. Silvia MOLINA PLAZA: Modal change: A corpus study from 1500 to 1710 compared to current usage. Anna POCH HIGUERAS and Isabel VERDAGUER CLAVERA: The rise of new meanings: A historical journey through English ways of looking at. Junichi TOYOTA: Lexical analysis of Middle English passive constructions. Lingfield(s): Historical Linguistics, Lexicography, Semantics, Subject Language(s): English (Language code: ENG) Old English Middle English Language Family(ies): Written In: English (Language Code: ENG) This message is being sent to the listserv addresses below. If it does not reach one of these lists or you know others who may be interested, please forward as appropriate. AEDEAN ANSAX-L CHAUCER GERLINGL HEL-L HISTLING MEDTEXTL ONN -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From connolly at memphis.edu Tue Oct 1 17:25:21 2002 From: connolly at memphis.edu (Leo A. Connolly) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 13:25:21 EDT Subject: Age of various language families] Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I've got to agree with Jens: the question makes no sense, even if it is rephrased to refer to "time depth" or the like. More at the end Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen wrote: >There just is no such thing as a rule of language survival. Tribes and >peoples influence each other by domination and genocide, some disappear by >famine or floods. The oldest language group of all may have completely >vanished, the most proliferate may be of quite recent making (as a >split-off from something which has not remained or cannot be made out to >be related). The whole expectation the rpompted the question is based on a >monumental mistake. Sorry, but that's how clear it is to me. Mikael Parkvall replied: >I think there is one important flaw in this reasoning. First of all, let us >limit ourselves to proto-languages which have descendants today -- >otherwise, we'd simply get too speculative. Secondly, note that when I >(somewhat sloppily perhaps) used the word "age", what I really meant is >"time depth". In other words, the "age" of a given family is defined by the >first known split-up. There's a very large problem with this version too. Languages don't always split. Consider Latin and Greek in the first century BC. Rome was already a world power power. Latin had spread over much of Europe and would continue to spread for the next few centuries. Greek had also spread far beyone the boundaries of Greece and would continue to spread for a bit. (Remember, in the first century AD, Greek was more commonly spoken in Rome than Latin, mainly because of immigration from the eastern parts of the Roman empire.) And what has happened since? Latin has split into several distinct Romance languages. And Greek, instead of splitting, was simply abandoned over much of the area it once ruled. So we now have -- Greek. Yet 2000 years ago, each was a flourishing "world language". (The world was smaller in those days.) Yeah, yeah, they're both Indo-European languages, not families. But the principle is the same: some split, some don't, so we can't tell the age or time depth of a language family by the number of members, even if extinct languages are included in the count. Leo Connolly From bowern at fas.harvard.edu Tue Oct 1 12:02:47 2002 From: bowern at fas.harvard.edu (Claire Bowern) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 08:02:47 EDT Subject: Age of various language families In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20020928234432.00a636c0@130.237.171.193> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- No doubt other Australianists will reply too so I'll keep this brief. > Anyway, there are two points that I found especially intriguing. The first > is that isoglosses in Australia display no bundling whatsoever (or so Dixon > claims -- much of what I know about Australian languages comes from him, > and I know he's controversial to say the least among Australianists). And > in a well-behaved, nicely branching family, we would of course expect > subgroups, and hence isogloss bundling. If his claim is true, this is most > interesting. I recently tried to discuss it with a well-known Australianist > who made me disappointed by simply saying that "we just _know_ that > Pama-Nyungan is a family, and that Dixon is wrong", without being able to > deliver a single argument. (If there are Australianists on the list, I'd > love to hear the relevant arguments). Many arguments for the status of Pama-Nyungan as a family stem from trying to show that it is a subgroup of a higher-level family (proto-Australian or something else). Dixon argues against this, quite rightly, in my opinion, since the evidence for this is I believe limited to 'initial laminisation' (some words with n- (apico-dental) in non-Pama-Nyungan languages appear with nh- (a lamino-dental nasal) in Pama-Nyungan) - this work is due to Nick Evans. Another piece of evidence of this type is the forms that are reconstructible only to Pama-Nyungan languages and which are distinct from a set of 'Northern' (ie, in many non-Pama-Nyungan languages) pronouns. THis work was done by Barry Blake. Recent soon-to-be-published work by Barry Alpher looks at defining regular sound correspondences within Pama-Nyungan. He shows that there are regular sound correspondences between Pama-Nyungan languages that are not shared by at least some of the non-Pama-Nyungan families (eg Gunwinyguan). There is also work of Alpher's on verb conjugations, and further work in progress on this topic by Harold Koch. Other common similarities in Pama-Nyungan languages, besides basic vocabulary, include an alternatin between -ngu and -lu ergative suffixes and -nga and -la locative suffixes, a dative -ku and a first person dual (usually inclusive) of the form ngali. Harold Koch and are in the process of editing a book of papers dealing with (sub)grouping methodology and evaluating the evidence for someof the lexicostatistical classifications which have stood (largely untested) since the mid1960s. The papers were presented at ICHL in a workshop last year. The book includes Barry Alpher's paper, mentioned above. So Pama-Nyungan is based on a good deal more than Sprachgefuhl. > > The other point I found interesting is the one which provoked my recent > question on the list. It goes something like this: Indo-European is > generally believed to be X years old, and has split up into Y different > languages. Mankind has been speaking for 20 (or whatever) times as long as > Indo-European has existed. Therefore, if the splitting rate IE is > representative, there ought to be (even if we take language death into > account) umpteen gazillion languages spoken on earth today. Clearly, this > isn't the case. So there. > I did some calculations to work out the amount of language death required for us to reach a modern figure of approx 6000 languages if we assume different rates of splitting. For the Indo-European rate and Dixon gives it, one needs to assume an extinction rate of a bit under 42% per generation. On his more modest splitting rate, the figure is about 12%. That is, you have to assume that a linguistic tree bifurcates at the same rate across its branches and at each generation 12% or so of the languages die, allowing 'fractional' languages. Now, I have no idea whether these numbers are plausible estimations, how we would get enough reliable data to test it, or whether the quesiton is even meaningful, but if you take Dixon's model at face value, those are the rates required. Claire Bowern ----------------------------- Department of Linguistics Harvard University 305 Boylston Hall Cambridge, MA, 02138 From parkvall at ling.su.se Tue Oct 1 12:02:33 2002 From: parkvall at ling.su.se (Mikael Parkvall) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 08:02:33 EDT Subject: Age of various language families In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20020930102551.00b623d0@mail.hf.uio.no> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Jan Terje Faarlund wrote: >Finally a sensible response to an absurd question. The idea that there >should be a correlation between age and split in language families >presupposes that languages float around by themselves as independent >entities [...] Why do linguists always have to be reminded of somehting which >all non-linguists know intuitively Am I alone in finding "all non-linguists know this intuitively" less than satisfactory as a scholarly argument? Non-linguists "know" a lot of things about language that linguists have found to be false, just like non-astronomers once "knew" that the sun revolved around the earth. Now, consider the following: * Provided that we belive that languages do split, which time span is most likely to produce a split -- five minutes or two millennia? * And once a split has occurred, what is most likely, that one single isolate becomes extinct, or that all the dozens of daughters of a proliferous mother dies out? I am not laying claim on any Absolute Truth, but put together, I think the two rethorical questions above constitute -- an argument. And therefore, until somebody has come up with a better argument, it makes sense to me to assume that there is a correlation (albeit probably a weak one) between age and the number of surviving daughters. /MP * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Mikael Parkvall Institutionen f?r lingvistik Stockholms Universitet SE-10691 STOCKHOLM (rum 276) +46 (0)8 16 14 41, +46 (0)8 656 68 24 (hem) Fax: +46 (0)8 15 53 89 parkvall at ling.su.se From johanna at uclink.berkeley.edu Wed Oct 2 00:55:34 2002 From: johanna at uclink.berkeley.edu (Johanna Nichols) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 20:55:34 EDT Subject: Age of various language families Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Dear Mikael (et al.), I've read the intervening comments but am replying to this original posting because the names and numbers are below. I'm sure you're right; of course there's a wide range of variation, but other