From EvolPub at aol.com Wed Sep 4 22:09:56 2002 From: EvolPub at aol.com (Tony Schiavo) Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2002 18:09:56 EDT Subject: Book Announcement: Minor Vocabularies of Tutelo & Saponi Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Evolution Publishing is pleased to announce publication of the following volume from the American Language Reprints (ALR) series: Volume 26: Minor Vocabularies of Tutelo and Saponi Edward Sapir and Leo Frachtenberg, 1913 This edition collects a number of small but valuable examples of the Virginia Siouan languages. It includes two small vocabularies of about 50 words each by Edward Sapir and Leo Frachtenberg, both published in 1913. Also included are 7 translated Saponi place-names collected by William Byrd on the Virginia-North Carolina border in 1728, and 2 words of Moneton or Tomahitan obtained by Abraham Wood during an expedition into southern West Virginia in 1674. July 2002 ~ 61 pp. ~ clothbound ~ ISBN 1-889758-24-8 ~ $28.00 Evolution Publishing is dedicated to preserving and consolidating early primary source records of Native and early colonial America with the goal of making them more accessible and readily available to the academic community and the public at large. For further information on this and other titles in the ALR series: http://www.evolpub.com/ALR/ALRhome.html Evolution Publishing evolpub at aol.com From kemmer at ruf.rice.edu Fri Sep 6 12:19:45 2002 From: kemmer at ruf.rice.edu (Suzanne Kemmer) Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 08:19:45 EDT Subject: CSDL conference - prereg open Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Preregistration is now underway for the 6th CONFERENCE ON CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE, DISCOURSE AND LANGUAGE "LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND MIND" RICE UNIVERSITY Houston, Texas OCTOBER 11-14, 2002 KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: JOHN LUCY, University of Chicago/Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen SUSANNA CUMMING, University of California, Santa Barbara RONALD LANGACKER, University of Californa, San Diego CSDL 6 at Rice presents 75 talks in the areas of Cognitive Linguistics, Discourse, Functional Linguistics, and Speech and Language Processing, dealing with all aspects of language (structure and function, acquisition, variation, change) and all levels of language (phonology, morphosyntax, lexicon, discourse, and neural processing). Preregistration: $10 Preregistration Deadline: Web form submitted and payment received by OCTOBER 1, 2002 Registration at the door (or late preregistration): $20 The cutoff date for hotel reservations at the two official conference hotels (Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn & Suites) with the Conference discount is SEPTEMBER 27, 2002 Note: two other nearby hotels (Rodeway Inn, Best Western Plaza) have no cutoff date and may still have rooms after that point. The Conference Schedule, as well as further information on Registration, Accommodations, Conference Reception, and Conference Party Dinner have been posted on the Conference Website at: http://www.rice.edu/csdl Contact Information: Michel Achard (achard at rice.edu), Suzanne Kemmer (kemmer at rice.edu) and our assistant Caleb Everett (cde at rice.edu) From anaikio at sun3.oulu.fi Tue Sep 10 19:53:54 2002 From: anaikio at sun3.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio) Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 15:53:54 EDT Subject: Substrate toponyms Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Dear HISTLING members, I am a student of the Sami (Lapp) language and general linguistics in Finland; my field of interest is comparative Uralic linguistics, in particular the origin and history of Samic and Finnic languages. I ask for your advice on references that discuss traces of language shifts in place names. I am currently working on a paper that discusses Sami substrate place names that occur in central and southern Finland, and I intend to write my dissertation on the same subject. It would be most useful to get acquainted with similar research conducted elsewhere. I am interested in any references that discuss related issues. However, papers on the subject are scattered and hard to come by. Both theoretical and methodological treatments of general interest and case studies concentrating on a particular language and/or area are welcome. References in English or German would be most welcome; however, if there are important works in other common languages (Russian, French, Spanish, etc.), I will try to make out the relevant parts with the assistance of colleagues and a dictionary. Questions that I find particularly interesting include e.g. the following: what toponyms are borrowed in language shifts, i.e. what kind of typological traits does toponymic substrate display, and how it differs from superstrate influence; what kind of phonetic and structural nativization and alteration the borrowed names undergo; are there cases of a manifest toponymic subtrate, but little traces of language shift in other parts of the lexicon and/or grammar; to what extent can toponymic substrate be used as evidence of ethnic history (in the absence of historical records). In exchange for information, I can only offer my warmest thanks - and, of course, I will be glad to answer any questions concerning Samic substrate toponyms in Finnish, and related issues, in the case that someone finds the subject to be of interest. with best regards, Ante Aikio --- University of Oulu, Finland e-mail: ante.aikio at oulu.fi From Julia.Ulrich at deGruyter.com Thu Sep 12 12:15:30 2002 From: Julia.Ulrich at deGruyter.com (Julia Ulrich) Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2002 08:15:30 EDT Subject: History of Language and Linguistic Change: Rosenbach: Genitive Variation in English (TiEL 42) Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- New Publication from Mouton de Gruyter >>From the series Topics in English Linguistics Series Editors: Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Bernd Kortmann Anette Rosenbach GENITIVE VARIATION IN ENGLISH Conceptual Factors in Synchronic and Diachronic Studies 2002. xi, 361 pages. Cloth. Euro 64.00 / sFr 102,- / approx. US$ 64.00 ISBN 3-11-017370-0 (Topics in English Linguistics 42) This monograph is an empirical study of a particular type of grammatical variation, i.e. the genitive variation in English (s-genitive vs. of-genitive). Comparing the results of a Modern English experimental study and historical evidence for the development of the genitive variation, the main empirical finding of this study is that the s-genitive has become more productive again from late Middle to Present-day English. Theoretically, an approach to grammatical variation is proposed which places the choice of genitive construction into the mind of individual language users and, in so doing, tries to account for the observed change. >>From the Contents 1 Introduction 2 The structure of the s-genitive and the of-genitive: some theoretical preliminaries 3 Grammatical variation 4 Factors: Animacy, topicality, and possessive relation 5 'Variation' versus 'choice' 6 Modern English data: experimental study 7 Historical development of the genitive variation 8 A diachronic scenario: the extension of the s-genitive from late Middle to Modern English - economically-driven language change? 