[Lingtyp] Contrastive vowel and consonant length?

Tue Dec 22 16:07:03 UTC 2020

I am an editor of phoible and I would like to point out that phoible is not
a database that is meant to include *the* one and only one definite
phonological inventory for each (spoken) language in the world.

Instead, phoible is an archive of inventories reported in published
resources -- or more precisely, what Cysouw & Good (2013) termed
"doculects" (from “documented lect”), i.e. an instance of documentation of
an instance of linguistic behavior at a particular time and place.

As such, we sometimes get feedback of the sort that so-en-so's phonological
description is wrong and it should be changed to reflect X. However, as an
archive of information, our procedure is to instead add (often newer)
published research that reflects those changes, while leaving the original
description in place. The result is multiple entries for the same language
(i.e. reported in different doculects) and we leave it to users to decide
which one(s) they take their information from.

That phonological descriptions can vary should not surprise linguists
because phonemic analysis is a non-deterministic process (Chao, 1934;
Hockett, 1963) and two different well-trained linguists may come to
different conclusions about what sounds are contrastive. Hyman (2008, p.
99) provides a general discussion and an interesting example from
Kabardian. (In some cases in phoible, we can even trace how work on the
same language by the same linguist has changed through their publications
over the years, which should also not be too surprising to field linguists.)

Since there seems to be some confusion about what phoible is intended to be
and how it should be and how it should not be used in research, we recently
put together a comprehensive FAQ:

http://phoible.github.io/faq/

In the FAQ we discuss issues regarding the language sample and we provide
code (in R) that works on the data, which are easily accessible from our
GitHub repository:

https://github.com/phoible/dev

References:

Chao, Y.R. (1934). The non-uniqueness of phonemic solutions of phonetic
systems. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia
Sinica, 4(4).

Cysouw, M., & Good, J. (2013). Languoid, Doculect, and Glossonym:
Formalizing the notion ‘language.’ Language Documentation & Conservation,
7, 331–360. Online: http://hdl.handle.net/10125/4606.

Hockett, C.F. (1963). The problem of universals in language. In J. H.
Greenberg (Ed.), Universals of language (Vol. 2, pp. 1–29). Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.

Hyman, L.M. (2008). Universals in phonology. The Linguistic Review,
25(1-2), 83–137. https://doi.org/10.1515/TLIR.2008.003.

All the best,

-Steven

--
Steven Moran, PhD
Assistant Professor
Institute of Biology
University of Neuchâtel

On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 1:44 PM <florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch> wrote:

> 1: Thank you for the reference! 2: The Yolngu example is not a minimal
> pair. This looks like one of the cases where you either have a VCː or a VːC
> pattern, also brought up by Sebastian Nordhoff for Sri Lanka Malay. 3: Ah,
> I should have specified “morpheme-internally”. 4: This is interesting,
> thank you! Under such an approach, one could still investigate whether C,
> V, or both can be linked to suprasegmental length, right?
>
> Best,
> Florian
>
> _____________________________
>
> Universität Bern
>
> Institut für Sprachwissenschaft
>
> Florian Matter
>
>
>
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> *florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch <florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch>*
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>
> On 22 December 2020 at 13:25:45, Mark Donohue (mhdonohue at gmail.com) wrote:
>
> A few peripheral, but I think rather important, and testable, points:
>
> > 1. When consonant length co-occurs with other features (aspiration,
> glottalization, affrication…) it is indeed difficult to establish whether
> it is contrastive or not. No answer here.
>
> Well, the discipline tends to favour VOT/glottalisation as the underlying
> contrast; Jansen (2004) spells out how much phonetic detail underlies a
> voiced-voiceless contrast in some well-studied languages.
>
> > 2. I do not talk about languages where segmental duration is due to
> allophony, only about those where a phonemic contrast between [Xː] and [X]
> exists, i.e. minimal pairs.
>
> That doesn't quite go far enough; given we know that there are languages
> (eg., Yolngu languages of northern Australia) that contrast (eg.)
>
> [ap:a]
> vs.
> [a:ba]
>
> as a single phonological difference, [Xː] and [X] (phonetic contrasts; [
> ], not / /) are only contrastive as unit segments in a particular language
> after phonological analysis.
>
> > 3. Regarding the representation of consonant length: I think it does not
> matter whether an appropriate phonemic analysis sees durationally longer
> consonants as geminate /CC/ or as long /Cː/. A length contrast between [Cː]
> and [C] exists in both cases.
>
> This is the big one.
> It does matter, a lot, in many languages.
> It is not hard to come up with examples like the following pair in
> Mandarin Chinese:
>
> 砂埃, shā'āi [ʂɐːj] (high tone) ‘(cloud of) fine sand’
>
> 篩, shāi [ʂɐːj] (high tone) ‘sieve’
>
> But that doesn't mean there are underlying long vowel contrasts in
> Mandarin, and we can easily demonstrate this on the basis of phonotactic
> possibilities. The same applies to phonetically long consonants; we know
> there are contrasts in English like [bʊkhɪŋ] 'booking' vs. [bʊkːhejs]
> 'bookcase', and we know by they do not represent an underlying difference
> in short vs. long consonants (numerous similar examples can be found).
>
> Phonetics isn't Phonology.
>
> > 4. If length is a suprasegmental feature and not bound to segments, how
> do we account for the fact that many languages only show a length contrast
> for certain segments? I could give a plethora of such examples.
>
> Easily.
> Numerous suprasegmental units are restricted by units on the segmental
> tier as to where they can associate; 'closed' syllables in numerous
> East/Southeast Asian tone languages have less tone contrasts than open
> syllables (eg., Nanjing Mandarin: 41 ≠ 24 ≠ 44 ≠ 11 on open- or
> sonorant-final syllables, but just 55 on -ʔ final syllables).
> Other languages are 'fussier' in some ways; Skou allows three different
> contours to be realised on a monosyllable, H, L and HL. As such we find
> contrasts on the syllable /ta/, realising 'grass', 'hair' and 'arrow',
> respectively.
> However, if the initial consonant is [+back] (k, ɟ, w or j), HL cannot be
> realised. Similarly, a voiced stop in the onset (b or ɟ) doesn't allow a L
> (meaning that ɟ only occurs with a H tone). Comparing tonal melodies to
> vowel, /ɔ/ occurs with L eight times more often as with HL (and H is in
> between), while with /œ/ HL outnumbers L (but H is twice as common as
> either). Quite a few segmental restrictions on linking to the tonal tier,
> so restrictions as to segment type wouldn't have to be a problem for a
> suprasegmental analysis of length.
>
> -Mark
>
> Jansen, Wouter. 2004. Laryngeal Contrast and Phonetic Voicing: A
> Laboratory Phonology Approach to English, Hungarian, and Dutch. Groningen
> Dissertations in Linguistics 47.
> Oakden, Chris. 2012. Tone Sandhi in the Nanjing dialect: a phonological
> analysis. MA thesis, The University of Arizona.
>
>
> On Tue, 22 Dec 2020 at 01:51, <florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch> wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> thank you for the many responses, which I won't address individually.
>>
>> a) To clarify: as a sample, I took the 2186 languages featured in phoible
>> <https://phoible.org/>, and evaluated whether they have phonemic length
>> contrasts for consonants and/or vowels. Results were:
>>
>> No contrast: 1278
>> Contrast in vowels only: 786
>> Contrast in consonants only: 39
>> Contrast in both: 83
>>
>> The correlation between vowel and consonant length contrasts is
>> statistically significant (p: 0.00000000965). However, I am aware that
>> there are many potential issues (representativeness of phoible, the
>> algorithm used for establishing contrastive vowel length, analytical
>> differences, only picking one inventory per language…), hence my question
>> to this list.
>>
>> b) People have provided counterexamples to the observed tendency, i.e.
>> languages with a length contrast in consonants only.
>> Not contained in phoible are: Jóola Banjal, Agul, Tabasaran, Southern
>> Dargwa, Chuukese, Logudorese Sardinian, Koromfe, Ghomara Berber, Western
>> Pantar.
>> In phoible, and classified correctly as "contrast in consonants only":
>> Archi, Border Kuna, Italian, Tashlhiyt Berber, Moroccan Arabic.
>>
>> In phoible, but classified as something other than "contrast in
>> consonants only":
>> 1. Japanese: the phoible inventory which my script picked has V and C
>> length contrasts, but the other two inventories have no long segments at
>> all.
>> 2. Lezgian and Lak: fortis-lenis is represented as ejectives. Lezgian has
>>  a length contrast for æ, Lak for a/i/u.
>> 3. Burarra, Emmi: the consonants are classified as tense-lax.
>> 4. Koryak, Yaqui, Mada (of Cameroun), Makassarese, Toba Batak: phoible
>> only lists short segments. For Toba Batak, the WP page includes examples of
>> <bb> and <ii>.
>>
>> I haven't read the cited sources yet, but for group 4 it seems that they
>> clearly have a length contrast in consonants, which is not represented *at
>> all* in phoible. This in turn implies a disagreement in analysis between
>> the person giving the counterexample and a) the original source or b)
>> somebody coding an inventory, for phoible or for one of the databases which
>> it aggregates.
>>
>> c) Some people also listed languages with length contrasts in both C and
>> V. Categorized correctly: Chechen, Leggbó, Ingush, Saami. Categorized
>> incorrectly: Pohnpeian (no contrast), Luganda (only long vowels). Not in
>> phoible: Chuukese.
>>
>> d) Some other issues were brought up, here are my thoughts on them:
>>
>> 1. When consonant length co-occurs with other features (aspiration,
>> glottalization, affrication…) it is indeed difficult to establish whether
>> it is contrastive or not. No answer here.
>> 2. I do not talk about languages where segmental duration is due to
>> allophony, only about those where a phonemic contrast between [Xː] and [X]
>> exists, i.e. minimal pairs.
>> 3. Regarding the representation of consonant length: I think it does not
>> matter whether an appropriate phonemic analysis sees durationally longer
>> consonants as geminate /CC/ or as long /Cː/. A length contrast between [Cː]
>> and [C] exists in both cases.
>> 4. If length is a suprasegmental feature and not bound to segments, how
>> do we account for the fact that many languages only show a length contrast
>> for certain segments? I could give a plethora of such examples.
>> 5. Distribution and diachrony of long consonants: Juliette Blevins has
>> done some work on this, finding a) many distinct diachronic pathways,
>> resulting in b) no clear patterns as to what kind of consonants show a
>> length contrast.
>>
>> Best,
>> Florian
>>
>> _____________________________
>>
>> Universität Bern
>>
>> Institut für Sprachwissenschaft
>>
>> Florian Matter
>>
>>
>>
>> Länggassstrasse 49
>>
>> CH-3012 Bern
>>
>> Tel. +41 31 631 37 54
>>
>> Raum B 168
>>
>> *florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch <florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch>*
>>
>> *http://www.isw.unibe.ch <http://www.isw.unibe.ch/>*
>>
>> On 21 December 2020 at 02:14:04,
>> lingtyp-request at listserv.linguistlist.org (
>> lingtyp-request at listserv.linguistlist.org) wrote:
>>
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>> Today's Topics:
>>
>> 1. Re: Contrastive vowel and consonant length? (Johanna Nichols)
>> 2. Re: syntactic construction formula (Siva Kalyan)
>> 3. Final call: SLE 2021 WS Dissecting Morphological Theory 1:
>> Diminutivization Across Languages and Frameworks (Stela Manova)
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2020 14:00:45 -0800
>> From: Johanna Nichols <johanna at berkeley.edu>
>> Cc: Linguistic Typology <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>> Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Contrastive vowel and consonant length?
>> Message-ID:
>> <CAHDpjwpXfLEY0HJ+hByaSwKGbko91hcP-qLQwAxatvhdumm1xA at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>>
>> Ingush (Nakh-Daghestanian), has a length contrast in vowels and
>> geminate consonants cognate to the Daghestanian ones that Misha and
>> Gilles mention. The geminate consonants behave like a sequence of two
>> consonants, with the first one closing the preceding syllable and
>> shortening the vowel, and the second one opening the following