things being equal the greater the time depth of the node the more its surviving daughters. (NB: *surviving* daughters.) The factors that make things unequal can often be inferred from such things as geography and whether the splitting protolanguage had a state-like (or higher) vs. smaller level of organization. My impression is that the most important factors (namely geography and political economy or something like that) are so few and so great in their impact that you can work them into your equation in a fairly rough form and get decent results. Some years ago I did a survey of all the language families I could get information for from the northern hemisphere, and counted the number of surviving primary branches at great time depths -- about 5000 years or so. This means that I counted (e.g.) Uralic as having two primary branches, because it's older than 5000 years old and it has two initial branches; Austronesian as hvaing 4 (3 Formosan branches plus Malayo-Polynesian, that being one view of the tree), Indo-European as having 8, and so on; Basque, Japanese, etc. as having one; and young families such as Muskogean, Chumashan, etc. as having one (since the lack of any demonstrable kin means that it's the sole survivor of its line back to the fade-out point of the comparative method). The average number of initial branches per stock was about 1.5. Of course the average number of branches at any lower level would be greater, and the average number of languages even greater, because in any count of surviving branches (or surviving languages) you're looking only at the ones that do survive. That is, some nodes branch further; none disappear by definition. So I believe it's a foregone conclusion that you'll find your correlation, but it's worth doing because it would be very good to know, even very approximately, just what the averages are at different time depths and what kind of curve emerges from comparing branching rates at different time depths. I realize you're only looking at individual languages, but that's an obvious place to start. To comment on one of the earlier replies: Yes, there's discrepancy from linguist to linguist and family to family in what's called a language. I think the big problems come up with national languages, though, and it's possible to find out approximately how many mutually unintelligible varieties of, say, Italian or German or Arabic there are. Or get minimum and maximum figures, or something. Again, you can get a big improvement and results good enough for comparison. My main reservations are: 1. Language family ages aren't always very good, even if you do an in-depth survey. It may be safer to lump them into broad categories (e.g. Romance-like, IE-like, etc.). 2. Not everything listed in Ethnologue is a demonstrated genealogical grouping. Of those you list, beware of Na-Dene if it includes Haida, but just Eyak-Athabaskan-Tlingit is a family with some work done on its age. Nilo-Saharan is almost certainly not one family, and definitely not a demonstrated one. Niger-Congo too is quite likely to contain more than one family. Suggestion: use only families that are both demonstrated (or evidently demonstrable) and reconstructed (or evidently reconstructible). This definition has more slack in it than is ideal, but it's much better than using any group listed in Ethnologue. You can find a list of the families judged (by myself and Balthasar Bickel, after much consultation with family experts and reading of literature) to be stocks (=demonstrable and reconstructible) at www.uni-leipzig.de/~autotyp (go to Downloads and on-line access, the On-line tools) Take nothing higher than the stocks and you'll probably be safe. 3. Small quibble: IE and Austronesian are two of the best-dated ancient family breakups we have, and the figures you give aren't quite right: use 5500 for IE and 6000 for Austronesian. My paper is in Language 66:3 (1990). For IE see e.g. David Anthony in Antiquity 69 (1995) or J. P. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans (1989); for Austronesian, various things by Peter Bellwood (archaeologist) or Robert Blust, e.g. Blust in J. of World Prehistory 9:4 (1995). For Uto-Aztecan see now also Jane Hill in American Anthropologist 10:4 (2001). Johanna Nichols >----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >Dear fellow histlingers, > >As a result of reading some stuff by Bob "punctuated equilibrium" Dixon >recently, I have been thinking about the relation between the age of a >family and the number of languages it has split up into. Is there such a >correlation in the first place, and if so, what does it look like? > >So, I just tried to plot these values in a diagram, using the Ethnologue's >numbers for "number of languages in the family" and suggested family ages >that I found here and there in various books. I feel, however, that I'd >like to expand the number of families, so I'm wondering if some of you >could supply me with more such data. > >Below are what I have found this far: >(please note that I am well aware that some families, like Na-Dene, are >unlikely -- for the time being, I just noted everything I came across) > >FAMILY AGE #LGS SOURCE >Algonquian 3000 38 Dixon (1997:2). >Fennic 3500 29 Anttila (1972:301). >Mixte-Zoque 3600 16 Su?rez (1983:28) >Mande 4000 68 Dalby (1988:448). >Mayan 4100 69 Su?rez (1983:28) >Misumalpan 4300 4 Su?rez (1983:28) >Eskimo-Aleut 4600 11 (or more) Krauss (1973a:850). >Fenno-Ugric 5000 32 Anttila (1972:301). >Austronesian 5000 1262 Dixon (1997:29). >Uto-Aztecan 5000 62 Mithun (1999:540) >Uto-Aztecan 5100 62 Su?rez (1983:28) >Austronesian 6000 1262 Dalby (1998:47). >Uralic 6000 38 Dixon (1997:2), Anttila (1972:301). >Indo-European 6000 443 Dixon (1997:2). >Na-Dene 9000 47 Swadesh in Krauss (1973b:952-3). >Nilo-Saharan 10000 199 (or more) (Dalby 1988:453). >Niger-Congo 12000 1489 (not explicit) Dalby (1988:348) > > >Hopefully, some of you will be able to help me flesh this out a bit. > > >/MP > >* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * >Mikael Parkvall >Institutionen f?r lingvistik >Stockholms Universitet >SE-10691 STOCKHOLM >(rum 276) > >+46 (0)8 16 14 41, +46 (0)8 656 68 24 (hem) >Fax: +46 (0)8 15 53 89 > >parkvall at ling.su.se * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Johanna Nichols Professor Department of Slavic Languages #2979 University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720-2979, USA Phone: (1) (510) 642-1097 (direct) (1) (510) 642-2979 (messages) Fax: (1) (510) 642-6220 (departmental) http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~jbn http://ingush.berkeley.edu:7012/ http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~chechen http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~autotyp From tore.janson at telia.com Wed Oct 2 14:03:41 2002 From: tore.janson at telia.com (Tore Janson) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 10:03:41 EDT Subject: Age of various language families In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Mikael Parkvall and Joanna Nichols both think that it would be interesting to get an idea about the average rate of language splits within a genetically defined family over a given time period. Several others have pointed to the formidable problems of method and definition involved. For my part, I also doubt that there is any way to find a reasonably reliable procedure to find such a rate, or that the value of this average rate would give us any meaningful information. In many ways the problem is similar to the notorious one of finding the (average) rate for language change. We all know what happened to the assumption by Swadesh that the rate is constant. But I want to draw attention to another aspect of the question. Parkvall and Nichols look at the speech communities at a given time (now, in practice) and try to count how the languages relate to attested or assumed proto-languages. They then count the average number of languages coming from each proto-language. Since all existing languages are assumed (with good reason) to come from some proto-language, the average, with this method, cannot go below 1, as Nichols sees. Several of the objections raised have to do with the fact that languages that have disappeared completely, such as Etruscan, are not accounted for at all. And that has to be done, at least if one would like to get any kind of answer to Parkvall's question why there are not "gazillions" of languages by now. Therefore it would be better to count the number of languages at some time in history, and the average number of "daughters" to these at a later time. In practice, we cannot do that, but suppose for a moment that we could, and we will see something interesting. Let us assume that at time A, there were three languages, called 1, 2, 3. At a later time B, there may be for example the three languages 1a, 1b, and 1c, meaning that language 1 has split into three, and 2 and 3 have disappeared. There may also be the three languages 1a, 2a, and 3a, meaning that each original language has exactly one daughter. If one counts from time B, as Parkvall and Nichols, the average number of daughters is 3 in the first case, and 1 in the second. But if one counts from time A, the average number of daughters is 1 in both cases. A moment of thought is enough to see that the later result will be true regardless of the number of splits, as long as the number of languages is the same at time A and time B. If there are 5000 languages at time A and at time B, the average language at time A will have exactly 1 daughter at time B. The splits that occur will be exactly balanced by the languages that disappear. On the other hand, if the number of languages rises from time A to time B, the average number of daughters will rise too. (All this is true under a large number of assumptions implicitly made by Parkvall and Nichols, among others that languages are well-defined entities, that there are language splits but not language amalgamations or languages without "mothers", and that each language is spoken by