9 Summary and conclusion 10 Appendix For more information please contact the publisher: Mouton de Gruyter Genthiner Str. 13 10785 Berlin, Germany Fax: +49 30 26005 222 e-mail: wdg-info at degruyter.de To order, please contact SFG Servicecenter-Fachverlage GmbH Postfach 4343 72774 Reutlingen Germany Fax +49 (7071) 93 53 33 E-mail: deGruyter at s-f-g.com Please visit our website for other publications by Mouton de Gruyter http://www.degruyter.com From bestde at earthlink.net Fri Sep 13 11:41:54 2002 From: bestde at earthlink.net (Debbie Best) Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 07:41:54 EDT Subject: CFP: History of the English Language session, Kalamazoo, Deadline extended Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE session: Sponsored by the Carolina Association for Medieval Studies International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, May 8-11, 2003 Papers on any aspect of the history of the English language are invited for this session. Proposals on any period of the history or prehistory of English are eligible, as are proposals with an emphasis on HEL pedagogy, and approaches to the subject matter may be diachronic or synchronic. Some possible areas of interest include sociolinguistic factors in the history of English; morphological, syntactical, or phonological change; lexical borrowing; orthography; the relationship between spoken and written English; semantics; dialect; the emergence of English from the West Germanic dialect continuum; gender representation; grammatical gender; the sociohistorical relationship of English to other languages; and the development of standardized forms of English. Send abstracts by email (prefered) to Debra Best at dbest at uwm.edu or to Britt Mize at bmize at email.unc.edu, or by fax (marked ATTN: Debra Best) to 414-229-6070. If you fax an abstract, include your email address so we can confirm receipt of your submission. The submission deadline has been extended to Sept. 21, 2001. 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. ANSAX-L CHAUCER GERLINGL HEL-L HISTLING MEDTEXTL ONN From l.campbell at ling.canterbury.ac.nz Thu Sep 19 01:49:06 2002 From: l.campbell at ling.canterbury.ac.nz (Lyle Campbell) Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 21:49:06 EDT Subject: Abstracts deadline for International Congress of Linguists Message-ID: Dear Historical Linguists, REMINDER: The deadline is October 1, 2002, for submission of abstracts for the XVII INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF LINGUISTS, Prague, Czech Republic, July 24-29, 2003. I draw your attention to the session "Comparative Linguistics" (i.e. "historical linguistics and language change generally"). Details are found on the website http://www.cil17.org/ (including information on registration and accommodation). The CALL FOR PAPERS reads: Three-page abstracts of papers (both for the regular sessions and for the workshops) and poster descriptions should be sent (preferably ELECTRONICALLY, or in four hard copies) to the organizer of the session (or workshop) relevant for the topic of the paper (see list of sessions and list of workshops) [i.e. to me, address below, for historical linguistics]; in case of uncertainty about the appropriate session, the abstract may be sent to the address of the Chair of the Scientific Committee (see below). The authors should clearly indicate whether they submit an abstract of a full paper or a description of a poster. Authors of the accepted papers will be asked to send in a one-page summary of the paper in a camera-ready format (the instructions will be sent to the authors together with the information of acceptance), and this summary will be printed in the volume of abstracts. The slot for paper presentation will be 30 min long (incl. discussion). Important dates for submission of abstracts of papers, workshop contributions and poster descriptions: 3-page abstracts: October 1, 2002 [[Note: I do not know the reasons why 3-page abstracts were asked for, but some of the abstracts already submitted are much shorter and there is no plan to eliminate them from consideration.]] Information of acceptance/rejection will be sent out before: December 31, 2002 1-page summary for publication in the proceedings: March 31, 2003 Each abstract should contain: a separate page with the title of the paper/poster, the author's name, and affiliation, postal address, e-mail address and fax. The author's name should not be written on the abstract itself. My address (for abstract submissiosns and matters concerning this session) is: e-mail: l.campbell at canterbury.ac.nz or Prof.Lyle Campbell Department of Linguistics University of Canterbury Private Bag 4800 Christchurch, New Zeeland (Telephone: 64-3-364-2242 [office], Fax: 64-3-364-2969) The address of the Chair of the Scientific Committee is: Prof. Ferenc Kiefer Research Institute for Linguistics Hungarian academy of Sciences Benczur u. 33 H-1068 Budapest, Hungary e-mail: kiefer at nytud.hu Languages: Papers can be delivered in English, German, French or Russian; summaries published in the volume of abstracts should be written in English or French. Best regards, Lyle -- Professor Lyle Campbell, Dept. of Linguistics University of Canterbury Christchurch, New Zealand Fax: 64-3-364-2969 Phone: 64-3-364-2242 (office), 64-3-364-2089 (Linguistics dept) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From EvolPub at aol.com Thu Sep 26 15:37:37 2002 From: EvolPub at aol.com (Tony Schiavo) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 11:37:37 EDT Subject: Native American language resource now available Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- The Complete American Language Reprints Series, First Edition (CD-Rom) Compiled by Claudio R. Salvucci By the end of 2003, the American Language Reprints (ALR) series will reach 40 volumes. The amount of primary source material still available ensures that the series will continue to grow each year, potentially reaching hundreds of volumes as the project progresses. In order to make this data more accessible and affordable to researchers, Evolution Publishing is pleased to announce publication of the Complete American Language Reprint Series CD-Rom. Updated annually, this invaluable resource features printable complete texts of all current ALR volumes in PDF format. The 2002 first edition features volumes 1 through 26 of the ALR series, containing together over 7,500 unique Native American terms. Vocabularies offered include Edwards's "Observations on the Mahican Language [1788]," Hale's "The Tutelo Language [1883]," Cartier's "Vocabulary of Stadaconan [1534-6]," Strachey's "Dictionary of Powhatan [1612]," Gallatin's "Vocabulary of Seneca [1836]" and 21 similar works. Each subsequent annual edition of the CD-Rom will include all new volumes in the series published during the prior year in addition to all previously published volumes. Special pricing is available for repeat customers. The price of the CD-Rom for first-time purchasers reflects a savings of nearly 65% versus purchasing the entire series in book form. August  2002 ~ CD-Rom ~ 1-889758-29-9 ~ $260.00 For more information on this resource plus a complete listing of the vocabularies and word lists included, please visit our web site: http://www.evolpub.com/ALR/ALRCDRom.html Evolution Publishing evolpub at aol.com From bowern at fas.harvard.edu Thu Sep 26 15:33:01 2002 From: bowern at fas.harvard.edu (Claire Bowern) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 11:33:01 EDT Subject: Noun Incorporation In-Reply-To: <134057241.3220682600@wren.