[Lingtyp] Contrastive vowel and consonant length?

Gussenhoven, C.H.M. (Carlos) c.gussenhoven at let.ru.nl
Tue Dec 22 07:29:27 UTC 2020


To pick up Mark’s mention of syllabicity, Nick Clements’ (1990) sonority-dispersion characterization of the syllable says that, ideally, sonority jumps up from the onset and fades out in the rhyme, making [ta] good. Also [taa], [taam], and, OK, even [tamm], but [tam.ma], not *[tamm.a]. 

Structurally, sonority dispersion puts moras in the rhyme rather than the onset.

Geminate onsets are bad, because they delay the jump and are structurally impossible if we believe that only rhymes have moras and geminates need a mora: structurally [tta] will be [t.ta]. What would be worse, though structurally possible, is a geminate straddling the onset-rhyme boundary:
*[mma] or *[mms], with [m] linked to the onset and the first mora. I bet this does not occur. 

In any event, syllable structure should be part of a typology of geminates.

________________________________________
From: Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] on behalf of Larry M. HYMAN [hyman at berkeley.edu]
Sent: Monday, 21 December, 2020 6:16 PM
To: florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch
Cc: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: !!!!!SPAM!!!!! Re: [Lingtyp] Contrastive vowel and consonant length?

I'm not sure anyone has said that databases obviously depend on interpretation. Florian mentions Luganda being "categorized incorrectly". For the purpose of such a database, I agree. I am sure that the reason was that many geminate consonants can be abstractly derived from word-initial or post-vocalic /iC/ (or other sources). Thus:

bba!  'steal!' and á-bb-a 's/he steals'  vs.  nz-íb-a  'I steal'
(the [z] is actually part of the root, but only appears after the nasal)

While I love this kind of morphophonemics, it obviously has no place in a database such as Phoible.

If anyone is interested in the full story concerning the seven sources of geminate consonants in Luganda, see the Appendix (pp.397-402) to the following (which I can supply upon request):

Hyman, Larry M. & Francis X. Katamba. 1999. The syllable in Luganda phonology and morphology. In Harry van der Hulst & Nancy Ritter, The syllable: views and facts, 349-416. Mouton de Gruyter.


On Mon, Dec 21, 2020 at 6:51 AM <florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch<mailto:florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch>> wrote:
Dear all,

thank you for the many responses, which I won't address individually.

a) To clarify: as a sample, I took the 2186 languages featured in phoible<https://phoible.org/>, and evaluated whether they have phonemic length contrasts for consonants and/or vowels. Results were:

No contrast: 1278
Contrast in vowels only: 786
Contrast in consonants only: 39
Contrast in both: 83

The correlation between vowel and consonant length contrasts is statistically significant (p: 0.00000000965). However, I am aware that there are many potential issues (representativeness of phoible, the algorithm used for establishing contrastive vowel length, analytical differences, only picking one inventory per language…), hence my question to this list.

b) People have provided counterexamples to the observed tendency, i.e. languages with a length contrast in consonants only.
Not contained in phoible are: Jóola Banjal, Agul, Tabasaran, Southern Dargwa, Chuukese, Logudorese Sardinian, Koromfe, Ghomara Berber, Western Pantar.
In phoible, and classified correctly as "contrast in consonants only": Archi, Border Kuna, Italian, Tashlhiyt Berber, Moroccan Arabic.

In phoible, but classified as something other than "contrast in consonants only":
1. Japanese: the phoible inventory which my script picked has V and C length contrasts, but the other two inventories have no long segments at all.
2. Lezgian and Lak: fortis-lenis is represented as ejectives. Lezgian has  a length contrast for æ, Lak for a/i/u.
3. Burarra, Emmi: the consonants are classified as tense-lax.
4. Koryak, Yaqui, Mada (of Cameroun), Makassarese, Toba Batak: phoible only lists short segments. For Toba Batak, the WP page includes examples of <bb> and <ii>.

I haven't read the cited sources yet, but for group 4 it seems that they clearly have a length contrast in consonants, which is not represented *at all* in phoible. This in turn implies a disagreement in analysis between the person giving the counterexample and a) the original source or b) somebody coding an inventory, for phoible or for one of the databases which it aggregates.

c) Some people also listed languages with length contrasts in both C and V. Categorized correctly: Chechen, Leggbó, Ingush, Saami. Categorized incorrectly: Pohnpeian (no contrast), Luganda (only long vowels). Not in phoible: Chuukese.

d) Some other issues were brought up, here are my thoughts on them:

1. When consonant length co-occurs with other features (aspiration, glottalization, affrication…) it is indeed difficult to establish whether it is contrastive or not. No answer here.
2. I do not talk about languages where segmental duration is due to allophony, only about those where a phonemic contrast between [Xː] and [X] exists, i.e. minimal pairs.
3. Regarding the representation of consonant length: I think it does not matter whether an appropriate phonemic analysis sees durationally longer consonants as geminate /CC/ or as long /Cː/. A length contrast between [Cː] and [C] exists in both cases.
4. If length is a suprasegmental feature and not bound to segments, how do we account for the fact that many languages only show a length contrast for certain segments? I could give a plethora of such examples.
5. Distribution and diachrony of long consonants: Juliette Blevins has done some work on this, finding a) many distinct diachronic pathways, resulting in b) no clear patterns as to what kind of consonants show a length contrast.

