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Language Contact and the Dynamics of Language: Theory and Implications 10-13 May 2007 Leipzig Paper for the Symposium Language Contact and the Dynamics of Language: Theory and Implications 10-13 May 2007 Leipzig Rethinking structural diffusion Peter Bakker First draft. Very preliminary version. Please do not quote. May 2007. Abstract Certain types of syntactic and morphological features can be diffused, as in convergence and metatypy, where languages take over such properties from neighboring languages. In my paper I would like to explore the idea that typological similarities in the realm of morphology can be used for establishing historical, perhaps even genetic, connections between language families with complex morphological systems. I will exemplify this with North America, in particular the possible connections between the language families of the Northwest coast/ Plateau and those of the eastern part of the Americas. I will argue on the basis on typological similarities, that (ancestor languages of ) some families (notably Algonquian) spoken today east of the continental divide, were once spoken west of the continental divide. This will lead to a more theoretical discussion about diffusion: is it really possible that more abstract morphological features such as morpheme ordering can be diffused? As this appears to be virtually undocumented, we have to be very skeptical about such diffusion. This means that mere morphological similarities between morphologically complex languages should be taken as evidence for inheritance rather than the result of contact. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 0. Preface Not too long ago, many colleagues in linguistics were skeptical that many were actually due to contact. Now that language contact research has become much more mainstream and central than when I started to work in that field, it is time to take the opposite position. I would like to take issue with a phenomenon that has been routinely ascribed to contact, more concretely diffusion. Diffusion in the case of polysynthetic languages appears virtually undocumented and extremely hard to prove. Genetic inheritance seems more likely. 1. Introduction We know that Algonquian and Salish languages have been in contact recently and may have exchanged some vocabulary and grammar. Van Eijk (2006) argued that Shuswap developed an inclusive/exclusive distinction inspired by Cree, as the only Salish language. But could there be a provable connection between Algonquian and Salish on a much deeper time level, going back thousands of years ago? In Bakker (2006c) I compared the two languages systematically and concluded that there was a connection. I did not claim that it was necessarily a genetic connection (i.e. both language families descend from one proto-language), but I suggested that there was at 1 least a historical connection, i.e. that both languages had been spoken in areas adjacent to one another. My evidence was almost exclusively typological: the two families shared a number of typological traits that were too numerous, and too different from other languages, to be due to chance. These shared traits, or at least not those clusters of traits, are not found in other language families in North America (except in the Wakashan and Chimakuan families, which are rather similar to Salish, and the isolate Kutenai, which shares traits with both Salish and Algonquian), apparently due to a common source. The suggestion that Algonquian (and Ritwan), Wakashan, Chimakuan and Salish form a superfamily is of course not new: Sapir =s (1929) classification already contained a Wakashan-Algonquian grouping. Sapir =s published proof, however, consisted exclusively of typological similarities between these groups, and not a single set of lexical cognates, let alone regular sound changes, were presented. Nobody after Sapir has pursued this line of research, and not surprisingly, Sapir =s grouping was never accepted, by lack of evidence. As far as I know, the only two other lumping attempts are Haas (1958), who tried to connect Kutenai and Algonquian lexically (with a few additional Salish forms), and Morgan (19XX; unpublished; not available to me) presented a considerable number of potential Salish- Kutenai cognates. Matthew Dryer has pointed out a number of striking typological similarities between Kutenai and Algonquian (1992, 1994, 1998), some of them already observed by Boas. Bakker (2006c) was a systematic typological comparison, in which Salish and Algonquian, despite striking structural and phonological differences, were shown to share a number of structural traits, suggestive of an ancient conenction, either genetic or through contact. Thus far, most Algonquianists and Salishanists refrained from commenting, and probably this silence can be interpreted as disapproval. The only specialized scholar who overtly expressed his disagreement is Jan Van Eijk (2007). His paper forced me not only to reply to his quite reasonable objections, but also to study the similarities and differences in more detail. The result of this exercise is that I think that a reasonable case can actually be made for a deep genetic connection between Algonquian and Salish. This conclusion could be drawn on the basis of typological similarities (Bakker 2006). Only after the observation of those structural parallels, a number of probable lexical cognates and a regular sound change could be adduced to strenghten the case for an explanation in genetic terms rather than contact terms. This led me to reconsider the more or less continuous discussion about whether typological similarities in the morphological realm alone, can be taken as evidence for a genetic connection between two languages. More recently, Nichols (1992) revolutionized typology and historical linguistic with her claim that certain typological traits can be taken as deep genetic evidence, with a much more impressive time depth than the standard method of lexical comparison. Even though some of her chosen features and her conclusions about them being inherited rather than spread from one family to another have been attacked, her techniques have been accepted and adopted elsewhere, and the combination of typological and historical-comparative research has now become mainstream. Thus, the Salish-Algonquian morphological-typological similarities first seemed to point to contact but on closer scrutiny appeared more likely to be genetic. In this paper I want to take up the challenge posed by these data, and Nichols = finding, and study the phenomenon of morphological diffusion in more general terms: is morphological diffusion really so common as often claimed, or is it really inheritance? 2 In this paper I will first summarize the most important typological similarities between Algonquian and Salish (section 2) from Bakker (2006). Thereafter I will present some lexical similarities between Salish and Algonquian (or Algic, the higher-level grouping that covers Algonquian and two languages of California, Wiyot and Yurok, which constitute together the Ritwan languages) that suggest that the connection is genetic rather than contact-induced (section 3). Thereafter I will give a brief overview of documented patterns of morphological change - suggesting that the type of morphological diffusion as envisaged as the proposed explanation for similarities between polysynthetic languages, is in fact an unlikely process (4). It is well known that polysynthetic languages cluster in certain areas of the world, and in section 5 I will briefly discuss incorporation and polysynthesis, in section 6 morphological change, in order to study (in section 7) the possibility of morphological diffusion in polysynthetic languages. In section 8 I get back to the question of the connection between Algonquian and Salish, arguing that the connection is more likely to be genetic than diffused. 2. Structural similarities between Algonquian and Salish In Bakker (2006c) I discussed a number of typological similarities between Salish and Algonquian. For more detailed information, I refer to that paper. In both families, it is difficult to distinguish between derivation and inflection. Both families have a similar order in the verbal morphology. Table 1 shows a comparative overview of the verbal morpheme order in the two families. The morpheme orders in Table 1 show a number of differences and resemblances. The most remarkable similarities are: (a) person markers and aspect markers are found both as suffixes and prefixes. (b) those categories that are found as either prefixes and suffixes are so in both languages. (c) the order of the prefixes and the suffixes converge for a great deal. (d) both families can express verbal plurality with prefixes (Algonquian only marginally with reduplication) There are also differences: (d) A number of semantic categories are only found in either Salishan (control) or Algonquian (animacy) (e) There are some minor differences in ordering. Table 1: comparative table of morpheme orders Salishan-Algonquian Salish person Aspect locativ Redupl ROOT redupl. Primar Lexical Trans Object Subjec Aspect terms e y Suffixe /intrans t affixes/ s /contro aspect l Salish -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Algon- 1 4-6 5 5-6 8 - 9 10 11+19 18+19 21 quian Algonq person prever prever redupl. Initial medial final obv. obv. itera- uian b b 7 rel. Theme Theme tive terms root 3 Some of the ordering patterns are more significant than others, such as the position of the aspect markers relatively far from the root: aspect is usually found quite close to the root (Bybee 1985), except in languages like the Athabaskan languages that have a
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