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Deixis and Reference Tracing in Tsova-Tush (PDF)
DEIXIS AND REFERENCE TRACKING IN TSOVA-TUSH A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAIʻI AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS MAY 2020 by Bryn Hauk Dissertation committee: Andrea Berez-Kroeker, Chairperson Alice C. Harris Bradley McDonnell James N. Collins Ashley Maynard Acknowledgments I should not have been able to finish this dissertation. In the course of my graduate studies, enough obstacles have sprung up in my path that the odds would have predicted something other than a successful completion of my degree. The fact that I made it to this point is a testament to thekind, supportive, wise, and generous people who have picked me up and dusted me off after every pothole. Forgive me: these thank-yous are going to get very sappy. First and foremost, I would like to thank my Tsova-Tush host family—Rezo Orbetishvili, Nisa Baxtarishvili, and of course Tamar and Lasha—for letting me join your family every summer forthe past four years. Your time, your patience, your expertise, your hospitality, your sense of humor, your lovingly prepared meals and generously poured wine—these were the building blocks that supported all of my research whims. My sincerest gratitude also goes to Dantes Echishvili, Revaz Shankishvili, and to all my hosts and friends in Zemo Alvani. It is possible to translate ‘thank you’ as მადელ შუნ, but you have taught me that gratitude is better expressed with actions than with set phrases, sofor now I will just say, ღაზიშ ხილჰათ, ბედნიერ ხილჰათ, მარშმაკიშ ხილჰათ.. -
Pluractionals in Fwe
DEPARTMENT OF LANGUAGES AND CULTURES BANTUGENT - UGENT CENTRE FOR BANTU STUDIES PLURACTIONALS IN FWE Hilde Gunnink - 28 August 2017 - CALL 47 Fwe • +- 20.000 speakers • spoken in Zambia and Namibia • Eastern Bantu, Bantu Botatwe (Bostoen 2009, de Luna 2010) Pluractionality pluractionality / verbal number: multiple events • ètêndè rìcóːkêtè ‘His leg is broken.’ • ètêndèrìcó ːkáùkìtè> PLURACTIONAL ‘His leg is broken in multiple places.’ Pluractionals 1. Suffix -a-: event-internal pluractionality 2. Stem reduplication: event-internal/external pluractionality 3. Prefix -kabú- / -yabú-: locative pluractional Pluractional -a- • derivational suffix -a- • obligatorily followed by another derivational suffix: – -ur- / -uk-: separative – -ik-: impositive – -ir-: applicative Pluractional -a- Pluractional -a- with separative -ur-/-uk- -dàm-à-ùr-à ‘to beat up, beat to a pulp’ -cènk-à-ùk-à ‘to look over both shoulders’ Pluractional -a- with transitive impositive -ik- -dáns-à-ìk-à ‘to scatter’ -hánj-à-ìk-à ‘to hang up (multiple objects)’ Pluractional -a- with applicative -ir- -shónj-à-ìr-à ‘to throw (multiple times)’ -sòs-à-ìr-à ‘to keep on poking a fire’ Pluractional -a- From *-ag- “imperfective/repetitive/habitual” (Meeussen 1967) Or from *-ad- “extensive: be in a spread-out position” (Schadeberg 2003)? “Extensive” -a- Yeyi (R41) -aar- “extensive” -tj’embaara ‘pinch repeatedly’ Tonga (M64) -aul-/-auk- “dispersive/frequentative” -yandaula ‘seek for, want in many places’ Lamba (M54) -al-/-aul-/-auk- “extensive” -kwamaula ~ -kwamala ‘tear to bits’ Kwangali -
Sociolinguistic Survey of Mpi in Thailand
Sociolinguistic Survey of Mpi in Thailand Ramzi W. Nahhas SIL International 2007 SIL Electronic Survey Report 2007-016, August 2007 Copyright © 2007 Ramzi W. Nahhas and SIL International All rights reserved 2 Abstract Ramzi W. Nahhas, PhD Survey Unit, Department of Linguistics School of Graduate Studies Payap University/SIL International Chiang Mai, Thailand Mpi is a language spoken mainly in only two villages in Thailand, and possibly in one location in China, as well. Currently, Mpi does not have vernacular literature, and may not have sufficient language vitality to warrant the development of such literature. Since there are only two Mpi villages in Thailand, and they are surrounded by Northern Thai communities, it is reasonable to be concerned about the vitality of the Mpi language. The purposes of this study were to assess the need for vernacular literature development among the Mpi of Northern Thailand and to determine which (if any) Mpi varieties should be developed. This assessment focused on language vitality and bilingualism in Northern Thai. Additionally, lexicostatistics were used to measure lexical similarity between Mpi varieties. Acknowledgments This research was conducted under the auspices of the Payap University Linguistics Department, Chiang Mai, Thailand. The research team consisted of the author, Jenvit Suknaphasawat (SIL International), and Noel Mann (Technical Director, Survey Unit, Payap University Linguistics Department, and SIL International). The fieldwork would not have been possible without the assistance of the residents of Ban Dong (in Phrae Province) and Ban Sakoen (in Nan Province). A number of individuals gave many hours to help the researchers learn about the Mpi people and about their village, and to introduce us to others in their village. -
PROTO-SIOUAN PHONOLOGY and GRAMMAR Robert L. Rankin, Richard T
PROTO-SIOUAN PHONOLOGY AND GRAMMAR Robert L. Rankin, Richard T. Carter and A. Wesley Jones Univ. of Kansas, Univ. of Nebraska and Univ. of Mary The intellectual work on the Comparative Siouan Dictionary is relatively complete we and now have a picture of Proto-Siouan phonology and grammar. 1 The following is our Proto-Siouan pho neme inventory with a number of explanatory comments: labial dental palatal velar glottal STOPS Preaspirates: hp ht hk Postaspirates: ph th kh Glottals: p? t? k? ? Plain: p t k FRICATIVES voiceless: s g x h glottal: s? g? x? RESONANTS sonorant: w r y obstruent: W R VOWELS oral vowels: i u e 0 a nasal vowels: i- II ACCENT: 1'1 (high vs, non-high) & (possibly IAI falling) VOWEL LENGTH: I-I (+long) PREASPIRATED VOICELESS STOPS. We treat these as units be cause they incorporate a laryngeal feature that has attached it self to the stop, and because speakers today treat the reflexes of the series as single units for purposes of syllabification and segmentability. However, in pre-Proto-Siouan it is possible that there was no preaspirated series. The preaspirates pretty clearly arose as regular allophonic variants of plain voiceless stops preceding an accented vowel. This was pointed out by Dick Carter for Ofo in 1984. Even so, we have a number of lexical sets where it appears to be necessary to reconstruct plain voiceless stops in this environment also. Therefore, by the Proto-Siouan period the distinction between plain and preaspirated stops had appar- ently been phonemicized as shown by the following cognate sets: -
Reconsidering the “Isolating Protolanguage Hypothesis” in the Evolution of Morphology Author(S): Jaïmé Dubé Proceedings
Reconsidering the “isolating protolanguage hypothesis” in the evolution of morphology Author(s): Jaïmé Dubé Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (2013), pp. 76-90 Editors: Chundra Cathcart, I-Hsuan Chen, Greg Finley, Shinae Kang, Clare S. Sandy, and Elise Stickles Please contact BLS regarding any further use of this work. BLS retains copyright for both print and screen forms of the publication. BLS may be contacted via http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/bls/. The Annual Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistics Society is published online via eLanguage, the Linguistic Society of America's digital publishing platform. Reconsidering the Isolating Protolanguage Hypothesis in the Evolution of Morphology1 JAÏMÉ DUBÉ Université de Montréal 1 Introduction Much recent work on the evolution of language assumes explicitly or implicitly that the original language was without morphology. Under this assumption, morphology is merely a consequence of language use: affixal morphology is the result of the agglutination of free words, and morphophonemic (MP) alternations arise through the morphologization of once regular phonological processes. This hypothesis is based on at least two questionable assumptions: first, that the methods and results of historical linguistics can provide a window on the evolution of language, and second, based on the claim that some languages have no morphology (the so-called isolating languages), that morphology is not a necessary part of language. The aim of this paper is to suggest that there is in fact no basis for what I will call the Isolating Proto-Language Hypothesis (henceforth IPH), either on historical or typological grounds, and that the evolution of morphology remains an interesting question. -
The Status of the East Kainji Languages of Central Nigeria: Recent Research
The status of the East Kainji languages of Central Nigeria: recent research Version submitted for proceedings of the Hamburg meeting, March 2004, to mark the retirement of Professor Ludwig Gerhardt Roger Blench Mallam Dendo 8, Guest Road Cambridge CB1 2AL United Kingdom Voice/Answerphone/Fax. 0044-(0)1223-560687 E-mail [email protected] http://homepage.ntlworld.com/roger_blench/RBOP.htm Cambridge, Saturday, 02 October 2004 TABLE OF CONTENTS FIGURES..........................................................................................................................................................I 1. INTRODUCTION: THE IDENTIFICATION OF AN EAST KAINJI GROUP.................................. 2 2. EAST KAINJI LANGUAGES TODAY.................................................................................................... 2 3. LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF EAST KAINJI........................................................................................ 3 3.1 Phonology............................................................................................................................................... 3 Consonants................................................................................................................................................... 4 Tones............................................................................................................................................................. 5 3.2 Nominal morphology............................................................................................................................ -
Casting a Wider Net Over Nǁng: the Older Archival Resources Tom Güldemann1 Humboldt University Berlin and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Leipzig
1 Casting a wider net over Nǁng: the older archival resources Tom Güldemann1 Humboldt University Berlin and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Leipzig 1 What we know and don’t know In the wake of the end of Apartheid and the emergence of a democratic South Africa the late 1990s witnessed an important (re)discovery for linguists dealing with languages in South Africa and in particular of the ‘Khoisan’2 domain. The efforts of the South African San Institute (SASI) lead to the identification of descendants of the former southern Kalahari San population (cf. Crawhall 2004, 2005), including more than 20 speakers and rememberers of their heritage language. While listed by Lewis, Simons and Fennig (2014) under Nǀu [ngh], this is called here Nǁng (see §2.4 for a detailed discussion of the variable terminology). Project Researcher(s) Main focus 1 NSF project J. Brugman, C. Collins, A. Miller, L. selected linguistic Namaseb, B. Sands topics 2 Ph.D. project at the M. Exter phonetics-phonology University of Cologne 3 ELDP project at the T. Güldemann, M. (Shaw)-Ernszt, S. natural discourse data MPI-EVA Leipzig Siegmund, A. Witzlack-Makarevich and text annotation Table 1: Recent linguistic research projects on Nǁng Since then the linguistic remnants of Nǁng have been documented according to current standards of the discipline, especially in the framework of three dedicated projects listed in Table 1. Hence, a modern description of Nǁng is taking shape, which entails revised and extended analyses compared to the limited documentation achieved by earlier studies. Some notable results are grammar sketches (Güldemann 2003, Collins and Namaseb 2011), specific morpho-syntactic studies (Collins 2004; Ernszt, Güldemann and Witzlack- 1 I am very grateful to the organizers for inviting me to “The Nǁng (Nǀuu) Conference” held on 17/3/2014 at the University of Cape Town. -
Transparency in Language a Typological Study
Transparency in language A typological study Published by LOT phone: +31 30 253 6111 Trans 10 3512 JK Utrecht e-mail: [email protected] The Netherlands http://www.lotschool.nl Cover illustration © 2011: Sanne Leufkens – image from the performance ‘Celebration’ ISBN: 978-94-6093-162-8 NUR 616 Copyright © 2015: Sterre Leufkens. All rights reserved. Transparency in language A typological study ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof. dr. D.C. van den Boom ten overstaan van een door het college voor promoties ingestelde commissie, in het openbaar te verdedigen in de Agnietenkapel op vrijdag 23 januari 2015, te 10.00 uur door Sterre Cécile Leufkens geboren te Delft Promotiecommissie Promotor: Prof. dr. P.C. Hengeveld Copromotor: Dr. N.S.H. Smith Overige leden: Prof. dr. E.O. Aboh Dr. J. Audring Prof. dr. Ö. Dahl Prof. dr. M.E. Keizer Prof. dr. F.P. Weerman Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen i Acknowledgments When I speak about my PhD project, it appears to cover a time-span of four years, in which I performed a number of actions that resulted in this book. In fact, the limits of the project are not so clear. It started when I first heard about linguistics, and it will end when we all stop thinking about transparency, which hopefully will not be the case any time soon. Moreover, even though I might have spent most time and effort to ‘complete’ this project, it is definitely not just my work. Many people have contributed directly or indirectly, by thinking about transparency, or thinking about me. -
14 Barnard & Boden Conclusions Final1
Edinburgh Research Explorer Conjectural histories – Pros and Cons Citation for published version: Barnard, A & Boden, G 2014, Conjectural histories – Pros and Cons. in A Barnard & G Boden (eds), Southern African Khoisan Kinship Systems. Research in Khoisan Studies, vol. 30, Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, Cologne, pp. 263-280. Link: Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research Explorer Document Version: Peer reviewed version Published In: Southern African Khoisan Kinship Systems Publisher Rights Statement: © Barnard, A., & Boden, G. (2014). Conjectural histories – Pros and Cons. In A. Barnard, & G. Boden (Eds.), Southern African Khoisan Kinship Systems. (pp. 263-280). (Research in Khoisan Studies; Vol. 30). Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. To be cited as: Alan Barnard / Gertrud Boden (eds.): Southern African Khoisan Kinship Systems (Research in Khoisan Studies , 2014, VI, 301 pp., ill. ISBN 978-3-89645-874-2 General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorer content complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 02. Oct. 2021 Conclusions 263 Conjectural histories: pros and cons Alan Barnard & Gertrud Boden Overview The aim of this book was to contribute to untangling the historical relations between the indigenous peoples of the Kalahari Basin Area, often subsumed under the label “Khoisan”, yet increasingly thought of as making up a Sprachbund composed of three individual language families, viz. -