Best,
Florian


_____________________________

Universität Bern

Institut für Sprachwissenschaft

Florian Matter



Länggassstrasse 49

CH-3012 Bern

Tel. +41 31 631 37 54

Raum B 168

florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch<mailto:florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch>

http://www.isw.unibe.ch<http://www.isw.unibe.ch/>


On 21 December 2020 at 02:14:04, lingtyp-request at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp-request at listserv.linguistlist.org> (lingtyp-request at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp-request at listserv.linguistlist.org>) wrote:

Send Lingtyp mailing list submissions to
lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp>
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
lingtyp-request at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp-request at listserv.linguistlist.org>

You can reach the person managing the list at
lingtyp-owner at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp-owner at listserv.linguistlist.org>

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Lingtyp digest..."


Today's Topics:

1. Re: Contrastive vowel and consonant length? (Johanna Nichols)
2. Re: syntactic construction formula (Siva Kalyan)
3. Final call: SLE 2021 WS Dissecting Morphological Theory 1:
Diminutivization Across Languages and Frameworks (Stela Manova)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2020 14:00:45 -0800
From: Johanna Nichols <johanna at berkeley.edu<mailto:johanna at berkeley.edu>>
Cc: Linguistic Typology <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Contrastive vowel and consonant length?
Message-ID:
<CAHDpjwpXfLEY0HJ+hByaSwKGbko91hcP-qLQwAxatvhdumm1xA at mail.gmail.com<mailto:CAHDpjwpXfLEY0HJ%2BhByaSwKGbko91hcP-qLQwAxatvhdumm1xA at mail.gmail.com>>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

Ingush (Nakh-Daghestanian), has a length contrast in vowels and
geminate consonants cognate to the Daghestanian ones that Misha and
Gilles mention. The geminate consonants behave like a sequence of two
consonants, with the first one closing the preceding syllable and
shortening the vowel, and the second one opening the following
syllable. In some Chechen varieties, the situation is similar, though
with geminates the consonant that opens the following syllable is
unaspirated while in most Chechen vowels a single voiceless stop or
obstruent is aspirated. I think this is the only respect in which the
geminate do not behave like a sequence (or more precisely they don't
behave like a sequence of the corresponding single consonants). But
I've heard one Chechen variety where vowel length is preserved before
geminates and the geminate is aspirated.

In Saami (Uralic) varieties there are vowel length oppositions and (as
I understand it) consonants written as double but which apparently do
not behave in any respect as sequences: they don't shorten preceding
long vowels and in gradation they are the strong grade of single
consonants. This is different from Finnish, where double consonants
behave like sequences in that they close the preceding syllable and
cause weak grade in its first consonant, but they do not shorten long
vowels and in gradation they behave like the strong grade of a
consonant alternating with a single consonant as weak grade.

