reversal of merger, proposal (2)

[Larry Trask]

On Fri, 27 Nov 1998 Alexis Manaster Ramer wrote:
 
> I think that there is at least one alternative.  Truly
> expressive forms are often pronounced somewhat differently
> from non-expressive forms with the same phonemes.  As Labov
> points out, for example, the f-word in English often has
> the /f/ made with the lower lip tucked in.  Sapir's
> paper on "abormal speech" in Nootka contains several
> examples.
 
> What would fit
> all the facts cited is the theory that there were two
> somewhat different articulations of what is written
> as <x>, which I will write as <x1> and <x2>, and that
> only one of these, (x2), went to <j>.  Note that the strikingly
> anomalous development of <gixaxo> to <gixajo>, *<gijajo>,
> can be explained if we assume that, once the force of the
> dim. suffix -<xo) was lost, it became <gix1ax2o) whence
> <gixajo>.
 
I agree that this interpretation of the Basque case is perfectly
possible.  However, it seems less economical than Michelena's proposal,
in requiring speakers of the Gipuzkoan dialect to construct and maintain
a contrast between two different kinds of [esh], a contrast which is not
observed or recorded in any variety of Basque.
 
Moreover, such a contrast would have produced an immensely crowded
sibilant system.  Quite apart from the further contrast proposed here,
Basque already has a contrast among three voiceless sibilants: a laminal
(notated <z>), an apical (notated <s>), and a palato-alveolar (notated
<x>), and it also has the three corresponding affricates, notated <tz>,
<ts> and <tx>.  This is already a surprisingly crowded system for a
language which has only a very modest number of phonemes to start with.
And note further that this proposal would have required speakers to
change the articulation of <x1> to <x2> in words in which the expressive
value of <x1> had been lost: hence it requires that speakers should
always have carefully distinguished between expressive and
non-expressive occurrences of <x>, which is precisely what Michelena was
proposing in the first place.
 
> Another possibility is that the expressive <x>'s that do
> not change to <j> are due to interference from other dialects.
> There is in general little doubt that many expressive
> features do come from external sources. E.g., in Polish
> a few words which normally have <e> get <i> in expressive
> forms, at least for some speakers, e.g., <dziewka>, an
> obsolescent word for 'young female servant' vs. <dziwka>
> roughly 'whore', <bieda> 'poverty' vs. <bida>, used to
> express sympathy or the like when talking about some
> particular people's poverty, etc.  In this case, we
> happen to know that <e> and <i> are different dialect
> realizations of older /e:/, which earlier in the century
> were in competition for standard status.  In general, <e>
> won this fight, thus making <i> eminently suitable to
> an expressive function.
 
Yes, but we are not here dealing with a handful of exceptional words.
With just one or two exceptions, like the second <x> in <gixaxo>,
*every* instance of original (expressive) <x> remained unchanged, while
*every* instance of non-original <x> underwent backing.  The process was
completely systematic, not merely sporadic.  And no known dialect of
Basque exhibits a contrast between two types of <x>, nor does any
dialect have a reflex of expressive <x> which is different from <x>,
except that word-initial <x> develops regularly to the affricate <tx> in
some varieties.
 
Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK
 
larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk