[Lingtyp] Folk definition of “word”

[Jess Tauber]

Regarding etymologies, ya- prefix is more specifically the lips rather than
the entire oral cavity. Then gu:ta (as defined in my first reply) may be
etymologically related to hu:ta, the generic term for 'neck, throat (the
front part)'  Lvn 'tongue' (but also part of words referring to oral parts
between the lips and the throat/neck) doesn't seem to be much involved in
words for word or speech, except in terms dealing with difficulties of
speech (for example lvndvpi 'dumb, unable to speak, slow or stammering in
speech' (dvpi means 'weak'), or lvntauwa 'tongue-tied, slow of speech'
(tauwa means 'tight', or 'tied up').  I would even go so far as to
hypothesize that the three zones of the oral cavity (lips, tongue, throat)
differentiate different aspects of speech- the lips for more careful,
controlled speech (though not always), and the throat more general,
forceful speech. In many organisms there is a differentiation of effector
organs such that the basal part gives the power stroke (like your upper arm
near the shoulder girdle, or your thigh near the hip joint), while the
distal part controls course corrections so that the effector ends up
exactly where you want it. From this perspective the throat, being in the
neck, constitutes the basal part, and the lips the distal.

Jess Tauber

On Fri, Nov 26, 2021 at 9:05 AM Jess Tauber <tetrahedralpt at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yahgan (genetic isolate from Tierra del Fuego, currently critically
> endangered) had several terms for 'word'.  ku:ta:na (colon marks tenseness
> of vowel preceding it) meant 'Language, speech, saying, word, a discourse',
> but as a verb also meant 'to speak, to say, utter, pronounce, to talk,
> preach, harangue'.  Then the related simplex, listed as gu:ta, means
> 'language, speech, word, pronounceable word'.  Ha:sha (sh voiceless hushing
> fricative) 'voice, language, uttered words, speech. Breath(ing). Cry,
> utterance'.  bvma;na (v schwa) 'to mention, speak of, to speak of one's
> intentions, wishes'. and 'to say, speak, detail, give an account of any
> plan. To bray, as penguins'.   As noun- 'language, conversation, talk,
> gossip'.  Wa:pa(n) 'a name, a word'.  Note also ya:pi:mata 'to talk, chat,
> speak, converse, to talk with or to', and ya:pis/ya:pvs 'talkative, noisy,
> given to gossip, forward with talk'. Yau(i)s (probably etymologically
> related to ya:pis) 'false, deceitful, a lie, (given to) lying'.  Ya:si:ta
> 'noisy, talkative, forward of speech, given to gossip, false tongued' (-ta
> is an adjective suffix referring to some proclivity).  Also likely related
> etymologically to ya:pis, yauis.  Note that the language exhibits a strong
> tendency towards 'bipartite constructions' (though here it's more
> 'tripartite', with some instrumental/manner-of-action/body part prefix on
> the verb, followed by the main verb (which can be serialized), and finally
> position/pathway suffixes. ya- refers to the mouth or leading edge of
> something, and is found in a good number of complexes referring to talking
> or eating.  Si:ta 'Talkative, given to chat, communicative'. Likely related
> to ya:si:ta.   Finally chis 'news, especially of murder or death.
> Intelligence of importance. Speech, harangue, hubbub, turmoil of voices in
> quarrels, language'.
>
> On Fri, Nov 26, 2021 at 8:10 AM Haig, Geoffrey <
> geoffrey.haig at uni-bamberg.de> wrote:
>
>> Here’s another reference on conceptualizations of ‘wordhood’, from a
>> language documentation perspective:
>>
>>
>>
>> Peterson, John. 2011.  "Words" in Kharia - Phonological,
>> morpho-syntactic, and “orthographical” aspects. Geoffrey L.J. Haig, Nicole
>> Nau, Stefan Schnell & Claudia Wegener (eds.), Documenting Endangered
>> Languages. Achievements and Perspectives. Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter
>> Mouton (Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs, 240). 89-119.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> **************************************
>>
>> Prof. Dr. Geoffrey Haig
>>
>> Lehrstuhl Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft
>>
>> Institut fuer Orientalistik
>>
>> Universität Bamberg
>>
>> Schillerplatz 17
>>
>> 96047 Bamberg
>>
>>
>>
>> Tel. ++49 (0)951 863 2490
>>
>> Admin. ++49 (0)951 863 2491
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> https://www.uni-bamberg.de/aspra/team/aktuelles-team/prof-dr-geoffrey-haig/
>>
>>
>>
>> *Von:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> *Im Auftrag
>> von *JOO, Ian [Student]
>> *Gesendet:* Freitag, 26. November 2021 11:54
>> *An:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>> *Betreff:* Re: [Lingtyp] Folk definition of “word”
>>
>>
>>
>> Dear David,
>>
>> thank you for introducing your interesting paper which I’ll have a look
