Inflectional Paradigms Have Bases Too: Arguments from Yiddish∗
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Yiddish Diction in Singing
UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones May 2016 Yiddish Diction in Singing Carrie Suzanne Schuster-Wachsberger University of Nevada, Las Vegas Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations Part of the Language Description and Documentation Commons, Music Commons, Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons, and the Theatre and Performance Studies Commons Repository Citation Schuster-Wachsberger, Carrie Suzanne, "Yiddish Diction in Singing" (2016). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 2733. http://dx.doi.org/10.34917/9112178 This Dissertation is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Dissertation in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. This Dissertation has been accepted for inclusion in UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones by an authorized administrator of Digital Scholarship@UNLV. For more information, please contact [email protected]. YIDDISH DICTION IN SINGING By Carrie Schuster-Wachsberger Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance Syracuse University 2010 Master of Music in Vocal Performance Western Michigan University 2012 -
Using 'North Wind and the Sun' Texts to Sample Phoneme Inventories
Blowing in the wind: Using ‘North Wind and the Sun’ texts to sample phoneme inventories Louise Baird ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, The Australian National University [email protected] Nicholas Evans ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, The Australian National University [email protected] Simon J. Greenhill ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, The Australian National University & Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History [email protected] Language documentation faces a persistent and pervasive problem: How much material is enough to represent a language fully? How much text would we need to sample the full phoneme inventory of a language? In the phonetic/phonemic domain, what proportion of the phoneme inventory can we expect to sample in a text of a given length? Answering these questions in a quantifiable way is tricky, but asking them is necessary. The cumulative col- lection of Illustrative Texts published in the Illustration series in this journal over more than four decades (mostly renditions of the ‘North Wind and the Sun’) gives us an ideal dataset for pursuing these questions. Here we investigate a tractable subset of the above questions, namely: What proportion of a language’s phoneme inventory do these texts enable us to recover, in the minimal sense of having at least one allophone of each phoneme? We find that, even with this low bar, only three languages (Modern Greek, Shipibo and the Treger dialect of Breton) attest all phonemes in these texts. -
6 Second Periodical Report Presented to the Secretary General Of
Strasbourg, 26 May 2003 MIN-LANG/PR (2003) 6 EUROPEAN CHARTER FOR REGIONAL OR MINORITY LANGUAGES Second Periodical Report presented to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe in accordance with Article 15 of the Charter NETHERLANDS 1 CONTENTS Volume I: Second report on the measures taken by the Netherlands with regard to the Frisian language and culture (1999-2000-2001)............................................4 1 Foreword........................................................................................................4 2 Introduction...................................................................................................5 3 Preliminary Section.....................................................................................10 PART I .....................................................................................................................25 4 General measures.........................................................................................25 PART II .....................................................................................................................28 5 Objectives and principles.............................................................................28 PART III 31 6 Article 8: Education.....................................................................................31 7 Article 9: Judicial authorities.......................................................................79 8 Article 10: Administrative authorities and public services..........................90 10 Article -
Yiddish and Relation to the German Dialects Bryan Witmore University of South Carolina
University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations 6-30-2016 Yiddish and Relation To The German Dialects Bryan Witmore University of South Carolina Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Part of the German Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Witmore, B.(2016). Yiddish and Relation To The German Dialects. (Master's thesis). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ etd/3522 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. YIDDISH AND ITS RELATION TO THE GERMAN DIALECTS by Bryan Witmore Bachelor of Arts University of South Carolina, 2006 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts in German College of Arts and Sciences University of South Carolina 2016 Accepted by: Kurt Goblirsch, Director of Thesis Lara Ducate, Reader Lacy Ford, Senior Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies © Copyright by Bryan Witmore, 2016 All Rights Reserved. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis project was made possible in large part by the German program at the University of South Carolina. The technical assistance that propelled this project was contributed by the staff at the Ted Mimms Foreign Language Learning Center. My family was decisive in keeping me physically functional and emotionally buoyant through the writing process. Many thanks to you all. iii ABSTRACT In an attempt to balance the complex, multi-component nature of Yiddish with its more homogenous speech community – Ashekenazic Jews –Yiddishists have proposed definitions for the Yiddish language that cannot be considered linguistic in nature. -
Base-Driven Leveling in Yiddish Verb Paradigms
Base-driven leveling in Yiddish verb paradigms Adam Albright MIT Draft: November 2006 1 Introduction A noteworthy feature of Yiddish present tense verbal inflection is that, unlike many other Germanic lan- guages, Yiddish has virtually no irregular stem vowel changes. Whereas Middle High German (the source language for Yiddish verbal inflection1) had numerous subclasses of verbs with different patterns of present tense vowel alternations, Yiddish verbs have the same vowel for all persons and numbers: (1) Present tense vowel alternations in Middle High German (MHG) Infin. tra:gen ‘carry’ kriegen ‘get’ geben¨ ‘give’ durfen¨ ‘need’ wizzen ‘know’ 1SG tra:ge kriuge gibe darf weiZ 2SG tre:g(e)st kriug(e)st gi(be)st darft weist 3SG tre:g(e)t kriug(e)t gi(be)t darf weiZ 1PL tra:gen kriegen geben¨ durfen¨ wiZZen 2PL tra:g(e)t krieg(e)t geb(e)t¨ durfet¨ wiZZ(e)t 3PL tra:gen(t) kriegen(t) geben(t)¨ durfen¨ wiZZen 1There is controversy concerning whether the development of the Yiddish language as a whole should be viewed in terms of monogenesis from Middle High German, or polygenesis from a set of source languages; see (Jacobs 2005, chapter 2), for an overview of the issues involved. This paper focuses specifically on verbal inflectional morphology, which can be traced back almost exclusively to a German source. The data discussed comes from modern eastern Yiddish, and except where noted, hold of all three major dialect areas (Northeastern, Central, and Southeastern). In order to keep the discussion as dialect-neutral as possible, Yiddish forms are cited using the standardized YIVO system of transliteration (http://www.yivoinstitute.org/yiddish/alefbeys fr.htm), with the following modifications: I use <@> for schwa (YIVO <e>); <@n, @l, @r> for syllabic sonorants (YIVO <n, l, r>); and <O> for the back non-high rounded vowel (YIVO <o>). -
Contact-Induced Phonological Change in Yiddish
<LINK "lou-r24"> <TARGET "lou" DOCINFO AUTHOR "Mark L. Louden" TITLE "Contact-induced phonological change in Yiddish" SUBJECT "Diachronica XVII:1" KEYWORDS "" SIZE HEIGHT "220" WIDTH "150" VOFFSET "4"> © Diachronica XVII:1.85–110 (2000). CONTACT-INDUCED PHONOLOGICAL CHANGE IN YIDDISH ANOTHER LOOK AT WEINREICH’S RIDDLES* Mark L. Louden University of Wisconsin-Madison Introduction With the publication in 1953 of his groundbreaking book, Languages in Contact, Uriel Weinreich significantly elevated the status of externally induced change within historical linguistics by rigorously adducing general predictive principles based on solid social, psychological, and linguistic data. Before 1953, contact linguistics had languished, in no small measure due to the priority given to system-internal factors in explanatory accounts of language change by the Young Grammarians and their European and American structuralist successors. As Weinreich and others pointed out, virtually all languages are affected by contact to some degree, meaning that externally induced change is far from exceptional. On the other hand, relative to system-internal change, change resulting from contact typically involves a greater number of variables, e.g. historical, cultural, psychological, a fact which poses a challenge for formulating accurate accounts of how specific changes no longer in progress may have proceeded. Precisely ten years after Languages in Contact, Weinreich took up one particular set of challenges emerging from the history of Yiddish which he collectively termed “four riddles in bilingual dialectology” (U. Weinreich 1963). At the time, Weinreich had begun working on a project dedicated to investigating the extent to which the history of Ashkenazic Jewish contact University of Wisconsin-Madison (wimadisonwi/1) IP: 128.104.46.196 On: Thu, 09 Jan 2020 02:12:43 with coterritorial non-Jewish populations in Eastern Europe might be reconstructed on the basis of (mainly) linguistic evidence. -
1 Introduction
Cambridge University Press 052177215X - Yiddish: A Linguistic Introduction Neil G. Jacobs Excerpt More information 1 Introduction 1.1 Aim and scope This book provides an overview of the Yiddish language and Yiddish linguis- tics.It is aimed at general linguists, Germanic linguists, scholars in Yiddish and Ashkenazic studies, and scholars in general Jewish studies.It seeks to strike a balance between breadth and depth of coverage of the main issues in Yiddish linguistics: the linguistic structure, history, dialectology, and sociolinguistics. The Yiddish data are presented in a format compatible with general and theoret- ical linguistic discussion, accessible to linguists regardless of their individual theoretical bent.However, the task is not to engage general theoretical debate; rather, theory is used only as a tool for presentation and its place in the exposition is minimized. There is a need for such an introduction to Yiddish linguistics.Max Weinreich’s monumental Geshikhte fun der yidisher shprakh (1973)1 provides a sweeping social history of Yiddish; however, it is not a grammar (historical or otherwise). The detailed grammars available (e.g., Zaretski 1926; Mark 1978) do not present the history or dialectology of the language.Birnbaum (1979a) in many respects provides both history/dialectology and a grammar;2 however, his grammatical section is essentially a reference grammar.While individual shorter works have dealt with specific problems of Yiddish phonology, mor- phology, and syntax, there was – with one exception – no book-length study which attempted to look at the overall structure of Yiddish systematically, with general linguistic issues in mind.Zaretski (1926) stands alone as the one serious attempt to present a theory-oriented comprehensive Yiddish grammar, though his focus is on syntax and morphology, with only limited discussion of the phonology.Prilutski (1940) provides comprehensive discussion of Yiddish phonology and phonetics. -
Phonetic Documentation in Three Collections: Topics and Evolution
Phonetic documentation in three collections: Topics and evolution D. H. Whalen City University of New York (also Haskins Laboratories and Yale University) [email protected] Christian DiCanio University at Buffalo [email protected] Rikker Dockum Swarthmore College [email protected] Phonetic aspects of many languages have been documented, though the breadth and focus of such documentation varies substantially. In this survey, phonetic aspects (here called ‘categories’) that are typically reported were assessed in three English-language collections – the Illustrations of the IPA from the Journal of the International Phonetic Association, articles from the Journal of Phonetics, and papers from the Ladefoged/Maddieson Sounds of the World’s Languages (SOWL) documentation project. Categories were defined for consonants (e.g. Voice Onset Time (VOT) and frication spec- trum; 10 in total), vowels (e.g. formants and duration; 7 in total) and suprasegmentals (e.g. stress and distinctive vowel length, 6 in total). The Illustrations, due to their brevity, had, on average, limited coverage of the selected categories (12% of the 23 categories). Journal of Phonetics articles were typically theoretically motivated, but 64 had sufficient measurements to count as phonetic documentation; these also covered 12% of the cate- gories. The SOWL studies, designed to cover as much of the phonetic structure as feasible in an article-length treatment, achieved 41% coverage on average. Four book-length stud- ies were also examined, with an average of 49% coverage. Phonetic properties of many language families have been studied, though Indo-European is still disproportionately rep- resented. Physiological measures were excluded as being less common, and perceptual measures were excluded as being typically more theoretical. -
Dovid Katz Phd Thesis University College London Submitted October' 1982
Dovid Katz PhD Thesis University College London Submitted October' 1982 Explorations in the History of the Semitic Component in Yiddish Vol. 1 I ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I entered the field of Yiddish Linguistics during the years I was privileged to study wider Professor Mikhl Herzog at Columbia University. I am profoundly grateful to Professor Herzog f or his continuous help, guidance and inspiration, during both my undergraduate enrolment at Columbia University in New York arid my postgraduate residence at University College London. I would ask Professor Herzog to regard this thesis as a provisional progress report and outline for further research. I have been fortunate to benefit from the intellectual environment of University College London while preparing the work reported In the thesis, and. most especially from the dedicated help, expert criticism and warm hospitality of my three supervisors, Professor Chimen Abrainsky and Professor Raphael Loewe of the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and. Dr. Richard A. Hudson of the Department of Phonetics and. Linguistics. Professor Loewe and Dr. Hudson generously gave of their time to spend many hours discussing with me the issues and problems of the thesis. They both read the entire manuscript and made many valuable suggestions f or Improvement. Most have been incorporated into the text as submitted to the University of London. I hope to elaborate upon the remainder ii in future work. Professor Abramsky provided superb guidance in the fields of literary history and bibliography and generously made available to me numerous rare volumes from his magnificent private library. Needless to say, full responsibility for the proposals herein and. -
Dutch. a Linguistic History of Holland and Belgium
Dutch. A linguistic history of Holland and Belgium Bruce Donaldson bron Bruce Donaldson, Dutch. A linguistic history of Holland and Belgium. Uitgeverij Martinus Nijhoff, Leiden 1983 Zie voor verantwoording: http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/dona001dutc02_01/colofon.php © 2013 dbnl / Bruce Donaldson II To my mother Bruce Donaldson, Dutch. A linguistic history of Holland and Belgium VII Preface There has long been a need for a book in English about the Dutch language that presents important, interesting information in a form accessible even to those who know no Dutch and have no immediate intention of learning it. The need for such a book became all the more obvious to me, when, once employed in a position that entailed the dissemination of Dutch language and culture in an Anglo-Saxon society, I was continually amazed by the ignorance that prevails with regard to the Dutch language, even among colleagues involved in the teaching of other European languages. How often does one hear that Dutch is a dialect of German, or that Flemish and Dutch are closely related (but presumably separate) languages? To my knowledge there has never been a book in English that sets out to clarify such matters and to present other relevant issues to the general and studying public.1. Holland's contributions to European and world history, to art, to shipbuilding, hydraulic engineering, bulb growing and cheese manufacture for example, are all aspects of Dutch culture which have attracted the interest of other nations, and consequently there are numerous books in English and other languages on these subjects. But the language of the people that achieved so much in all those fields has been almost completely neglected by other nations, and to a degree even by the Dutch themselves who have long been admired for their polyglot talents but whose lack of interest in their own language seems never to have disturbed them. -
The “New” and “Traditional” Speaker Dichotomy: Bridging the Gap
IJSL 2015; 231: 107 – 125 Open Access Michael Hornsby The “new” and “traditional” speaker dichotomy: bridging the gap Abstract: This article analyzes the tensions and dynamics which exist between “new” speakers and other speakers, such as traditional or native speakers of minority languages (MLs), in an attempt to discover just how much of a barrier to communication are the (perceived) differences which are purported to exist between them. The dynamics between “new” and native speakers seem to be complex and nuanced, and “(in)authenticity” can be indexed through accent, the lexicon and grammatical structures, both by local users and more widely by researchers and other interested third parties, reflecting a wide range of ideo- logical stances. Using a critical sociolinguistic framework, these differences are examined from the perspective of the power differentials among and between various ML speakers/users in two situations of language endangerment, Breton and Yiddish. The reproduction of “symbolic violence”, as described by Bourdieu (1991), which results from such differentials can hinder language revitalization projects and can run counter to the interests of the language community in ques- tion. Both settings appear to share a commonality of experience that is wider than just the two language communities under scrutiny here and possible ways of rec- onciling such differences are examined toward the end of the article. Keywords: Breton, Yiddish, minority, authenticity, speakerhood DOI 10.1515/ijsl-2014-0034 1 Introduction What it means to “speak” a language, and to be a “speaker” of a particular lan- guage or languages appears to be changing as the 21st century progresses. -
Phonetics and Phonology of Schwa Insertion in Central Yiddish Marc Garellek University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, US [email protected]
a journal of Garellek, Marc. 2020. Phonetics and phonology of schwa insertion general linguistics Glossa in Central Yiddish. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 5(1): 66. 1–25. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.1141 RESEARCH Phonetics and phonology of schwa insertion in Central Yiddish Marc Garellek University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, US [email protected] Central Yiddish (CY) has inserted schwas that occur between long vowels or diphthongs and certain coda consonants. In the most restrictive varieties, schwas are inserted only between long high vowels or diphthongs and uvular or rhotic codas (as in /biːχ/ → [biːəχ] ‘book’), and between long high vowels or diphthongs and coronal codas, as long as the vowel is [+back] (as in /ʃuːd/ → [ʃuːəd] ‘shame’). These patterns of insertion are both typologically unusual and synchronically hard to explain. In this paper, I argue that they can be traced back to the phonetic transitions between specific vowels and coda consonants: vowel-coda sequences that produce formant transitions through the mid-central acoustic vowel space are those that are most likely to exhibit schwa insertion. An analysis of 19th-century CY verse demonstrates that these inserted schwas were intended to count for purposes of poetic rhyme, suggesting that they are phonological schwas rather than exclusively phonetic transitions. This study thus adds to the phonological description and analysis of Central Yiddish, and provides novel predictions regarding the spreading of vowel epenthesis across different phonological environments. Keywords: schwa; vowel intrusion; epenthesis; gestural timing; Yiddish; rhyme 1 Introduction In all varieties of Yiddish, some schwas are non-alternating, whereas others participate in different types of alternation.