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Dear list members, I'm interested in languages that have lost noun incorporation, and I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of some examples. I am particularly interested in languages that have lost noun incorporation by ceasing to incorporate, thereby leaving few (if any) fossilised incorporated items. I'm also interested in the circumstances of the loss, if known. Please reply to me and I'll post a summary to the list. Best wishes, Claire Bowern _________________________________ Department of Linguistics Harvard University 305 Boylston Hall Cambridge MA 02138 USA ph: (+1) 617-547-3521 fax: (+1) 617-496-4447 From parkvall at ling.su.se Thu Sep 26 15:41:10 2002 From: parkvall at ling.su.se (Mikael Parkvall) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 11:41:10 EDT Subject: Age of various language families Message-ID: ----------------------------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 From paul at benjamins.com Thu Sep 26 15:41:28 2002 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 11:41:28 EDT Subject: New Book: Fanego Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- A new book from John Benjamins Publishing of interest to historical linguists: Sounds, Words, Texts and Change Selected papers from 11 ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela, 7-11 September 2000 Edited by Teresa Fanego, Belén Méndez-Naya and Elena Seoane (University of Santiago de Compostela ) Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 224 2002. x, 310 pp. Hardbound: US & Canada: 1 58811 196 2 / USD 99.00/ Rest of world: 90 272 4732 3 / EUR 109.00 This volume and its companion one (English Historical Syntax and Morphology, CILT 223) offer 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 thirteen papers were carefully selected to reflect the state of current research in the field of English historical linguistics. The areas represented in the volume are lexis and semantics, text-types, historical sociolinguistics and dialectology, and phonology. Many of the articles tackle questions of change and linguistic periodization through the use of methodological tools like corpora, linguistic atlases, thesauri and historical dictionaries. The theoretical frameworks adopted include, among others, multi-dimensional analysis, systemic-functional grammar, Communication Accommodation Theory, historical discourse analysis and Optimality Theory. Table of Contents Introduction Teresa Fanego 1 Linguistic accommodation: The correspondence between Samuel Johnson and Hester Lynch Thrale Randy C. Bax 9 Style evolution in the English sermon Claudia Claridge and Andrew Wilson 25 Lexical bundles in Early Modern English dialogues: A window into the speech-related language of the past Jonathan Culpeper and Merja Kytö 45 Changing documentation in the Third Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary: Sixteenth-century vocabulary as a test case Philip Durkin 65 A linguistic history of advertising, 1700 – 1890 Manfred Görlach 83 Ebb and flow: A cautionary tale of language change Raymond Hickey 105 Wreak, wrack, rack, and (w)ruin: The history of some confused spellings Christian J. Kay and Irené Wotherspoon 129 When did English begin? Angelika Lutz 145 What ’s afoot with word-final C? Metrical coherence and the history of English Chris B. McCully 173 Dan Michel: Fossil or innovator? John Scahill 189 Historical discourse analysis: Scientific language and changing thought-styles Irma Taavitsainen 201 Key issues in English etymology Theo Vennemann 227 The dialectology of ‘English’ north of the Humber, c.1380 – 1500 Keith Williamson 253 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 delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu Sat Sep 28 21:02:14 2002 From: delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu (Scott DeLancey) Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 17:02:14 EDT Subject: Age of various language families In-Reply-To: <5.0.0.25.2.20020926163344.00a46eb0@bamse.ling.su.se> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Thu, 26 Sep 2002, Mikael Parkvall wrote: > 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? Possibly an interesting question, but I see two very serious empirical problems in trying to investigate it. First, your sources will never be truly comparable in terms of the criteria used to count languages. For example, on your list you have Algonquian and Uralic each comprised of 38 languages. But counts like that are notoriously arbitrary-- Algonquianists, for example, count Fox and Kickapoo as two languages, but the differences between them are of an order which in Europe, for example, would probably only be considered as defining dialects of one language. Second, and even more problematic (since it's not soluble even in principle) is the fact that, for many families, it is very likely-- indeed, in many cases virtually certain--that the number of languages used to be considerably greater. Again, Fennic/Fenno-Ugric/Uralic serve to illustrate: there is (so I understand) onomastic and other evidence that most of northern Russia was originally F-U or Uralic speaking. The obvious inference is that some indeterminate, and forever undeterminable, number of F-U or Uralic languages disappeared in the face of Russian expansion. Thus the number of attested Fenno-Ugric languages cannot be taken as giving any kind of reliable indication of the historical divergence of the family. The same thing is true in many parts of the world--in North America, for instance, it is likely that the plagues which followed early European contact effectively wiped out many tribes, or reduced their populations so severely that the survivors joined another group. Thus undoubtedly resulted in the extinction of some languages, but there is no way of ever knowing, or even intelligently guessing, how many or what their genetic affiliation might have been. Scott DeLancey Department of Linguistics 1290 University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403-1290, USA delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html From parkvall at ling.su.se Sun Sep 29 19:00:09 2002 From: parkvall at ling.su.se (Mikael Parkvall) Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 15:00:09 EDT Subject: Age of various language families In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- The other day, I asked Histlingers about the suggested ages of various language families. I have received two comments on my question (one in private, and one on the list), which suggest that I should perhaps give a little bit of background on the reason for asking this. I appear to have given both respondents the impression that I am quite a bit more naïve than I actually am -- I am a professional linguist, and perfectly aware of the caveats involves. Also, the reason for asking is not that I have come up with what I myself consider the most brilliant idea of all times, to which I intend to devote ten years of research. Rather, my curiosity was sparked by my writing a review of a recent Bob Dixon & Sasha Aikhenvald book (which some of you have probably read). A couple of years ago, I read Dixon's "The rise and fall of langauges", where he develops his "punctuated equilibrium" idea. I presume you are familiar with it. the main idea is that the Indo-European/Austronesian-type spread, which yields neat family trees is the exception rather than the rule, so that the Stammbaum model could and should not be extended to cases like Australian and Khoisan languages. At the time, I wasn't overly impressed by his reasoning, but I was surprised to realise that I now, when reading the new book, was more positive. Maybe I was just more receptive. 