[Lingtyp] ALT Newsletter No. 56

[Kristine Hildebrandt]

Hello ALT Membership and Participants,

Please find ALT Newsletter No. 56 attached, and also entered directly into
the text of this email. Please feel free to share/distribute this
Newsletter onward.

Yours,

Kristine Hildebrandt
ALT Secretary

*ALT News No. 56*

*July 2019*



*1. Message from the president, Jeff Good:*



As we get closer to the 13th meeting of the Association for Linguistic
Typology, the local organizers at the University of Pavia are working hard
to prepare for the event. Even if you are not able to attend, I hope you
will take some time to look at the program to get a sense for the work that
people are doing on typology today. As usual, the talks and posters contain
an interesting mix of studies focusing on individual languages, different
language families and areas, and more general typological topics.



At the end of this year, my term as President will be complete, and the
Nominating Committee is working now on developing a list of nominees for a
number of ALT positions where those who have served the Association will be
rotating off. Please look out for more information on ALT nominations and
elections as it becomes available.



Below in this newsletter, you will find further announcements regarding the
upcoming ALT meeting as well as reports from the Greenberg and Pāṇini Award
Committees. I would like to give my sincere thanks to Peter Arkadiev for
serving as Chair of the Greenberg Award Committee and Hilary Chappell for
serving as Chair of the Pāṇini Award Committee. The other members of the
Greenberg Award committee were: Sonia Cristofaro, Frans Plank, Larry Hyman,
Eva van Lier, Marina Chumakiba, Mark Donohue, Matti Miestamo, Tatiana
Nikitina, and Sergey Say. The other members of the Pāṇini Award Committee
were: Niclas Burenhult, Denis Creissels, Wilson De Lima Silva, Diana
Forker, Alice Gaby, Tom Güldemann, Hirofumi Hori, Gwen Hyslop, Nerida
Jarkey, František Kratochvil, Florian Lionnet, Danqing Liu, Enrique
Palancar, Andrey Shluinsky, Martine Vanhove, Yogendra Yadava. One of the
pleasures of serving in my role as ALT President has been to discover how
many scholars are willing to dedicate their time to support ALT by serving
on these committees. Giving out these awards is one of ALT’s most important
functions, and I am grateful to everyone who assisted ALT in evaluating the
submissions. I take it as strong evidence of the strength of typology as a
discipline that the level of acceptance of invitations to serve on these
committees is very high, even though I know that those serving have many
other commitments.



I am looking forward to seeing many of you soon in Pavia!



*2. ALT13Announcements*

*2.1. Updates*



All information regarding the upcoming ALT conference, including the
program, may be found online:
https://sites.google.com/universitadipavia.it/alt2019/program?authuser=0



The 13th biennial Association for Linguistic Typology meeting will be held
4-6 September, 2019 at the University of Pavia, Italy. The organizers
include Sonia Cristofaro, Silvia Luraghi, Elisa Roma, and Chiara Zanchi.



*2.2 Attendee Conduct at the ALT Meeting in Pavia*

The ALT Executive Committee asks all attendees of the 13th Meeting of the
Association for Linguistic Typology to respect the Code of Ethics of the
host of the meeting, the University of Pavia, by following those elements
of its Code that are most applicable to academic visitors to the
university. These include, in particular:

Article 1: Basic Principles
Article 7: Rejection of any form of discrimination
Article 8: Abuses, nuisances and harassment of a sexual nature
Article 10: Moral harassment and bullying

The official version of the Code (in Italian) can be found at
https://web.unipv.it/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Codice-Etico.pdf, and an
English translation can be found at
https://web.unipv.it/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Code-of-Ethics-English-transaltion.pdf
.

Attendees with any concerns related to the conduct of individuals at the
meeting should feel free to report them to any member of the Local
Organizing Committee, Sonia Cristofaro, Silvia Luraghi, Elisa Roma, and
Chiara Zanchi, or any of the following members of the ALT Executive
Committee: Mark Dingemanse, Jeff Good, Masha Koptjevskaja Tamm, Felicity
Meakins, Rachel Nordlinger, and Ljuba Veselinova.


