Reconstructing Indo-European Syllabification Andrew M
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O-TYPE VOWELS in CORNISH Dr Ken George
GEORGE 2013 2ovowels O-TYPE VOWELS IN CORNISH by Dr Ken George Cornish Language Board 1 A B S T R A C T Evidence from traditional Cornish texts and from place-names is used to trace the development of the two o-type vowels, /o/ and / ɔ/. Recent denials by Williams of the existence of two long o-type vowels are refuted. Further evidence shows a difference between /o/ and / ɔ/ when short, and by inference, when of mid-length. The significance of this for the spelling of the revived language is briefly discussed. 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 /ɔ/ and /o/ In George (1984), I showed that there were two o-type vowels in Middle Cornish (MidC), which will be denoted /o/ and / ɔ/. /o/, from Old Cornish (OldC) /ui/ and /ɔ/ from OldC / ɔ/ were separate phonemes. Support for their separateness, when followed by [s], [z], [ θ] and [ ð] appears in three different historical orthographies, in rhymes and in place-names. (The evidence in other phonetic environments, particularly when followed by nasal and liquid consonants, is weaker, and is reviewed below). My discovery has gained wide acceptance, but has been persistently attacked by Nicholas Williams. In Williams (2006), he devoted a whole chapter (31 pages) to the case of the long stressed vowels, concluding: “Middle Cornish never contained two separate long vowels /o ː/ and / ɔː/. 2. The distinction … between troes ‘foot’ and tros ‘noise’ is unjustified.” In this paper, the evidence for the two o-type vowels is reviewed in detail, and the reasons for Williams’ erroneous conclusion are examined. -
Sofya Dmitrieva Institute for Linguistic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences Nasal-Infixed Presents and Their Collateral
Sofya Dmitrieva Institute for Linguistic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences Nasal-infixed presents and their collateral aorists in Homeric Greek1 The process of formation of the Greek verbal paradigm is closely related to secondary affixation: new presents are built on present and non-present stems, modifying the grammatical semantics of primary roots (Kuryłowicz 1964). The paper analyses the uses of the Greek verbs derived from the IE present stems of the type R(C1C2)-né/n-R(C3)- or R(C1)-né/n-R(C2)- (LIV) and their collateral aoristic formations attested in the Homeric poems. Indo-European nasal-infixed presents are known to be connected with transitivisation (Meiser 1993; Sihler 1995; Shatskov 2016). It has also been observed that Greek n-infix verbs, along with higher degree of transitivity, demonstrate higher degree of telicity in comparison with the corresponding verbs of the same roots without the nasal infix. This feature had been mentioned in earlier studies, particularly concerning the nasal presents in -ανω (Vendryes 1923; Chantraine 1961), and was recently addressed with regard to other Greek n-presents (Dmitrieva 2017). It should be considered that lexical aspect played a significant role in the earlier periods of Ancient Greek (Moser 2017). Imperfects from telic verbs can often express perfective meaning; the employment of imperfectives "pro perfective" has been discussed in the studies dealing with Homeric aspect. (Napoli 2006: 191). Some nasal preterits could even formally be interpreted either as imperfects or aorists (e.g. ὄρινε, ἔκλινε). These conditions provide a good opportunity to investigate how nasal imperfects correspond with the aorists built to the same roots, taking into account the distribution of usages, structure and completeness of verbal paradigm. -
Tongan Personal Pronouns*