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). 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. So, what I really wanted to do was to check this claim -- to what extent do or don't other well-established language families behave like IE in terms of splitting rate? Of course we won't get a clear answer to this, but I suppose we could get a very general and approximate idea. Mikael Parkvall From jer at cphling.dk Mon Sep 30 00:31:29 2002 From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen) Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 20:31:29 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---------------------------- On Sun, 29 Sep 2002, Mikael Parkvall wrote: > [...] > So, what I really wanted to do was to check this claim -- to what extent do > or don't other well-established language families behave like IE in terms > of splitting rate? Of course we won't get a clear answer to this, but I > suppose we could get a very general and approximate idea. 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. Jens From dot at email.unc.edu Mon Sep 30 20:26:25 2002 From: dot at email.unc.edu (dot at email.unc.edu) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 16:26:25 EDT Subject: CFP: Michigan Academy Medieval Studies Section Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE, ARTS, AND LETTERS, MEDIEVAL STUDIES SECTION: Hope College, Holland, MI March 21-22, 2003 The Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters is a regional professional organization that facilitates scholarly exchange through annual meetings and a quarterly journal of outstanding papers. Over half of the Academy's current members are faculty and graduate students of supporting Michigan colleges and universities. Others include independent scholars, scholars from other states, and people engaged in relevant research in business and government. Membership is open to all. Abstracts are currently being accepted for the 2003 Medieval Studies Section of the Michigan Academy Annual Meeting to be held March 21-23 at Hope College in Holland, MI. Submissions are invited on any topic relating to medieval studies (history, languages and literature, art and music, religious studies, etc., etc.). Graduate and undergraduate student papers are encouraged. The section does not have a theme this year, but groups of related papers (2-3) are welcome. You do not have to be a member of the Academy or student/faculty at an institutional member to participate. Visit the official Michigan Academy website at http://www.umich.edu/~michacad/. Official call for papers and information concerning abstract submission is available at http://www.unc.edu/~dot/MASAL/MASAL.html. For questions about the Medieval Studies Section contact the Medieval Studies Section Chair, Dorothy Carr Porter, at saintleoba at yahoo.com. For questions about the Michigan Academy contact Kathleen Duke at kduke at umich.edu. Submission deadline is Nov. 21, 2002. 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. ANSAX-L CHAUCER GERLINGL HEL-L HISTLING MEDTEXTL ONN From parkvall at ling.su.se Mon Sep 30 20:25:17 2002 From: parkvall at ling.su.se (Mikael Parkvall) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 16:25:17 EDT Subject: Age of various language families In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- We're getting pretty far away from my original query now, but this is of course also interesting. 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. 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. Then let's discuss extinction. Any language risks disappearing, be it due to smallpox, assimilation, flooding or whatever. A "family" consisting of only one language would be wiped out if this sole language were to become extinct. Meanwhile, another family with hundreds of members could lose some of these, and yet continue to exist. In other words, a single natural disaster could indeed wipe out all speakers of Basque, but hardly all speakers of, say, Austronesian (lest it kills of humanity entirely). There is no a priori reason why a meteor (or disease or assimilation) would target any specific language, nor is there any reason to suppose that splitting would be biased. Thus, we have to assume that all languages multiply and die regardless of their genetic relationship. If we were to ask "which groups is more likely to have eight members tomorrow -- a) the one which currently has six, or b) the one which currently has two?", the answer must be a), since splitting is random, and there are three times as many potential mothers in one of the groups. Then, let's look at the same scenario the other way: "which group is most likely to have been one single language yesterday -- a) the one which currently has six members, or b) the one which currently has two?". Note however, that we're dealing with _likelihood_ here -- reality may of course look different. Even unlikely things happen, of course. In an expanding population, an individual high up in the family tree is likely to have more descendants than an individual further down. It is highly likely that my great-great-great-great-grandfather has more living descendants than you yourself have. It could be argued here that the number of languages on earth has remained constant, as opposed to the number of people, but if we limit ourselves to proto-languages with surviving daughters, the number of languages must certainly have increased over the past 10000 or whatever years. In other words, it is certainly possible, as Jens suggests, that "the most proliferate [family] may be of quite recent making", but, I maintain, it is statistically less likely. I suspect that if we looked closer at this, the correlation between family time-depth and number of attested daughters would be a weak one, but it would be more likely to be positive than negative. Also, we might possibly gain some insights by pondering upon the cases which are more aberrant than others. My ability of making myself understood seems to have reached an all-time-low these past few days, but hopefully somebody understood something of what I was trying to say above. In any case, while I enjoy discussing this, I would also love receiving the additional data I my original query concerned. That way we could at least get an empirical reusult (albeit a shaky one) to compare my guess with. /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 j.t.faarlund at inl.uio.no Mon Sep 30 12:00:23 2002 From: j.t.faarlund at inl.uio.no (Jan Terje Faarlund) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 08:00:23 EDT Subject: Age of various language families In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- At 20:31 29.09.2002 -0400, 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. > >Jens 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 over the Kalahari desert, the Caucasus, or the Australian continent. Why do linguists always have to be reminded of somehting which all non-linguists know intuitively: languages are spoken by people and transmitted by new generations learning their mother tongue. The splitting up of language families of course depend on such factors as Jens mention, and floods and volcanoes do not come at regular intervals, do they? We know this, don't we? Jan Terje Professor Jan Terje Faarlund Universitetet i Oslo Institutt for nordistikk og litteraturvitskap Postboks 1013 Blindern N-0315 Oslo (Norway) Tel. (+47) 22 85 69 49 (office) (+47) 22 12 39 66 (home) Fax (+47) 22 85 71 00 From EvolPub at aol.com Wed Sep 4 