[Lingtyp] Contrastive vowel and consonant length?

Wed Dec 23 08:24:47 UTC 2020

Hello all,

To follow up on Steve's point - one *could* analyze the lenis-fortis
contrast in Ojibwe as a length contrast (hardly anyone does). But how much
longer does the "fortis" have to be on average for one to make such a move?

https://www.academia.edu/6389294/2011_Acoustic_correlates_of_lenis_and_fortis_stops_in_Saulteaux_Ojibwe_MA_thesis_University_of_Manitoba

I would suggest that a more interesting approach at this point would be to
take a sample of languages for which you have a corpus and measure the
vowels and consonants of interest to determine whether such a relation is
present quantitatively using phoible as a guide to get the most informative
cases.

best,

Adam

On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 1:23 AM Steven Moran <bambooforest at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> 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
>>
>>
>>
>> Länggassstrasse 49
>>
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>> *florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch <florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch>*
>>
>> *http://www.isw.unibe.ch <http://www.isw.unibe.ch/>*
>>
>> 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 (
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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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>>> > |||| Pier Marco Bertinetto
>>> > ------ professore emerito
>>> > /////// Scuola Normale Superiore
>>> > ------- p.za dei Cavalieri 7
>>> > /////// I-56126 PISA
>>> > ------- phone: +39 050 509111
>>> > ///////
>>> > ------- HOME
>>> > /////// via Matteotti 197
>>> > ------- I-55049 Viareggio LU
>>> > /////// phone: +39 0584 652417
>>> > ------- cell.: +39 368 3830251
>>> > =========================================================
>>> > editor of "Italian Journal of Linguistics"
>>> > webpage <https://www.sns.it/it/bertinetto-pier-marco>
>>> > "Laboratorio di Linguistica" <http://linguistica.sns.it>
>>> > =========================================================
>>> >
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>>> > Lingtyp mailing list
>>> > Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>> > http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>>
>>> 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>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>>
>>> 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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>>> ------------------------------
>>>
>>> Subject: Digest Footer
>>>
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>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>>
>>> End of Lingtyp Digest, Vol 75, Issue 9
>>> **************************************
>>>
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-- 
Adam J.R. Tallman
PhD, University of Texas at Austin
Investigador del Museo de Etnografía y Folklore, la Paz
ELDP -- Postdoctorante
CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596)
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