*2.3. Awards*



Both the Greenberg and Panini awards have been decided, and the recipients
were announced in a general email earlier in 2019. What follows are the
final reports from the jury chairs, and another word of thanks to the jury
members:



*Chair's Report for the Greenberg Award, 2019, Peter Arkadiev, Chair:*



*(**i) The 2019 Winner*



*Shelece Easterday. 2017. Highly complex syllable structure: a typological
study of its phonological characteristics and diachronic development*

*University of New Mexico*

*Supervisor**: Caroline Smith*



In her dissertation Shelece Easterday engages in a very ambitious project
of determining the properties of “highly complex syllable structures”
asking if such systems constitute an identifiable “type”. To do this,
Easterday established a database of 100 phonological systems from a
diversified sample of languages which she examined and coded individually
to test if such structures correlate with other phonological and
morphological properties. The research exacted a deep and broad study that
is truly impressive and ambitious in scope.



The dissertation consists of eight chapters, of which chapter 1 serves as a
general introduction and chapter 2 describes the language sample. Chapter 3
surveys syllable structure patterns attested in the sample, examining onset
and coda sizes and their mutual relationships, properties of nuclei and
morphological patterns associated with different syllable structures; the
syllable structures in the 24 languages of the sample with highly complex
syllable structure are investigated in detail. Chapter 4 discusses the
relationship between syllable structure complexity and inventories of
vowels and consonants, showing that highly complex syllable structures are
associated with specific properties of phoneme inventories, such as
presence of palato-alveolar, uvular, and ejective consonants and of length
contrast in vowels. Chapter 5 discusses the relationship between syllable
structure complexity and suprasegmental features, showing that languages
with highly complex syllable structures tend to have word stress rather
than tone, and to use vowel duration as a phonetic correlate of word
stress, as well as to have such stress-related phonological properties as
unstressed vowel reduction and deletion. In chapter 6 Easterday
specifically discusses the role of vowel reduction in the development of
syllable structure complexity and observes, on the one hand, that vowel
deletion in languages with simple and moderately complex syllable
structures only rarely produces non-canonical tautosyllabic consonant
sequences, and, on the other, “that vowel deletion is more likely to create
clusters in languages which already have a prevalence of consonant
clusters” (p. 402). Chapter 7 addresses the issue of consonant allophony
and shows that stress- and vowel-conditioned processes such as
palatalization are associated with less complex syllable structures, while
lenition and sonorization processes are not sensitive to syllable
complexity. Chapter 8 summarizes the results of the study, addressing such
issues as the relationship between syllable structure complexity and
morphology, the properties of highly complex syllable structure as a
linguistic type and pathways of its diachronic development. Easterday
concludes that highly complex syllable structure, often considered to be
functionally dispreferred, is a synchronically and diachronically stable
pattern in the languages of the world, whose long-term maintenance is
motivated by specific phonetic characteristics derived from temporal
properties of gestural organization in such languages.



The main text of the dissertation is followed by appendices including the
full encoding of the inventories and contrasts in the 100 languages with
respect to fifteen different criteria, thereby allowing readers to evaluate
the author’s interpretations and replicate the study of the (un)successful
correlations reported in the different chapters.



The dissertation shows an impressive command both of theoretical and
methodological issues, an open-mindedness and respect for others’ views.
Extensive citation of preceding work shows a scholarly disposition as
Easterday considers different interpretations of her findings, including
the formal theoretical literature (the dissertation ends with 50 pages of
references.). Easterday masterfully produces a thoroughly typological work,
considering the claims of other system “types” such as stress- vs. syllable
timing, consonantal vs. vocalic languages etc., as well as holistic claims
of correspondence between morphological typology and syllable structure.
This thesis is clearly outstanding, both as a phonological investigation
and a work in typology, and should be read by anyone who wants to be taken
seriously with claims about patterns of syllable complexity, becoming a
standard reference for some time to come.



*(**ii) Report on the highly commended dissertations*

*Raina Heaton. 2017. A typology of antipassives, with special reference to
Mayan*

*University of * *Hawai'i* * at Mānoa*

*Supervisor:** Lyle Campbell*



This is the most comprehensive typological study of antipassive
constructions to date, impressive both in the breadth of coverage (the
language sample includes 445 languages from 144 language families) and the
depth of analysis. In addition to a substantive typological study
comprising ten chapters which would constitute a full dissertation by
themselves, the thesis also offers a detailed discussion of antipassives
and antipassive-like constructions in the Mayan languages, mainly based on
the author’s own extensive fieldwork on Kaqchikel. Moreover, these two
parts of the dissertation are not separate, but rather feed each other in
such a way that the analysis of the Mayan data builds upon the results of
the typological study and its theoretical proposals, while the
cross-linguistic part of the dissertation is being constantly informed by
the Mayan material.



