[Lingtyp] Loanwords tend to have more uncommon phonemes?

[Eitan Grossman]

Hi all,

We'd like to draw your attention to the first large-scale cross-linguistic
database of phonological segment borrowing in the world's languages, called
SEGBO. SEGBO has more than 1600 borrowed sounds documented in more than 500
languages.

You can see some basic info about it, with some of the data we've made
public here <https://github.com/segbo-db/segbo/blob/master/README.md> on
GitHub, where you'll also find some references to talks we've given (with
slides) at the last SLE and ALT, and papers in progress. We'll also be
presenting at EVOLANG in April on the topic.

In particular, we'd like to point out Elad Eisen's (2019) MA thesis, which
deals with the issue of borrowability and cross-linguistic frequency. It
isn't published yet, but some of the findings are in the slides mentioned
above.

Best wishes,
Eitan, Elad, Dmitry and Steve

Eitan Grossman
Chair, Department of Linguistics/School of Language Sciences
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Tel: +972 2 588 3809
Fax: +972 2 588 1224


On Fri, Jan 31, 2020 at 6:35 PM Joo, Ian <joo at shh.mpg.de> wrote:

> Yes, sorry for the miswording: when I said “rare”, I meant rare *in * the
> vocabulary of a given language, not rare cross-linguistically.
>
> Regards,
> Ian
>
> On 31. Jan 2020, at 17:33, Ian Maddieson <ianm at berkeley.edu> wrote:
>
> I’d comment that /b, p, o/ are cross-linguistically common — rather than
> rare — sounds, so they do not seem
> to illustrate the case where ‘exotic’ sounds are more frequent in
> loanwords. Tariana has a full set of nasalized vowels
> so õ fits with the existing phonological patterns of the language.
>
> Ian
>
> On Jan 31, 2020, at 09:10, Joo, Ian <joo at shh.mpg.de> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> I have also found some answers to my own question, I will just copy &
> paste this from a manuscript I am currently writing:
>
> Aikhenvald (2010) observes that in Tariana, certain sounds – *b*, *o* and
> *õ* – occur frequently in East Tucanoan loanwords but are rare in other
> words. Whiteley (1965:4) observes that in Gusii phonology, ```p' occurs in
> one or two ideophones only, but is increasingly noticeable in the speech of
> the younger generation who have had contact with Swahili and English.”
>
>
> Alexandra Y Aikhenvald. Language contact in Amazonia. Oxford University
> Press, Oxford, 2010.
> Wilfred Howell. Whiteley. A practical introduction to Gusii. East African
> Literature. Bureau, Nairobi, 1965.
>
> I would much appreciate if anyone could point to other cases like this.
>
> Regards,
> Ian
>
> On 31. Jan 2020, at 15:17, Joo, Ian <joo at shh.mpg.de> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> I would like to know if there are any sources that demonstrate that
> loanwords tend to have a larger number of rare, uncommon sounds as opposed
> to native words.
> My intuition tells me that this is true, but I’ve yet to find any source
> that makes a general typological claim on this.
> I would greatly appreciate your help.
>
> From Jena,
> Ian
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
>
> Ian Maddieson
>
> Department of Linguistics
> University of New Mexico
> MSC03-2130
> Albuquerque NM 87131-0001
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20200131/8e562eea/attachment.htm>