TONGAN PERSONAL PRONOUNS* Catherine Macdonald University of Toronto 1. Background: Tongan Grammar Tongan is an ergative, VSO, mostly isolating language. The template of a clause is given in (1); an illustrative example, in (2): (1) Tense-Aspect-Mood Particle (TAM), Predicate, Arguments, PPs (2) Oku kai ‘e Sione ‘a e ika ‘i he potu ki tahi Pres eat Erg Sione Abs Det fish Loc Det area Loc sea "Sione eats the fish in the area of the sea." [Tchekhoff, 1981:15] 1.1. Tongan Pronouns Tongan has two series of personal pronouns. Those in the first series act like DPs: They can function as arguments, following the predicate and preceded by a case marker, as in (3a), or they can be the objects of prepositions as in (3b). (3) a. Na'e taki ‘e ia ‘a kinautolu past lead erg 3sg abs 3pl "He led them." b. Na'e hulohula ‘e Sione mo kimaua Past dance erg Sione with 1exc.du "Sione danced with us." These pronouns meet Cardinaletti & Starke's (1994) (henceforth, C&S) tests for “strong” pronouns. They can be co-ordinated; they are assigned 2-roles; and they are distributed like DPs. They can be new in discourse, defined by pointing, or bear contrastive stress. The paradigm of strong pronouns is presented in (4). *I wish to thank Diane Massam for guidance and critique, and my Tongan consultant Siokatame Vahavaha’i Moengangongo (“Moahengi”) for sharing his knowledge of Tongan. All errors are my own. 2 (4) Paradigm of strong pronouns 1st Exclusive Singular au Dual kimaua Plural kimautolu 1st Inclusive Singular kita Dual kitaua Plural kitautolu 2nd Singular koe Dual kimoua Plural kimoutolu 3rd Singular ia Dual kinaua Plural kinautolu In addition to the strong personal pronouns, there is a set of monosyllabic “deficient” personal pronouns in Tongan. -
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. -
Sambahsa Mundialect Complete Grammar
Sambahsa Mundialect Complete Grammar Henrique Matheus da Silva Lima Revision: Dr. Olivier Simon Version: !.!9.! IMPORTANT NOTES ABOUT LEGAL ISSUES This grammar is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license. You are free to: Share – copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format Adapt – remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. You must give appropriate credit, provide a lin to the license, and indicate if changes !ere made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any !ay that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits. "ere is the lin for more information# https#$$creativecommons.org$licenses$by$4.0$deed.en %or the elaboration of this grammar, The Grammar Of Sambahsa-Mundialect In English by &r. 'livier (imon !as used. (ome subchapters of this grammar are practically a transcription of 'livier)s book. &r. (imon has given me permission to do so, even considering the license of this book. *)ve also utilized many examples from The Grammar Of Sambahsa-Mundialect In English and others that Dr. Simon made for me. *t)s very important to inform the reader that the language it!elf ! not under a "reat #e "o$$on! l %en!e or anyth ng l ke that, the language is under the traditional Copyright license in !hich &r. 'livier (imon has all property rights. But the language ! free, you can translate your !orks or produce original !orks !ithout the need of &r. -
A Note on the Phonology and Phonetics of CR, RC, and SC Consonant Clusters in Italian
A note on the phonology and phonetics of CR, RC, and SC consonant clusters in Italian Michael J. Kenstowicz 1. Introduction Previous generative research on Italian phonology starting with Vogel (1982) and Chierchia (1986) has proposed that intervocalic consonant clusters are parsed into contrasting tauto- vs. heterosyllabic categories based on several factors: phonotactic restrictions on word-initial consonant sequences, syllable weight as reflected in the distribution of stress and the length of a preceding tonic vowel, the distribution of prenominal allomorphs of various determiners, and the application of syntactic gemination (radoppiamento sintattico). Based on these criteria, clusters of rising sonority (in particular stop plus liquid) fall into the tautosyllabic category while falling sonority clusters composed of a sonorant plus obstruent are heterosyllabic. Clusters composed of /s/ plus a stop display mixed behavior but generally pattern with the heterosyllabic group. In her 2004 UCLA Ph.D. dissertation, Kristie McCrary investigated corpus-external reflexes of these cluster distinctions with a psycholinguistic test of word division and measurements of the phonetic duration of segments (both consonants and vowels). Her results support some aspects of the traditional phonological analysis but call into question others. In this squib we summarize the literature supporting the traditional distinction among these clusters and then review McCrary’s results. An important finding in McCrary’s study was that stops in VCV and VCRV contexts (R = a liquid) were significantly shorter than stops in VRCV contexts. She observed that these contexts align with the distribution of geminates in Italian and proposed that singleton stops are significantly shorter in the VCV and VCRV contexts in order to enhance their paradigmatic contrast with geminates. -