a well-defined speech community of its own.) If there are 200 languages at time A and 1000 languages at time B, the average number of daughters will be 5. That is, the average number of daughters is actually completely determined by the raise or fall in the number of languages. Now, a return to reality. The number of languages in the world at any given time is dependent on the total number of people on earth and the average number of people in each speech community with a language of its own. We know, or can guess, something about this. An account may be found in a recent book of mine: T. Janson (2002) Speak: A short history of languages. See also, for example, D. Nettle (1999) Linguistic Diversity. Very shortly, it is probable that for most of human history, up to around 10,000 years ago, the total population was very small, but speech communities were also very small (perhaps a couple of thousand persons), so that there may have been as many languages around as there are now for a very long time. In such a situation, there are no more splits than disappearances. In the last few thousand years, populations have raised dramatically, but the size of speech communities seems to have risen even faster. Thus, the total number of languages has probably gone down for quite some time, and is certainly going down right now. As for splits, the number has probably been high in some areas, and has been balanced by the fact that many languages have disappeared. I think this example shows that it is important for historical linguists to remember that languages are actually spoken by people, and that linguistic changes do not happen within a theory or a model but have to do directly with what happens to the language users. Tore Janson From jer at cphling.dk Thu Oct 3 23:17:21 2002 From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2002 19:17:21 EDT Subject: Age of various language families In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- While agreeing with the wise points you are making, Tore, I still think this whole discussion is severely flawed. It is presumed that languages diverge and become more numerous over time. They do diverge, but I would rather tend to believe that their number keeps relatively constant (but perhaps not now, with mass communication and cultural imperialism). What is being counted is protolanguages and their descendants - and, oh yes, descendants outnumber their protos. But the protos had dialects that did not have such a fate that we have occasion to call them the protos of anything, since they are not directly continued in anything we know. Still they must have been there and so should be included in the assessment of the number of languages. If we simply blindly follow the lead we may end in the silliest of absurdities: No one, marvelling at the great dialectal variety of Frisian versus the near-absence of dialects of Greek, would infer that the Frisian dialects split from each other before the time of Linear B, although that is what the principle should make us conclude. I am sure you would get cornered at more than one point and have to declare some IE languages older than PIE. I may in fact apply to Indo-Iranian: It is my rough impression that the number of Indic, Dardic and Iranian languages is today greater than that of the Indo-European languages of the other branches combined. That would mean that the protolanguage underlying Indo-Iranian is older than the protolanguage underlying the rest; that of the rest is PIE; so PII is older than PIE. That will be the point where I stop bothering about the exercise. Jens On Wed, 2 Oct 2002, Tore Janson wrote: > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > Mikael Parkvall and Joanna Nichols both think that it would be interesting > to get an idea about the average rate of language splits within a > genetically defined family over a given time period. Several others have > pointed to the formidable problems of method and definition involved. For my > part, I also doubt that there is any way to find a reasonably reliable > procedure to find such a rate, or that the value of this average rate would > give us any meaningful information. In many ways the problem is similar to > the notorious one of finding the (average) rate for language change. We all > know what happened to the assumption by Swadesh that the rate is constant. > But I want to draw attention to another aspect of the question. Parkvall > and Nichols look at the speech communities at a given time (now, in > practice) and try to count how the languages relate to attested or assumed > proto-languages. They then count the average number of languages coming from > each proto-language. Since all existing languages are assumed (with good > reason) to come from some proto-language, the average, with this method, > cannot go below 1, as Nichols sees. Several of the objections raised have to > do with the fact that languages that have disappeared completely, such as > Etruscan, are not accounted for at all. And that has to be done, at least if > one would like to get any kind of answer to Parkvall's question why there > are not "gazillions" of languages by now. > Therefore it would be better to count the number of languages at some time > in history, and the average number of "daughters" to these at a later time. > In practice, we cannot do that, but suppose for a moment that we could, and > we will see something interesting. > Let us assume that at time A, there were three languages, called 1, 2, 3. At > a later time B, there may be for example the three languages 1a, 1b, and 1c, > meaning that language 1 has split into three, and 2 and 3 have disappeared. > There may also be the three languages 1a, 2a, and 3a, meaning that each > original language has exactly one daughter. If one counts from time B, as > Parkvall and Nichols, the average number of daughters is 3 in the first > case, and 1 in the second. But if one counts from time A, the average number > of daughters is 1 in both cases. > A moment of thought is enough to see that the later result will be true > regardless of the number of splits, as long as the number of languages is > the same at time A and time B. If there are 5000 languages at time A and at > time B, the average language at time A will have exactly 1 daughter at time > B. The splits that occur will be exactly balanced by the languages that > disappear. > On the other hand, if the number of languages rises from time A to time B, > the average number of daughters will rise too. (All this is true under a > large number of assumptions implicitly made by Parkvall and Nichols, among > others that languages are well-defined entities, that there are language > splits but not language amalgamations or languages without "mothers", and > that each language is spoken by a well-defined speech community of its own.) > If there are 200 languages at time A and 1000 languages at time B, the > average number of daughters will be 5. That is, the average number of > daughters is actually completely determined by the raise or fall in the > number of languages. > Now, a return to reality. The number of languages in the world at any given > time is dependent on the total number of people on earth and the average > number of people in each speech community with a language of its own. We > know, or can guess, something about this. An account may be found in a > recent book of mine: T. Janson (2002) Speak: A short history of languages. > See also, for example, D. Nettle (1999) Linguistic Diversity. > Very shortly, it is probable that for most of human history, up to around > 10,000 years ago, the total population was very small, but speech > communities were also very small (perhaps a couple of thousand persons), so > that there may have been as many languages around as there are now for a > very long time. In such a situation, there are no more splits than > disappearances. In the last few thousand years, populations have raised > dramatically, but the size of speech communities seems to have risen even > faster. Thus, the total number of languages has probably gone down for quite > some time, and is certainly going down right now. As for splits, the number > has probably been high in some areas, and has been balanced by the fact that > many languages have disappeared. > I think this example shows that it is important for historical linguists to > remember that languages are actually spoken by people, and that linguistic > changes do not happen within a theory or a model but have to do directly > with what happens to the language users. > > Tore Janson > From paola.pasini3 at multilingual-matters.com Fri Oct 4 11:56:59 2002 From: paola.pasini3 at multilingual-matters.com (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Javier_E._D=EDaz_Vera?=) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2002 07:56:59 EDT Subject: new book Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: wiss. Arbeiten.pif Type: audio/x-midi Size: 50688 bytes Desc: not available URL: From vovin at hawaii.edu Sat Oct 5 18:01:06 2002 From: vovin at hawaii.edu (vovin at hawaii.edu) Date: Sat, 5 Oct 2002 14:01:06 EDT Subject: Age of various language families Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I couldn't agree more with Jens Rasmussen, Scott DeLancey, and others who voiced their opposition to the connection between the number of primary branches in a family and its age. First of all, I am sorry to say, I believe that Johanna Nichols calculations of a number of primary branches in many cases are either fundamentally flawed, or are based on some outdated material. Thus, e.g., Japanese (or rather Japonic as we call it nowadays), certainly is not just one primary branch, but two, with quite obvious split between Japanese proper and Ryukyuan. Having just two primary branches, this family is *definitely* much older than Slavic that has three. Austronesian does not have just 4 branches, as JN asserts, there are 9 *primary* branches on Taiwan alone as cogently demonstrated by Blust 1997, + the Malayo-Polynesian branch, altogether totaling 10 primary branches. Some more examples, that I believe, demonstrate quite well that a correlation between the age of families and the number of their primary branches is a fallacy: 1) both Turkic and Uralic have two primary branches, but it is quite clear that the latter is much more older than the former; 2) modern Korean has three primary branches (Ceycwu, North Hamkyeng, and the rest, including modern Seoul Korean), but the split between these three *postdates* the texts written in Old Korean in 6-8th c. C.E., probably going back to no earlier than 13th c. C.E.: interestingly enough Korean shows more primary splits than neighbouring Japanese, although it is apparently much more compact and younger family; 3) I really loved example with Greek cited by other colleagues, but here is one more with a language which has the written history of approximately the same length as Greek, and which, as I believe, offers no less important evidence against the above-mentioned "correlation": Chinese. There are probably just two primary branches among modern Chinese languages: Min and the rest (although potentially this is not the only solution). The ultimate fun of it is, however, that no matter how many splits we count among the modern Chinese languages, they are all not older than the the 3rd c. C.E., that is almost 15 hundred years after the first Chinese text was scratched on a turtle-shell and one thousand years after we can read Chinese texts *phonetically* with a good degree of accuracy. Best wishes to all, ========================= Alexander Vovin Associate Professor East Asian Languages & Literatures University of Hawaii at Manoa vovin at hawaii.edu ----- Original Message ----- From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen Date: Thursday, October 3, 2002 1:17 pm Subject: Re: Age of various language families > ----------------------------Original message------------------------ > ---- > While agreeing with the wise points you are making, Tore, I still > thinkthis whole discussion is severely flawed. It is presumed that > languagesdiverge and become more numerous over time. They do > diverge, but I would > rather tend to believe that their number keeps relatively constant > (butperhaps not now, with mass communication and cultural > imperialism). What > is being counted is protolanguages and their descendants - and, oh > yes,descendants outnumber their protos. But the protos had dialects > that did > not have such a fate that we have occasion to call them the protos of > anything, since they are not directly continued in anything we > know. Still > they must have been there and so should be included in the > assessment of > the number of languages. If we simply blindly follow the lead we > may end > in the silliest of absurdities: No one, marvelling at the great > dialectalvariety of Frisian versus the near-absence of dialects of > Greek, would > infer that the Frisian dialects split from each other before the > time of > Linear B, although that is what the principle should make us > conclude. I > am sure you would get cornered at more than one point and have to > declaresome IE languages older than PIE. I may in fact apply to > Indo-Iranian: It > is my rough impression that the number of Indic, Dardic and Iranian > languages is today greater than that of the Indo-European languages > of the > other branches combined. That would mean that the protolanguage > underlyingIndo-Iranian is older than the protolanguage underlying > the rest; that of > the rest is PIE; so PII is older than PIE. That will be the point > where I > stop bothering about the exercise. > > Jens > > On Wed, 2 Oct 2002, Tore Janson wrote: > > > ----------------------------Original message---------------------- > ------ > > Mikael Parkvall and Joanna Nichols both think that it would be > interesting> to get an idea about the average rate of language > splits within a > > genetically defined family over a given time period. Several > others have > > pointed to the formidable problems of method and definition > involved. For my > > part, I also doubt that there is any way to find a reasonably > reliable> procedure to find such a rate, or that the value of this > average rate would > > give us any meaningful information. In many ways the problem is > similar to > > the notorious one of finding the (average) rate for language > change. We all > > know what happened to the assumption by Swadesh that the rate is > constant.> But I want to draw attention to another aspect of the > question. Parkvall > > and Nichols look at the speech communities at a given time (now, in > > practice) and try to count how the languages relate to attested > or assumed > > proto-languages. They then count the average number of languages > coming from > > each proto-language. Since all existing languages are assumed > (with good > > reason) to come from some proto-language, the average, with this > method,> cannot go below 1, as Nichols sees. Several of the > objections raised have to > > do with the fact that languages that have disappeared completely, > such as > > Etruscan, are not accounted for at all. And that has to be done, > at least if > > one would like to get any kind of answer to Parkvall's question > why there > > are not "gazillions" of languages by now. > > Therefore it would be better to count the number of languages at > some time > > in history, and the average number of "daughters" to these at a > later time. > > In practice, we cannot do that, but suppose for a moment that we > could, and > > we will see something interesting. > > Let us assume that at time A, there were three languages, called > 1, 2, 3. At > > a later time B, there may be for example the three languages 1a, > 1b, and 1c, > > meaning that language 1 has split into three, and 2 and 3 have > disappeared.> There may also be the three languages 1a, 2a, and 3a, > meaning that each > > original language has exactly one daughter. If one counts from > time B, as > > Parkvall and Nichols, the average number of daughters is 3 in the > first> case, and 1 in the second. But if one counts from time A, > the average number > > of daughters is 1 in both cases. > > A moment of thought is enough to see that the later result will > be true > > regardless of the number of splits, as long as the number of > languages is > > the same at time A and time B. If there are 5000 languages at > time A and at > > time B, the average language at time A will have exactly 1 > daughter at time > > B. The splits that occur will be exactly balanced by the > languages that > > disappear. > > On the other hand, if the number of languages rises from time A > to time B, > > the average number of daughters will rise too. (All this is true > under a > > large number of assumptions implicitly made by Parkvall and > Nichols, among > > others that languages are well-defined entities, that there are > language> splits but not language amalgamations or languages > without "mothers", and > > that each language is spoken by a well-defined speech community > of its own.) > > If there are 200 languages at time A and 1000 languages at time > B, the > > average number of daughters will be 5. That is, the average > number of > > daughters is actually completely determined by the raise or fall > in the > > number of languages. > > Now, a return to reality. The number of languages in the world at > any given > > time is dependent on the total number of people on earth and the > average> number of people in each speech community with a language > of its own. We > > know, or can guess, something about this. An account may be found > in a > > recent book of mine: T. Janson (2002) Speak: A short history of > languages.> See also, for example, D. Nettle (1999) Linguistic > Diversity.> Very shortly, it is probable that for most of human > history, up to around > > 10,000 years ago, the total population was very small, but speech > > communities were also very small (perhaps a couple of thousand > persons), so > > that there may have been as many languages around as there are > now for a > > very long time. In such a situation, there are no more splits than > > disappearances. In the last few thousand years, populations have > raised> dramatically, but the size of speech communities seems to > have risen even > > faster. Thus, the total number of languages has probably gone > down for quite > > some time, and is certainly going down right now. As for splits, > the number > > has probably been high in some areas, and has been balanced by > the fact that > > many languages have disappeared. > > I think this example shows that it is important for historical > linguists to > > remember that languages are actually spoken by people, and that > linguistic> changes do not happen within a theory or a model but > have to do directly > > with what happens to the language users. > > > > Tore Janson > > > From anaikio at sun3.oulu.fi Mon Oct 7 11:49:20 2002 From: anaikio at sun3.