22:09:56 2002 From: EvolPub at aol.com (Tony Schiavo) Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2002 18:09:56 EDT Subject: Book Announcement: Minor Vocabularies of Tutelo & Saponi Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Evolution Publishing is pleased to announce publication of the following volume from the American Language Reprints (ALR) series: Volume 26: Minor Vocabularies of Tutelo and Saponi Edward Sapir and Leo Frachtenberg, 1913 This edition collects a number of small but valuable examples of the Virginia Siouan languages. It includes two small vocabularies of about 50 words each by Edward Sapir and Leo Frachtenberg, both published in 1913. Also included are 7 translated Saponi place-names collected by William Byrd on the Virginia-North Carolina border in 1728, and 2 words of Moneton or Tomahitan obtained by Abraham Wood during an expedition into southern West Virginia in 1674. July 2002 ~ 61 pp. ~ clothbound ~ ISBN 1-889758-24-8 ~ $28.00 Evolution Publishing is dedicated to preserving and consolidating early primary source records of Native and early colonial America with the goal of making them more accessible and readily available to the academic community and the public at large. For further information on this and other titles in the ALR series: http://www.evolpub.com/ALR/ALRhome.html Evolution Publishing evolpub at aol.com From kemmer at ruf.rice.edu Fri Sep 6 12:19:45 2002 From: kemmer at ruf.rice.edu (Suzanne Kemmer) Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 08:19:45 EDT Subject: CSDL conference - prereg open Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Preregistration is now underway for the 6th CONFERENCE ON CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE, DISCOURSE AND LANGUAGE "LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND MIND" RICE UNIVERSITY Houston, Texas OCTOBER 11-14, 2002 KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: JOHN LUCY, University of Chicago/Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen SUSANNA CUMMING, University of California, Santa Barbara RONALD LANGACKER, University of Californa, San Diego CSDL 6 at Rice presents 75 talks in the areas of Cognitive Linguistics, Discourse, Functional Linguistics, and Speech and Language Processing, dealing with all aspects of language (structure and function, acquisition, variation, change) and all levels of language (phonology, morphosyntax, lexicon, discourse, and neural processing). Preregistration: $10 Preregistration Deadline: Web form submitted and payment received by OCTOBER 1, 2002 Registration at the door (or late preregistration): $20 The cutoff date for hotel reservations at the two official conference hotels (Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn & Suites) with the Conference discount is SEPTEMBER 27, 2002 Note: two other nearby hotels (Rodeway Inn, Best Western Plaza) have no cutoff date and may still have rooms after that point. The Conference Schedule, as well as further information on Registration, Accommodations, Conference Reception, and Conference Party Dinner have been posted on the Conference Website at: http://www.rice.edu/csdl Contact Information: Michel Achard (achard at rice.edu), Suzanne Kemmer (kemmer at rice.edu) and our assistant Caleb Everett (cde at rice.edu) From anaikio at sun3.oulu.fi Tue Sep 10 19:53:54 2002 From: anaikio at sun3.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio) Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 15:53:54 EDT Subject: Substrate toponyms Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Dear HISTLING members, I am a student of the Sami (Lapp) language and general linguistics in Finland; my field of interest is comparative Uralic linguistics, in particular the origin and history of Samic and Finnic languages. I ask for your advice on references that discuss traces of language shifts in place names. I am currently working on a paper that discusses Sami substrate place names that occur in central and southern Finland, and I intend to write my dissertation on the same subject. It would be most useful to get acquainted with similar research conducted elsewhere. I am interested in any references that discuss related issues. However, papers on the subject are scattered and hard to come by. Both theoretical and methodological treatments of general interest and case studies concentrating on a particular language and/or area are welcome. References in English or German would be most welcome; however, if there are important works in other common languages (Russian, French, Spanish, etc.), I will try to make out the relevant parts with the assistance of colleagues and a dictionary. Questions that I find particularly interesting include e.g. the following: what toponyms are borrowed in language shifts, i.e. what kind of typological traits does toponymic substrate display, and how it differs from superstrate influence; what kind of phonetic and structural nativization and alteration the borrowed names undergo; are there cases of a manifest toponymic subtrate, but little traces of language shift in other parts of the lexicon and/or grammar; to what extent can toponymic substrate be used as evidence of ethnic history (in the absence of historical records). In exchange for information, I can only offer my warmest thanks - and, of course, I will be glad to answer any questions concerning Samic substrate toponyms in Finnish, and related issues, in the case that someone finds the subject to be of interest. with best regards, Ante Aikio --- University of Oulu, Finland e-mail: ante.aikio at oulu.fi From Julia.Ulrich at deGruyter.com Thu Sep 12 12:15:30 2002 From: Julia.Ulrich at deGruyter.com (Julia Ulrich) Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2002 08:15:30 EDT Subject: History of Language and Linguistic Change: Rosenbach: Genitive Variation in English (TiEL 42) Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- New Publication from Mouton de Gruyter >>From the series Topics in English Linguistics Series Editors: Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Bernd Kortmann Anette Rosenbach GENITIVE VARIATION IN ENGLISH Conceptual Factors in Synchronic and Diachronic Studies 2002. xi, 361 pages. Cloth. Euro 64.00 / sFr 102,- / approx. US$ 64.00 ISBN 3-11-017370-0 (Topics in English Linguistics 42) This monograph is an empirical study of a particular type of grammatical variation, i.e. the genitive variation in English (s-genitive vs. of-genitive). Comparing the results of a Modern English experimental study and historical evidence for the development of the genitive variation, the main empirical finding of this study is that the s-genitive has become more productive again from late Middle to Present-day English. Theoretically, an approach to grammatical variation is proposed which places the choice of genitive construction into the mind of individual language users and, in so doing, tries to account for the observed change. >>From the Contents 1 Introduction 2 The structure of the s-genitive and the of-genitive: some theoretical preliminaries 3 Grammatical variation 4 Factors: Animacy, topicality, and possessive relation 5 'Variation' versus 'choice' 6 Modern English data: experimental study 7 Historical development of the genitive variation 8 A diachronic scenario: the extension of the s-genitive from late Middle to Modern English - economically-driven language change? 