A Typology of Consonant Agreement As Correspondence
A TYPOLOGY OF CONSONANT AGREEMENT AS CORRESPONDENCE SHARON ROSE RACHEL WALKER University of California, San Diego University of Southern California This article presents a typology of consonant harmony or LONG DISTANCE CONSONANT AGREEMENT that is analyzed as arisingthroughcorrespondence relations between consonants rather than feature spreading. The model covers a range of agreement patterns (nasal, laryngeal, liquid, coronal, dorsal) and offers several advantages. Similarity of agreeing consonants is central to the typology and is incorporated directly into the constraints drivingcorrespondence. Agreementby correspon- dence without feature spreadingcaptures the neutrality of interveningsegments,which neither block nor undergo. Case studies of laryngeal agreement and nasal agreement are presented, demon- stratingthe model’s capacity to capture varyingdegreesof similarity crosslinguistically.* 1. INTRODUCTION. The action at a distance that is characteristic of CONSONANT HAR- MONIES stands as a pivotal problem to be addressed by phonological theory. Consider the nasal alternations in the Bantu language, Kikongo (Meinhof 1932, Dereau 1955, Webb 1965, Ao 1991, Odden 1994, Piggott 1996). In this language, the voiced stop in the suffix [-idi] in la is realized as [ini] in 1b when preceded by a nasal consonant at any distance in the stem constituent, consistingof root and suffixes. (1) a. m-[bud-idi]stem ‘I hit’ b. tu-[kun-ini]stem ‘we planted’ n-[suk-idi]stem ‘I washed’ tu-[nik-ini]stem ‘we ground’ In addition to the alternation in 1, there are no Kikongo roots containing a nasal followed by a voiced stop, confirmingthat nasal harmony or AGREEMENT, as we term it, also holds at the root level as a MORPHEME STRUCTURE CONSTRAINT (MSC). -
Anti-Romance Laryngeal Patterns in Italian Phonology
Anti-Romance laryngeal patterns in Italian phonology Bálint Huszthy Babes-Bolyai University [email protected] In the literature of laryngeal phonology all Romance languages are depicted as “voice languges”, exhibiting a binary laryngeal distinction between a voiced lenis and a voiceless fortis set of obstruents (Wetzels and Mascaró 2001; Petrova et al. 2006; etc.). Voice languages are characterised by regressive voice assimilation (RVA) due to the phonological activity of [voice] (Petrova et al. 2006; Cyran 2014). Italian manifests a process similar to RVA, called preconsonantal s-voicing; that is, /s/ becomes voiced before voiced consonantal segments; e.g., sparo [sp] ‘gunshot’ vs. sbarra [zb] ‘barrier’, sveglia [zv] ‘alarm clock’, smettere [zm] ‘to stop’, slitta [zl] ‘sled’, etc. (Nespor 1993; Bertinetto 2004; Krämer 2009). Since /sC/ is the only obstruent cluster in Italian phonotactics, Italian seems to fulfil the requirements for being a prototypical voice language. However, this paper argues that s-voicing is not an instance of RVA, at least from a synchronic phonological point of view. Data: This study is built on a loanword test: 15 Italian informants (from different dialectal zones) were recorded in a soundproof studio, who repeated five times 18 Italian sample texts containing 108 target loanwords (e.g., vo/dk/a, foo/tb/all, a/fɡ/ano, iceberg /sb/ etc.). The overall statistics reveal that the informants retain the underlying voice values in the respective obstruent clusters in 65% of the cases; that is, they avoid RVA in a two-thirds majority, which characterises the performance of all the informants rather evenly. Uniformity in voicing also occurs in the data: 20% out of the marked clusters is devoiced (e.g. -
Ablaut and the Latin Verb
