DOCSLIB.ORG

Cladistic and Reticulate Processes in Language Change and Diversification

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Cladistic and Reticulate Processes in Language Change and Diversification Cladistic and reticulate processes in language change and diversification Sarah Grey Thomason University of Michigan January 2002 1. Introduction. This paper explores some of the ways in which linguistic evidence can contribute to the effort to discover and understand the interweaving of linguistic, cultural, and genetic change. I will begin by discussing the historical linguist's concept of language families, focusing on the problem of `synchronizing the clocks' (John Moore, this volume) that represent different dating techniques in historical linguistics, archaeology, and genetics ( 2). Section 3 surveys the most extreme outcomes of language contact and attempts to x provide answers, from a linguist's viewpoint, to two questions posed by William Durham (this volume). First, can one predict when ethnogenesis will come about through cladistic development and when it will come about via amalgamation, or reticulate development? And second, a question about tempo and mode: does linguistic change and diversification happen gradually, through `insensibly fine gradations', or abruptly via punctuated equilib- rium? Section 4 then addresses (very tentatively) the prospects for using linguistic evidence in conjunction with evidence from other branches of anthropology, especially genetics, to achieve a unified picture of population origins. Throughout the paper, most of my examples will be drawn from the New World. My main conclusion will be that cladistic development is by far the most common route to language genesis, with reticulate origin a distant second: when different languages come into contact, amalgamation of the languages does sometimes occur, but it rarely results in a stable mixed language that becomes a community's primary medium of communication. The reasons for the low probability of amalgamation are social, not linguistic. A related conclusion is that punctuated equilibrium, though it could be invoked frequently (if rather trivially) in describing specific linguistic changes, is probably not an important factor in the split of a parent language into two or more daughter languages to form a language family. Language splits probably proceed much more often by insensibly fine gradations. (But here the `probably' hedge is needed, for reasons I'll explain later on.) 2. Estimating time depths for language families. In the elaborate biologi- cal metaphor used by historical linguistics since the nineteenth century, a language family consists of a single parent language and a set of one or more descendent languages, which are changed later forms of the earlier parent language. The parent language is called a proto-language if it is unattested (literally, prehistoric), and its descendants are its daughter languages. The members of a language family, parent and daughters, are said to be genet- ically related. Crucially, parent and daughter languages do not co-exist as contemporary living languages. That is, while it is certainly possible for a parent language to live on in written or even limited spoken form after its split into two or more daughter languages, it will not continue as the major language of any speech community, and it is unlikely to be learned as a first language by children. Latin is the most famous example of a parent lan- guage that survived its historical split into several daughter languages (the modern Romance languages): it continued to be used as a (or the) major language of European diplomacy long after its descendants replaced it as major languages of speech communities. Sanskrit is another example|a more typical one, because its continuing cultural importance was due to its status as the language of a major religion. Language families vary greatly in size and complexity. At one extreme, a few of the world's language families are enormous and complex, with hundreds of member languages. The two most spectacular examples are Niger-Congo in sub-Saharan Africa and Austronesian in Oceania and parts of southeast Asia, but the Indo-European family, with far fewer lan- guages but with worldwide distribution (thanks primarily to colonialism), is of even greater importance in the international ecology of languages. At the other extreme, a non-trivial number of languages, e.g. Basque in western Europe and Burushaski in Pakistan, constitute one-member language families, as far as we can tell (at least at present): they are certainly descended from earlier parent languages, but their respective parents apparently underwent no splits, each developing instead in a straight-line fashion into a single isolated modern language. In other words, language split is not inevitable: whether or not splits will occur is a function of non-linguistic factors such as the amount of territory occupied by a language's speakers. Complexity in a language family is represented by branching in the metaphorical family tree, with subgroups clustering together on separate branches and often branching in 2 their turn into sub-subgroups, and so on. Historical linguists reconstruct cladistic (tree-forming) processes of language split and di- versification by means of a powerful methodology known simply as the Comparative Method. This method enables us to establish the fact of linguistic relationship by showing systematic sound/meaning correspondences in a particular set of languages, correspondences that are too numerous and too interlocking to be plausibly assigned to the operation of mere coinci- dence. The method also permits the reconstruction of parts of the proto-language's lexical, phonological, and morphological structure, and to a lesser extent its syntactic structure; in fact, most historical linguists would insist that establishing genetic relationship requires showing that reconstruction is possible in all the major components of a language's structure. Distinguishing the results of reticulate processes from the results of cladistic processes