>> into soon.
>> But, I don’t think speakers not employing spaces necessarily indicates
>> the absence of wordhood.
>> In many traditional orthographies, there are no spaces at all: Thai,
>> Tibetan, Khmer, Japanese, pre-modern Korean, etc.
>> But that wouldn’t necessarily mean that Thai speakers don’t perceive
>> words.
>> Many orthographies only transcribe consonants - but that wouldn’t mean
>> that the speakers don’t perceive vowels as phonological units.
>> So I think the emergence of spaces is sufficient, but not necessary,
>> evidence of wordhood.
>>
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Ian
>>
>> On 26 Nov 2021, 6:45 PM +0800, David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de>, wrote:
>>
>> Following on Nikolaus' comment, it is also an experiment that is
>> performed whenever speakers of an unwritten language decide to introduce an
>> orthography for the first time:  Do they insert spaces, and if so where?
>>
>>
>>
>> I wrote about about this in Gil (2020), with reference to a naturalistic
>> corpus of SMS messages in Riau Indonesian, produced in 2003, which was the
>> year everybody in the village I was staying in got their first mobile
>> phones and suddenly had to figure out how to write their language.  In the
>> 2020 article, my focus was more on the presence or absence of evidence for
>> bound morphology, and less on whether they introduce spaces in the first
>> case. What I did not mention there, but which is most germane to Ian's
>> query, is the latter question, whether they use spaces at all.  In fact, my
>> corpus contains lots of messages that were written without spaces at all.
>> Within a couple of years the orthography became more conventionalized, and
>> everybody started using spaces, but to begin with, at least, it seemed like
>> many speakers were not entertaining any (meta-)linguistic notion of 'word'
>> whatsoever.
>>
>>
>>
>> (BTW, in Riau and many other dialects of Indonesian, the word for 'word',
>> *kata*, also means 'say'.)
>>
>>
>>
>> David
>>
>>
>>
>> Gil, David (2020) "What Does It Mean to Be an Isolating Language? The
>> Case of Riau Indonesian", in D. Gil and A. Schapper eds., *Austronesian
>> Undressed: How and Why Languages Become Isolating*, John Benjamins,
>> Amsterdam, 9-96.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 26/11/2021 12:11, Nikolaus P Himmelmann wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Hi
>>
>> On 26/11/2021 10:17, JOO, Ian [Student] wrote:
>>
>>
>> The question would be, when one asks a speaker of a given language to
>> divide a sentence into words, would the number of words be consistent
>> throughout different speakers?
>> It would be an interesting experiment. I’d be happy to be informed of any
>> previous study who conducted such an experiment.
>>
>> Yes, indeed. And it is an experiment, though largely uncontrolled, that
>> is carried out whenever someone carries out fieldwork on an undocumented
>> lect. In this context, speakers provide evidence for word units in two
>> ways: a) in elicitation when prompted by pointing or with a word from a
>> contact language; b) when chunking a recording into chunks that can be
>> written down by the researcher.
>>
>> In my experience, speakers across a given community are pretty consistent
>> in both activities though one may distinguish two basic types speakers. One
>> group provides word-like units, so when you ask for "stone" you get a
>> minimal form for stone. The other primarily provides utterance-like units.
>> So you do not get "stone" but rather "look at this stone", "how big the
>> stone is", "stones for building ovens" or the like.
>>
>> Depending on the language, there is some variation in the units provided
>> in both activities but this is typically restricted to the kind of
>> phenomena that later on cause the main problems in the analytical
>> reconstruction of a word unit, i.e. mostly phenomena that come under the
>> broad term of "clitics". In my view, one should clearly distinguish between
>> these analytical reconstructions, which are basic building blocks of
>> grammatial descriptions, and the "natural" units provided by speakers,
>> which are primary data providing the basis for the description.
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Nikolaus
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> David Gil
>>
>>
>>
>> Senior Scientist (Associate)
>>
>> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
>>
>> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
>>
>> Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany
>>
>>
>>
>> Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
>>
>> Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
>>
>> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091
>>
>>
>>
>>
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