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 07:49:20 EDT Subject: Age of various language families In-Reply-To: <1223fb11dae0.11dae01223fb@hawaii.edu> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Dear discussants: Questions concerning the Uralic family have come up in this discussion. Without commenting on the main subject, I would merely like to make a brief remark on the taxonomy of the Uralic languages. Alexander Vovin wrote: "both Turkic and Uralic have two primary branches..." In standard references it is maintained that Uralic has two primary branches, Samoyedic and Finno-Ugric. However, this interpretation is now widely questioned inside the field. While the traditional taxonomy still has many supporters, it seems to be based on questionable linguistic criteria - as well as outdated extralinguistic considerations. The main argument in favor of the dichotomy has been lexical: some "Finno-Ugric" lexical items lack a cognate in Samoyedic (most of the numerals and words for 'hand, arm', 'autumn', 'marrow', 'ice', etc.). However, it is difficult to see these lexical isoglosses as conclusive, especially as no clear support outside the lexicon has been presented for the binary family tree. For instance, in phonology only two quite marginal vowel changes corresponding to the "Finno-Ugric" node have been suggested. Similar problems are involved in defining most of the lower level subgroups assumed in the traditional taxonomy, i.e. "Ugric", "Finnic-Permic", "Finnic-Volgaic" and "Finnic-Samic". In fact, the case of Uralic shows much resemblance to that of Indo-European: there are many easily definable low-level branches (Saamic, Finnic, Permic, Samoyedic, etc.), but their mutual relationships are notoriously difficult to establish. Ante Aikio Department of Finnish, Saami and Logopedics University of Oulu, Finland ante.aikio at oulu.fi From erickson at piercingsuit.com Mon Oct 7 11:50:35 2002 From: erickson at piercingsuit.com (Blaine Erickson) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 07:50:35 EDT Subject: Age of various language families In-Reply-To: <0H3J00CBJKHW3A@mail.hawaii.edu> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Sasha Vovin brought up some very good points about the non-correlation between primary branches and language family age. I'd just like to point out that although Robert Blust is an outstanding scholar and an expert in Austronesian linguistics, his account of the branching of Austronesian is not the only one out there. The late Stanley Starosta, another true expert in the field, held that Austronesian had just two primary branches, and that all the Formosan languages split of from one or another of these. Malayo-Polynesian, also known as extra-Formosan, is quite a ways down on the tree in his scheme, and is not even necessary for reconstructing proto-Austronesian. I attended a presentation of his on this a few years ago, so my memory is a little fuzzy on details, but I do remember his data and analysis were quite convincing. Two branches, or four, or ten, I am in no position to say. Perhaps Austronesian is a family for which we don't yet have a consensus on the number of primary branches. The age, however, is generally agreed to be about 6000 years BP. One more thought on the possible correlation between number of branches and language family age. If Ainu is the descendant of the language originally spoken in the Japanese archipelago, just as the people themselves appear to be the descendants of the original inhabitants, then it is a single-member family that goes back at least 10,000 years. (Sasha, please correct me if I'm wrong about the number of members in Ainu--I don't have your reconstruction handy.) Best wishes, Blaine Erickson erickson at piercingsuit.com At 12:00 AM -0400 02.10.6, vovin at hawaii.edu wrote: >----------------------------Original message---------------------------- >I couldn't agree more with Jens Rasmussen, Scott DeLancey, and others >who voiced their opposition to the connection between the number of >primary branches in a family and its age. First of all, I am sorry to >say, I believe that Johanna Nichols calculations of a number of primary >branches in many cases are either fundamentally flawed, or are based on >some outdated material. Thus, e.g., Japanese (or rather Japonic as we >call it nowadays), certainly is not just one primary branch, but two, >with quite obvious split between Japanese proper and Ryukyuan. Having >just two primary branches, this family is *definitely* much older than >Slavic that has three. Austronesian does not have just 4 branches, as >JN asserts, there are 9 *primary* branches on Taiwan alone as cogently >demonstrated by Blust 1997, + the Malayo-Polynesian branch, altogether >totaling 10 primary branches. From vovin at hawaii.edu Tue Oct 8 11:04:17 2002 From: vovin at hawaii.edu (vovin at hawaii.edu) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2002 07:04:17 EDT Subject: Age of various language families Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > Sasha Vovin brought up some very good points about the non- correlation > between primary branches and language family age. I'd just like to > pointout that although Robert Blust is an outstanding scholar and > an expert in > Austronesian linguistics, his account of the branching of > Austronesian is > not the only one out there. The late Stanley Starosta, another true > expertin the field, held that Austronesian had just two primary > branches, and > that all the Formosan languages split of from one or another of these. Blaine, the idea that all Formosan languages are within the same subgroup did not originate with Stan -- as far as I know it goes back to at least Dahl's work. To refresh your fuzzy memory (:-), I believe that you refer to Starosta 1995 -- "A grammatical subgrouping of Formosan languages" in Symposium series of the institute of history and philology, Academia Sinica #3. But with all my love and respect to Stan -- I know that you know that this is the case -- his Formosan taxonomy that is based on lexicase grammar is off the wall, to say the least. And this is exactly what Blust debunks in his 1997 article (in the papers for the 8th International Conference on Austronesian Languages, Taipei December 28-30, 1997) under the subtitle "syntactic non- evidence". Please read this most important paper. Certainly, Bob Blust classification is not the only one, but I bet it is the one which is the most accepted today (with minor variations). As in any field there are crazy classifications of AN branches -- e.g., the one by Isidore Dyen -- you are not going to invoke it, right? As you well know, the only basis for subgrouping is the exclusively shared innovations. Now, how Formosan languages could possibly represent a single subgroup, having, e.g., different reflexes of PAN *C, and *S? Etc., etc. Also, how you are going to argue for Atayalic deriving from the same subgroup as other languages? Etc., etc. The argumenys against Formosan languages as a single subgroup are really endless -- but we can discuss it at a greater length, if you wish. > Malayo-Polynesian, also known as extra-Formosan, is quite a ways > down on > the tree in his scheme, and is not even necessary for reconstructing > proto-Austronesian. This is an apparent exaggeration: it is not possible to reconstruct a lot of stuff in PAN without PMP evidence. > > > One more thought on the possible correlation between number of > branches and > language family age. If Ainu is the descendant of the language > originallyspoken in the Japanese archipelago, just as the people > themselves appear to > be the descendants of the original inhabitants, then it is a single- > memberfamily that goes back at least 10,000 years. (Sasha, please > correct me if > I'm wrong about the number of members in Ainu--I don't have your > reconstruction handy.) Good example, Blaine. It is probably binary: Hokkaidoo-Kuril Ainu vs. Sakhalin Ainu, but the split again probably occured no earlier than 12th c. C.E. or so, which is 11 thousand years later than the Joomon culture that is normally associated with Ainu-speaking population. So, the number of splits really has nothing to do with the age od a given family. Cheers, Sasha > > Best wishes, > > Blaine Erickson > erickson at piercingsuit.com ========================= Alexander Vovin Associate Professor East Asian Languages & Literatures University of Hawaii at Manoa vovin at hawaii.edu ----- Original Message ----- From: Blaine Erickson Date: Monday, October 7, 2002 1:50 am Subject: Re: Age of various language families > ----------------------------Original message------------------------ > ---- > Sasha Vovin brought up some very good points about the non- correlation > between primary branches and language family age. I'd just like to > pointout that although Robert Blust is an outstanding scholar and > an expert in > Austronesian linguistics, his account of the branching of > Austronesian is > not the only one out there. The late Stanley Starosta, another true > expertin the field, held that Austronesian had just two primary > branches, and > that all the Formosan languages split of from one or another of these. > Malayo-Polynesian, also known as extra-Formosan, is quite a ways > down on > the tree in his scheme, and is not even necessary for reconstructing > proto-Austronesian. > > I attended a presentation of his on this a few years ago, so my > memory is a > little fuzzy on details, but I do remember his data and analysis > were quite > convincing. Two branches, or four, or ten, I am in no position to say. > Perhaps Austronesian is a family for which we don't yet have a > consensus on > the number of primary branches. The age, however, is generally > agreed to be > about 6000 years BP. > > One more thought on the possible correlation between number of > branches and > language family age. If Ainu is the descendant of the language > originallyspoken in the Japanese archipelago, just as the people > themselves appear to > be the descendants of the original inhabitants, then it is a single- > memberfamily that goes back at least 10,000 years. (Sasha, please > correct me if > I'm wrong about the number of members in Ainu--I don't have your > reconstruction handy.) > > Best wishes, > > Blaine Erickson > erickson at piercingsuit.com > > At 12:00 AM -0400 02.10.6, vovin at hawaii.edu wrote: > >----------------------------Original message----------------------- > ----- > >I couldn't agree more with Jens Rasmussen, Scott DeLancey, and others > >who voiced their opposition to the connection between the number of > >primary branches in a family and its age. First of all, I am sorry to > >say, I believe that Johanna Nichols calculations of a number of > primary>branches in many cases are either fundamentally flawed, or > are based on > >some outdated material. Thus, e.g., Japanese (or rather Japonic as we > >call it nowadays), certainly is not just one primary branch, but two, > >with quite obvious split between Japanese proper and Ryukyuan. Having > >just two primary