32.873, Review: Historical Linguistics; Sociolinguistics; Typology: Hickey (2020)

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Subject: 32.873, Review: Historical Linguistics; Sociolinguistics; Typology: Hickey (2020)

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Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2021 20:38:09
From: Natalie Operstein [natacha at ucla.edu]
Subject: The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/31/31-1690.html

EDITOR: Raymond  Hickey
TITLE: The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2020

REVIEWER: Natalie Operstein,  

SUMMARY

''The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics'', edited by Raymond Hickey, is
divided into an editor's introduction (Chapter 1), ''Issues in Areal
Linguistics'' (Chapters 2-8), and ''Case Studies for Areal Linguistics''
(Chapters 9-33). 

In his introduction, ''Areas, Areal Features and Areality'' (1-15), Raymond
Hickey introduces the subject and the volume. The chapter offers a provisional
definition of the concept of a linguistic area, highlights the dynamic nature
of areality (''the areal concentration of linguistic features'') by
delineating the processes through which it may be promoted or inhibited, and
identifies as the central concern of areal linguistics research into the
mechanisms through which languages in a given area come to share features. 

Two chapters engage with the thorny issue of how to define and delimit a
linguistic area. In ''Why Is It So Hard to Define a Linguistic Area?''
(19-39), Lyle Campbell emphasizes the nonuniform nature of the linguistic
areas proposed in the literature, which differ not only in substantive terms
-- such as their time depth and sociocultural history -- but also in the
degree of acceptance among specialists; and he outlines the criteria that have
been used for defining linguistic areas: the number of shared features, their
bundling, their comparative weight, and the degree of relatedness among the
participating languages. To overcome the issue of non-overlap between the
boundaries of areal traits, some of which may not be found in all of the
area's languages while others may extend beyond its geographical boundaries,
Campbell advocates a shift of focus from geography to the shared features
themselves, and, in the later part of the chapter, applies this approach to
the proposed Gran Chaco convergence area. 

In ''Reassessing Sprachbunds: A View from the Balkans'' (55-87), Victor A.
Friedman and Brian D. Joseph bring a historical, political, and social
dimension to the task of identifying a linguistic area. The centerpiece of
their fine-grained discussion is the Balkan Sprachbund, which they use as a
testing ground for asking questions about the viability of the linguistic area
as a theoretical construct. Among the questions explored are the number of
languages participating in a linguistic area and their genetic relatedness,
the number and types of shared features and their distribution across the
languages, the social and political circumstances that favor the formation of
linguistic areas and the types of language contact that underlie it, how to
identify the areal boundaries, and whether linguistic areas are ongoing
phenomena or products of past activity. 

The subject of ''Areas and Universals'' (40-54), by Balthasar Bickel, is
interplay between cross-linguistic structural patterns and their geographical
distribution. Underlying the discussion is the distinction between linguistic
areas defined by cognitively or socially motivated linguistic changes that
occur each time the relevant conditions are met (''functional triggers'') and
those defined by idiosyncratic changes deriving from topical historical events
(''event-based triggers''), with the corresponding difference in the
mechanisms of area formation, selection of the cognitively/sociolinguistically
preferred variant or copying. 

Three chapters are devoted to phonological areas. In ''Areal Sound Patterns:
>From Perceptual Magnets to Stone Soup'' (88-121), Juliette Blevins takes a
general look at the areal sharing of sound patterns, broadly understood, which
does not result from chance, genetic inheritance, or general phonological
tendencies. The phenomena examined include tone, retroflexion, clicks,
ejectives, and front rounded vowels. The central concern of the chapter is the
proposed mechanism by which sound patterns are diffused: it is hypothesized
that, rather than from lexical borrowing, areal phonological convergence
results from internal developments prompted by external stimuli in the form of
contact sound patterns.  

In ''Convergence and Divergence in the Phonology of the Languages of Europe''
(122-160), Thomas Stolz and Nataliya Levkovych examine areal properties of the
consonantal systems of the languages of Europe. The chapter takes an expansive
view of Europe by including Greenland and parts of Anatolia, Transcaucasia,
and Kazakhstan. The properties examined are airstream mechanisms, phonation,
place and manner of articulation, and secondary articulations. The global
findings include the existence of distinctions between center and periphery,
and between east and west, in the distribution of phonological phenomena.
Languages of the Caucasus consistently stand out in having features, such as
ejectives, lateral affricates, pharyngeal and epiglottal places of
articulation, secondary labialization and pharyngealization, that are not
found elsewhere in the area. Also emphasized is phonological diversity within
language families as seen, e.g., in the nonuniform distribution of secondary
palatalization across Slavic languages. At the conclusion of the chapter, the
authors stress that there is as yet no general framework for the study of
phonological convergence. 