can be problematic in cases of languages that, if related at all, are only very distantly related. At shallower time depths (say, 8,000-10,000 years), the Comparative Method makes it possible to identify borrowed material that has been incorporated into one or more of the languages being compared. An occasional loanword or borrowed syntactic pattern may certainly es- cape detection. But if a language with two or more fairly closely related sister languages has borrowed extensively from another language, the borrowed items will be flagged as un- analyzable residue by the Comparative Method. The only exception to this generalization would be a case of extensive borrowing from a closely-related language; in such cases, the foreign material could in fact disrupt application of the Comparative Method|though that fact itself would be flagged by the methodology. Several such cases have been proposed from different parts of the world, especially in the Pacific, but the jury is still out on whether those instances actually do prevent successful application of the Comparative Method. The 8,000-10,000-year time depth is very, very rough and tentative, and this brings us to the problem of determining how long ago two or more related languages split off from their common parent. First the bad news: the only sure way of establishing the time depth for any language family is to have the initial split, and (if any) all subsequent splits as well, documented in datable texts. This would require dated documents written or inscribed in the parent language and in all the daughter languages. Unfortunately, such cases are vanishingly rare. There's Latin, which (though not precisely in its most widely preserved written form) 3 is the ancestor of the Romance languages; there's literary Old English, which is close to the ancestor of most of the Modern English dialects (there are a few kinks in the line from Old English to Modern English); there's Classical Arabic, which is sort of the ancestor of the Modern Arabic dialects; there's Sanskrit, which is close to the ancestor of the Modern Indic languages; and there are a very few others in the Old World and perhaps one or two in the New World. Chinese has the oldest continuous literary tradition of all the world's living languages|the earliest known Chinese writing dates from the Shang dynasty (1766-1123? BCE)|but even aside from the fact that the ancient writing system is very conservative and tends to conceal dialect divergence, the emergence of the several different Modern Chinese languages was fairly recent. Egyptian, now dead, also had a very long written tradition (3200 BCE-1700 CE), but it remained a unitary tradition (no splits and thus only one daughter language at each stage), so it's useless for the investigation of documented language splits. In practice, almost all of our precise information about time depths comes from a few branches of the large Indo-European (IE) family. Of all the hundreds of language families in the world, IE is by far the best understood historically, partly because it has received by far the most attention from historical linguists for the past century and a half and partly because it is so well documented, with attestations from several of its ten branches dating from before the turn of the common era. Now the good news, or at least the semi-good news: historical linguists do have ways of compensating for the distressing paucity of real-time data on language splits. The first step, always, is to work intensively on a group of related languages (after demonstrating that they are related) to get a feel for how closely related they are. Basic vocabulary can be compared and lexical closeness can be calculated. Grammatical closeness can only be judged impressionistically, but a historical linguist with solid training and experience in Indo-European can provide reasonable support for an estimate of grammatical closeness in another language family by comparison to one or more branches of Indo-European. In other words, Indo-European is usually used as the rough measuring stick for estimating closeness of relationship.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Toward the Reconstruction of Proto-Algonquian-Wakashan. Part 3: the Algonquian-Wakashan 110-Item Wordlist
    Sergei L. Nikolaev Institute of Slavic studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow/Novosibirsk); [email protected] Toward the reconstruction of Proto-Algonquian-Wakashan. Part 3: The Algonquian-Wakashan 110-item wordlist In the third part of my complex study of the historical relations between several language families of North America and the Nivkh language in the Far East, I present an annotated demonstration of the comparative data that was used in the lexicostatistical calculations to determine the branching and approximate glottochronological dating of Proto-Algonquian- Wakashan and its offspring; because of volume considerations, this data could not be in- cluded in the previous two parts of the present work and has to be presented autonomously. Additionally, several new Proto-Algonquian-Wakashan and Proto-Nivkh-Algonquian roots have been set up in this part of study. Lexicostatistical calculations have been conducted for the following languages: the reconstructed Proto-North Wakashan (approximately dated to ca. 800 AD) and modern or historically attested variants of Nootka (Nuuchahnulth), Amur Nivkh, Sakhalin Nivkh, Western Abenaki, Miami-Peoria, Fort Severn Cree, Wiyot, and Yurok. Keywords: Algonquian-Wakashan languages, Nivkh-Algonquian languages, Algic languages, Wakashan languages, Chimakuan-Wakashan languages, Nivkh language, historical phonol- ogy, comparative dictionary, lexicostatistics. The classification and preliminary glottochronological dating of Algonquian-Wakashan currently remain the same as presented in Nikolaev 2015a, Fig. 1 1. That scheme was generated based on the lexicostatistical analysis of 110-item basic word lists2 for one reconstructed (Proto-Northern Wakashan, ca. 800 A.D.) and several modern Algonquian-Wakashan lan- guages, performed with the aid of StarLing software 3.