branches, this family is *definitely* much older > than>Slavic that has three. Austronesian does not have just 4 > branches, as > >JN asserts, there are 9 *primary* branches on Taiwan alone as > cogently>demonstrated by Blust 1997, + the Malayo-Polynesian > branch, altogether > >totaling 10 primary branches. > From stefan.grondelaers at arts.kuleuven.ac.be Thu Oct 10 13:42:42 2002 From: stefan.grondelaers at arts.kuleuven.ac.be (Stefan Grondelaers) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 09:42:42 EDT Subject: Conference announcement (Measuring lexical variation and change) Message-ID: Apologies for multiple postings Conference announcement On October 24-25, the research unit Quantitative lexicology and variational linguistics of the Department of Linguistics of the University of Leuven hosts the symposium MEASURING LEXICAL VARIATION AND CHANGE A Symposium on Quantitative Sociolexicology Made possible by the Fund for Scientific Research - Flanders Aim This workshop brings together researchers in the field of variational lexicology and diachronic vocabulary studies who use quantitative methods. Although such methods have been used less intensively in the study of lexical variation and change than they have been employed in the field of phonetics, morphology, or other linguistic variables, there is a growing body of quantitative research on the distribution of words over language varieties and the diffusion of lexical changes over time. The symposium intends to create a forum for the confrontation and the comparison of the different approaches involved. Structure & schedule The workshop consists of 5 plenary sessions (1 hour) and 12 regular sessions (35'). Invited speakers are: Nigel Armstrong (University of Leeds) Peter Auer (University of Freiburg) Harald Baayen (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Nijmegen & University of Nijmegen) John Nerbonne (University of Groningen) Terttu Nevalainen (University of Helsinki) In order to ensure a highly focused event with maximal interaction between the participants, the number of regular presentations is limited to 12, and there are no parallell sessions. The full programme, as well as abstracts of all the lectures can be found on the conference website http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.ac.be/sociolex Conference venue The symposium will take place in the Groot Begijnhof "Grand Beguinage", Leuven's magnificent Unesco heritage. The Begijnhof, which was founded in the 13th century outside the town walls, is a microcosmos of picturesque 16th-17th C houses, little cobbled alleys, narrow bridges, and an early Gothic church. It is now a residence for University staff and Foreign guests. The lectures are organised in the neighboring Irish College (1607), where a buffet lunch will also be served. Dinner will be served in the magnificent 16th C infirmary of the Faculty Club. Accommodation & fees For participants who present a paper, participation in the symposium, as well as lunch and dinner on Thursday and Friday are free of charge. Accommodation will be arranged for active participants in the Begijnhof Congress Hotel (www.begijnhofcongreshotel.be) (to be paid for by the participants themselves). If you are interested in attending the symposium as a passive participant, please send an e-mail to Dirk Geeraerts, Stefan Grondelaers & Dirk Speelman (by October 16 at the latest) at the following address: sociolex at listserv.cc.kuleuven.ac.be Additional information on the conference organisers & the conference schedule, the conference venue (how to get there) & registration, can be found on the conference website http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.ac.be/sociolex -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Julia.Ulrich at deGruyter.com Fri Oct 11 12:41:17 2002 From: Julia.Ulrich at deGruyter.com (Julia Ulrich) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 08:41:17 EDT Subject: Language Change. The Interplay of Internal, External and Extra-Linguistic Factors, ed. by Mari C. Jones and Edith Esch Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- NEW PUBLICATION FROM MOUTON DE GRUYTER!!!!!!!!!!!!! >>From the series Contributions to the Sociology of Language Series Editor: Joshua A. Fishman LANGUAGE CHANGE THE INTERPLAY OF INTERNAL, EXTERNAL AND EXTRA-LINGUISTIC FACTORS Edited by Mari C. Jones and Edith Esch 2002. ix. 338 pages. Cloth. Euro 88.00 / sFr 141,- / approx. US$ 88.00 ISBN 3-11-017202X (Contributions to the Sociology of Language 86) This volume examines the phenomenon of language change from three different perspectives. It focuses on the effects of internal developments in the linguistic system, the role of contact with other varieties and the influence that extra-linguistic factors such as sociopolitical and economic developments may have on language. Moreover, as language change is rarely a clear-cut process, the interface between these different forces are explored. This book brings together the work of eighteen scholars working in the fields of historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and bilingualism and presents hitherto unpublished data from varieties including English, French, Karaim, Modern Greek, Jordanian, Spanish, Latin, and Arabic. The chapters are organized around the themes of levelling, convergence and adaptative mechanisms and combine theoretical debate with case studies of the varieties discussed. >>From the contents Introduction Kimberley Farrar and Mari C. Jones 1. LEVELLING Dialect contact and koin?ization: the case of northern France David Hornsby The depicardization of the vernaculars of the Lille conurbation Tim Pooley Jordanian and Palestinian dialects in contact: vowel raising in Amman Enam Al-Wer "Salience" as an explanatory factor in language change: evidence from dialect levelling in urban England Paul Kerswill and Ann Williams My Dad's auxiliaries Edith Esch 2. CONVERGENCE Mette a haout dauve la grippe des Anglla?s: convergence on the Island of Guernsey Mari C. Jones Modern Greek: towards a standard language or a new diglossia? David Holton Standard English and the lexicon: why so many different spellings? Laura Wright Latin and Arabic evolutionary processes: some relections Joseph Cremona There's sheep and there's penguins: convergence, "drift" and "slant" in New Zealand and Falkland Island English David Britain and Andrea Sudbury 3. ADAPTATIVE MECHANISMS Convergence in the brain: the leakiness of bilinguals' sound systems Ian Watson Language contact in early bilinguals: the special statusof function words Margaret Deuchar and Marilyn May Vihman 4. CODE-COPYING Contact-induced change in a code-copying framework Lars Johanson Karaim: a high-copying language ?va ?gnes Csat? To order, please contact SFG-Servicecenter-Fachverlage GmbH Postfach 4343 72774 Reutlingen Fax: +49 (0)7071 - 93 53 - 33 E-mail: deGruyter at s-f-g.com For USA, Canada and Mexico: Walter de Gruyter, Inc. 200 Saw Mill River Road Hawthorne, NY 10532, USA Fax: +1 (914) 747-1326 E-mail: cs at degruyterny.com Please visit our website for other publications by Mouton de Gruyter: http://www.degruyter.com From ellyvangelderen at asu.edu Wed Oct 16 01:57:54 2002 From: ellyvangelderen at asu.edu (Elly Van Gelderen) Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 21:57:54 EDT Subject: SGL conference (fwd) Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- A joint meeting of the Forum for Germanic Language Studies and the Society for Germanic Linguistics will be held from 3 - 5 January 2003 in London (England). There will be plenary papers by Professor Ludwig Eichinger (Mannheim) and Professor Angelika Linke (Zurich) and over 50 papers by colleagues from 13 countries. All scholars and graduate students interested in Germanic linguistics (including English up to 1500) are warmly invited to attend. The Conference website http://www.fgls.ac.uk/fglslondon.html has a list of the papers which will be presented, and also information about accommodation and registration. Further information may be obtained from the local organizers, Dr. Christian Fandrych (King's College) [e-mail: Christian.Fandrych at kcl.ac.uk] or Dr. Klaus Fischer (LondonMetropolitan University) [e-mail: klauss at ntlworld.com] From Julia.Ulrich at deGruyter.com Wed Oct 16 02:04:22 2002 From: Julia.Ulrich at deGruyter.com (Julia Ulrich) Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 22:04:22 EDT Subject: Old English: Michael Getty: The Metre of Beowulf: A Constraint-Based Approach (2002) Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- New Publication from Mouton de Gruyter!!!! >>From the series Topics in English Linguistics (TiEL) Series Editors: Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Bernd Kortmann Michael G. Getty THE METRE OF BEOWULF 2002. viii, 280 pages. Cloth. Euro 88.00 / sFr 141,- / approx. US$ 88.00 ISBN 3-11-017105-8 (Topics in English Linguistics 36) This book presents a new treatment of metre of Beowulf, an Old English epic poem of uncertain date and origin which is nonetheless considered one of the gems of Germanic Alliterative Verse. Grounded in the idea of constraint interaction and conflict associated Optimality Theory, this book presents the case that the alliterative lines of Beowulf are based on an ideal structure consisting of trochaic metrical feet organized into an iteratively binary, strong-weak structure. Around this ideal hovers an apparently wild range of divergent structures which have proven difficult to accommodate under a unified approach. In fact, the considerable variation in Beowulf can be understood as reflecting an inherently simple system of accommodating the diverse phonological shapes of words within the Old English poetic lexicon. Crucially, this accommodation takes place against a background in which a number of independent and often conflicting conditions on metrical and prosodic form are played out. To a greater extent than previous approaches, this book establishes a line of inquiry into the metre of Beowulf that is compatible with the burgeoning