Johanna


On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 1:11 PM Pier Marco Bertinetto
<piermarco.bertinetto at sns.it<mailto:piermarco.bertinetto at sns.it>> wrote:
>
> A possible source of phonologically long Cs is total assimilation of C clusters.
> I doubt that V quantity could have an impact on that.
> Best
> Pier Marco
>
>
> Il giorno dom 20 dic 2020 alle ore 20:59 Peter Austin <pa2 at soas.ac.uk<mailto:pa2 at soas.ac.uk>> ha scritto:
>>
>> Some Western Micronesian languages have a consonant length contrast, including word-initially. Among them, Chuukese lacks long vowels but Pohnpeian has long vowels as well. I understand the consonant length contrast can be reconstructed for their ancestor.
>>
>> Peter
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, 20 Dec 2020 at 19:34, Larry M. HYMAN <hyman at berkeley.edu<mailto:hyman at berkeley.edu>> wrote:
>>>
>>> I have the same impression as Juergen that languages with a vowel length contrast are vastly more numerous than those with a single/geminate consonant contrast. (I could only think of Italian, myself, as having only the latter, though good to see the others cited). On the other hand, the few languages I have worked with that have geminates also have a vowel length contrast, e.g. Luganda, Leggbó (with a fortis-lenis contrast that is largely durational).
>>>
>>> On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 10:03 AM Bohnemeyer, Juergen <jb77 at buffalo.edu<mailto:jb77 at buffalo.edu>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Dear all — Just for the sake of speculation, let me propose a possible causal link. The argument has multiple steps:
>>>>
>>>> 1. Presumably (but I haven’t looked at this empirically), length contrasts are easier to perceive in vowels than in consonants. And as a result, their production would also be easier to monitor and control in vowels than in consonants.
>>>>
>>>> 2. If the above is correct, then it would also stand to reason that phonemic length contrasts are more likely to occur in vowels than in consonants.
>>>>
>>>> 3. This in turn would mean that a likely scenario for the emergence of phonemic duration in consonants is that the members of a language community first become habituated to perceiving duration contrasts in vowels, and from there extend this type of categorization to consonant phonemes.
>>>>
>>>> Since we’ve already seen examples of languages with phonemic duration in consonants only in this thread, it is probably not the case that the emergence of phonemic duration in consonants presupposed the prior existence of phonemic duration in vowels. However, it is of course also conceivable that languages first acquire phonemic duration in vowels, then extend it to consonants, and then reinterpret duration contrasts in vowels as tone or quality contrasts, leaving the quantity opposition in consonants orphaned.
>>>>
>>>> Like I said, all idle speculation. — Best — Juergen
>>>>
>>>> > On Dec 20, 2020, at 12:42 PM, Pier Marco Bertinetto <piermarco.bertinetto at sns.it<mailto:piermarco.bertinetto at sns.it>> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > Dear Florian,
>>>> > the question I would ask myself is the following: Since we know that vowel and consonant quantity are independent of each other (they can coexist, or one can have phonological value and the other, possibly, a mere allophonically conditioned behavior), does it make sense to look for an "implicational tendency"?
>>>> > Unless one can prove that the existence of consonant quantity presupposes vowel quantity, I would leave out any "implicational" reasoning.
>>>> > Needless to say, it might be interesting to know, say, that there are more languages with vowel quantity than languages with consonant quantity, but would this teach us anything more than a mere statistical fact?
>>>> > Best
>>>> > Pier Marco
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > Il giorno dom 20 dic 2020 alle ore 18:17 Hartmut Haberland <hartmut at ruc.dk<mailto:hartmut at ruc.dk>> ha scritto:
>>>> > Apparent counterexamples seem to be Italian (no vowel length) and maybe Japanese (long vowels in Sinojapanese vocabulary like sū ‘number’ seem to be genuine but in suu ‘sucks, inhales’ with a morpheme border it is often considered u+u. Both languages have long/double consonants.
>>>> >
>>>> >> Den 20. dec. 2020 kl. 17.49 skrev Michael Daniel <misha.daniel at gmail.com<mailto:misha.daniel at gmail.com>>:
>>>> >>
>>>> >> 
>>>> >> ps Sorry, i shouldn't have sent it to the general list. I am aware that individual cases do not undermine the general correlation. But because Florian also asked for language-level evidence, I provided (my understanding of) the data I know of.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Michael Daniel
>>>> >>
>>>> >> вс, 20 дек. 2020 г., 19:25 Michael Daniel <misha.daniel at gmail.com<mailto:misha.daniel at gmail.com>>:
>>>> >> Dear Florian,
>>>> >>
>>>> >> i guess this depends on how to define consonant length, and what to count as presence of vowel quantity contrast. In East Caucasian, many languages distinguish between geminate vs simple, alias strong vs weak, alias fortis vs lenis, alias non-aspirated vs aspirated stops.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> At the same time, vowel length, if present at all, is much less central to the system, though this varies across languages. I'm afraid, in order to fully assess the force of this implication, you should somehow account also for the role of the two contrasts in the language.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> As one example, there is an important contrast between fortis and lenis stops in Archi, Lezgic. Vowel length is also present, but is used in expressive elements such as distance demonstratives; secondarily as compensation for the loss of the intervocalic -q- in one (of several hundred) of verbal forms; in some morphophonological contexts with the coordinative clitic; and maybe in one or two other forms that do not quickly come to my mind.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Sincerely,
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Michael
>>>> >>
>>>> >> вс, 20 дек. 2020 г., 19:13 <florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch<mailto:florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch>>:
>>>> >> Dear all,
>>>> >>
>>>> >> is anybody aware of large-scale studies investigating the distribution of contrastive length in consonants and vowels? Preliminary analysis of phoible data tells me that there is an implicational tendency where if a language has contrastive length in consonants, it also has it in vowels. Are there studies supporting this? I’m also interested in literature on the geographical and genealogical distribution of contrastive length.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Best,
>>>> >> Florian
>>>> >>
>>>> >>
>>>> >> _____________________________
>>>> >> Universität Bern
>>>> >> Institut für Sprachwissenschaft
>>>> >> Florian Matter
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Länggassstrasse 49
>>>> >> CH-3012 Bern
>>>> >> Tel. +41 31 631 37 54
>>>> >> Raum B 168
>>>> >> florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch<mailto:florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch>
>>>> >> http://www.isw.unibe.ch<http://www.isw.unibe.ch>
>>>> >> _______________________________________________
>>>> >> Lingtyp mailing list
>>>> >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>>> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp>
>>>> >> _______________________________________________
>>>> >> Lingtyp mailing list
>>>> >> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>>> >> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp>
>>>> > _______________________________________________
>>>> > Lingtyp mailing list
>>>> > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>>> > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp>
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > --
>>>> > =========================================================
>>>> >
>>>> > |||| Pier Marco Bertinetto
>>>> > ------ professore emerito
>>>> > /////// Scuola Normale Superiore
>>>> > -------
>>>> > p.za<http://p.za> dei Cavalieri 7
>>>> >
>>>> > /////// I-56126 PISA
>>>> > ------- phone: +39 050 509111
>>>> > ///////
>>>> > ------- HOME
>>>> > /////// via Matteotti 197
>>>> > ------- I-55049 Viareggio LU
>>>> > /////// phone: +39 0584 652417
>>>> >
>>>> > ------- cell.: +39 368 3830251
>>>> > =========================================================
>>>> > editor of "Italian Journal of Linguistics"
>>>> >
>>>> > webpage <https://www.sns.it/it/bertinetto-pier-marco<https://www.sns.it/it/bertinetto-pier-marco>
>>>> > >
>>>> > "Laboratorio di Linguistica" <
>>>> > http://linguistica.sns.it<http://linguistica.sns.it>
>>>> > >
>>>> > =========================================================
>>>> >
>>>> > _______________________________________________
>>>> > Lingtyp mailing list
>>>> > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>>> > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Juergen Bohnemeyer (He/Him)
>>>> Professor, Department of Linguistics
>>>> University at Buffalo
>>>>
>>>> Office: 642 Baldy Hall, UB North Campus
>>>> Mailing address: 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260
>>>> Phone: (716) 645 0127
>>>> Fax: (716) 645 3825
>>>> Email: jb77 at buffalo.edu<mailto:jb77 at buffalo.edu>
>>>> Web: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/<http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jb77/>
>>>>
>>>> Office hours will be held by Zoom. Email me to schedule a call at any time. I will in addition hold Tu/Th 4-5pm open specifically for remote office hours.
>>>>
>>>> There’s A Crack In Everything - That’s How The Light Gets In
>>>> (Leonard Cohen)
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Larry M. Hyman, Professor of Linguistics & Executive Director, France-Berkeley Fund
>>> Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley
>>> http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/person_detail.php?person=19<http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/person_detail.php?person=19>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp>
>>
>> --
>> Prof Peter K. Austin
>> Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics, SOAS
>> Visiting Researcher, Oxford University
>> Foundation Editor, EL Publishing
>> Honorary Treasurer, Philological Society
>> www.peterkaustin.com<http://www.peterkaustin.com>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Lingtyp mailing list
>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp>
>
>
>
> --
>
> =========================================================
> |||| Pier Marco Bertinetto
> ------ professore emerito
> /////// Scuola Normale Superiore
> ------- p.za<http://p.za> dei Cavalieri 7
> /////// I-56126 PISA
> ------- phone: +39 050 509111
> ///////
> ------- HOME
> /////// via Matteotti 197
> ------- I-55049 Viareggio LU
> /////// phone: +39 0584 652417
> ------- cell.: +39 368 3830251
> =========================================================
> editor of "Italian Journal of Linguistics"
> webpage <https://www.sns.it/it/bertinetto-pier-marco<https://www.sns.it/it/bertinetto-pier-marco>>
> "Laboratorio di Linguistica" <http://linguistica.sns.it<http://linguistica.sns.it>>
> =========================================================
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp>