Calculus of Possibilities As a Technique in Linguistic Typology
Calculus of possibilities as a technique in linguistic typology Igor Mel’uk 1. The problem stated: A unified conceptual system in linguistics A central problem in the relationship between typology and the writing of individual grammars is that of developing a cross-linguistically viable con- ceptual system and a corresponding terminological framework. I will deal with this problem in three consecutive steps: First, I state the problem and sketch a conceptual system that I have put forward for typological explora- tions in morphology (Sections 1 and 2). Second, I propose a detailed illus- tration of this system: a calculus of grammatical voices in natural languages (Section 3). And third, I apply this calculus (that is, the corresponding con- cepts) in two particular case studies: an inflectional category known as an- tipassive and the grammatical voice in French (Sections 4 and 5). In the latter case, the investigation shows that even for a language as well de- scribed as French a rigorously standardized typological framework can force us to answer questions that previous descriptions have failed to re- solve. I start with the following three assumptions: 1) One of the most pressing tasks of today’s linguistics is description of particular languages, the essential core of this work being the writing of grammars and lexicons. A linguist sets out to describe a language as pre- cisely and exhaustively as possible; this includes its semantics, syntax, morphology and phonology plus (within the limits of time and funds avail- able) its lexicon. 2) Such a description is necessarily carried out in terms of some prede- fined concepts – such as lexical unit, semantic actant, syntactic role, voice, case, phoneme, etc. -
Asshai Reference Grammar and Lexicon—David J
Asshai Reference Grammar and Lexicon—David J. Peterson 1 Asshai Reference Grammar and Lexicon by David J. Peterson Asshai Reference Grammar and Lexicon—David J. Peterson 2 Introduction The Asshai'i are a mysterious people from the far east—often murmured about, but rarely seen or discussed directly in A Song of Ice and Fire. Taking the various snippets of names and character descriptions from the books, I've created a language for the Asshai'i that both includes all the existing names and terms from the book, and suits the general Asshai aesthetic hinted out throughout A Song of Ice and Fire. Regards, David J. Peterson Asshai Reference Grammar and Lexicon—David J. Peterson 3 1. Asshai Language Description Phonology: • The phonetic inventory of Asshai is listed below: Consonants Labial Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal Plain Labial. Stops p/b t/d k/g kʷ/gʷ ʔ Fricatives θ/ð s/z ɬ/ɮ ʃ/ʒ x/ɣ xʷ/ɣʷ h Nasals m n ŋ ŋʷ Approximants r l j w Vowels Front Central Back High i, iː/ĩ, ĩː u, uː/ũ, ũː Close Mid e, eː/ẽ, ẽː ə, əː o, oː/õ, õː Open Mid ɛ, ɛː/ɛ,̃ ɛː̃ ɔ, ɔː/ɔ,̃ ɔː̃ Low a, aː/ã, ãː • There are four diphthongs: ay, aay, aw, aaw. • The symbols listed in the tables above are phonetic symbols. These will be used to transcribe Asshai words, but not to write them. To write them, I've devised a romanization system that should make the pronunciation fairly transparent. -
Native American Languages, Indigenous Languages of the Native Peoples of North, Middle, and South America
Native American Languages, indigenous languages of the native peoples of North, Middle, and South America. The precise number of languages originally spoken cannot be known, since many disappeared before they were documented. In North America, around 300 distinct, mutually unintelligible languages were spoken when Europeans arrived. Of those, 187 survive today, but few will continue far into the 21st century, since children are no longer learning the vast majority of these. In Middle America (Mexico and Central America) about 300 languages have been identified, of which about 140 are still spoken. South American languages have been the least studied. Around 1500 languages are known to have been spoken, but only about 350 are still in use. These, too are disappearing rapidly. Classification A major task facing scholars of Native American languages is their classification into language families. (A language family consists of all languages that have evolved from a single ancestral language, as English, German, French, Russian, Greek, Armenian, Hindi, and others have all evolved from Proto-Indo-European.) Because of the vast number of languages spoken in the Americas, and the gaps in our information about many of them, the task of classifying these languages is a challenging one. In 1891, Major John Wesley Powell proposed that the languages of North America constituted 58 independent families, mainly on the basis of superficial vocabulary resemblances. At the same time Daniel Brinton posited 80 families for South America. These two schemes form the basis of subsequent classifications. In 1929 Edward Sapir tentatively proposed grouping these families into superstocks, 6 in North America and 15 in Middle America.