What is particularly impressive, apart from the broad cross-linguistic
coverage and many interesting typological insights, is the methodological
rigor and explicitness maintained throughout the dissertation. At virtually
any point of the thesis it is clearly shown how every particular
generalization or analytical result was arrived at and which difficulties
the author had to overcome and how. The thesis contains almost
150-page-long appendices comprising full information about the sample and
dataset, together with statistical models used for testing the quantitative
findings.



The examination of the patterns of co-occurrence of various morphological,
syntactic and semantic features of antipassive constructions in the
languages of the sample allows the author to plot a broader typological
space where the antipassive belongs and to highlight the similarities and
differences between the antipassive and related constructions. Besides
having a clear typological and theoretical significance, this proves
indispensable for the discussion of the Mayan languages with their multiple
antipassive and antipassive-like constructions. Heaton not only discusses
antipassive constructions as such, but also asks what the languages with
antipassives look like. This is achieved by examining possible correlations
between the presence of antipassives and a number of features thereof with
such parameters as basic word order, alignment, head- and dependent
marking, encoding of transitivity etc. Perhaps the most important finding
in this domain relates to the relation between antipassives and ergativity:
while the sample corroborates the common belief that that ergative
languages have antipassives with greater chances than nominative-accusative
languages, the author suggests that this is not a direct correlation, but
rather a consequence of the fact that both antipassives and ergativity are
favoured in languages with rigid transitivity classes.



In sum, this is a very comprehensive study, both in breadth and in depth,
which offers a wealth of new data and insights and should become a standard
reference on antipassives.







*Dana Louagie. 2017. A typological study of noun phrase structures in
Australian languages*

*Katholieke Universiteit Leuven*

*Supervisor:** Jean-Christophe Verstraete*



This dissertation presents a study of noun phrase structures in Australian
languages based on a sample of 100 languages. The analysis is developed in
two main parts. The first part of the dissertation presents a general
survey of NP features, developing a synthesis of the available
Australianist literature, testing some of its ideas on the languages of the
sample, and showing where Australian languages stand in relation to other
languages in the world. Chapter 1 deals with nominal classification, which
is the best-described aspect of NP structure for Australian languages.
Chapter 2 discusses the domains of qualification and quantification, which
have received less attention in the literature, and chapter 3 introduces
the domains of determination and NP constituency, which are most poorly
understood.



The second part of the dissertation presents a more detailed analysis of
the last two aspects, determination and NP constituency, in the languages
of the sample. In Chapter 4, on NP constituency, Louagie concludes that
there is in fact no strong evidence against constituency, contrary to what
has been traditionally claimed in the Australianist literature. More
generally, it is shown that constituency is not an absolute value that can
be applied to languages as unitary wholes, but rather a matter of degree.
Chapter 5, on determiners, likewise challenges the received view that
Australian languages lack determiners. Interestingly, Louagie shows that a
determiner slot can be filled by a range of structurally different
elements, which share the functional feature of identifiability. This
approach is cross-linguistically applicable to languages with and without
‘classic’ determiner systems.



This thesis is very clearly structured and reads easily. The analysis and
presentation of the data is very transparent and conscientious, including
possible limitations of the research due to scarce or inconclusive data. An
important merit of this thesis is that in addition to providing a detailed
overview of NP structure in 100 Australian languages it also draws on and
extrapolates to general typological work.