''Word Prominence and Areal Linguistics'' (161-203), by Harry van der Hulst,
Rob Goedemans and Keren Rice, draws on studies in loanword prosody,
second-language phonology and the diachrony of prosodic systems to provide a
richly illustrated introduction to the areal dimensions of word prominence, a
multifaceted notion whose components include stress (or absence thereof), its
placement, its phonetic cues and phonotactic correlates. The authors emphasize
the scarcity of detailed studies of changes in word prominence and the
difficulty of determining whether a particular change is contact-induced.
Central to the latter issue is the idea of hybridity, or simultaneous presence
in a language of more than one word-prominence pattern, such as both initial
and right-edge stress in Germanic languages (though the authors emphasize that
an explanation in terms of diachronic layering is also possible in such
cases). The concept of hybridity is applied to explaining the stress systems
of languages in northern Australia which combine characteristics of initial-
and penultimate-stress patterns. The chapter's other case studies address
divergence in word prominence among closely related languages, through an
exploration of Basque, and probe the existence of areal stress patterns in
several linguistic areas of North America. 

''Semantic Patterns from an Areal Perspective'' (204-236), by Maria
Koptjevskaja-Tamm and Henrik Liljegren, brings into focus areal convergence in
semantics and lexicon. The chapter surveys a number of lexico-semantic
phenomena that are prone to cross-linguistic areal diffusion, such as shared
polysemy patterns; shared lexico-constructional patterns, including formulaic
expressions; shared lexicalizations tied to the areas' physical or cultural
environments; and shared conceptual organization of entire semantic domains,
such as the domain of deictic verbs in European languages. In the latter part
of the chapter, these analytic categories are applied to sketching the
lexico-semantic profile of the Greater Hindu Kush area. 

The second part of the volume consists of twenty-five case studies of the
linguistic areas and language families of Eurasia, Africa, Oceania and the
Americas. The chapters vary in their length, detail, and perspective on
areality.   

The linguistic areality of Africa is introduced through a variety of
approaches. In “An Areal View of Africa” (424-445), Bernd Heine and Anne-Maria
Fehn single out for discussion features that are common in African languages
but less common elsewhere, such as the animal/meat polysemy, ATR vowel
harmony, preference for open syllables, low incidence of case inflections, and
grammaticalization of a verb meaning “pass”, “surpass”, or “defeat” into a
standard of comparison marker. In ''Areal Contact in Nilo-Saharan'' (446-470),
Gerrit J. Dimmendaal examines the typological split between the Central
Sudanic and Northeastern branches of the Nilo-Saharan language family from the
perspective of their typological convergence with neighboring languages. In
''Niger-Congo Languages'' (471-499), Jeff Good surveys the areal patterns of
the Niger-Congo family, contrasting the areal characteristics of languages
spoken in the Marco-Sudan belt (the ''center'') with those located outside
this region (the ''periphery''). In ''The Kalahari Basin Area as a
'Sprachbund' before the Bantu Expansion'' (500-526), Tom Güldemann and
Anne-Maria Fehn present an areal convergence alternative to the Khoisan family
hypothesis. In ''South Africa and Areal Linguistics'' (527-550), Rajend
Mesthrie surveys the complex linguistic mosaic of South Africa against the
backdrop of the contact history of the area. The range of the contact
phenomena examined is wide and includes phonological impact of Khoisan on
Bantu, mutual influences between English and Afrikaans, the role of Afrikaans
in the diffusion of structural features, and SLA effects, such as
''anti-deletion'' (Mesthrie 2006), in Black South African English.  

The central thread that runs through the presentation of linguistic areality
in Oceania is the tension between inheritance and diffusion as potential
sources of the shared features, coupled with the difficulty of teasing the two
apart because of the great time depth of the genetic relationships involved.
In ''The Areal Linguistics of Australia'' (732-757), Luisa Miceli and Alan
Dench focus on the competing genetic and contact explanations for the
widespread phonological, semantic, and morphosyntactic similarities among
Australian languages, embedding their discussion within the social context of
sustained multilingualism and special effects of contact among genetically
related languages, responsible for the intricate relationship between
inheritance and diffusion in the Australian context. The bulk of ''Languages
of the New Guinea Region'' (758-820), by Malcolm Ross, is devoted to tracking
the areal distribution of seventeen morphosyntactic features in the Papuan and
Austronesian languages of the vast and linguistically diverse New Guinea
region. The features examined include the division between tense-prominent and
mood-prominent languages, clause chaining, and a variety of word-order
features. 

In ''Languages of Eastern Melanesia'' (821-851), Paul Geraghty examines Papuan
substrate influence on the Oceanic languages of Eastern Melanesia, which show
certain aberrant characteristics with respect to Proto-Oceanic. The features
examined include verb serialization, quinary numeral systems, and borrowed
vocabulary. ''The Western Micronesian Sprachbund'', by Anthony P. Grant
(852-877), provides a further opportunity for illustrating some of the
difficulties inherent in trying to separate inheritance from diffusion in a
contact situation involving related linguistic systems. The chapter is devoted
to evaluating the status of Western Micronesia as a potential linguistic area,
focusing largely on the shared features in phonology and lexicon.   

The Americas are represented by three chapters. In ''Native North American
Languages'' (878-933), Marianne Mithun highlights the distinctive feature of
areality in North America: extensive sharing of structural patterns, including
abstract morphological patterns, in the absence of a matching level of lexical
borrowing. The chapter describes several of the areas -- the Northwest, the
Southeast, the Southwest, California -- in some detail, providing extensive
bibliographical references and correlating the linguistic patterns with those
of social interaction. The reader learns about the areal distribution of such
features as ejectives, fricative symbolism, alignment patterns, and shared
grammaticalization processes, such as grammaticalization of positional verbs
into aspect markers in the Southeast. 

In ''The Areal Linguistics of Amazonia'' (934-963), Patience Epps and Lev
Michael show that the combination of low lexical and extensive structural
borrowing, including borrowing of bound morphology and semantic calquing, is
also characteristic of the linguistic areas of Amazonia, where the contact
zones combine multilingualism with emblematic role of language as a marker of
identity. The chapter examines several of the areas -- Vaupés,
Caquetá-Putumayo, Upper Xingu, Guaporé-Mamoré -- in some detail before
considering the possibility that Amazonia as a whole may constitute a
linguistic area. As part of their discussion, the authors briefly mention the
west/east areal split in South America, with the former area consisting of the
Andes, the Southern Cone, and Western Amazonia and the latter comprising the
rest of the continent. The division of South American linguistic systems into
the western and eastern types is confirmed by the areal distribution of NP
types, which forms the foundation for the next chapter, ''Linguistic Areas,
Linguistic Convergence and River Systems in South America'' (964-996) by Rik
van Gijn, Harald Hammarström, Simon van de Kerke, Olga Krasnoukova, and Pieter
Muysken. Earlier research has shown that languages of the western and eastern
types differ with respect to such structural features of the noun phrase as
the location of modifiers, the presence of gender and classifiers, and the
expression of property concepts. The specific aim of the chapter is to attempt
to correlate the linguistic with the physical geography as regards the areal
distribution of the NP features.  

The linguistic areas of Eurasia receive the most coverage in terms of the
number of chapters. In ''Jarkhand as a 'Linguistic Area': Language Contact
Between Indo-Aryan and Munda in Eastern-Central South Asia'' (551-574), John
Peterson examines convergence between the Munda and Indo-Aryan languages
against the backdrop of the larger South Asian convergence area, emphasizing
the fact that, due to the absence of historical record, the direction of areal
diffusion is often unclear. In ''Sri Lanka and South India'' (575-585),
Umberto Ansaldo brings population genetics research to bear on the issue of
multilayered structural convergence among the Dravidian and Indo-Aryan
languages of the region. The chapter brings into relief the special historical
interest of Sri Lanka Malay and Sri Lanka Portuguese, contact varieties whose
typological profiles have shifted away from those of their lexifiers and in
the direction of those of their neighbors in the Sri Lankan Sprachbund.   

''The Transeurasian Languages'' (586-626), by Martine Robbeets, addresses the
long-debated issue of structural similarities among Turkic, Tungusic,
Mongolic, Japonic, and Koreanic (otherwise known as Altaic) languages. The
chapter compares the behavior of selected Transeurasian languages with that of
their neighbors, including Ket, Ainu, and Mandarin, with respect to 27
features, both synchronic (e.g., the basic constituent order) and diachronic
(grammaticalization patterns). The study detects maximum concentration of the
features in Tungusic and Mongolic; while inclusion in the sample of older
stages of some of the languages points to a decrease in Transeurasian areality
over the intervening period. In ''The Changing Profile of Case Marking in the
Northeastern Siberia Area'' (627-650), Gregory D. S. Anderson looks at four
recurrent features of case marking in indigenous languages of Siberia -- the
instrumental/comitative contrast, the dative/allative contrast, the prolative
case, and the use of case markers as markers of subordinate clauses --
suggesting diffusion from Tungusic as a plausible explanation for the observed
areal pattern.   