    [Show full text]
  • Archaeolinguistics As a Way to Overcome the Impasse in Comparative Linguistics Wolodymyr H
    Archaeolinguistics As A Way To Overcome The Impasse In Comparative Linguistics Wolodymyr H. Kozyrski1, *, Alexander V. Malovichko2 1The International Physical Encyclopedia Bureau, Mathematical Modeling Laboratory at The Bogolubov Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kiev, Ukraine 2Physics Laboratory, The Lyceum at The National Technical University “KPI”, Kiev, Ukraine [email protected] ABSTRACT The paper exposes some essential points of our one and a half decade research results within new approach to study prehistoric stages of human language development mainly in times of ergaster-erectus domination and reflects our reaction to the protracted conceptual crisis in the comparative linguistics. As a result of fundamentally incorrectly stated goals, most of the researchers artificially limited themselves both by the defined scope of the problems to solve and by the methods used. Becoming tightly tied knot of up to now unsolved intrinsic contradictions, today comparative linguistics needs radical change. We have developed a synthetic approach that has proved its effectiveness. Our model is well aligned with prehistoric data of auxiliary historical disciplines and even IBM Genographic project. The results offer further opportunities for interesting studies. Indexing terms/Keywords : Archaeolinguistics, Comparativistics, Ergaster-Erectus, Language Families, Vocabulary Enrichment Subject Classification : Comparative Linguistics Language : English Date of Submission : 2017-12-23 Date of Acceptance : 2018-01-06 Date of Publication : 2018-02-28 ISSN : 2348-3024 Volume : 09 Issue : 01 Journal : Journal Of Advances In Linguistics Publisher : CIRWORLD Website : https://cirworld.com This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 1313 1 INTRODUCTION Exclusively complicated and probably completely inexplicable phenomenon, human language origin still excites thought and imagination of today researchers.
    [Show full text]
  • Fieldwork and Linguistic Analysis in Indigenous Languages of the Americas
    Fieldwork and Linguistic Analysis in Indigenous Languages of the Americas edited by Andrea L. Berez, Jean Mulder, and Daisy Rosenblum Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication No. 2 Published as a sPecial Publication of language documentation & conservation language documentation & conservation Department of Linguistics, UHM Moore Hall 569 1890 East-West Road Honolulu, Hawai‘i 96822 USA http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/ldc university of hawai‘i Press 2840 Kolowalu Street Honolulu, Hawai‘i 96822-1888 USA © All texts and images are copyright to the respective authors. 2010 All chapters are licensed under Creative Commons Licenses Cover design by Cameron Chrichton Cover photograph of salmon drying racks near Lime Village, Alaska, by Andrea L. Berez Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data ISBN 978-0-8248-3530-9 http://hdl.handle.net/10125/4463 Contents Foreword iii Marianne Mithun Contributors v Acknowledgments viii 1. Introduction: The Boasian tradition and contemporary practice 1 in linguistic fieldwork in the Americas Daisy Rosenblum and Andrea L. Berez 2. Sociopragmatic influences on the development and use of the 9 discourse marker vet in Ixil Maya Jule Gómez de García, Melissa Axelrod, and María Luz García 3. Classifying clitics in Sm’algyax: 33 Approaching theory from the field Jean Mulder and Holly Sellers 4. Noun class and number in Kiowa-Tanoan: Comparative-historical 57 research and respecting speakers’ rights in fieldwork Logan Sutton 5. The story of *o in the Cariban family 91 Spike Gildea, B.J. Hoff, and Sérgio Meira 6. Multiple functions, multiple techniques: 125 The role of methodology in a study of Zapotec determiners Donna Fenton 7.
    [Show full text]
  • Methodological Algorithm for Diachronic
    Advanced Education Issue 10, 2018 ISSN: 2409-3351 DOI: 10.20535/2410-8286.143784 METHODOLOGICAL ALGORITHM FOR DIACHRONIC INTERPRETATION OF NOSTRATIC *mar-a “tree” (based on the data taken from Bomhard’s “A Comprehensive Introduction to Nostratic Comparative Linguistics: With Special Reference to Indo-European”) Yan Kapranov Kyiv National Linguistic University, Kyiv, Ukraine E-mail: [email protected] The article discusses the methodological algorithm for diachronic interpretation of the Nostratic etymon *mar-a “tree” represented in the A. R. Bomhard’s “A Comprehensive Introduction to Nostratic Comparative Linguistics: With Special Reference to Indo- European. The paper elaborates the definition of the Nostratic etymon as a hypothetical language-ancestor, established based on the comparison of the degree of affinity with the available reconstructed etymons at the level of every Nostratic language family (Altaic, Afro-Asiatic, Dravidian, Indo-European, Kartvelian, and Uralic). The author comes to the conclusion that Bomhard used the three research stages to identify the Nostratic etymon. At the first stage (the level of the language family) the comparative-historical method is used with the procedures of internal (etymon(s) / proto-form(s) at the level of the language group) and external (comparison of etymons / proto-forms reconstructed for certain language groups in order to reconstruct etymon / proto-form at the level of the language family) reconstruction; the step-by-step reconstruction method. At the second stage (the level of macrofamily) the mass comparison method is used. It helps to involve the already reconstructed etymons at the level of every Nostratic language family into comparison. At the third stage, a specially developed method of diachronic interpretation is used.
    [Show full text]
  • JOSEPH, BRIAN D. and RICHARD D. JANDA, Editors. the Handbook of Historical Linguistics
    JOSEPH, BRIAN D. and RICHARD D. JANDA, Editors. The Handbook of Historical Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Pp. xviii, 881. The Blackwell Handbook in Linguistics series has already yielded outstanding state-of-the-art summaries of many subfields of general linguistics: child language, second language acquisition, phonological theory, syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, etc. This large, epoch-making work is particularly outstanding in that it comprehensively covers the contemporary state of affairs of such important historical linguistic topics as sound change, analogy, and grammaticalization. However, it is not a history of historical linguistics, although there are numerous pages containing developmental overviews which are, of necessity, historical in orientation. The book consists of 25 well-researched, polished essays in the ever-growing field of comparative-historical linguistics. Due primarily to space limitations but also in accordance with my background and interests, I have chosen to focus on half of them which, I believe, have significant general interest. This decision, however, in no way implies that those not discussed are less satisfactory. These latter works are listed with their authors at the conclusion of the remarks. The editors’ preface (pp. xi-xviii) states that this publication is dedicated to the spirit of cooperative and collaborative research, which they hope always leads to the progress of an academic discipline (and I believe it does). Their following introduction, “On Language, Change, and Language Change – Or, Of History, Linguistics, and Historical Linguistics” (pp. 3-180) is a joint effort of unusual proportions reflecting “on what the present and future trajectory of work in our field may – and can – be” (p.
    [Show full text]
  • Joseph Harold Greenberg
    JOSEPH HAROLD GREENBERG CORRECTED VERSION* Joseph H. Greenberg, one of the most original and influential linguists of the twentieth century, died at his home in Stanford, California, on May 7th, 2001, three weeks before his eighty-sixth birthday. Greenberg was a major pioneer in the development of linguistics as an empirical science. His work was always founded directly on quantitative data from a single language or from a wide range of languages. His chief legacy to contemporary linguistics is in the development of an approach to the study of language—typology and univerals—and to historical linguistics. Yet he also made major contributions to sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, phonetics and phonology, morphology, and especially African language studies. Joe Greenberg was born on May 28th, 1915, in Brooklyn, New York, the second of two children. His father was a Polish Jew and his mother, a German Jew. His father’s family name was originally Zyto, but in one of those turn-of-the- century immigrant stories, he ended up taking the name of his landlord. Joe Greenberg’s early loves were music and languages. As a child he sat fascinated next to his mother while she played the piano, and asked her to teach him. She taught him musical notation and then found him a local teacher. Greenberg ended up studying with a Madame Vangerova, associated with the Curtis Institute of Music. Greenberg even gave a concert at Steinway Hall at the age of 14, and won a city-wide prize for best chamber music ensemble. But after finishing high school, Greenberg chose an academic career instead of a musical one, although he continued to play the piano every evening until near the end of his life.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 the Phonology of Wakashan Languages Adam Werle University
    1 The Phonology of Wakashan Languages Adam Werle University of Victoria, March 2010 Abstract This article offers an overview of the phonological typology and analysis of the Wakashan languages, namely Haisla, Heiltsukvla (Heiltsuk, Bella Bella), Oowekyala, Kwak’wala (Kwakiutl), Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka), Ditidaht (Nitinaht), and Makah. Like other languages of the Northwest Coast of North America, these have many consonants, including several laterals, front and back dorsals, few labials, contrastive glottalization and lip rounding, and a glottal stop with similar distribution to other consonants. Consonant-vowel sequences are characterized by large obstruent clusters, and no hiatus. Of theoretical interest at the segmental level are consonant mutations, positional neutralizations of laryngeal features, vowel-glide alternations, glottalized vowels and glottalized voiced plosives, and historical loss of nasal consonants. Also addressed here are aspects of these languages’ rich prosodic morphology, such as patterns of reduplication and templatic stem modifications, the distribution of Northern Wakashan schwa, alternations in Southern Wakashan vowel length and presence, and the syllabification of all-obstruent words. 1. Introduction The Wakashan language are spoken in what are now British Columbia, Canada, and Washington State, USA. The family comprises a northern branch—Haisla, Heiltsukvla, Oowekyala, and Kwa kwala—and̓ a southern branch—Nuu-chah-nulth, Ditidaht, and Makah— that diverge significantly from each other, but are internally very similar. They are endangered, being spoken natively by about 350 people, out of ethnic populations of about 23,000 whose main language is English. At the same time, most are undergoing active revitalization, with about 1,000 semi-speakers and learners ( First Peoples’ Language Map ).
