[Lingtyp] Grammatical diversity of Oceania, suggestions for features?

Wed Apr 5 05:48:28 UTC 2017

One feature David mentions is “d/t place-of-articulation asymmetry” — I assume this refers to
the observation that a voiced coronal plosive in a language without multiple coronal place
contrasts may have a more retracted place of articulation than a voiceless counterpart. 

This is observed in quite a few areas around the world (and could be more frequent if we
had better data on the phonetics of more languages), so this not might be a particularly strong
areal marker. A few examples are Kisi and Bowiri in West Africa, Wapishana in South America 
and Sui in China.

Ian

> On Apr 4, 2017, at 21:24, Hedvig Skirgård <hedvig.skirgard at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi David, 
> 
> That's an excellent idea! Thanks. Some of these I know from reading other papers of yours, and some already overlap with Reesink, Dunn et al and with Grambank. Would it be possible however to get some more detailed definition on them? For example, what constituted "optional TAM marking"? What did it take for a language to be classified as "yes" for that feature?
> 
> /Hedvig
> 
> 
> ***
> Tōfā soifua,
> Hedvig Skirgård
> 
> PhD Candidate
> The Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity
> ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language
> School of Culture, History and Language
> College of Asia and the Pacific
> Rm 4203, H.C. Coombs Building (#9)
> The Australian National University
> Acton ACT 2601
> Australia
> 
> Co-chair of Public Relations
> Board of the International Olympiad of Linguistics
> www.ioling.org <http://www.ioling.org/>
> 
> Blogger at Humans Who Read Grammars
> http://humans-who-read-grammars.blogspot. <http://humans-who-read-grammars.blogspot./>
> 
> On 5 April 2017 at 13:14, David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de <mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de>> wrote:
> Hi Hedvig,
> 
> in Gil (2015) I define a Mekong-Mamberamo area extending from Mainland Southeast Asia through the Indonesian archipelago and into western new Guinea, characterized by 17 features which I've listed below.  In the final section of the paper, I briefly discuss the extent to which these 17 features "overflow" from the Mekong-Mamberamo area into Oceania, due to the spread of Austronesian languages from New Guinea into the Pacific.  So you may wish to follow up on this and examine the extent to which the languages of Oceania exhibit these features.
> 
> Best,
> 
> David
> 
> Gil, David (2015) "The Mekong-Mamberamo Linguistic Area", in N.J. Enfield and B. Comrie eds., Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia, The State of the Art, Pacific Linguistics, DeGruyter Mouton, Berlin, 266-355.
> 
> 
> 17 Mekong-Mamberamo Properties
>         1.       passing gesture
>         2.       repeated dental clicks expressing amazement
>         3.       conventionalized greeting with 'where'
>         4.       'eye day' > 'sun' lexicalization
>         5.       d/t place-of-articulation asymmetry
>         6.       numeral classifiers
>         7.       verby adjectives
>         8.       basic SVO word order
>         9.       iamitive perfects
>         10.     'give' causatives
>         11.     low differentiation of adnominal attributive constructions
>         12.     weakly developed grammatical voice
>         13.     isolating word structure
>         14.     short words
>         15.     low grammatical-morpheme density
>         16.     optional thematic-role flagging
>         17.     optional TAM marking
> 
> 
> 
> On 05/04/2017 10:21, Hedvig Skirgård wrote:
>> Dear typologists,
>> What are interesting grammatical typological features for capturing the diversity of Oceania? I sent this message earlier to the mailing list for pacific linguistics, but I thought I'd try here as well since I didn't get any response there yet.
>> 
>> I work with a grammatical survey of the world's languages, Grambank, and I'm also personally interested in Oceania in particular for my PhD project. I've been doing some thinking as to what features would be interesting to cover to more accurately capture the grammatical diversity of Oceania in particular, besides the feature set that we already have for the world-sample.
>> 
>> One guide are the features that Reesink, Dunn et al used in their publications on Sahul and Melanesia (see attachments and references listed below).  They've taken in input from a lot of previous literature and commentary, so it's a                 good set.
>> 
>> Besides those, do you have other suggestions?
>> 
>> From a rather Samoan-centric perspective, I'd be inclined to add features like these:
>> 
>> Is there a "neutral" choice in attributive possession, i.e. not alienable/inalienable, dominant/subordinate?
>> Can the agent be expressed as the possessor of the verb instead of encoded in the more canonical ergative/nominative manner?
>> Can TA markers be entirely dropped in main clauses?
>> Is number of absolute arguments expressed by reduplication on the verb?
>> Clearly these need further refinement, I just wanted to give some examples. Looking forward to more suggestions!
>> 
>> Tōfā soifua,
>> Hedvig Skirgård
>> 
>> References:
>> Dunn, Michael, Angela Terrill, Ger Reesink, Robert A. Foley & Stephen C. Levinson. 2005. Structural phylogenetics and the reconstruction of ancient language history. Science 309. 2072–2075. 
>> 
>> Dunn, Michael, Robert A. Foley, Stephen C. Levinson, Ger Reesink & Angela Terrill. 2007. Statistical reasoning in the evaluation of typological diversity in Island Melanesia. Oceanic Linguistics 46(2). 388-403. 