------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2020 10:50:46 +1100
From: Siva Kalyan <sivakalyan.princeton at gmail.com<mailto:sivakalyan.princeton at gmail.com>>
To: Christian Lehmann <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de<mailto:christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de>>
Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] syntactic construction formula
Message-ID: <FE339692-FA47-4473-839C-2639708239DF at gmail.com<mailto:FE339692-FA47-4473-839C-2639708239DF at gmail.com>>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Why not take inspiration from autosegmental phonology, and have the Adv on a separate "tier"? Then in particular instantiations, you could have an association line between the Adv and a placeholder element that is either before the NP, between the NP and VP, or after the VP.

The disadvantage of this is that it would reify the idea of free word order, rather than making it clear that it’s just a representation of our ignorance of the true conditioning factors.

Siva

> On 21 Dec 2020, at 2:45 am, Christian Lehmann <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de<mailto:christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de>> wrote:
>
> Let the adverb suddenly be my component C. Combined with the construction John screamed, my formula might look something like:
>
> {Adv} NP {Adv} VP {Adv}
>
> Is this a misleading use of curly brackets (referring to Ian Joo's suggestion, which I remember having seen in the early days of transformationalism) ? Or is there a more adequate representation?
>
> --
> Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
> Rudolfstr. 4
> 99092 Erfurt
> Deutschland
>
> Tel.: +49/361/2113417
> E-Post: christianw_lehmann at arcor.de<mailto:christianw_lehmann at arcor.de> <mailto:christianw_lehmann at arcor.de<mailto:christianw_lehmann at arcor.de>>
> Web: https://www.christianlehmann.eu<https://www.christianlehmann.eu> <https://www.christianlehmann.eu/<https://www.christianlehmann.eu/>>_______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20201221/0b3dee4f/attachment-0001.html<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20201221/0b3dee4f/attachment-0001.html>>

------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2020 02:12:16 +0100
From: Stela Manova <stela.manova at univie.ac.at<mailto:stela.manova at univie.ac.at>>
To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: [Lingtyp] Final call: SLE 2021 WS Dissecting Morphological
Theory 1: Diminutivization Across Languages and Frameworks
Message-ID: <F0D88DD2-096C-4FB1-91C6-42BBE2283BED at univie.ac.at<mailto:F0D88DD2-096C-4FB1-91C6-42BBE2283BED at univie.ac.at>>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Dissecting Morphological Theory 1:
Diminutivization Across Languages and Frameworks

Final CFP

Workshop to be held in conjunction with the 54th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Athens, 31 August – 3 September 2021, http://www.sle2021.eu<http://www.sle2021.eu> <http://www.sle2021.eu/list-of-workshops<http://www.sle2021.eu/list-of-workshops>>

Deadline for abstract submission
15 January 2021

Convenors
Stela Manova, Boban Arsenijević, Laura Grestenberger & Katharina Korecky-Kröll
(University of Vienna, University of Graz, University of Vienna & University of Vienna)

Workshop website
https://sites.google.com/view/morphologytheories-diminutives/calls-for-papers/dmtd1<https://sites.google.com/view/morphologytheories-diminutives/calls-for-papers/dmtd1> <https://sites.google.com/view/morphologytheories-diminutives/calls-for-papers/dmtd1<https://sites.google.com/view/morphologytheories-diminutives/calls-for-papers/dmtd1>>

Keywords: morphological theory, diminutives, form-meaning mismatches, affix (re)analysis, end/beginning of word

This workshop is planned as the first of a series of workshops that challenge morphological theory with data from diminutivization and addresses three basic issues of diminutive morphology: A. Demarcation, B. Status in grammar, and C. Theoretical description.
Diminutive(-related) meanings and forms have received much attention in the literature (overview in Grandi & Körtvelyessy 2015) and some authors have claimed that we cannot account for peculiarities of diminutives with the regular mechanisms of grammar but need an additional component: evaluative morphology (Scalise 1986), morphopragmatics (Dressler & Merlini Barbaresi 1994). Do we? Or is everything a matter of method (Jurafsky 1996)?

A. Demarcation

Diminutives and hypocoristics often use the same formal means, express affection and are considered overlapping categories (Doleschal & Thornton 2000). For theoretical purposes, do we need to differentiate between them and is a sharp distinction possible? The following list contains properties of hypocoristics that do not seem characteristic of diminutives:

Phonology
Phonological word and phonological templates play an important role in hypocoristic formation (Prosodic Morphology in Lappe 2007); hypocoristics involve shortening of form: stressed syllables tend to be preserved, unstressed syllables tend to be deleted; hypocoristic affixes select monosyllabic bases.

Morphology
Hypocoristics (and all types of shortening/clipping) are hard to analyze in terms of morphemes and exhibit variation (Thomas - Tom(my)).

Semantics
Hypocoristics are not (necessarily) related to smallness. The base and the derivative in hypocoristic formations have the same referential meaning and differ only in terms of pragmatic function (Alber & Arndt-Lappe 2012).

Pragmatics
Hypocoristics serve for calling and in languages such as Russian where the phenomenon affects all proper nouns in informal style (i.e. seems obligatory) hypocoristics have even been labelled Vocative case by some scholars (discussion in Manova 2011).