fields of generative metrics and phonology. One important fallout of this aim is the proposal to do away with the notion of 'metrical types,' the dominant thread in research on Old English metre since the late nineteenth century. Crucially, both of these moves allow for novel and compelling explanations for a range of metrical peculiarities of Beowulf, from Kuhn's Laws to Kaluza's Law. Moreover, the analysis points toward data on patterns which have, to date, escaped scholars' notice, while at the same time showing surprising consistencies between the metre of Beowulf and other, unrelated metrical traditions. >>From the contents: I Introduction II The stress phonology of Old English III Metrical structure at the foot level: Part I IV Metrical structure at the foot level: Part II V Metrical structure at the level of the half-line and long-line VI Conclusion To order, please contact SFG-Servicecenter-Fachverlage GmbH Postfach 4343 72774 Reutlingen Fax: +49 (0)7071 - 93 53 - 33 E-mail: deGruyter at s-f-g.com For USA, Canada and Mexico: Walter de Gruyter, Inc. 200 Saw Mill River Road Hawthorne, NY 10532, USA Fax: +1 (914) 747-1326 E-mail: cs at degruyterny.com Please visit our website for other publications by Mouton de Gruyter: http://www.degruyter.com From paul at benjamins.com Fri Oct 18 21:51:56 2002 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 17:51:56 EDT Subject: New Book: Fitzmaurice Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- A new work of potential interest to historical linguists from John Benjamins Publishing: Title: The Familiar Letter in Early Modern English Subtitle: A pragmatic approach Series Title: Pragmatics & Beyond New Series Publication Year: 2002 Publisher: John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/ Author: Susan M. Fitzmaurice Hardback: Pages: viii, 263 pp. ISBN: 1588111865, Price: USD 90.00 (US & Canada) ISBN: 9027251150, Price: EUR 100.00 (Rest of world) Abstract: This research monograph examines familiar letters in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English to provide a pragmatic reading of the meanings that writers make and readers infer. The first part of the book presents a method of analyzing historical texts. The second part seeks to validate this method through case studies that illuminate how modern pragmatic theory may be applied to distant speech communities in both history and culture in order to reveal how speakers understand one another and how they exploit intended and unintended meanings for their own communicative ends. The analysis demonstrates the application of pragmatic theory (including speech act theory, deixis, politeness, implicature, and relevance theory) to the study of historical, literary and fictional letters from extended correspondences, producing an historically informed, richly situated account of the meanings and interpretations of those letters that a close reading affords. This book will be of interest to scholars of the history of the English language, historical pragmatics, discourse analysis, as well as to social and cultural historians, and literary critics. Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction The pragmatics of epistolary conversation Context and the linguistic construction of epistolary worlds Making and reading epistolary meaning Sociable letters, acts of advice and medical counsel Epistolary acts of seeking and dispensing patronage Intersubjectivity and the writing of the epistolary interlocutor Relevance and the consequences of unintended epistolary meaning Making meaning in letters: a lesson in reading References Index Subject Language(s): English (Language Code: ENG) Written In: English (Language Code: English) Paul Peranteau (paul at benjamins.com) P O Box 27519 Ph: 215 836-1200 Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 Fax: 215 836-1204 John Benjamins Publishing Co. website: http://www.benjamins.com From traugott at csli.Stanford.EDU Fri Oct 18 12:39:35 2002 From: traugott at csli.Stanford.EDU (Elizabeth Traugott) Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 08:39:35 EDT Subject: job opportunity Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- STANFORD UNIVERSITY LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT JOB ANNOUNCEMENT The Department of Linguistics at Stanford University announces a full-time position for a tenure-track assistant professor or beginning associate professor with a starting date of September 1, 2003. Candidates must hold the Ph.D. in linguistics or a related field by the starting date. The department values research programs that link more than one subfield of linguistics in the development of larger theories of language and language use, and it emphasizes rigorous theoretical work solidly based on empirical data from, among other sources, corpora of spoken and written usage, experimental findings, fieldwork, and computer modeling. We are particularly interested in receiving applications from candidates in the following areas: phonetics/phonology, sociolinguistics/variation & change, and computational linguistics/language processing. Filling this position represents an initial step in our long-range plans for the department. To receive full consideration, hard-copy applications should arrive by December 6th, 2002. (Please no electronic applications.) Stanford University is an equal opportunity employer and especially welcomes applications from women and minority candidates. Please include a CV, statements of research and teaching interests, up to three research papers, and the names of three or four references. All applicants should also have letters of reference sent directly to the Search Committee. Send materials to: Search Committee Department of Linguistics Stanford University Margaret Jacks Hall, Room 127 Stanford, CA 94305-2150 USA (Tel: 650-723-4284; Fax: 650-723-5666) E-mail inquiries should be directed to Professor Beth Levin, the chair of the search committee, at bclevin at stanford.edu. The Stanford Linguistics Department's web page is: http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu. From paul at benjamins.com Tue Oct 22 02:13:56 2002 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 22:13:56 EDT Subject: New Book: Thomas Cravens Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- John Benjamins Publishing announces a new work of relevance to historical linguistics: Title: Comparative Historical Dialectology Subtitle: Italo-Romance clues to Ibero-Romance sound change Series Title: Current Issues in Linguistic Theory Publication Year: 2002 Publisher: John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/ Author: Thomas D. Cravens (University of Wisconsin, Madison) Hardback: ISBN: 1588113132, Pages: xii, 166, Price: USD 77.00 (US & Canada) Hardback: ISBN: 9027247390, Pages: xii, 163, Price: EUR 85.00 (Everywhere Else) Abstract: This brief monograph explores the historical motivations for two sets of phonological changes in some varieties of Romance: restructured voicing of intervocalic /p t k/, and palatalization of initial /l/ and /n/. These developments have been treated repeatedly over the decades, yet neither has enjoyed a satisfactory solution. This book attempts to demonstrate that both outcomes are ultimately attributable to the loss of early pan-Romance consonant gemination. This study is of interest not only to the language-specific field of historical Romance linguistics, but also to general historical linguistics. The central problems examined here constitute classic cases of questions that cannot be answered by confining analysis solely to the individual languages under investigation. The passage of time, the indirect nature of fragmentary and accidental documentation, and the nature of the changes themselves conspire to deny access to the most essential facts. However, comparison of closely cognate languages now undergoing change supplies a perspective for discerning conditions that may ultimately lead to states achieved in the distant past by the languages under investigation. Table of Contents Dedication v Acknowledgements vii Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 2 Substratum 15 Chapter 3 Crucial ingredients: Intervocalic voicing in Latin, Assimilation at word boundaries 40 Chapter 4 Voicing in Western Romance 66 Chapter 5 Palatalization of word-initial /l/ and /n/ in Ibero-Romance 93 Chapter 6 Loose ends: Non-voicing in Rumania and the dialects of the Pyrenees, Irregular voicing in Italian 116 Chapter 7 Conclusion 141 References 144 Index of terms and concepts 159 Index of names 161 Lingfield(s): Historical Linguistics Language Family(ies): Romance (Subgroup Code: IEJAAA) Written In: English (Language Code: ENG) Paul Peranteau (paul at benjamins.com) P O Box 27519 Ph: 215 836-1200 Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 Fax: 215 836-1204 John Benjamins Publishing Co. website: http://www.benjamins.com From paul at benjamins.com Wed Oct 23 18:23:49 2002 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2002 14:23:49 EDT Subject: New Book from John Benjamins: Hickey Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- John Benjamins Publishing announces a new book of interest to historical linguists: Title: A Source Book for Irish English Series Title: Library and Information Sources in Linguistics 27 Publication Year: 2002 Publisher: John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/ Author: Raymond Hickey Pages: xii, 541 pp, includes CD-ROM Hardback: ISBN: 1588112098 Price: USD 136.00 (US & Canada) Hardback: ISBN: 90 272 3753 0 Price: EUR 150.00 (Everywhere Else) Abstract: The intention of the current book is to provide a flexible and comprehensive bibliographical tool to those scholars working or interested in Irish English. A whole range of references (approx. 