In ''Languages of China in their East and Southeast Asian Context'' (651-676),
Hilary Chappell surveys features that define continental East and Southeast
Asia as a linguistic area and examines three sub-areas in more detail, two
involving contact between Sinitic and non-Sinitic languages -- Altaic and Tai
-- and one concerning contact among Sinitic languages. In ''Language in the
Mainland Southeast Asia Area'' (677-702), N. J. Enfield supplies a bird's-eye
view of Mainland Southeast Asia and some of the phonological and grammatical
features shared among its several hundred Sino-Tibetan, Tai-Kadai, Hmong-Mien,
Austroasiatic, and Austronesian languages. The chapter also orients the reader
about major resources and ongoing work in this field. In ''Southeast Asian
Tone in Areal Perspective'' (703-731), James Kirby and Marc Brunelle survey
the tone systems of Southeast Asian languages, dwelling on their synchronic
diversity and developmental pathways, and stressing the difficulty of making a
solid case for contact spread of tone.      

In “Western Asia: East Anatolia as a Transition Zone” (396-423), Geoffrey Haig
undertakes a critical assessment of selected features proposed as indicators
of a pan-Anatolian area of interaction among Turkic, Semitic, Kartvelian, and
Indo-European languages, showing that the features in question show bilateral
rather than pan-Anatolian diffusion. He proposes to view the region as
transitional between the Mesopotamian and Caspian/Caucasian regions, with some
of the features representing compromise solutions to the conflicting
linguistic typologies. In “The Caucasus” (355-395), Sven Grawunder examines
the Caucasus as a phonological/phonetic sprachbund, focusing on such features
as segmental inventories, phonation contrasts, places of articulation, and
secondary articulations and drawing on historical, population genetics, and
wide-ranging linguistics research for the task of describing the Caucasus as a
linguistic area.  

In ''Slavic Languages'' (331-355), Alan Timberlake examines contacts between
Slavic peoples and their neighbors, distinguishing between the impact on
linguistic convergence of substrates and supra-regional lingua francas. In
''The Germanic Languages and Areal Linguistics'' (239-269), Johan van der
Auwera and Daniël Van Olmen survey contacts among Germanic languages, such as
the impact of Danish on Norwegian, and between Germanic and non-Germanic
languages, including Romance, Celtic, and Slavic. In ''Britain and Ireland''
(270-303), Raymond Hickey examines the areal features of English in Britain
and Ireland in a broadly diachronic perspective and against the background of
a wide-ranging discussion of a number of foundational issues in the study of
areality. 

''Varieties of English'' (304-330), by Bernd Kortmann and Verena Schröter, is
unique in the volume in focusing on a single language while adopting a global
perspective on areality. The chapter scrutinizes areal biases in the
distribution of morphosyntactic features in world-wide varieties of English
and English-based contact languages. The features in question include
complementation, pronominal features (such as pronoun deletion), NP features
(such as deletion of definite and indefinite articles), and VP features (such
as the aspectual done). The authors reiterate the earlier finding that the
areal morphosyntactic patternings are secondary to those tied to
sociolinguistic variety types (low-contact L1, high-contact L1, L2, pidgin,
creole), with the strongest areal signals obtaining in the Caribbean
(dominated by creoles), America (dominated by L1 varieties), and Asia
(dominated by L2 varieties). 

EVALUATION 

Through a combination of survey and case studies, ''The Cambridge Handbook of
Areal Linguistics'' introduces the reader to various aspects of areal
linguistics as a branch of study and the state of the art of areal-linguistic
research in selected parts of the world. The different contributions are
united by the methodological concerns that are central to the field, including
how to define a linguistic area and circumscribe its reach; how to separate,
in an areal context, changes that are due to contact from those that may be
due to genetic inheritance or universal drifts; and the mechanisms of areal
diffusion. Other conceptual concerns that recur across the chapters are
genetic relatedness and typological congruence among the participating
linguistic systems, the special mechanisms and effects of contact among
genetically related languages, and the societal and cultural aspects of
linguistic area formation. These broad themes are tackled from a variety of
perspectives, with some of the chapters proceeding from general principles to
specific studies and others working from the local to the general.  