>> syllable. In some Chechen varieties, the situation is similar, though
>> with geminates the consonant that opens the following syllable is
>> unaspirated while in most Chechen vowels a single voiceless stop or
>> obstruent is aspirated. I think this is the only respect in which the
>> geminate do not behave like a sequence (or more precisely they don't
>> behave like a sequence of the corresponding single consonants). But
>> I've heard one Chechen variety where vowel length is preserved before
>> geminates and the geminate is aspirated.
>>
>> In Saami (Uralic) varieties there are vowel length oppositions and (as
>> I understand it) consonants written as double but which apparently do
>> not behave in any respect as sequences: they don't shorten preceding
>> long vowels and in gradation they are the strong grade of single
>> consonants. This is different from Finnish, where double consonants
>> behave like sequences in that they close the preceding syllable and
>> cause weak grade in its first consonant, but they do not shorten long
>> vowels and in gradation they behave like the strong grade of a
>> consonant alternating with a single consonant as weak grade.
>>
>> Johanna
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 1:11 PM Pier Marco Bertinetto
>> <piermarco.bertinetto at sns.it> wrote:
>> >
>> > A possible source of phonologically long Cs is total assimilation of C
>> clusters.
>> > I doubt that V quantity could have an impact on that.
>> > Best
>> > Pier Marco
>> >
>> >
>> > Il giorno dom 20 dic 2020 alle ore 20:59 Peter Austin <pa2 at soas.ac.uk>
>> ha scritto:
>> >>
>> >> Some Western Micronesian languages have a consonant length contrast,
>> including word-initially. Among them, Chuukese lacks long vowels but
>> Pohnpeian has long vowels as well. I understand the consonant length
>> contrast can be reconstructed for their ancestor.
>> >>
>> >> Peter
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> On Sun, 20 Dec 2020 at 19:34, Larry M. HYMAN <hyman at berkeley.edu>
>> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> I have the same impression as Juergen that languages with a vowel
>> length contrast are vastly more numerous than those with a single/geminate
>> consonant contrast. (I could only think of Italian, myself, as having only
>> the latter, though good to see the others cited). On the other hand, the
>> few languages I have worked with that have geminates also have a vowel
>> length contrast, e.g. Luganda, Leggbó (with a fortis-lenis contrast that is
>> largely durational).
>> >>>
>> >>> On Sun, Dec 20, 2020 at 10:03 AM Bohnemeyer, Juergen <
>> jb77 at buffalo.edu> wrote:
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Dear all — Just for the sake of speculation, let me propose a
>> possible causal link. The argument has multiple steps:
>> >>>>
>> >>>> 1. Presumably (but I haven’t looked at this empirically), length
>> contrasts are easier to perceive in vowels than in consonants. And as a
>> result, their production would also be easier to monitor and control in
>> vowels than in consonants.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> 2. If the above is correct, then it would also stand to reason that
>> phonemic length contrasts are more likely to occur in vowels than in
>> consonants.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> 3. This in turn would mean that a likely scenario for the emergence
>> of phonemic duration in consonants is that the members of a language
>> community first become habituated to perceiving duration contrasts in
>> vowels, and from there extend this type of categorization to consonant
>> phonemes.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Since we’ve already seen examples of languages with phonemic
>> duration in consonants only in this thread, it is probably not the case
>> that the emergence of phonemic duration in consonants presupposed the prior
>> existence of phonemic duration in vowels. However, it is of course also
>> conceivable that languages first acquire phonemic duration in vowels, then
>> extend it to consonants, and then reinterpret duration contrasts in vowels
>> as tone or quality contrasts, leaving the quantity opposition in consonants
>> orphaned.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Like I said, all idle speculation. — Best — Juergen
>> >>>>
>> >>>> > On Dec 20, 2020, at 12:42 PM, Pier Marco Bertinetto <
>> piermarco.bertinetto at sns.it> wrote:
>> >>>> >
>> >>>> > Dear Florian,
>> >>>> > the question I would ask myself is the following: Since we know
>> that vowel and consonant quantity are independent of each other (they can
>> coexist, or one can have phonological value and the other, possibly, a mere
>> allophonically conditioned behavior), does it make sense to look for an
>> "implicational tendency"?
>> >>>> > Unless one can prove that the existence of consonant quantity
>> presupposes vowel quantity, I would leave out any "implicational" reasoning.
>> >>>> > Needless to say, it might be interesting to know, say, that there
>> are more languages with vowel quantity than languages with consonant
>> quantity, but would this teach us anything more than a mere statistical
>> fact?
>> >>>> > Best
>> >>>> > Pier Marco
>> >>>> >
>> >>>> >
>> >>>> > Il giorno dom 20 dic 2020 alle ore 18:17 Hartmut Haberland <
>> hartmut at ruc.dk> ha scritto:
>> >>>> > Apparent counterexamples seem to be Italian (no vowel length) and
>> maybe Japanese (long vowels in Sinojapanese vocabulary like sū ‘number’
>> seem to be genuine but in suu ‘sucks, inhales’ with a morpheme border it is
>> often considered u+u. Both languages have long/double consonants.
>> >>>> >
>> >>>> >> Den 20. dec. 2020 kl. 17.49 skrev Michael Daniel <
>> misha.daniel at gmail.com>:
>> >>>> >>
>> >>>> >> 
>> >>>> >> ps Sorry, i shouldn't have sent it to the general list. I am
>> aware that individual cases do not undermine the general correlation. But
>> because Florian also asked for language-level evidence, I provided (my
>> understanding of) the data I know of.
>> >>>> >>
>> >>>> >> Michael Daniel
>> >>>> >>
>> >>>> >> вс, 20 дек. 2020 г., 19:25 Michael Daniel <misha.daniel at gmail.com
>> >:
>> >>>> >> Dear Florian,
>> >>>> >>
>> >>>> >> i guess this depends on how to define consonant length, and what
>> to count as presence of vowel quantity contrast. In East Caucasian, many
>> languages distinguish between geminate vs simple, alias strong vs weak,
>> alias fortis vs lenis, alias non-aspirated vs aspirated stops.
>> >>>> >>
>> >>>> >> At the same time, vowel length, if present at all, is much less
>> central to the system, though this varies across languages. I'm afraid, in
>> order to fully assess the force of this implication, you should somehow
>> account also for the role of the two contrasts in the language.
>> >>>> >>
>> >>>> >> As one example, there is an important contrast between fortis and
>> lenis stops in Archi, Lezgic. Vowel length is also present, but is used in
>> expressive elements such as distance demonstratives; secondarily as
>> compensation for the loss of the intervocalic -q- in one (of several
>> hundred) of verbal forms; in some morphophonological contexts with the
>> coordinative clitic; and maybe in one or two other forms that do not
>> quickly come to my mind.
>> >>>> >>
>> >>>> >> Sincerely,
>> >>>> >>
>> >>>> >> Michael
>> >>>> >>
>> >>>> >> вс, 20 дек. 2020 г., 19:13 <florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch>:
>> >>>> >> Dear all,
>> >>>> >>
>> >>>> >> is anybody aware of large-scale studies investigating the
>> distribution of contrastive length in consonants and vowels? Preliminary
>> analysis of phoible data tells me that there is an implicational tendency
>> where if a language has contrastive length in consonants, it also has it in
>> vowels. Are there studies supporting this? I’m also interested in
>> literature on the geographical and genealogical distribution of contrastive
>> length.
>> >>>> >>
>> >>>> >> Best,
>> >>>> >> Florian
>> >>>> >>
>> >>>> >>
>> >>>> >> _____________________________
>> >>>> >> Universität Bern
>> >>>> >> Institut für Sprachwissenschaft
>> >>>> >> Florian Matter
>> >>>> >>
>> >>>> >> Länggassstrasse 49
>> >>>> >> CH-3012 Bern
>> >>>> >> Tel. +41 31 631 37 54
>> >>>> >> Raum B 168
>> >>>> >> florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch
>> >>>> >> http://www.isw.unibe.ch
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>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 2
>> Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2020 10:50:46 +1100
>> From: Siva Kalyan <sivakalyan.princeton at gmail.com>
>> To: Christian Lehmann <christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de>
>> Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>> Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] syntactic construction formula
>> Message-ID: <FE339692-FA47-4473-839C-2639708239DF at gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>
>> Why not take inspiration from autosegmental phonology, and have the Adv
>> on a separate "tier"? Then in particular instantiations, you could have an
>> association line between the Adv and a placeholder element that is either
>> before the NP, between the NP and VP, or after the VP.
>>
>> The disadvantage of this is that it would reify the idea of free word
>> order, rather than making it clear that it’s just a representation of our
>> ignorance of the true conditioning factors.
>>
>> Siva
>>
>> > On 21 Dec 2020, at 2:45 am, Christian Lehmann <
>> christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de> wrote:
>> >
>> > Let the adverb suddenly be my component C. Combined with the
>> construction John screamed, my formula might look something like:
>> >
>> > {Adv} NP {Adv} VP {Adv}
>> >
>> > Is this a misleading use of curly brackets (referring to Ian Joo's
>> suggestion, which I remember having seen in the early days of
>> transformationalism) ? Or is there a more adequate representation?
>> >
>> > --
>> > Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
>> > Rudolfstr. 4
>> > 99092 Erfurt
>> > Deutschland
>> >
>> > Tel.: +49/361/2113417
>> > E-Post: christianw_lehmann at arcor.de <mailto:christianw_lehmann at arcor.de
>> >
>> > Web: https://www.christianlehmann.eu <https://www.christianlehmann.eu/
>> >_______________________________________________
>> > Lingtyp mailing list
>> > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>> > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>
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>>
>> Message: 3
>> Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2020 02:12:16 +0100
>> From: Stela Manova <stela.manova at univie.ac.at>
>> To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>> Subject: [Lingtyp] Final call: SLE 2021 WS Dissecting Morphological
>> Theory 1: Diminutivization Across Languages and Frameworks
>> Message-ID: <F0D88DD2-096C-4FB1-91C6-42BBE2283BED at univie.ac.at>
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>>
>> Dissecting Morphological Theory 1:
>> Diminutivization Across Languages and Frameworks
>>
>> Final CFP
>>
>> Workshop to be held in conjunction with the 54th Annual Meeting of the
>> Societas Linguistica Europaea, Athens, 31 August – 3 September 2021,
>> http://www.sle2021.eu <http://www.sle2021.eu/list-of-workshops>
>>
>> Deadline for abstract submission
>> 15 January 2021
>>
>> Convenors
>> Stela Manova, Boban Arsenijević, Laura Grestenberger & Katharina
>> Korecky-Kröll
>> (University of Vienna, University of Graz, University of Vienna &
>> University of Vienna)
>>
>> Workshop website
>>
>> https://sites.google.com/view/morphologytheories-diminutives/calls-for-papers/dmtd1
>> <
>> https://sites.google.com/view/morphologytheories-diminutives/calls-for-papers/dmtd1
>> >
>>
>> Keywords: morphological theory, diminutives, form-meaning mismatches,
>> affix (re)analysis, end/beginning of word
>>
>> This workshop is planned as the first of a series of workshops that
>> challenge morphological theory with data from diminutivization and
>> addresses three basic issues of diminutive morphology: A. Demarcation, B.
>> Status in grammar, and C. Theoretical description.
>> Diminutive(-related) meanings and forms have received much attention in
>> the literature (overview in Grandi & Körtvelyessy 2015) and some authors
>> have claimed that we cannot account for peculiarities of diminutives with
>> the regular mechanisms of grammar but need an additional component:
>> evaluative morphology (Scalise 1986), morphopragmatics (Dressler & Merlini
>> Barbaresi 1994). Do we? Or is everything a matter of method (Jurafsky 1996)?
>>
>> A. Demarcation
>>
>> Diminutives and hypocoristics often use the same formal means, express
>> affection and are considered overlapping categories (Doleschal & Thornton
>> 2000). For theoretical purposes, do we need to differentiate between them
>> and is a sharp distinction possible? The following list contains properties
>> of hypocoristics that do not seem characteristic of diminutives:
>>
>> Phonology
>> Phonological word and phonological templates play an important role in
>> hypocoristic formation (Prosodic Morphology in Lappe 2007); hypocoristics
>> involve shortening of form: stressed syllables tend to be preserved,
>> unstressed syllables tend to be deleted; hypocoristic affixes select
>> monosyllabic bases.
>>
>> Morphology
>> Hypocoristics (and all types of shortening/clipping) are hard to analyze
>> in terms of morphemes and exhibit variation (Thomas - Tom(my)).
>>
>> Semantics
>> Hypocoristics are not (necessarily) related to smallness. The base and
>> the derivative in hypocoristic formations have the same referential meaning
>> and differ only in terms of pragmatic function (Alber & Arndt-Lappe 2012).
>>
>> Pragmatics
>> Hypocoristics serve for calling and in languages such as Russian where
>> the phenomenon affects all proper nouns in informal style (i.e. seems
>> obligatory) hypocoristics have even been labelled Vocative case by some
>> scholars (discussion in Manova 2011).
>>
>> B. Status in grammar
>>
>> Diminutives are considered an in-between category, i.e. between
>> derivation and inflection (Scalise 1986, Dressler 1989). But does this tell
>> us something significant about diminutives? In Distributed Morphology (DM,
>> Halle & Marantz 1993, and Bobaljik 2017) both derivational and inflectional
>> affixes can serve as heads; in Paradigm Function Morphology (PFM, Stump
>> 2001) inflection and derivation are both paradigm-based (Bonami & Strnadová
>> 2019). For the morphological parser (C3 below), diminutive suffixes are
>> inseparable from the inflection that follows them. Based on the literature
>> (relevance, Bybee 1985; scope, Rice 2000; closing suffix, Aronoff & Fuhrhop
>> 2002): Is a positional control (internal/external affix; distance from the
>> root; word-final) more useful than derivation/inflection for research on
>> diminutives?
>>
>> C. Theoretical description
>>
>> Types of bases
>> DM assumes that all morphological derivations start from the √root; PFM
>> recognizes only stems as bases; still other theories postulate a parallel
>> existence of roots, stems and words as bases (Natural Morphology, Dressler
>> et al. 1987). There are two types of stems: (i) uncategorized (morphomes,
>> Aronoff 1994), they are in use in a-morphous morphology (PFM) (in the
>> main-stream DM only √roots can be uncategorized); (ii) categorized: stems
>> in DM are of this type but affixes that derive them are either heads or
>> modifiers, the latter do not categorize or change the category or
>> grammatical features of the base (Steriopolo 2009 in relation to
>> diminutives).
>>
>> Form-meaning mismatches
>> DM and PFM treat form and meaning separately: roughly, we first produce
>> what we want to say in terms of semantics (combination of abstract
>> morphemes (syntactic terminal nodes) in DM versus ready-made sets of
>> morphosyntactic properties associated with paradigm cells in PFM); having
>> produced the semantic word, we look for form to express it (DM late
>> insertion). Such architecture does not have space for form-meaning
>> mismatches, at least not at the level of the morpheme (Manova et al. 2020).
>> Thus, how do form-meaning mismatches associated with pieces of structure
>> smaller than words arise? One way in which mismatches arise is via
>> diachronic reanalysis/semantic bleaching, by which diminutive suffixes lose
>> their diminutive meaning, e.g. the Bugarian barče ‘café’, originally a
>> diminutive from bar ‘bar, discoteque’, has lost its diminutive meaning in
>> some contexts; barče in (1) is larger than bar:
>>
>> bar-če sǎs sobstven bar
>> café [bar-DIM] with its own bar
>>
>> Diminutive suffixes in Slavic can be stacked/queued (2), Manova (2015).
>> See also De Belder et al. (2014) on "high" and "low" diminutive affixes.
>>
>> bar ‘bar, discotheque’ → bar-če ‘small bar & café’ →
>> → bar-č-ence ‘very small bar & small café’ →
>> → bar-č-enc-ence ‘very very small bar & very small café’
>>
>> With the reanalysis of bar-če as ‘café’, the diminutive suffix moves one
>> position away from the root, nothing gets lost but a new non-diminutive
>> suffix was born. Bar-če still has diminutive connotation meanings: (i) part
>> of a furniture set used for drinks; (ii) small piece of furniture. And -če
>> is also a non-diminutive derivational suffix: dimitr-ov-če ‘chrysanthemum’
>> (flower that blooms around St. Dimitar’s day).
>>
>> 3. Affix (re)analysis
>> Derivatives relate to other derivatives through their bases and through
>> their affixes, which results in priming effects in psycholinguistics.
>> Lázaro et al. (2016) researched suffix priming on lexical decision of
>> suffixed (ero-JORNAL-ERO ‘laborer’) and pseudosuffixed (ero-CORD:ERO
>> ‘lamb’; cord is not the root of cordero) Spanish words, as well as the
>> effect of orthographic priming on nonsuffixed words (eba-PRUEBA ‘test’).
>> For suffixed and pseudosuffixed words, related primes significantly
>> accelerated response latencies in comparison to unrelated primes
>> (ista-JORNALERO; ura-CORDERO); for simple words, there was no facilitation
>> effect of the orthographically related prime (eba-PRUEBA) in comparison to
>> the unrelated prime (afo-PRUEBA). In other words, since -če is a word-final
>> (frequent) derivational suffix in Bulgarian (C2), for morphological
>> processing it is favorable if a derived Bulgarian word terminates in -če.
>> Contra Parsability Hypothesis (Hay 2002)/Complexity-Based Ordering (Plag &
>> Baayen 2009), morphological parser appears semantically blind (Beyersmann
>> et al. 2016; but affix position matters, Crepaldi et al. 2016), and all
>> word-final -če suffixes are the same suffix for it. All this indirectly
>> supports reanalysis of morphological form and suffix homophony
>> word-finally. Unsurprisingly, the semantically-blind positional logic of
>> the morphological parser serves for affix discovery in Unsupervised
>> Learning of Morphology (Hammarström & Borin 2011).
>> Is diminutive affix reanalysis wide-spread cross-linguistically? Is it
>> always related to word-final/beginning position? Do (productive) diminutive
>> affixes, in this process, always distance from the root?
>>
>> We invite papers that tackle diminutive morphology (based on A, B, C
>> above) with data from any language and within any theory. Submissions
>> suggesting improvements of the architectures of existing theories of
>> morphology are particularly welcome.
>>
>> Abstract submission
>>
>> 500-word anonymous abstracts should be submitted in Easy Chair using the
>> following link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sle2021 <
>> https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sle2021>. The deadline is 15
>> January 2021. Upon abstract submission, you should select: 1) type of paper
>> (workshop paper) and 2) indicate the workshop to which your abstract should
>> be assigned (Dissecting Morphological Theory 1). Abstracts should not
>> exceed 500 words (including examples, excluding references).
>> Practical information about how to submit an abstract can be found at:
>> http://sle2021.eu/submission-guidelines <
>> http://sle2021.eu/submission-guidelines>.
>>
>>
>> References
>> Alber, Birgit, and Sabine Arndt-Lappe (2012), Templatic and subtractive
>> truncation, in J. Trommer (ed), (2012), The morphology and phonology of
>> exponence, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 289–325.
>> Aronoff, Mark (1994), Morphology by itself, Cambridge, Ma: MIT.
>> Aronoff, Mark, and Nanna Fuhrhop (2002), Restricting suffix combinations
>> in German and English: Closing suffixes and the monosuffix constraint,
>> Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 20, 451−490.
>> Beyersmann, Elisabeth, Johannes C. Ziegler, Anne Castles, Max Coltheart,
>> Yvette Kezilas, and Jonathan Grainger (2016), Morpho-orthographic
>> segmentation without semantics, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 23(2),
>> 533–539.
>> Bobaljik, Jonathan (2017), Distributed Morphology, Oxford Research
>> Encyclopedia of Linguistics, retrieved 17 Jun. 2020, from
>> https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-131
>> <
>> https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-131
>> >.
>> Bonami, Olivier, and Jana Strnadová (2019), Paradigm structure and
>> predictability in derivational morphology, Morphology 29(2), 167–197.
>> Bybee, Joan L. (1985), Morphology: A study of the relation between
>> meaning and form, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
>> Crepaldi, Davide, Lara Hemsworth, Colin J. Davis, and Kathleen Rastle
>> (2016), Masked suffix priming and morpheme positional constraints,
>> Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 69(1), 113–128.
>> De Belder, Marijke, Noam Faust, and Nicola Lampitelli (2014), On a low
>> and a high diminutive: evidence from Italian and Hebrew, in A. Alexiadou,
>> H. Borer, and F. Schäfer (eds.), (2014), The syntax of roots and the roots
>> of syntax, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 149–163.
>> Doleschal, Ursula, and Anna Thornton (2000), Extragrammatical and
>> marginal morphology, München: Lincom.
>> Dressler, Wolfgang U. (1989), Prototypical differences between inflection
>> and derivation, Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und
>> Kommunikationsforschung 42, 3–10.
>> Dressler, Wolfgang U., Willi Mayerthaler, Oswald Panagl, and Wolfgang U.
>> Wurzel (1987), Leitmotifs in Natural Morphology, Amsterdam: Benjamins.
>> Dressler, Wolfgang U., and Lavinia Merlini Barbaresi (1994),
>> Morphopragmatics: diminutives and intensifiers in Italian, German, and
>> other languages, Berlin: de Gruyter.
>> Grandi, Nicola, and Lívia Körtvélyessy (eds.), (2015), Edinburgh Handbook
>> of Evaluative Morphology, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
>> Halle, Morris, and Alec Marantz (1993), Distributed morphology and the
>> pieces of inflection, in K. Hale, and S. J. Keyser (eds.), (1993), The view
>> from building 20, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 111–176.
>> Hammarström, Harald, and Lars Borin (2011), Unsupervised learning of
>> morphology, Computational Linguistics 37(2), 309–350.
>> Hay, Jennifer (2002), From Speech Perception to Morphology:
>> Affix-ordering Revisited, Language 78, 527–555.
>> Jurafsky, Daniel (1996), Universal tendencies in the semantics of the
>> diminutive, Language 72(3), 533–577.
>> Lappe, Sabine (2007), English prosodic morphology, Dordrecht: Springer.
>> Lázaro, Miguel, Víctor Illera, and Javier Sainz (2016), The suffix
>> priming effect: Further evidence for an early morpho-orthographic
>> segmentation process independent of its semantic content, Quarterly Journal
>> of Experimental Psychology 69(1), 197–208.
>> Manova, Stela (2011), Understanding Morphological Rules: With Special
>> Emphasis on Conversion and Subtraction in Bulgarian, Russian and
>> Serbo-Croatian, Dordrecht: Springer.
>> Manova, Stela (2015), Affix order and the structure of the Slavic word,
>> in S. Manova (ed.), (2015), Affix ordering across languages and frameworks,
>> New York: Oxford University Press, 205–230.
>> Manova, Stela, Harald Hammarström, Itamar Kastner, ad Yining Nie (2020),
>> What is in a morpheme? Theoretical, experimental and computational
>> approaches to the relation of meaning and form in morphology, Word
>> Structure 13(1), 1–21.
>> Plag, Ingo, and Harald Baayen (2009), Suffix Ordering and Morphological
>> Processing, Language 85, 109–152
>> Rice, Keren (2000), Morpheme order and semantic scope, Cambridge:
>> Cambridge University Press.
>> Scalise, Sergio (1986), Generative morphology, 2nd edn, Dordrecht: Foris.
>> Steriopolo, Olga (2009), Form and function of expressive morphology: A
>> case study of Russian, Russian Language Journal 59, 149–194.
>> Stump, Gregory T. (2001), Inflectional morphology, Cambridge: Cambridge
>> University Press.
>>
>>
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