B. Status in grammar

Diminutives are considered an in-between category, i.e. between derivation and inflection (Scalise 1986, Dressler 1989). But does this tell us something significant about diminutives? In Distributed Morphology (DM, Halle & Marantz 1993, and Bobaljik 2017) both derivational and inflectional affixes can serve as heads; in Paradigm Function Morphology (PFM, Stump 2001) inflection and derivation are both paradigm-based (Bonami & Strnadová 2019). For the morphological parser (C3 below), diminutive suffixes are inseparable from the inflection that follows them. Based on the literature (relevance, Bybee 1985; scope, Rice 2000; closing suffix, Aronoff & Fuhrhop 2002): Is a positional control (internal/external affix; distance from the root; word-final) more useful than derivation/inflection for research on diminutives?

C. Theoretical description

Types of bases
DM assumes that all morphological derivations start from the √root; PFM recognizes only stems as bases; still other theories postulate a parallel existence of roots, stems and words as bases (Natural Morphology, Dressler et al. 1987). There are two types of stems: (i) uncategorized (morphomes, Aronoff 1994), they are in use in a-morphous morphology (PFM) (in the main-stream DM only √roots can be uncategorized); (ii) categorized: stems in DM are of this type but affixes that derive them are either heads or modifiers, the latter do not categorize or change the category or grammatical features of the base (Steriopolo 2009 in relation to diminutives).

Form-meaning mismatches
DM and PFM treat form and meaning separately: roughly, we first produce what we want to say in terms of semantics (combination of abstract morphemes (syntactic terminal nodes) in DM versus ready-made sets of morphosyntactic properties associated with paradigm cells in PFM); having produced the semantic word, we look for form to express it (DM late insertion). Such architecture does not have space for form-meaning mismatches, at least not at the level of the morpheme (Manova et al. 2020). Thus, how do form-meaning mismatches associated with pieces of structure smaller than words arise? One way in which mismatches arise is via diachronic reanalysis/semantic bleaching, by which diminutive suffixes lose their diminutive meaning, e.g. the Bugarian barče ‘café’, originally a diminutive from bar ‘bar, discoteque’, has lost its diminutive meaning in some contexts; barče in (1) is larger than bar:

bar-če sǎs sobstven bar
café [bar-DIM] with its own bar

Diminutive suffixes in Slavic can be stacked/queued (2), Manova (2015). See also De Belder et al. (2014) on "high" and "low" diminutive affixes.

bar ‘bar, discotheque’ → bar-če ‘small bar & café’ →
→ bar-č-ence ‘very small bar & small café’ →
→ bar-č-enc-ence ‘very very small bar & very small café’

With the reanalysis of bar-če as ‘café’, the diminutive suffix moves one position away from the root, nothing gets lost but a new non-diminutive suffix was born. Bar-če still has diminutive connotation meanings: (i) part of a furniture set used for drinks; (ii) small piece of furniture. And -če is also a non-diminutive derivational suffix: dimitr-ov-če ‘chrysanthemum’ (flower that blooms around St. Dimitar’s day).

3. Affix (re)analysis
Derivatives relate to other derivatives through their bases and through their affixes, which results in priming effects in psycholinguistics. Lázaro et al. (2016) researched suffix priming on lexical decision of suffixed (ero-JORNAL-ERO ‘laborer’) and pseudosuffixed (ero-CORD:ERO ‘lamb’; cord is not the root of cordero) Spanish words, as well as the effect of orthographic priming on nonsuffixed words (eba-PRUEBA ‘test’). For suffixed and pseudosuffixed words, related primes significantly accelerated response latencies in comparison to unrelated primes (ista-JORNALERO; ura-CORDERO); for simple words, there was no facilitation effect of the orthographically related prime (eba-PRUEBA) in comparison to the unrelated prime (afo-PRUEBA). In other words, since -če is a word-final (frequent) derivational suffix in Bulgarian (C2), for morphological processing it is favorable if a derived Bulgarian word terminates in -če. Contra Parsability Hypothesis (Hay 2002)/Complexity-Based Ordering (Plag & Baayen 2009), morphological parser appears semantically blind (Beyersmann et al. 2016; but affix position matters, Crepaldi et al. 2016), and all word-final -če suffixes are the same suffix for it. All this indirectly supports reanalysis of morphological form and suffix homophony word-finally. Unsurprisingly, the semantically-blind positional logic of the morphological parser serves for affix discovery in Unsupervised Learning of Morphology (Hammarström & Borin 2011).
Is diminutive affix reanalysis wide-spread cross-linguistically? Is it always related to word-final/beginning position? Do (productive) diminutive affixes, in this process, always distance from the root?

We invite papers that tackle diminutive morphology (based on A, B, C above) with data from any language and within any theory. Submissions suggesting improvements of the architectures of existing theories of morphology are particularly welcome.

