[Lingtyp] Grammatical diversity of Oceania, suggestions for features?
Mark Donohue
mark at donohue.cc
Wed Apr 5 08:10:11 UTC 2017
Since it's come up, I can also refer people to:
*Donohue, Mark*. 2010. Dental discrepancies and the sound of
Proto-Austronesian. In Bethwyn Evans, ed., *Discovering History through
Language: papers in honour of Malcolm Ross*: 271-287. Canberra: Pacific
Linguistics 605. (PDF
<http://papuan.linguistics.anu.edu.au/Donohue/downloads/Donohue_2010_Dentals.pdf>,
3.7MB)
-Mark
On 5 April 2017 at 17:45, David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de> wrote:
> 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>
> 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
>
> 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>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
>>
>> Blogger at Humans Who Read Grammars
>> 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
>>
>> Blogger at Humans Who Read Grammars
>> http://humans-who-read-grammars.blogspot.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Lingtyp mailing listLingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.orghttp://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>
>> --
>> 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 <+49%203641%20686834>
>> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816 <+62%20812-8116-2816>
>>
>> _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list
>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.o
>> rg/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
> _______________________________________________ Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org http://listserv.linguistlist.
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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 <+49%203641%20686834>
> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816 <+62%20812-8116-2816>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
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