9 Summary and conclusion 10 Appendix For more information please contact the publisher: Mouton de Gruyter Genthiner Str. 13 10785 Berlin, Germany Fax: +49 30 26005 222 e-mail: wdg-info at degruyter.de To order, please contact SFG Servicecenter-Fachverlage GmbH Postfach 4343 72774 Reutlingen Germany Fax +49 (7071) 93 53 33 E-mail: deGruyter at s-f-g.com Please visit our website for other publications by Mouton de Gruyter http://www.degruyter.com From bestde at earthlink.net Fri Sep 13 11:41:54 2002 From: bestde at earthlink.net (Debbie Best) Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 07:41:54 EDT Subject: CFP: History of the English Language session, Kalamazoo, Deadline extended Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE session: Sponsored by the Carolina Association for Medieval Studies International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, May 8-11, 2003 Papers on any aspect of the history of the English language are invited for this session. Proposals on any period of the history or prehistory of English are eligible, as are proposals with an emphasis on HEL pedagogy, and approaches to the subject matter may be diachronic or synchronic. Some possible areas of interest include sociolinguistic factors in the history of English; morphological, syntactical, or phonological change; lexical borrowing; orthography; the relationship between spoken and written English; semantics; dialect; the emergence of English from the West Germanic dialect continuum; gender representation; grammatical gender; the sociohistorical relationship of English to other languages; and the development of standardized forms of English. Send abstracts by email (prefered) to Debra Best at dbest at uwm.edu or to Britt Mize at bmize at email.unc.edu, or by fax (marked ATTN: Debra Best) to 414-229-6070. If you fax an abstract, include your email address so we can confirm receipt of your submission. The submission deadline has been extended to Sept. 21, 2001. 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. ANSAX-L CHAUCER GERLINGL HEL-L HISTLING MEDTEXTL ONN From l.campbell at ling.canterbury.ac.nz Thu Sep 19 01:49:06 2002 From: l.campbell at ling.canterbury.ac.nz (Lyle Campbell) Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 21:49:06 EDT Subject: Abstracts deadline for International Congress of Linguists Message-ID: Dear Historical Linguists, REMINDER: The deadline is October 1, 2002, for submission of abstracts for the XVII INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF LINGUISTS, Prague, Czech Republic, July 24-29, 2003. I draw your attention to the session "Comparative Linguistics" (i.e. "historical linguistics and language change generally"). Details are found on the website http://www.cil17.org/ (including information on registration and accommodation). The CALL FOR PAPERS reads: Three-page abstracts of papers (both for the regular sessions and for the workshops) and poster descriptions should be sent (preferably ELECTRONICALLY, or in four hard copies) to the organizer of the session (or workshop) relevant for the topic of the paper (see list of sessions and list of workshops) [i.e. to me, address below, for historical linguistics]; in case of uncertainty about the appropriate session, the abstract may be sent to the address of the Chair of the Scientific Committee (see below). The authors should clearly indicate whether they submit an abstract of a full paper or a description of a poster. Authors of the accepted papers will be asked to send in a one-page summary of the paper in a camera-ready format (the instructions will be sent to the authors together with the information of acceptance), and this summary will be printed in the volume of abstracts. The slot for paper presentation will be 30 min long (incl. discussion). Important dates for submission of abstracts of papers, workshop contributions and poster descriptions: 3-page abstracts: October 1, 2002 [[Note: I do not know the reasons why 3-page abstracts were asked for, but some of the abstracts already submitted are much shorter and there is no plan to eliminate them from consideration.]] Information of acceptance/rejection will be sent out before: December 31, 2002 1-page summary for publication in the proceedings: March 31, 2003 Each abstract should contain: a separate page with the title of the paper/poster, the author's name, and affiliation, postal address, e-mail address and fax. The author's name should not be written on the abstract itself. My address (for abstract submissiosns and matters concerning this session) is: e-mail: l.campbell at canterbury.ac.nz or Prof.Lyle Campbell Department of Linguistics University of Canterbury Private Bag 4800 Christchurch, New Zeeland (Telephone: 64-3-364-2242 [office], Fax: 64-3-364-2969) The address of the Chair of the Scientific Committee is: Prof. Ferenc Kiefer Research Institute for Linguistics Hungarian academy of Sciences Benczur u. 33 H-1068 Budapest, Hungary e-mail: kiefer at nytud.hu Languages: Papers can be delivered in English, German, French or Russian; summaries published in the volume of abstracts should be written in English or French. Best regards, Lyle -- Professor Lyle Campbell, Dept. of Linguistics University of Canterbury Christchurch, New Zealand Fax: 64-3-364-2969 Phone: 64-3-364-2242 (office), 64-3-364-2089 (Linguistics dept) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From EvolPub at aol.com Thu Sep 26 15:37:37 2002 From: EvolPub at aol.com (Tony Schiavo) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 11:37:37 EDT Subject: Native American language resource now available Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- The Complete American Language Reprints Series, First Edition (CD-Rom) Compiled by Claudio R. Salvucci By the end of 2003, the American Language Reprints (ALR) series will reach 40 volumes. The amount of primary source material still available ensures that the series will continue to grow each year, potentially reaching hundreds of volumes as the project progresses. In order to make this data more accessible and affordable to researchers, Evolution Publishing is pleased to announce publication of the Complete American Language Reprint Series CD-Rom. Updated annually, this invaluable resource features printable complete texts of all current ALR volumes in PDF format. The 2002 first edition features volumes 1 through 26 of the ALR series, containing together over 7,500 unique Native American terms. Vocabularies offered include Edwards's "Observations on the Mahican Language [1788]," Hale's "The Tutelo Language [1883]," Cartier's "Vocabulary of Stadaconan [1534-6]," Strachey's "Dictionary of Powhatan [1612]," Gallatin's "Vocabulary of Seneca [1836]" and 21 similar works. Each subsequent annual edition of the CD-Rom will include all new volumes in the series published during the prior year in addition to all previously published volumes. Special pricing is available for repeat customers. The price of the CD-Rom for first-time purchasers reflects a savings of nearly 65% versus purchasing the entire series in book form. August? 2002 ~ CD-Rom ~ 1-889758-29-9 ~ $260.00 For more information on this resource plus a complete listing of the vocabularies and word lists included, please visit our web site: http://www.evolpub.com/ALR/ALRCDRom.html Evolution Publishing evolpub at aol.com From bowern at fas.harvard.edu Thu Sep 26 15:33:01 2002 From: bowern at fas.harvard.edu (Claire Bowern) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 11:33:01 EDT Subject: Noun Incorporation In-Reply-To: <134057241.3220682600@wren.crn.cogs.susx.ac.uk> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Dear list members, I'm interested in languages that have lost noun incorporation, and I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of some examples. I am particularly interested in languages that have lost noun incorporation by ceasing to incorporate, thereby leaving few (if any) fossilised incorporated items. I'm also interested in the circumstances of the loss, if known. Please reply to me and I'll post a summary to the list. Best wishes, Claire Bowern _________________________________ Department of Linguistics Harvard University 305 Boylston Hall Cambridge MA 02138 USA ph: (+1) 617-547-3521 fax: (+1) 617-496-4447 From parkvall at ling.su.se Thu Sep 26 15:41:10 2002 From: parkvall at ling.su.se (Mikael Parkvall) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 11:41:10 EDT Subject: Age of various language families Message-ID: ----------------------------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 From paul at benjamins.com Thu Sep 26 15:41:28 2002 From: paul at benjamins.com (Paul Peranteau) Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 11:41:28 EDT Subject: New Book: Fanego Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- A new book from John Benjamins Publishing of interest to historical linguists: Sounds, Words, Texts and Change Selected papers from 11 ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela, 7-11 September 2000 Edited by Teresa Fanego, Bel?n M?ndez-Naya and Elena Seoane (University of Santiago de Compostela ) Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 224 2002. x, 310 pp. Hardbound: US & Canada: 1 58811 196 2 / USD 99.00/ Rest of world: 90 272 4732 3 / EUR 109.00 This volume and its companion one (English Historical Syntax and Morphology, CILT 223) offer 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 thirteen papers were carefully selected to reflect the state of current research in the field of English historical linguistics. The areas represented in the volume are lexis and semantics, text-types, historical sociolinguistics and dialectology, and phonology. Many of the articles tackle questions of change and linguistic periodization through the use of methodological tools like corpora, linguistic atlases, thesauri and historical dictionaries. The theoretical frameworks adopted include, among others, multi-dimensional analysis, systemic-functional grammar, Communication Accommodation Theory, historical discourse analysis and Optimality Theory. Table of Contents Introduction Teresa Fanego 1 Linguistic accommodation: The correspondence between Samuel Johnson and Hester Lynch Thrale Randy C. Bax 9 Style evolution in the English sermon Claudia Claridge and Andrew Wilson 25 Lexical bundles in Early Modern English dialogues: A window into the speech-related language of the past Jonathan Culpeper and Merja Kyt? 45 Changing documentation in the Third Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary: Sixteenth-century vocabulary as a test case Philip Durkin 65 A linguistic history of advertising, 1700 ? 1890 Manfred G?rlach 83 Ebb and flow: A cautionary tale of language change Raymond Hickey 105 Wreak, wrack, rack, and (w)ruin: The history of some confused spellings Christian J. Kay and Iren? Wotherspoon 129 When did English begin? Angelika Lutz 145 What ?s afoot with word-final C? Metrical coherence and the history of English Chris B. McCully 173 Dan Michel: Fossil or innovator? John Scahill 189 Historical discourse analysis: Scientific language and changing thought-styles Irma Taavitsainen 201 Key issues in English etymology Theo Vennemann 227 The dialectology of ?English? north of the Humber, c.1380 ? 1500 Keith Williamson 253 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 delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu Sat Sep 28 21:02:14 2002 From: delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu (Scott DeLancey) Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 17:02:14 EDT Subject: Age of various language families In-Reply-To: <5.0.0.25.2.20020926163344.00a46eb0@bamse.ling.su.se> Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- On Thu, 26 Sep 2002, Mikael Parkvall wrote: > 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? Possibly an interesting question, but I see two very serious empirical problems in trying to investigate it. First, your sources will never be truly comparable in terms of the criteria used to count languages. For example, on your list you have Algonquian and Uralic each comprised of 38 languages. But counts like that are notoriously arbitrary-- Algonquianists, for example, count Fox and Kickapoo as two languages, but the differences between them are of an order which in Europe, for example, would probably only be considered as defining dialects of one language. Second, and even more problematic (since it's not soluble even in principle) is the fact that, for many families, it is very likely-- indeed, in many cases virtually certain--that the number of languages used to be considerably greater. Again, Fennic/Fenno-Ugric/Uralic serve to illustrate: there is (so I understand) onomastic and other evidence that most of northern Russia was originally F-U or Uralic speaking. The obvious inference is that some indeterminate, and forever undeterminable, number of F-U or Uralic languages disappeared in the face of Russian expansion. Thus the number of attested Fenno-Ugric languages cannot be taken as giving any kind of reliable indication of the historical divergence of the family. The same thing is true in many parts of the world--in North America, for instance, it is likely that the plagues which followed early European contact effectively wiped out many tribes, or reduced their populations so severely that the survivors joined another group. Thus undoubtedly resulted in the extinction of some languages, but there is no way of ever knowing, or even intelligently guessing, how many or what their genetic affiliation might have been. Scott DeLancey Department of Linguistics 1290 University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403-1290, USA delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html From parkvall at ling.su.se Sun Sep 29 19:00:09 2002 From: parkvall at ling.su.se (Mikael Parkvall) Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 15:00:09 EDT Subject: Age of various language families In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- The other day, I asked Histlingers about the suggested ages of various language families. I have received two comments on my question (one in private, and one on the list), which suggest that I should perhaps give a little bit of background on the reason for asking this. I appear to have given both respondents the impression that I am quite a bit more na?ve than I actually am -- I am a professional linguist, and perfectly aware of the caveats involves. Also, the reason for asking is not that I have come up with what I myself consider the most brilliant idea of all times, to which I intend to devote ten years of research. Rather, my curiosity was sparked by my writing a review of a recent Bob Dixon & Sasha Aikhenvald book (which some of you have probably read). A couple of years ago, I read Dixon's "The rise and fall of langauges", where he develops his "punctuated equilibrium" idea. I presume you are familiar with it. the main idea is that the Indo-European/Austronesian-type spread, which yields neat family trees is the exception rather than the rule, so that the Stammbaum model could and should not be extended to cases like Australian and Khoisan languages. At the time, I wasn't overly impressed by his reasoning, but I was surprised to realise that I now, when reading the new book, was more positive. Maybe I was just more receptive. 