*Chair’s report on the finalists for the Fourth **Pāṇini Award, 2019,
Hilary Chappell, Chair:*



*(**i)      The 2019 Winner*

*Nadine Grimm. 2015. A grammar of Gyeli*

*Humboldt University, Berlin*

*Supervisors**: Tom Güldemann and Maarten Mous*



This thesis presents a remarkable and comprehensive grammar of Gyeli, a
Bantu language whose description is based on the Ngolo speech community in
southern Cameroon, West Africa. The research draws on 19 months of
fieldwork, some of which Nadine Grimm carried out as part of a DoBeS
(*Documentation
of Endangered Languages*) team project between 2010 and 2014. The analysis
is firmly anchored in a multimodal corpus, which includes texts of diverse
genres such as traditional stories, narratives, multi-party conversations
and dialogues, descriptions of everyday activities, procedural texts and
songs. This rich documentation has been supplemented by data from
elicitation work, questionnaires, and experiments. As to be expected of a
winning grammar, it covers all levels of language, ranging from Gyeli
phonology to its information structure.



In her analysis, Nadine Grimm has chosen to use an approach which
explicitly privileges form over function in her presentation so that each
successive chapter topic neatly mirrors its role in a hierarchy of
structures that she has established. Crucially, the description reveals
itself as one that is well-entrenched in Bantu linguistics, providing a
wealth of in-depth comparative and typological information and supplemented
by observations on reconstructed forms for proto-Bantu. Some more specific
comments follow below.



An important reason for singling out Grimm’s grammar among the sixteen
submitted to the Pāṇini Award are its in-depth analyses and discussions on
a range of topics that will appeal to a wider typological audience, not
just Bantuists. What is particularly laudable is that these analyses are
clearly argued as to the reasons for favouring one theoretical solution
over another. This is not just an occasional instance of good
argumentation; it is evident in every chapter, and many sections within
chapters. A few examples follow to illustrate this from different parts of
the grammar.



Given the highly complex nature of the Gyeli tone system, the careful
attention to phonetic and phonological detail including the identification
of tonal patterns is original and exemplary, particularly in its treatment
of tonal phenomena such as High Tone Spreading, and its relevance to the
discussion of toneless, tone-bearing units (TBUs). The notion of toneless
TBUs may in fact shed a new light on interpreting tonal phenomena in other
Bantu languages. The phonological interpretation of pre-glottalization of
labial and alveolar stops is another feature which is carefully examined by
analyzing voice-onset time (VOTs) in spectrograms of the consonants in
question. By this means, Nadine Grimm effectively argues that Gyeli cannot
be considered to possess an implosive series, as found in neighbouring
languages, but rather a pre-glottalized one.



The description of gender and agreement classes in chapters 4 and 5 is
similarly very rewarding to read in its intricate detail, wherein the
arbitrary basis between semantic category and Gyeli genders is revealed,
which is then contrasted with the formal correspondences between the six
genders and the nine agreement classes. In spite of this, once more we
cannot escape the fascination of Gyeli tone phenomena since, in a
subsequent chapter, we learn of the existence of an object-linking high
tone prefix which attaches to the (toneless TBU) noun class prefix of the
object noun which is closest to the verb (§4.1.1.4). Such suprasegmental
marking is an essential feature for the coding of grammatical relations and
can thus be gainfully used as a diagnostic for objecthood in Gyeli. The use
of different tone patterns with the further grammatical functions of coding
TAM and negation values is evident in the case of a special portmanteau
clitic that simultaneously codes subject agreement on the verbal complex
(§3.9.1).



Particularly convincing are also the arguments in favour of a two-unit
interpretation of some of the consonant clusters which are typically
considered as one unit in the Bantu tradition, as well as the diachronic
argument in favour of grammaticalised verbs with a similative morpheme for
the small, colour-qualifier category, and the existence of asyndetic
subordinate clauses. The discussion of the passive (§4.2.3.2) and the
autocausative middle voice (§4.2.3.5) will similarly be of great interest
to typologists, not to mention the split genitive (§5.5) and the topic of
covert coordination (§8.1.2). On the latter topic, a succinct but clear
explanation is given as to why the author regards the relevant
constructions to involve covert coordination rather than complex
predicates.



A further bonus of this grammar comes in the form of the numerous
ethnographic, sociolinguistic, diachronic and comparative remarks, combined
with a plethora of insightful and perceptive observations woven into her
explanations in each chapter. The substantial appendices include an
impressive table of Gyeli verb extensions and a Gyeli lexicon, in addition
to three annotated texts from different genres. Notably, this textual
corpus has been systematically solicited to support the argumentation
throughout the thesis. Overall, the jury viewed the accessibility of the
grammar to be the sign of a well-crafted work.



Jury members also appreciated the ethnographical note on naming strategies
and the excursus on the semantic categories of numerals (Chapter 5.7). Two
jury members noted the availability of a much larger online corpus on the
DoBeS website of Gyeli annotated texts and suggested that the web address
might usefully be added to the thesis or to its published version.



In sum, the following three qualities were highlighted by the jury as
making this grammar the one that deserves the Pāṇini Award: (i) the
originality of the grammatical analysis which is solidly based on empirical
evidence from a diverse range of natural language data, with appropriate
supplementation; (ii) the fact that the grammar is thoroughly embedded in
and explicitly connected to wider scholarship in both Bantu linguistics and
typology; and not the least, (iii) a mastery of Gyeli grammar whose
description is presented in a highly clear and accessible form-to-function
style that is reader-friendly, given the cross-referencing links supplied
throughout the volume.

*********************



*(**ii)     Highly Commended (in alphabetical order):*



*Yunfan **Lai. 2017. Grammaire du khroskyabs de Wobzi*

*Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3*

*Supervisors**: Pollet **Samvelian and Guillaume Jacques*



This is an impressively comprehensive thesis on the Tibeto-Burman
rGyalrongic language of Khroskyabs spoken in Sichuan province of China –
impressive in its detailed coverage of different issues from phonetics
through to clause-combining. It is based on nine fieldtrips, carried out
between 2010 and 2017, and 93 hours of recordings of five varieties of the
language. The thesis thus contains a great deal of comparative dialectal
notes on other varieties of Khroskyabs, as well as diachronic and
typologically informed analyses, to name but a few. In addition to this,
the discussions on templatic morphology, on the many diverse types of
relative clauses (preposed, postposed, head-internal and –external), the
rich verbal morphology of Khroskyabs, as well the treatment of comparative
constructions, adnominal possession, causatives and anti-causatives, are
all really excellent.



The organisation is well-thought out and arranged according to the language
on its own terms, while also making it extremely easy for the reader to
find the topics or information they are looking for. One example is the
entire section on indexation of person, which covers both pronouns and
verbal agreement in a coherent and well-motivated manner. The depth and
detail at all levels of the discussion and the clarity of the argumentation
is admirable and only to be commended.

In terms of its originality, the thesis represents a new and important
contribution to the refining the classification of rGyalrongic languages
and to the broader Sino-Tibetan context. It includes a description, to take
one example, of the impressive collection of consonant clusters which is
arguably the largest possible in the entire family. The discussion of tone
sandhi and phonological processes is equally thorough, with acoustic images
provided as additional support for the various phonetic analyses. The use
of different scripts and colours is also both maximally informative and
user-friendly with hyperlinked crossreferences. Finally, the appendices are
especially impressive – they include a lexicon, an extremely useful
vocabulary index organised according to language or language variety of
Khroskyabs, as well as transcribed and translated texts.



*Sally Akevai Te Namu Nicholas. 2016. A grammar of the Southern Cook
Islands Maori*

*The University of Auckland, New Zealand*

*Supervisors**: Margaret Mutu and Ross Clark*



The Southern Cook Islands Maori grammar by Ms Sally Akevai Te Namu Nicholas
sets an admirable standard of comprehensiveness, accessibility,
originality, and transparency in its reliance on natural data. The grammar
is a result of a documentation project by a member of the Ma’uke Southern
Cook Islands Maori community, who in the process of her study has become a
specialist of her own linguistic heritage. Her background makes the
description rich in cultural detail and offers unique insights into the
Cook Islands Maori culture.



The grammar is well written, showing a solid knowledge of Polynesian
languages and the previous research on Maori and Austronesian in general.
The discussion in each chapter is well organized, proceeding from the more
general to the concrete and exceptional, often starting with useful
reference to Oceanic patterns. The chapter on phonology employs standard
instrumental measurements in its lucid treatment of Cook Islands Maori
phonotactics, including the minimal three morae rule for the phonological
phrase, and processes necessary to fulfil this rule. Links to audio files
are usefully provided.



