[Algonquiana] Workshop on Consonant and vowel symbolism in Native North American languages

Fri May 6 08:07:47 UTC 2022

Dear colleagues, 

Please find below a call for papers for a workshop on consonant and vowel symbolism in Native North American languages , to be held in Paris on December 8 and 9, 2022 (online and on-site workshop). 
The deadline for sending abstracts is June 3, 2022 (included). 

Best regards, 

Julie Marsault 

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Call for papers : Consonant and vowel symbolism in Native North American languages 

Online & on-site workshop ; December 8 and 9, 2022, Paris (France). 

Sound symbolism has been a growing research subject for the last few decades (e.g. Hinton et al. 1994; Nuckolls 1999; Johansson et al. 2020), and so have ideophones (e.g. Voeltz & Kilian-Hatz 2001; Dingemanse 2012, 2017, 2019; Dingemanse et al. 2016; McLean 2020; Akita & Prashant 2019), which can be viewed as lexicalized, language-specific instances of sound symbolism. North American languages often are underrepresented in these works ( with the exception of Hinton et al. 1994 and large typological surveys such as Alderete & Kochetov 2017; Johansson et al. 2020) , even though many Native languages of this continent possess a specific type of sound symbolism, where consonant (and sometimes vowel) shifts express augmentation/diminution or various degrees of intensity (Mithun 1999). 

Consonant symbolism was described as early as the 1890s for the Siouan languages (Dorsey 1892) and the 1910s for Wishram (Sapir 1911), and has since been the object of numerous investigations on individual languages (e.g., Aoki (1994) for Nez Perce, Boas & Deloria (1941) for Dakota, Melnychuk (2003) for Cree), as well as on families or proto-languages (e.g., Tarpent (2002) for the Penutian Phylum, Pentland (1974) for Algonquian , Langdon (1971) for Yuman, Rankin (1998) for Siouan-Yuchi) and areas (e.g., Nichols (1971) for the western region). 

Symbolic consonant shifts can spread by language contact. Hinton (1991) describes how several Uto-Aztecan languages developed diminutive consonant symbolism by contact with Yuman languages in California. It is also one of the few linguistic traits that have passed from one language family to another in the Plains area (from Siouan to the Caddoan language Arikara; Hollow & Parks 1980). It can be considered one of the areal features of several regions or sub-regions, including the Northwest Coast, the Plateau, and Northern California (Sherzer 1968, 1976; Nichols 1971; Campbell 1997). Nichols (1971) lists and studies its presence in more than 25 languages in the western part of the continent, with several clusters of specific types of shift. 

With this workshop, we wish to resume the areal and typological investigation of symbolic consonant and vowel shifts in Native languages of North America. We encourage presentations on consonant or vowel gradation phenomena in individual languages and language families, if possible with an areal perspective. The following questions may be a relevant starting point: 

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How similar are the sound symbolic alternations attested across different areas and families? 
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In their structure: which kind of contrasts are used (cf. Nichols 1971)? How much of the phonemic inventory is involved in these contrasts? Are the shifts restricted to one or a few word classes? 
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In their semantics: what do the symbolic shifts express in each language? 
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How well do they map onto known universal tendencies of sound symbolism (cf. Ultan 1978; Alderete & Kochetov 2017; Johansson et al. 2020)? 
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Are there other documented cases of areal diffusion of sound symbolism? Does areal diffusion concern the structure, the semantics, or both? Does it coincide with the diffusion of other linguistic traits? 
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Is there a word class that could be called “ideophones” in the languages displaying sound symbolism? Are consonant/vowel symbolism and ideophones related in some ways? (e.g., does the first frequently affect ideophones?) 

The workshop is organized within the framework of the “Ideophones and Interjections in a typological, areal and diachronic perspective” research program funded by the [ https://en.labex-efl.fr/ | Empirical Foundations of Linguistics Labex ] , Paris. It will be held in Paris and online on the 8 th and 9 th of December, and will involve two half-day sessions at the hours most convenient for participants in Paris and online. 

Schedule : 

Deadline for abstracts: Ju ne 3 , 2022 . 

Abstracts are to be sent at Julie Marsault: [ mailto:julie.marsault at inalco.fr | julie.marsault at inalco.fr ] 

Notifications of acceptance: July 1 st , 2022 

Workshop: December 8 th and 9 th , 2022. 

Organizer : Julie Marsault 

Scientific Committee : Guillaume Jacques, Aimée Lahaussois, Marc-Antoine Mahieu, Julie Marsault, Yvonne Treis. 

References 

Akita, Kimi & Pardeshi, Prashant. 2019. Ideophones, Mimetics and Expressives . John Benjamins Publishing Company. 