Abstract submission

500-word anonymous abstracts should be submitted in Easy Chair using the following link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sle2021<https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sle2021> <https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sle2021<https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sle2021>>. The deadline is 15 January 2021. Upon abstract submission, you should select: 1) type of paper (workshop paper) and 2) indicate the workshop to which your abstract should be assigned (Dissecting Morphological Theory 1). Abstracts should not exceed 500 words (including examples, excluding references).
Practical information about how to submit an abstract can be found at: http://sle2021.eu/submission-guidelines<http://sle2021.eu/submission-guidelines> <http://sle2021.eu/submission-guidelines<http://sle2021.eu/submission-guidelines>>.


References
Alber, Birgit, and Sabine Arndt-Lappe (2012), Templatic and subtractive truncation, in J. Trommer (ed), (2012), The morphology and phonology of exponence, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 289–325.
Aronoff, Mark (1994), Morphology by itself, Cambridge, Ma: MIT.
Aronoff, Mark, and Nanna Fuhrhop (2002), Restricting suffix combinations in German and English: Closing suffixes and the monosuffix constraint, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 20, 451−490.
Beyersmann, Elisabeth, Johannes C. Ziegler, Anne Castles, Max Coltheart, Yvette Kezilas, and Jonathan Grainger (2016), Morpho-orthographic segmentation without semantics, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 23(2), 533–539.
Bobaljik, Jonathan (2017), Distributed Morphology, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, retrieved 17 Jun. 2020, from https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-131<https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-131> <https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-131<https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-131>>.
Bonami, Olivier, and Jana Strnadová (2019), Paradigm structure and predictability in derivational morphology, Morphology 29(2), 167–197.
Bybee, Joan L. (1985), Morphology: A study of the relation between meaning and form, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Crepaldi, Davide, Lara Hemsworth, Colin J. Davis, and Kathleen Rastle (2016), Masked suffix priming and morpheme positional constraints, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 69(1), 113–128.
De Belder, Marijke, Noam Faust, and Nicola Lampitelli (2014), On a low and a high diminutive: evidence from Italian and Hebrew, in A. Alexiadou, H. Borer, and F. Schäfer (eds.), (2014), The syntax of roots and the roots of syntax, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 149–163.
Doleschal, Ursula, and Anna Thornton (2000), Extragrammatical and marginal morphology, München: Lincom.
Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1989), Prototypical differences between inflection and derivation, Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 42, 3–10.
Dressler, Wolfgang U., Willi Mayerthaler, Oswald Panagl, and Wolfgang U. Wurzel (1987), Leitmotifs in Natural Morphology, Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Dressler, Wolfgang U., and Lavinia Merlini Barbaresi (1994), Morphopragmatics: diminutives and intensifiers in Italian, German, and other languages, Berlin: de Gruyter.
Grandi, Nicola, and Lívia Körtvélyessy (eds.), (2015), Edinburgh Handbook of Evaluative Morphology, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Halle, Morris, and Alec Marantz (1993), Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection, in K. Hale, and S. J. Keyser (eds.), (1993), The view from building 20, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 111–176.
Hammarström, Harald, and Lars Borin (2011), Unsupervised learning of morphology, Computational Linguistics 37(2), 309–350.
Hay, Jennifer (2002), From Speech Perception to Morphology: Affix-ordering Revisited, Language 78, 527–555.
Jurafsky, Daniel (1996), Universal tendencies in the semantics of the diminutive, Language 72(3), 533–577.
Lappe, Sabine (2007), English prosodic morphology, Dordrecht: Springer.
Lázaro, Miguel, Víctor Illera, and Javier Sainz (2016), The suffix priming effect: Further evidence for an early morpho-orthographic segmentation process independent of its semantic content, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 69(1), 197–208.
Manova, Stela (2011), Understanding Morphological Rules: With Special Emphasis on Conversion and Subtraction in Bulgarian, Russian and Serbo-Croatian, Dordrecht: Springer.
Manova, Stela (2015), Affix order and the structure of the Slavic word, in S. Manova (ed.), (2015), Affix ordering across languages and frameworks, New York: Oxford University Press, 205–230.
Manova, Stela, Harald Hammarström, Itamar Kastner, ad Yining Nie (2020), What is in a morpheme? Theoretical, experimental and computational approaches to the relation of meaning and form in morphology, Word Structure 13(1), 1–21.
Plag, Ingo, and Harald Baayen (2009), Suffix Ordering and Morphological Processing, Language 85, 109–152
Rice, Keren (2000), Morpheme order and semantic scope, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Scalise, Sergio (1986), Generative morphology, 2nd edn, Dordrecht: Foris.
Steriopolo, Olga (2009), Form and function of expressive morphology: A case study of Russian, Russian Language Journal 59, 149–194.
Stump, Gregory T. (2001), Inflectional morphology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20201221/6789c681/attachment.html<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20201221/6789c681/attachment.html>>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Final CFP SLE WS 9 Dissecting Morphological Theory 1 Diminutivization Across Languages and Frameworks.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 145862 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20201221/6789c681/attachment.pdf<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20201221/6789c681/attachment.pdf>>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20201221/6789c681/attachment-0001.html<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20201221/6789c681/attachment-0001.html>>