The chapters on word classes similarly offer a critical approach to the
study of a predominantly isolating language, presenting in an elegant way
the methodological conundrum about parts of speech in Maori. The ‘actor
emphatic’ construction is also an excellent chapter highlighting a feature
of Cook Islands Maori that is relevant to an ongoing theoretical debate
about the actor construction at least in East Polynesian and beyond. The
author demonstrates her ability to engage in and relate to these debates
and presents the relevant data, concluding diplomatically that the
construction remains ‘recalcitrant’.



The examples are well chosen with corpus data being taken as the starting
point for more detailed grammatical investigation. The corpus of over 60
hours of recordings have been deposited at Paradisec with 100,000 words
transcribed.



(iii)*    Shortlisted** (in alphabetical order)*



*Hilde Gunnink. 2018.  A grammar of Fwe: a Bantu language of Zambia and
Namibia *

*University of Ghent *

*Supervisor**s: Michael Meeuwis and Koen Bostoen*



This is an outstanding grammar that shows a complete mastery of Bantu
linguistics and a typological approach in the examination of Fwe, a Bantu
language spoken on the border between Zambia and Namibia. The data were
collected at several fieldsites in both these countries between 2013 and
2015. At all levels of grammar, the author shows the range and fulsomeness
of her competence in the analysis of the phonology, including prosody and
tone patterns of the language and in her intricate descriptions of the noun
classes and their variation, in particular, changes in noun class
membership and allomorphy, verbal derivation and a well-balanced discussion
of many interesting grammatical phenomenon, including the vowel augment and
its uses.



The perceptive remarks on phonology and tone change are given with laudable
precision throughout the description, wherever it is relevant in the
discussion of grammar and morphology, for example, tone change caused by
left dislocation. Another example is the description of the high tone
change on the subject marker which creates a relative clause out of a main
clause.



All analyses are clearly argumented, and based on well understood theories.
In this respect, the section on tense and aspect, which are very intricate
categories in Fwe, are particularly convincing, as too the explanations on
the use of passive and the causative suffixes. There is whole chapter
dedicated to cleft constructions and focus, as well as a comprehensive
study of topicalisation devices, including word order issues in chapter 16
on syntax. It is also to be appreciated that the author compares Zambian
and Namibian varieties of Fwe throughout the grammar.



The author additionally considers the diachronic perspective in an epilogue
on language history for the origins of certain phonemes such as clicks and
derivational morphemes, for example, the borrowed diminutive and
pluractional suffixes. This final chapter considers contact between Khoisan
languages and Bantu-Botatwe Fwe and is again very insightful.



The thesis is based on a large and diverse corpus (10,000 elicited
sentences; narratives (2 hours) and conversations (45 mins), and songs. A
lexicon of 2,200 words is provided and there is a section in the appendix
on useful phrases, discussing their cultural basis and a narrative text.

*Yankee Modi. 2017. The Milang language: Grammar and texts*

*University of Bern*

*Supervisor**: George van Driem*



Yankee Modi's grammar is a comprehensive and innovative study about the
Tibeto-Burman language of Milan, located in Arunachal Pradesh. It is the
result of a decade-long language documentation project by a heritage
speaker who decided to rediscover her own passive knowledge of the
language, acquired from her grandmother. Hence, the grammar has first of
all benefitted from the fact that the author is a community researcher who
has been exposed to the culture and language of the Milang speaking
community in a way very different from normal research circumstances. This
status has given her access to special knowledge and data, which clearly
outweigh other challenges that may exist, which she explicitly discusses.
The advantages of this situation are especially clear from the detailed and
fine anthropological description in Chapter 1 concerning Milang society,
its structure and institutions, its agricultural practices, lunar seasons
and language vitality, in addition to the rich text corpus of the appendix
(200 pages).



Indirectly related to this is a second positive feature of the grammar,
namely, that it covers an impressively wide array of linguistic topics -
quite a few of them not yet regularly treated in grammar writing. There are
thus informative sections on kinship, proper names, and expressive and
other discourse-related word types such as interjections and hesitation
particles, to name just a few. Another example is the chapter on clausal
syntax is refreshingly organized from the information structure viewpoint.
It draws a natural line between predicative and attributive clauses and
requires the notions of topic and focus to be used. The same chapter is
used to explain interclausal relations and the structure of complex clauses.



