[Lingtyp] Grammatical diversity of Oceania, suggestions for features?
David Gil
gil at shh.mpg.de
Wed Apr 5 07:45:06 UTC 2017
Ian is quite right in pointing out that d/t place-of-articulation
asymmetry is under-reported: I could offer my own native language
Hebrew as an example of a relatively well-described language in which
such an asymmetry exists but — to the best of my knowledge — has not
been previously described in the literature.
According to the map by Donohue et al (2012) map, most cases of d/t
place-of-articulation asymmetry occur almost exclusively in two large
regions, one encompassing much of equatorial Africa, the second
consisting of the Mekong-
Mamberamo area plus spillover into eastern parts of South Asia, Taiwan, and
Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.
What's particularly interesting for the history of the Mekong-Mamberamo
area is that d/t place-of-articulation asymmetry, while common in the
Austronesian languages of Indonesia, is (well, so far at least)
unattested in the Philippines. This suggests a scenario in which the
Austronesian languages spreading south from Taiwan through the
Philippines into the Indonesian archipelago originally didn't have it,
but then picked it up (along with other Mekong-Mamberamo features) from
the now-extinct non-Austronesian languages of the Indonesian archipelago.
David
Donohue, Mark, Rebecca Hetherington & James McElvenny. 2012. World
Phonotactics Database. Canberra: Australian National University. http:
//phonotactics.anu.edu.au.
On 05/04/2017 13:48, Ian Maddieson wrote:
> 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
>> <mailto: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
>>> www.ioling.org <http://www.ioling.org/>
>>>
>>> Blogger at Humans Who Read Grammars
>>> 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
>>> www.ioling.org <http://www.ioling.org/>
>>>
>>> Blogger at Humans Who Read Grammars
>>> 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
--
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
Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816
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