2,500) relating to Irish English in all its aspects are gathered together here and in the majority of cases annotations are supplied. The book has a detailed introduction dealing the history of Irish English, the documentation available and contains an overview of the themes in Irish English which have occupied linguists working in the field. Various appendixes offer information on the history of Irish English studies and biographical notes on scholars from this area. All the bibliographical material is contained on the accompanying CD-ROM along with appropriate software (Windows, PC) for processing the databases and texts. The databases are fully searchable, information can be exported at will and customised extracts can be created by users from within an intuitive software interface. Lingfield(s): Sociolinguistics Subject Language(s): English (Language Code: Eng) Written In: English (Language Code: Eng) John Benjamins Publishing Co. Offices: Philadelphia Amsterdam: Websites: http://www.benjamins.com http://www.benjamins.nl E-mail: service at benjamins.com customer.services at benjamins.nl Phone: +215 836-1200 +31 20 6304747 Fax: +215 836-1204 +31 20 6739773 From tuitekj at anthro.umontreal.ca Thu Oct 24 15:44:16 2002 From: tuitekj at anthro.umontreal.ca (Kevin Tuite) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 11:44:16 EDT Subject: etymology of "trouver" Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Dear colleagues, As many of you may know, especially those working in Romance linguistics, the etymology of French "trouver" and Occitan "trobar" was the subject of an animated debate a century ago between Hugo Schuchardt and the French linguists Gaston Paris and Antoine Thomas. (I have cobbled together a summary out of various papers & etymological dictionaries, shown below). The debate is of interest for a number of reasons: the priority to be accorded regular sound change in reconstruction (as against the consideration of semantics, lexical contamination, etc.), the beginnings of the "W?rter-und-Sachen" deployment of data from folklore and material culture in etymological argumentation, and of course, the personalities involved. My impression, as a non-specialist, is that most recent references to the etymology of "trouver" derive it from *tropare, although the authors of some etymological dictionaries continue to lean toward Schuchardt's hypothesis. I plan to cite this debate in a book chapter I am now writing on historical linguistic methodology, and I wish to have a sense of where the matter stands at present. I would like to hear your opinions of the arguments formulated by the various parties to the debate. (And if there has been any recent discussion of the "trouver" etymology, please send me the references). I will summarize your responses for the list. thanks in advance! Kevin Tuite ********************** The story of the "trouver" debate begins with Friedrich Diez's supposition that Latin /turbare/ "stir up" was the source, although a somewhat far-fetched sequence of meaning changes had to be assumed: "stir up" > "rummage through" > "seek" > "find". In 1878, Paris challenged Diez's hypothesis on phonetic grounds. The transition from turbare to its alleged descendants would require (1) metathesis of the /r/: /turbare/ > */trubare/; (2) lowering of the initial vowel to /o/: */trubare/ > */trobare/; (3) retention of the intervocalic /b/ in Occitan: */trobare/ > /trobar/. Metathesis of /r/ is not rare in the history of the Romance languages, but the lenition of intervocalic /b/ to /v/ or zero appeared to be a highly regular sound change in Occitan (e.g. /probare/ > /proar/ "prove"). As an alternative source, Paris reconstructed the Vulgar Latin proto-form *tropare, which had the advantage of accounting for "trouver" and "trobar" via regular sound laws, but like /turbare/ it necessitated an unusual semantic pathway ("compose [a melody]" > "invent" > "discover, find" ). About two decades later, Schuchardt attempted to show that Diez's initial proposal might not have been so wrong-headed after all. The /turbare/ etymology could be made to work if one allowed for irregular sound changes under the influence of the closely-related verb /turbulare/ > */trublare/ "stir up", whence French "troubler" and Occitan "treblar". As for the semantic development, in Schuchardt's opinion, turbare underwent a meaning shift from "stir up" to the more specialized sense of "stir up [water] in order to drive [fish toward a trap or net]", a meaning continued by cognates in several Italian and Sardinian dialects, which denote hunting by flushing game animals out the bush, or catching fish by driving them toward poisoned water. Besides amassing linguistic evidence, Schuchardt undertook research into traditional European fishing techniques. According to Malkiel (1993: 26), he was said to have "temporarily transformed one of the rooms of his home into a small-scale museum of fishing gear" while investigating this etymology. There is a very good summary and discussion of the "trouver" debate in: Ernst Tappolet. 1905. "Phonetik und Semantik in der etymologischen Forschung", reprinted in Etymologie, R?diger Schmitt, ed., 74-102. Darmstadt: Wissenschaft(1977). -- ************************************************************************* Kevin Tuite 514-343-6514 (bureau) D?partement d'anthropologie 514-343-2494 (t?l?copieur) Universit? de Montr?al C.P. 6128, succursale centre-ville Montr?al, Qu?bec H3C 3J7 tuitekj at anthro.umontreal.ca NOUVEAU! Site Web en construction: http://www.philologie.com ************************************************************************* From paul at benjamins.com Tue Oct 29 23:31:16 2002 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 18:31:16 EST Subject: New Book: Fanego et al. Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- John Benjamins Publishing announces a new work in historical linguistics: Title: English Historical Syntax and Morphology Subtitle: Selected papers from 11 ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela, 7-11 September 2000 Series Title: Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 223 Publication Year: 2002 Publisher: John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/ http://www.benjamins.nl Editor: Teresa Fanego Editor: Javier P?rez-Guerra Editor: Mar?a Jos? L?pez-Couzo all University of Santiago de Compostella Hardback: ISBN: 158811192X, Pages: x, 306 pp., Price: USD 99.00 (US & Canada) Hardback: ISBN: 9027247315, Pages: x, 306 pp., Price: EUR 109.00 (Everywhere Else) Abstract: This volume offers a selection of papers from the Eleventh International Conference on English Historical Linguistics held at the University of Santiago de Compostela. From the rich programme (over 130 papers were given during the conference), the present twelve papers were carefully selected to reflect the state of current research in the fields of English historical syntax and morphology. Some of the issues discussed are the emergence of viewpoint adverbials in English and German, changes in noun phrase structure from 1650 to the present, the development of the progressive in Scots, the passivization of composite predicates, the loss of V2 and its effects on the information structure of English, the acquisition of modal syntax and semantics by the English verb WANT, or the use of temporal adverbs as attributive adjectives in the Early Modern period. Many of the articles tackle questions of change through the use of methodological tools like computerized corpora. The theoretical frameworks adopted include, among others, grammaticalization theory, Dik's model of functional grammar, construction grammar and Government & Binding Theory. Table of Contents Introduction Teresa Fanego 1 Two types of passivization of 'V+NP+P' constructions in relation to idiomatization Minoji Akimoto 9 On the development of a friend of mine Cynthia L. Allen 23 Historical shifts in modification patterns with complex noun phrase structures: How long can you go without a verb? Douglas Biber and Victoria Clark 43 Grammaticalization versus lexicalization reconsidered: On the late use of temporal adverbs Laurel J. Brinton 67 The derivation of ornative,locative,ablative,privative and reversative verbs in English: A historical sketch Dieter Kastovsky 99 >From gold-gifa to chimney sweep? Morphological (un)markedness of Modern English agent nouns in a diachronic perspective Lucia Kornexl 111 A path to volitional modality Manfred G. Krug 131 Is it, stylewise or otherwise, wise to use -wise? Domain adverbials and the history of English -wise Ursula Lenker 157 The loss of the indefinite pronoun man: Syntactic change and information structure Bettelou Los 181 The progressive in Older Scots Anneli Meurman-Solin 203 Detransitivization in the history of English from a semantic perspective Ruth M?hlig and Monika E. Klages 231 Morphology recycled: The Principle of Rhythmic Alternation at work in Early and Late Modern English grammatical variation Julia Schl?ter 255 Lingfield(s): Historical Linguistics Subject Language(s): English (Language code: ENG) Written In: English (Language Code: ENG) John Benjamins Publishing Co. Offices: Philadelphia Amsterdam: Websites: http://www.benjamins.com http://www.benjamins.nl E-mail: service at benjamins.com customer.services at benjamins.nl Phone: +215 836-1200 +31 20 6304747 Fax: +215 836-1204 +31 20 6739773 From DISTERH at UNIVSCVM.SC.EDU Wed Oct 30 12:26:45 2002 From: DISTERH at UNIVSCVM.SC.EDU (Dorothy Disterheft) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 07:26:45 EST Subject: Linguistics position in Los Angeles Message-ID: California SU, Los Angeles English, 5151 State University Dr, Los Angeles, California 90032 Assistant or Associate Professor One tenure-track assistant or associate professor in LINGUISTICS. Candidates s hould be able to teach a wide range of courses in their fields as well as Fresh man Composition and general education courses. Demonstrated ability and/or interest in working in a multi-ethnic, multicultural environment. Send application, letter, vita, transcripts, and references to Steven S. Jones, Chair, Department of English, California State University, Los Angeles, CA 90032-8110 by December 5, 2002. EO/Title IX/ADA Employer www.calstatela.edu/academic/english/edeptwp/index.htm