Perhaps the most exciting aspect of this grammar is the bold attempt to
escape the structuralist mould of grammar writing and get closer to
interaction and communication. This effort culminates in the last three
chapters, which target the perspective taking, knowledge states, and
information structure. The chapter on the grammar of knowledge is very
nicely argued regarding the egophoric stance of all independent predicate
types that do not take any special kind of evidential marking. The mere
courage to deviate from the organizational canon of grammar description and
analysis gives this grammar its special appeal.



*Jaime Germán Peña* *. 2015. A grammar of Wampis*

*University of Oregon*

*Advisor**: Doris L. Payne*



This dissertation represents an excellent example of a comprehensive,
descriptive grammar of an Amazonian language. It consists of 21 chapters
that cover all relevant aspects of the grammar and include a text. The
language is Wampis, an undocumented and under-described Jivaroan language
spoken in Peru. The grammar is based on several months of field work during
which the author gathered a corpus of texts (10 hours) to serve as the
basis for the grammar, in addition to elicitation.



As it is a heavily agglutinating language, there are many semantic and
syntactic functions that are required to be encoded at word-level by the
morphology in the form of intricate templates. The author neatly describes
the morpho-phonological processes that take place at the morphotactic level
and the functions of each of the morphemes involved, especially those
affecting the verb, with a solid description of each word class. The thesis
is impressive in the clarity and systematicity of its definitions and the
motivations for its categories, precisely in the case of noun, verb, and
syllable, for example. The adverbs receiving person markers will certainly
be of broader typological interest.

The grammar is very clearly structured and the detailed table of contents
helps the reader to quickly find individual topics of interest. The author
relies on typological literature, whenever necessary, to clarify the
concepts and terms he uses, with the grammatical phenomena under
description being illustrated by numerous examples, which are then
explained in the accompanying text. Numerous tables and figures summarize
important points of the discussion and help the reader to keep track of the
relevant points.



The grammar also includes a discussion of the language in a broader context
and highlights features that are of typological and general theoretical
interest such that non-experts of Jivaroan languages are able judge and
appreciate the grammar.



********



*3. Linguistic Typology 2019-2*

*(*
*https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/lity.2019.23.issue-2/issue-files/lity.2019.23.issue-2.xml*
<https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/lity.2019.23.issue-2/issue-files/lity.2019.23.issue-2.xml>
*)*

*Articles*

Joan Bybee and Shelece Easterday

Consonant strengthening: a crosslinguistic survey and articulatory account.

FREE ACCESS (Editor’s choice)



Thera Marie Crane and Bastian Persohn.

What’s in a Bantu Verb? Actionality in Bantu languages.

OPEN ACCESS



*Methodological Contribution*

Beatriz Fernández, Ane Berro, Iñigo Urrestarazu and Itziar Orbegozo

Mapping variation in Basque: the *BiV *database



*Obituary*

Pioneer of thought-based linguistics: Wallace Chafe

Dan I. Slobin



*Book review*

Francesca Di Garbo

Torres Cacoullos, Rena and Catherine E. Travis. 2018. Bilingualism in the
community. Code-switching and grammars in contact.

OPEN ACCESS



*Grammar Highlights*

A new category listing the grammars published during the preceding year



*4. The new ALT website*



The ALT website was ported to WordPress, a more modern and more flexible
platform. This also allows for sharing the responsibilities of editing and
updating the site and also can be used to help manage ALT membership
information in the future. We plan on soliciting curators for particular
pages in the coming months. There will also be an updated and searchable
Grammar Watch. The address for the new website remains the same:
http://linguistic-typology.org. We welcome feedback on the redesign from
members.




-- 
Orche
('Thanks' in Manange)

*Kristine A. Hildebrandt*
*Professor, Department of English Language & Literature
<http://www.siue.edu/artsandsciences/english/>*
*President, Endangered Language Fund
<http://www.endangeredlanguagefund.org/>*

*Secretary, Association for Linguistic Typology
<http://www.linguistic-typology.org/>*
*Editor, Himalayan Linguistics
<http://escholarship.org/uc/himalayanlinguistics>*

*Southern Illinois University Edwardsville*


*Box 1431Edwardsville, IL 62026 U.S.A.618-650-3991 (department voicemail)*


*khildeb at siue.edu <khildeb at siue.edu>http://www.siue.edu/~khildeb
<http://www.siue.edu/~khildeb>*
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