>> 
>> Dunn, Michael, Stephen C. Levinson, Eva Lindström, Ger Reesink, & Angela Terrill. 2008. Structural phylogeny in historical linguistics: Methodological explorations applied in Island Melanesia. Language 84(4). 710-759 
>> 
>> Reesink, G., Singer, R., & Dunn, M. (2009). Explaining the linguistic diversity of Sahul using population models. PLoS Biology, 7(11), e1000241. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000241
>> 
>> Reesink, Ger & Michael Dunn (2012) Systematic typological comparison as a tool for investigating language history. in Nicholas Evans and Marian Klamer (eds) Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication No. 5 Melanesian Languages on the Edge of Asia: Challenges for the 21st Century. pp. 34–71
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ***
>> Hedvig Skirgård
>> 
>> PhD Candidate
>> The Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity
>> ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language
>> School of Culture, History and Language
>> College of Asia and the Pacific
>> Rm 4203, H.C. Coombs Building (#9)
>> The Australian National University
>> Acton ACT 2601
>> Australia
>> 
>> Co-chair of Public Relations
>> Board of the International Olympiad of Linguistics
>>  <http://www.ioling.org/>www.ioling.org <http://www.ioling.org/>
>> 
>> Blogger at Humans Who Read Grammars
>>  <http://humans-who-read-grammars.blogspot./>http://humans-who-read <http://humans-who-read/>-grammars.blogspot.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Dear typologists,
>> What are interesting grammatical typological features for capturing the diversity of Oceania? I sent this message earlier to the mailing list for pacific linguistics, but I thought I'd try here as well since I didn't get any response there yet.
>> 
>> I work with a grammatical survey of the world's languages, Grambank, and I'm also personally interested in Oceania in particular for my PhD project. I've been doing some thinking as to what features would be interesting to cover to more accurately capture the grammatical diversity of Oceania in particular, besides the feature set that we already have for the world-sample.
>> 
>> One guide are the features that Reesink, Dunn et al used in their publications on Sahul and Melanesia (see attachments and references listed below).  They've taken in input from a lot of previous literature and commentary, so it's a                 good set.
>> 
>> Besides those, do you have other suggestions?
>> 
>> From a rather Samoan-centric perspective, I'd be inclined to add features like these:
>> 
>> Is there a "neutral" choice in attributive possession, i.e. not alienable/inalienable, dominant/subordinate?
>> Can the agent be expressed as the possessor of the verb instead of encoded in the more canonical ergative/nominative manner?
>> Can TA markers be entirely dropped in main clauses?
>> Is number of absolute arguments expressed by reduplication on the verb?
>> Clearly these need further refinement, I just wanted to give some examples. Looking forward to more suggestions!
>> 
>> Tōfā soifua,
>> Hedvig Skirgård
>> 
>> References:
>> Dunn, Michael, Angela Terrill, Ger Reesink, Robert A. Foley & Stephen C. Levinson. 2005. Structural phylogenetics and the reconstruction of ancient language history. Science 309. 2072–2075. 
>> 
>> Dunn, Michael, Robert A. Foley, Stephen C. Levinson, Ger Reesink & Angela Terrill. 2007. Statistical reasoning in the evaluation of typological diversity in Island Melanesia. Oceanic Linguistics 46(2). 388-403. 
>> 
>> Dunn, Michael, Stephen C. Levinson, Eva Lindström, Ger Reesink, & Angela Terrill. 2008. Structural phylogeny in historical linguistics: Methodological explorations applied in Island Melanesia. Language 84(4). 710-759 
>> 
>> Reesink, G., Singer, R., & Dunn, M. (2009). Explaining the linguistic diversity of Sahul using population models. PLoS Biology, 7(11), e1000241. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000241
>> 
>> Reesink, Ger & Michael Dunn (2012) Systematic typological comparison as a tool for investigating language history. in Nicholas Evans and Marian Klamer (eds) Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication No. 5 Melanesian Languages on the Edge of Asia: Challenges for the 21st Century. pp. 34–71
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> ***
>> Hedvig Skirgård
>> 
>> PhD Candidate
>> The Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity
>> ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language
>> School of Culture, History and Language
>> College of Asia and the Pacific
>> Rm 4203, H.C. Coombs Building (#9)
>> The Australian National University
>> Acton ACT 2601
>> Australia
>> 
>> Co-chair of Public Relations
>> Board of the International Olympiad of Linguistics
>>  <http://www.ioling.org/>www.ioling.org <http://www.ioling.org/>
>> 
>> Blogger at Humans Who Read Grammars
>>  <http://humans-who-read-grammars.blogspot./>http://humans-who-read <http://humans-who-read/>-grammars.blogspot.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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> 
> -- 
> David Gil
> 
> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
> Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
> 
> Email: gil at shh.mpg.de <mailto:gil at shh.mpg.de>
> Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834 <tel:+49%203641%20686834>
> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816 <tel:+62%20812-8116-2816>
> 
> 
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Ian Maddieson

Department of Linguistics
University of New Mexico
MSC03-2130
Albuquerque NM 87131-0001

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