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). 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. So, what I really wanted to do was to check this claim -- to what extent do or don't other well-established language families behave like IE in terms of splitting rate? Of course we won't get a clear answer to this, but I suppose we could get a very general and approximate idea. Mikael Parkvall From jer at cphling.dk Mon Sep 30 00:31:29 2002 From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen) Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 20:31:29 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---------------------------- On Sun, 29 Sep 2002, Mikael Parkvall wrote: > [...] > So, what I really wanted to do was to check this claim -- to what extent do > or don't other well-established language families behave like IE in terms > of splitting rate? Of course we won't get a clear answer to this, but I > suppose we could get a very general and approximate idea. 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. Jens From dot at email.unc.edu Mon Sep 30 20:26:25 2002 From: dot at email.unc.edu (dot at email.unc.edu) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 16:26:25 EDT Subject: CFP: Michigan Academy Medieval Studies Section Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE, ARTS, AND LETTERS, MEDIEVAL STUDIES SECTION: Hope College, Holland, MI March 21-22, 2003 The Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters is a regional professional organization that facilitates scholarly exchange through annual meetings and a quarterly journal of outstanding papers. Over half of the Academy's current members are faculty and graduate students of supporting Michigan colleges and universities. Others include independent scholars, scholars from other states, and people engaged in relevant research in business and government. Membership is open to all. Abstracts are currently being accepted for the 2003 Medieval Studies Section of the Michigan Academy Annual Meeting to be held March 21-23 at Hope College in Holland, MI. Submissions are invited on any topic relating to medieval studies (history, languages and literature, art and music, religious studies, etc., etc.). Graduate and undergraduate student papers are encouraged. The section does not have a theme this year, but groups of related papers (2-3) are welcome. You do not have to be a member of the Academy or student/faculty at an institutional member to participate. Visit the official Michigan Academy website at http://www.umich.edu/~michacad/. Official call for papers and information concerning abstract submission is available at http://www.unc.edu/~dot/MASAL/MASAL.html. For questions about the Medieval Studies Section contact the Medieval Studies Section Chair, Dorothy Carr Porter, at saintleoba at yahoo.com. For questions about the Michigan Academy contact Kathleen Duke at kduke at umich.edu. Submission deadline is Nov. 21, 2002. 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. ANSAX-L CHAUCER GERLINGL HEL-L HISTLING MEDTEXTL ONN From parkvall at ling.su.se Mon Sep 30 20:25:17 2002 From: parkvall at ling.su.se (Mikael Parkvall) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 16:25:17 EDT Subject: Age of various language families In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- We're getting pretty far away from my original query now, but this is of course also interesting. 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. 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. Then let's discuss extinction. Any language risks disappearing, be it due to smallpox, assimilation, flooding or whatever. A "family" consisting of only one language would be wiped out if this sole language were to become extinct. Meanwhile, another family with hundreds of members could lose some of these, and yet continue to exist. In other words, a single natural disaster could indeed wipe out all speakers of Basque, but hardly all speakers of, say, Austronesian (lest it kills of humanity entirely). There is no a priori reason why a meteor (or disease or assimilation) would target any specific language, nor is there any reason to suppose that splitting would be biased. Thus, we have to assume that all languages multiply and die regardless of their genetic relationship. If we were to ask "which groups is more likely to have eight members tomorrow -- a) the one which currently has six, or b) the one which currently has two?", the answer must be a), since splitting is random, and there are three times as many potential mothers in one of the groups. Then, let's look at the same scenario the other way: "which group is most likely to have been one single language yesterday -- a) the one which currently has six members, or b) the one which currently has two?". Note however, that we're dealing with _likelihood_ here -- reality may of course look different. Even unlikely things happen, of course. In an expanding population, an individual high up in the family tree is likely to have more descendants than an individual further down. It is highly likely that my great-great-great-great-grandfather has more living descendants than you yourself have. It could be argued here that the number of languages on earth has remained constant, as opposed to the number of people, but if we limit ourselves to proto-languages with surviving daughters, the number of languages must certainly have increased over the past 10000 or whatever years. In other words, it is certainly possible, as Jens suggests, that "the most proliferate [family] may be of quite recent making", but, I maintain, it is statistically less likely. I suspect that if we looked closer at this, the correlation between family time-depth and number of attested daughters would be a weak one, but it would be more likely to be positive than negative. Also, we might possibly gain some insights by pondering upon the cases which are more aberrant than others. My ability of making myself understood seems to have reached an all-time-low these past few days, but hopefully somebody understood something of what I was trying to say above. In any case, while I enjoy discussing this, I would also love receiving the additional data I my original query concerned. That way we could at least get an empirical reusult (albeit a shaky one) to compare my guess with. /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 j.t.faarlund at inl.uio.no Mon Sep 30 12:00:23 2002 From: j.t.faarlund at inl.uio.no (Jan Terje Faarlund) Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 08:00:23 EDT Subject: Age of various language families In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- At 20:31 29.09.2002 -0400, 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. > >Jens 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 over the Kalahari desert, the Caucasus, or the Australian continent. Why do linguists always have to be reminded of somehting which all non-linguists know intuitively: languages are spoken by people and transmitted by new generations learning their mother tongue. The splitting up of language families of course depend on such factors as Jens mention, and floods and volcanoes do not come at regular intervals, do they? We know this, don't we? Jan Terje Professor Jan Terje Faarlund Universitetet i Oslo Institutt for nordistikk og litteraturvitskap Postboks 1013 Blindern N-0315 Oslo (Norway) Tel. (+47) 22 85 69 49 (office) (+47) 22 12 39 66 (home) Fax (+47) 22 85 71 00