------------------------------

Subject: Digest Footer

_______________________________________________
Lingtyp mailing list
Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp>


------------------------------

End of Lingtyp Digest, Vol 75, Issue 9
**************************************
_______________________________________________
Lingtyp mailing list
Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp>


--
Larry M. Hyman, Professor of Linguistics & Executive Director, France-Berkeley Fund
Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/person_detail.php?person=19<http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/person_detail.php?person=19>
ogy, Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Dressler, Wolfgang U., and Lavinia Merlini Barbaresi (1994), Morphopragmatics: diminutives and intensifiers in Italian, German, and other languages, Berlin: de Gruyter.
Grandi, Nicola, and Lívia Körtvélyessy (eds.), (2015), Edinburgh Handbook of Evaluative Morphology, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Halle, Morris, and Alec Marantz (1993), Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection, in K. Hale, and S. J. Keyser (eds.), (1993), The view from building 20, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 111–176.
Hammarström, Harald, and Lars Borin (2011), Unsupervised learning of morphology, Computational Linguistics 37(2), 309–350.
Hay, Jennifer (2002), From Speech Perception to Morphology: Affix-ordering Revisited, Language 78, 527–555.
Jurafsky, Daniel (1996), Universal tendencies in the semantics of the diminutive, Language 72(3), 533–577.
Lappe, Sabine (2007), English prosodic morphology, Dordrecht: Springer.
Lázaro, Miguel, Víctor Illera, and Javier Sainz (2016), The suffix priming effect: Further evidence for an early morpho-orthographic segmentation process independent of its semantic content, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 69(1), 197–208.
Manova, Stela (2011), Understanding Morphological Rules: With Special Emphasis on Conversion and Subtraction in Bulgarian, Russian and Serbo-Croatian, Dordrecht: Springer.
Manova, Stela (2015), Affix order and the structure of the Slavic word, in S. Manova (ed.), (2015), Affix ordering across languages and frameworks, New York: Oxford University Press, 205–230.
Manova, Stela, Harald Hammarström, Itamar Kastner, ad Yining Nie (2020), What is in a morpheme? Theoretical, experimental and computational approaches to the relation of meaning and form in morphology, Word Structure 13(1), 1–21.
Plag, Ingo, and Harald Baayen (2009), Suffix Ordering and Morphological Processing, Language 85, 109–152
Rice, Keren (2000), Morpheme order and semantic scope, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Scalise, Sergio (1986), Generative morphology, 2nd edn, Dordrecht: Foris.
Steriopolo, Olga (2009), Form and function of expressive morphology: A case study of Russian, Russian Language Journal 59, 149–194.
Stump, Gregory T. (2001), Inflectional morphology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20201221/6789c681/attachment.html<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20201221/6789c681/attachment.html>>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Final CFP SLE WS 9 Dissecting Morphological Theory 1 Diminutivization Across Languages and Frameworks.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 145862 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20201221/6789c681/attachment.pdf<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20201221/6789c681/attachment.pdf>>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20201221/6789c681/attachment-0001.html<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20201221/6789c681/attachment-0001.html>>

------------------------------

Subject: Digest Footer

_______________________________________________
Lingtyp mailing list
Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp>


------------------------------

End of Lingtyp Digest, Vol 75, Issue 9
**************************************
_______________________________________________
Lingtyp mailing list
Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp<http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp>


--
Larry M. Hyman, Professor of Linguistics & Executive Director, France-Berkeley Fund
Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/person_detail.php?person=19<http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/person_detail.php?person=19>
____________________________________
Lingtyp mailing list
Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp<https://www.mf.surf.net/canit/urlproxy.php?_q=aHR0cDovL2xpc3RzZXJ2Lmxpbmd1aXN0bGlzdC5vcmcvbWFpbG1hbi9saXN0aW5mby9saW5ndHlw&_s=Yy5ndXNzZW5ob3ZlbkBsZXQucnUubmw%3D&_c=79694e69&_r=cnU%3D>


--
Larry M. Hyman, Professor of Linguistics & Executive Director, France-Berkeley Fund
Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/person_detail.php?person=19<https://www.mf.surf.net/canit/urlproxy.php?_q=aHR0cDovL2xpbmd1aXN0aWNzLmJlcmtlbGV5LmVkdS9wZW9wbGUvcGVyc29uX2RldGFpbC5waHA%2FcGVyc29uPTE5&_s=Yy5ndXNzZW5ob3ZlbkBsZXQucnUubmw%3D&_c=bdbe4bb7&_r=cnU%3D>


More information about the Lingtyp mailing list