Areal convergence is addressed at a variety of structural levels, including
segmental and suprasegmental phonology, morphology, syntax, discourse,
semantics, and lexicon. The extent to which these different levels are
explored in the individual chapters varies: for instance, the case studies
devoted to English, Germanic and Slavic languages focus on morphosyntax
whereas the chapter on the languages of the Caucasus addresses phonetics and
phonology to the exclusion of other levels. Some of the key mechanisms of
areal diffusion, such as replication of grammaticalization patterns and
changes in the frequency of native constructions in response to external
models, receive attention in more than one chapter.   

Other substantive and methodological issues covered in the volume include
selection of features to define a linguistic area; the role of shared
vocabulary (Grant) and discourse markers (Haig) as indicators of areality; the
difficulty of determining the source of the areal traits and the direction of
diffusion; the distinction between core and periphery, and between high-level
and local patterns, in an areal context; areal diffusion processes in parts of
the world that lack historical documentation or significant descriptive work
(e.g., Heine & Fehn; Ross); and the unequal value of different types of
linguistic features as indicators of areality. 

The individual chapters draw attention to interfaces between areal linguistics
and allied fields, including genetic and typological linguistics,
sociolinguistics, language ecology, language acquisition and various subfields
of contact linguistics, such as the study of bilingualism, contact language
formation and contact-induced simplification (due to L2 learning) and
complexification (due to development of new distinctions). This last issue is
explored in several chapters which describe the rise of new linguistic
patterns in geographically transitional areas (''buffer zones''; cf. Dahl
2009). These include new suppletive paradigms combining inherited and borrowed
forms, such as varda/bliva ''become'' in some Swedish vernaculars (Van der
Auwera & Van Olmen), the hybrid comparative in Xianghua (Sinitic) (Chappell),
and cross-linguistically uncommon structural patterns arising at the
intersection of differing typologies, such as the object/verb/goal word order
in East Anatolia (Haig) and hybrid word prominence patterns in northern
Australia (Van der Hulst, Goedemans & Rice). Changes in linguistic complexity
are correlated with the larger context of the typological ecology of the
contact environment by Ansaldo. 

Various chapters extend their discussion to general issues in contact-induced
language change, including the agency behind it and the distinctions between
matter and pattern borrowing, and between borrowing and shift (e.g., Van der
Auwera & Van Olmen); the impact of sociolinguistic conditions on the outcome
of language change, the influence of urbanization on patterns of language
change and areal distribution of features, contact-induced retention of
linguistic features (e.g., Hickey); interaction between different types of
contact phenomena in an areal setting, including bi- and multilingualism,
code-switching, L1 transfer and SLA processes in L2 varieties; the impact of
cultural and societal factors, such as language ideologies and shared
discourse practices, on the shaping of areal patterns (e.g., Mesthrie;
Grawunder; Good; Epps & Michael); and the role of lingua francas in promoting
areal convergence (Timberlake; Anderson). The inhibiting effect on areality of
language standardization and supraregionalization prompts recurrent urging to
(re-)focus the study of areality on nonstandard varieties (e.g., Hickey;
Enfield). 

The volume provides a balanced introduction to the rapidly developing field of
areal linguistics while at the same time highlighting its connection and
interdependence with related research fields. Many of the chapters offer ample
bibliographical orientation and make good use of maps, enhancing the volume's
usefulness as a research tool for understanding the multifaceted phenomenon of
linguistic areality. The volume is expected to stimulate further research on
areal and contact linguistics and to be of interest to a range of students and
scholars interested in language contact, linguistic typology, historical
linguistics, and related fields.   

REFERENCES

Dahl, Östen. 2009. Increases in complexity as a result of language contact.
Convergence and Divergence in Language Contact Situations, Kurt Braunmüller &
Juliane House (eds), 41-52. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Mesthrie, Rajend. 2006. Anti-deletions in an L2 grammar: A study of Black
South African English mesolect. English World-Wide 27: 111-145.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Natalie Operstein's research interests center on language change, phonology,
and language contact. Her publications include ''Consonant Structure and
Prevocalization'' (John Benjamins, 2010), ''Zaniza Zapotec'' (Lincom Europa,
2015), ''Valence Changes in Zapotec: Synchrony, Diachrony, Typology'', ed.
with Aaron Huey Sonnenschein (2015) and ''Language Contact and Change in
Mesoamerica and Beyond'', ed. with Karen Dakin and Claudia Parodi (2017).





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