    [Show full text]
  • 33 Contact and North American Languages
    9781405175807_4_033 1/15/10 5:37 PM Page 673 33 Contact and North American Languages MARIANNE MITHUN Languages indigenous to the Americas offer some good opportunities for inves- tigating effects of contact in shaping grammar. Well over 2000 languages are known to have been spoken at the time of first contacts with Europeans. They are not a monolithic group: they fall into nearly 200 distinct genetic units. Yet against this backdrop of genetic diversity, waves of typological similarities suggest pervasive, longstanding multilingualism. Of particular interest are similarities of a type that might seem unborrowable, patterns of abstract structure without shared substance. The Americas do show the kinds of contact effects common elsewhere in the world. There are some strong linguistic areas, on the Northwest Coast, in California, in the Southeast, and in the Pueblo Southwest of North America; in Mesoamerica; and in Amazonia in South America (Bright 1973; Sherzer 1973; Haas 1976; Campbell, Kaufman, & Stark 1986; Thompson & Kinkade 1990; Silverstein 1996; Campbell 1997; Mithun 1999; Beck 2000; Aikhenvald 2002; Jany 2007). Numerous additional linguistic areas and subareas of varying sizes and strengths have also been identified. In some cases all domains of language have been affected by contact. In some, effects are primarily lexical. But in many, there is surprisingly little shared vocabulary in contrast with pervasive structural parallelism. The focus here will be on some especially deeply entrenched structures. It has often been noted that morphological structure is highly resistant to the influence of contact. Morphological similarities have even been proposed as better indicators of deep genetic relationship than the traditional comparative method.
    [Show full text]
  • What Can a Database of Proto-Languages Tell Us About the Last 10,000 Years of Sound Changes ?
    WHAT CAN A DATABASE OF PROTO-LANGUAGES TELL US ABOUT THE LAST 10,000 YEARS OF SOUND CHANGES ? Egidio Marsico Dynamique Du Langage, Université Lumière Lyon 2, France ABSTRACT this classification as a whole nor as the best representation of the This paper describes the construction of a database on genetic situation, but simply as a practical mean to organize our reconstructed phonological system and some of the preliminary sample. interpretations. The statistical study of the content of over a Even if we cover more than 90% of the families, we hundred proto-phonological systems, does not reveal a significant recognize a disproportion in the representation of each family, evolution towards either complexification nor simplification, some have only one element (Khoisan, Caucasian, Eskimo-Aleut, during the last 10,000 years. This means first that language Na-Dene) where some others can have up to 18 (Austric) or 21 reached a sufficient level of complexity long ago, and second that proto-languages (Amerind). However, we can balance this sound changes must not be viewed as teological processes, thus apparent desequilibrium noting that the families with the largest placing their motivations and explanations elsewhere. We also number of representatives are also the largest ones (Niger- offer insights on some theoretical points raised by this study. Kordofanian 12 proto-languages, Austric 18, Amerind 21), thus turning hyper-representation into a better picture of the actual 1. INTRODUCTION diversity of these families. The aim of this study is to test different theories about We gathered a total of 113 reconstructed proto-languages but complexification and/or simplification of phonological systems in we have only kept 95 of them for the sake of reliability and their evolution.
    [Show full text]
  • Handout on Deep Genetic Relationships
    Ling. 150, Historical Linguistics Moore, Spring 2013 Deep Genetic Relations 1. Disputed Families • Altaic (with or without Japanese and Korean) • Ural-Altaic • Yukagir-Uralic • Indo-Pacific (Papuan, Adamanenese, and Tasmanian) • Austro-Tai (Tai & Austronesian) • Austric (Austro-Asiatic & Austronesian) • Amerind (all languages of N. & S. America, except Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut) • Na-Dene (Eyak-Athabaskan, Tlingit & Haida) • Eurasiatic (Indo-European, Uralic, Eskimo-Aleut, Aunu, and others) • Penutian • Hokan • Niger-Kordofanian • Nilo-Saharan • Proto-Australian • Nostratic (Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic, Kartvelian, Dravidian, & Afro-Asiatic, also sometimes Chukchi-Kamchatkan, Eskimo-Aleut, Sumerian, and Gilyak) 2. Mass Comparison (Multilateral Comparison) • Pioneered by Joseph Greenberg in The Languages of Africa (1963), Later applied to Amerid in Language in the Americas (1987), and then Eurasiatic in Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family (2000 & 2002). Suggests a Eurasiatic-Amerid family. • Merritt Ruhlen argues against the idea that sound correspondences are the only way to establish genetic relationships and defends Greeberg’s Mass Comparison in On the Origin of Languages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy (1994) • Ruhlen considers archeological and genetic evidence (working with Renfew and Cavalli-Sforza) • More recent work has proposed a Proto-Sapiens family 3. Statistical Phylogenetics • Pagel et al. (2013) used hypothesized reconstructions of proto-words from seven language families, and used a Markov
    [Show full text]
  • Historical Linguistics and the Comparative Study of African Languages
    Historical Linguistics and the Comparative Study of African Languages UNCORRECTED PROOFS © JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY 1st proofs UNCORRECTED PROOFS © JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY 1st proofs Historical Linguistics and the Comparative Study of African Languages Gerrit J. Dimmendaal University of Cologne John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia UNCORRECTED PROOFS © JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY 1st proofs TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American 8 National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dimmendaal, Gerrit Jan. Historical linguistics and the comparative study of African languages / Gerrit J. Dimmendaal. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. African languages--Grammar, Comparative. 2. Historical linguistics. I. Title. PL8008.D56 2011 496--dc22 2011002759 isbn 978 90 272 1178 1 (Hb; alk. paper) isbn 978 90 272 1179 8 (Pb; alk. paper) isbn 978 90 272 8722 9 (Eb) © 2011 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Company • P.O. Box 36224 • 1020 me Amsterdam • The Netherlands John Benjamins North America • P.O. Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA UNCORRECTED PROOFS © JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY 1st proofs Table of contents Preface ix Figures xiii Maps xv Tables
    [Show full text]
  • STUDIES in SOUTHERN WAKASHAN (NOOTKAN) GRAMMAR by Matthew Davidson June 2002 a Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Grad
    STUDIES IN SOUTHERN WAKASHAN (NOOTKAN) GRAMMAR by Matthew Davidson June 2002 A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of State University of New York at Buffalo in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics iii Acknowledgements I have many people to thank for their contributions to my dissertation. First, I must thank the people of Neah Bay, Washington for their hospitality and generosity during my stay there. The staff of the Makah Cultural and Reseach Center and the Makah Language Program merit special recognition for their unwavering support of my project, so thanks to Janine Bowechop, Yvonne Burkett, Cora Buttram, Keely Parker, Theresa Parker, Maria Pascua, and Melissa Peterson. Of all my friends in Neah Bay, I am most indebted to my primary Makah language consultant, Helma Swan Ward, who spent many patient hours answering questions about Makah and sharing her insights about the language with me. My project has benefited greatly from the labors of my dissertation committee at SUNY Buf- falo, Karin Michelson, Matthew Dryer, and Jean-Pierre Koenig. Their insights concerning both analytic matters and organizational details made the dissertation better than it otherwise would have been. Bill Jacobsen, my outside reader, deserves my gratitude for his meticulous reading of the manuscript on short notice, which resulted in many improvements to the final work. Thanks also to Jay Powell, who facilitated my initial contact with the Makah. I gratefully acknowledge funding for my research from the Jacobs Research Funds and the Mark Diamond Research Fund of the Graduate Student Association of the State University of New York at Buffalo.
    [Show full text]