Alder ete, John & Kotchek ov, Alexei. 2017. Integrating sound symbolism with core grammar: the case of expressing palatalization. In Language 93 . 731-766. 

Aoki, Haruo. 1994. Symbolism in Nez Perce. In Hinton et al. (eds), Sound Symbolism , Cambridge University Press, 15-22. 

Boas, Franz & Deloria, Ella. 1941. Dakota Grammar . Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 22 

Campbell, Lyle. 1997. American Indian Languages. The historical linguistics of Native America . Oxford University Press. 

Dingemanse, Mark. 2012. Advances in the Cross-Linguistic Study of Ideophones. Language and Linguistics Compass , 654-672. 

Dingemanse, Mark. 2017. Expressiveness and system integration: On the typology of ideophones, with special reference to Siwu. Language Typology and Universals 70, 363-384. 

Dingemanse, Mark. 2019. ‘Ideophone’ as a comparative concept. In Akita, K. & Pardeshi, P. (eds), Ideophones, Mimetics and Expressives . John Benjamins Publishing Company. 13-34 

Dingemanse, Mark; Schuerman, Will; Reinisch, Eva; Tufvesson, Sylvia & Mitterer, Holger. 2016. What sound symbolism can and cannot do: Testing the iconicity of ideophones from five languages. In Language 92 . 117-133. 

Dorsey, James O. 1892. Siouan Onomatopes. American Anthropologist 5, 1-8. 

Hinton, Leanne. 1991. Takic and Yuman: a study in phonological convergence. In International Journal of American Linguistics , 57. 133-157. 

Hinton, Leanne, Nichols, Johanna & Ohala, John J. (eds.). 1994. Sound Symbolism . Cambridge University Press. 

Hollow, Robert C. & Parks, Douglas. 1980. Studies in Plains linguistics: a review. In Wood, R. W. & Liberty, M. (Eds.), Anthropology on the Great Plains , University of Nebraska. 68-97. 

Johansson, Niklas; Anikin, Andrey; Carling, Gerd & Holmer, Arthur. 2020. The typolology of sound symbolism: Defining macro-concepts via their semantic and phonetic features. In Linguistic Typology 24 . 253-310. 

Langdon, Margaret. 1971. Sound Symbolism in Yuman Languages. In Sawyer, J. (ed.), Studies in American Indian Languages , University of California Press. 149-173. 

McLean, Bonnie. 2021. Revising an implicational hierarchy for the meanings of ideophones, with special reference to Japonic . In Linguistic Typolog y 25(3) . 507-549. 

Melnychuk, Teresa D. 2003. Diminutive consonant harmony in several dialects of Cree . Winnipeg: University of Manitoba master’s thesis. 

Mithun, Marianne. 1999. The Languages of Native North America . Cambridge University Press. 

Nichols, Johanna. 1971. Diminutive consonant symbolism in western North America. Language 47, 826-48. 

Nuckolls, J anis B. 1999. The Case for Sound Symbolism. In Annual Review of Anthropology 28 . 225-252. 

Pentland, David H. 1974. Diminutive Consonant symbolism in Algonquian . In Papers of the sixth Algonquian Conference. 237-251. 

Rankin, Robert L. 1998. Siouan-Catawban-Yuchi Genetic Relationship: with a Note on Caddoan. Paper presented at the Siouan-Caddoan Linguistics Conference, Bloomington, IN, May 1998. 

Sapir, Edward. 1911. Diminutive and augmentative consonantism in Wishram (Contribution to Franz Boas's "Chinook"). Handbook of American Indian languages: Volume 1 (BAE:40.1). Washington:Smithsonian Institute. 638-45. 

Sherzer, Joel. 1968. An areal-typological study of the American Indian languages north of Mexico . University of Pennsylvania Dissertation. 

Sherzer, Joel. 1976. Areal linguistics in North America. In Sebeok (ed.), Native Languages of the Americas , Plenum Press. 121-173. 

Tarpent, Marie-Lucie. 2002. A Pan-Penutian Database of Materials for Comparison and Reconstruction: Its Organization, Uses and Current Results. UC Berkeley: Department of Linguistics. Retrieved from [ https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2w618727 | https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2w618727 ] 

Ultan, Russell. 1978. Size sound symbolism. In Greenberg (ed.), Universal of Human Language volume 2: Phonology , Standford University Press. 525-568. 

Voeltz, Erhard & Kilian-Hatz, Christa. 2001. Ideophones . John Benjamins Publishing Company. 

Julie Marsault 
Post-doctorante au Labex EFL / Inalco 
UMR Histoire des Théories Linguistiques 
8 rue Albert Einstein 
75013 Paris 