probability & sound change (nee rhotacism from R.H.)

[H.M.Hubey]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Robert R. Ratcliffe wrote:
>
> > but I am more sure now that some of what we see is not really
> > universal but rather due to some specific local phenomena.
>
> This is not a matter of opinion, or something that can be decided simply
> by thinking about it.  It is a matter of evidence, and that is what I
> meant by 'empirical'. Labov's conclusion, based on case studies of some
> twenty languages, is: ".. there are no directions of vowel shifting that
> are forbidden to speakers of human languages, but ... some directions
> are taken far more than others" (Principles of Linguistic Change 1994,
> p.116).  Specifically he proposes that in chain shifts, long vowels
> rise, short vowels fall, and back vowels move to the front.
 
I have nothing about empiricism. But these directions must be local
because if it were not, we would not have had those which are supposed
to disappear.
 
 
> Labov's sample (mistake in title, should be Prinicples of Linguistic
> Change, sorry) is small by the standards of typology, and most of the
> languages are European.  Further work in the diachronic typology of
 
Even if all the languages of the world were in the sample, it would
still be local (temporally) we do not know what it was like before
we recorded these languages.
 
> phonological systems is certainly desirable. Nonetheless, as empirical
> scientists we have to prefer a theory consistent with some evidence
> (directional sound change) over a theory (random sound change) which has
> not been shown to apply to any evidence.  It is certainly possible that
> directionality effects are part of a short term cycle which evens out to
> zero in the long run, but I haven't seen any evidence which would
> support this view.
 
Yes, I understand all that. But even if someone produced an equation of
evolution, it still cannot be universal because it is still local in
time.
A time evolution cannot be created from a short sample in time.
 
> > There is a similar problem in probability theory, that of stationarity
> > of a signal. It's impossible to prove. No matter how many languages
> > you
> > look into you can only look at a specific time interval. It's hard to
> > say if the sound changes are due to universals or to a particular
> > combination of sounds and phonotactics.
>
> This passage is a bit cryptic. I haven't talked about universals, but
> only about emprically observed statistical tendencies, and haven't
> discussed explanatory factors at all. It would certainly be meaningless
> to say that something is "due to" a statistical tendency.  The length of
> the time interval is only limited by the historical record, but even so,
> it isn't necessarily a problem.  If directional effects are only part of
> a long term cycle X>Y>X (a cycle longer than the historical record),
> this should still be demonstrable, based on the fact that not all
> languages should be at the same point in the cycle.  In some langues X>Y
> should be the trend in the attested period, in others Y>X.  Breadth of
> the sample can substitute for depth.
 
 
YEs, given a long enough time and a large enough sample we can say that
such and such changes have a tendency to occur. But is it a tendency
that is unconditioned or is it a tendency that arose from some reasons
which are lost in time? To attack the problem a model is needed,
a model of change over time.
 
 
> You're right, of course. Directional trends relate only to what is
> probable in sound change, not to what is possible or impossible. On the
> other hand it occurs to me that there is one type of sound change which
> IS irreversible, that is X>0, as found in mergers, phoneme loss, or
> assimilation in clusters.
 
Don't languages also add vowels and consonants? Japanese suffixes vowels
to many borrowed words. Ditto for Finnish. Turkish prefixes vowels to
initial consonant clusters. The general idea is that the phonotactics
decides. That means some phonotactical rule of some language (even the
same language at a different time) can create the conditions which can
result in the addition of a vowel.
 
But then again, a model is needed of language evolution. Lass talks
about
a lot of this in his book. There are things we can think about just from
the way things behave in nature. Gell-Mann discusses this in the Santa
Fe
book.
 
 
> Directionality does not mean teleology. To say that sound change moves
> in a non-random direction is not to say that it is going anywhere in
> particular.  One might propose (although I didn't) that over time
 
Maybe there is.
 
Dynamical systems have behaviors which can be used as models. For
example,
the concept of stability. Languages might change very slowly after they
have essentially reached stability. That could explain why some
languages
seem to change fast and others slowly.
 
> phoneme inventories get smaller, or that 'marked' phonemes tend to be
> lost in favor of unmarked.  I have yet to see a teleological proposal of
> this type which can survive the test of the evidence. The directionality
> trends discovered by Labov appear ultimately due to physiological
> constraints both articulatory and auditory.
 
If that can be shown to follow from physical and auditory causes so much
the better.
 
In other words the direction
> of sound change is constrained by the present not by the future.  I
> suppose this is what you mean by talking about local versus universal
> (i.e. short term vs. long term).   There are no long term directional
> trends (as far as the evidence now goes).  But we cannot conclude from
> this that the sum of short term directional trends adds up to zero or no
> directionality or random directionality.
 
No, local means restricted to a small region of space or time. If humans
have been speaking for 500,000 years, a 5,000 year span is very small.
 
 
>     The prequisite to a realistic probalistic model of language change
> is a systematic research program in diachronic typology.  We have to
> establish the probable direction of change on the basis of statistical
> data from observed changes-- not on the basis of a priori reasoning.
 
Of, course. But even statistics is built on models.
 
 
> suspect the ultimate model will look something like those typhoon maps
> we see here (don't know if you have them in other countries): There is a
> circle showing where the storm is and from the outer edges of the circle
> there is a wedge shaped projection showing the area into which the storm
> is likely to move. At the big end of the wedge there is another bigger
> circle showing where the storm is likely to be at the end of a certain
> period (24 hrs, e.g.).  From this big circle another wedge is projected,
> with a bigger mouth showing where the storm should go in the next
> period, and so on.
 
Well, that is dynamics already. And there are models (equations) that
will
do those things. The zeroth order approximation is the asexual family
tree model. Something beyond this seems desirable. What kind of a model
should it be?
 
>
> > The same applies to linguistics changes.There are many scales at which
> > changes occur, and if we mix up these levels we create opposing ideas.
>
> A priori we don't know what models or scales apply to linguistic
> changes. We can't know until we have tried to apply them, that is test
> them against the data.
 
Yes, and if the present model says that the subtratum has no effect then
there's no way to test it against data. The reason is that the neutral
data
is interpreted to always confirm the status quo.
 
It is circular.
 
Substratum has no effect. The change was internal. Proof: no words from
the
substratum. If we don't know the substratum how can we tell if there was
no effect. Similarly, how do we reach the conclusion that the subtratum
had
no effect, if we do not consider any change to be due to the substratum
but
always internal?
 
 
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> Robert R. Ratcliffe
> Senior Lecturer, Arabic and Linguistics,
> Dept. of Linguistics and Information Science
> Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
> Nishigahara 4-51-21, Kita-ku
> Tokyo 114 Japan
 
--
Best Regards,
Mark
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