Ablaut and the Latin Verb Aspects of Morphophonological Change Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Philosophie an der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München vorgelegt von Ville Leppänen aus Tampere, Finnland München 2019 Parentibus Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Olav Hackstein (München) Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. Gerhard Meiser (Halle) Datum der mündlichen Prüfung: 17. Mai 2018 ii Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. vii List of abbreviations and symbols ........................................................................................... viii 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 1.1. Scope, aim, theory, data, and method ............................................................................. 2 1.2. Previous research ............................................................................................................. 7 1.3. Terminology and definitions ......................................................................................... 12 1.4. Ablaut ............................................................................................................................ 14 2. Verb forms and formations .................................................................................................. 17 2.1. Verb systems overview ................................................................................................ -
Accents, Dialects and Languages of the Bristol Region
Accents, dialects and languages of the Bristol region A bibliography compiled by Richard Coates, with the collaboration of the late Jeffrey Spittal (in progress) First draft released 27 January 2010 State of 5 January 2015 Introductory note With the exception of standard national resources, this bibliography includes only separate studies, or more inclusive works with a distinct section, devoted to the West of England, defined as the ancient counties of Bristol, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire. Note that works on place-names are not treated in this bibliography unless they are of special dialectological interest. For a bibliography of place-name studies, see Jeffrey Spittal and John Field, eds (1990) A reader’s guide to the place-names of the United Kingdom. Stamford: Paul Watkins, and annual bibliographies printed in the Journal of the English Place-Name Society and Nomina. Web-links mentioned were last tested in summer 2011. Thanks for information and clarification go to Madge Dresser, Brian Iles, Peter McClure, Frank Palmer, Harry Parkin, Tim Shortis, Jeanine Treffers-Daller, Peter Trudgill, and especially Katharina Oberhofer. Richard Coates University of the West of England, Bristol Academic and serious popular work General English material, and Western material not specific to a particular county Anderson, Peter M. (1987) A structural atlas of the English dialects. London: Croom Helm. Beal, Joan C. (2006) Language and region. London: Routledge (Intertext). ISBN-10: 0415366011, ISBN-13: 978-0415366014. 1 Britten, James, and Robert Holland (1886) A dictionary of English plant-names (3 vols). London: Trübner (for the English Dialect Society). Britton, Derek (1994) The etymology of modern dialect ’en, ‘him’. -
Indo-European Linguistics: an Introduction Indo-European Linguistics an Introduction
This page intentionally left blank Indo-European Linguistics The Indo-European language family comprises several hun- dred languages and dialects, including most of those spoken in Europe, and south, south-west and central Asia. Spoken by an estimated 3 billion people, it has the largest number of native speakers in the world today. This textbook provides an accessible introduction to the study of the Indo-European proto-language. It clearly sets out the methods for relating the languages to one another, presents an engaging discussion of the current debates and controversies concerning their clas- sification, and offers sample problems and suggestions for how to solve them. Complete with a comprehensive glossary, almost 100 tables in which language data and examples are clearly laid out, suggestions for further reading, discussion points and a range of exercises, this text will be an essential toolkit for all those studying historical linguistics, language typology and the Indo-European proto-language for the first time. james clackson is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge, and is Fellow and Direc- tor of Studies, Jesus College, University of Cambridge. His previous books include The Linguistic Relationship between Armenian and Greek (1994) and Indo-European Word For- mation (co-edited with Birgit Anette Olson, 2004). CAMBRIDGE TEXTBOOKS IN LINGUISTICS General editors: p. austin, j. bresnan, b. comrie, s. crain, w. dressler, c. ewen, r. lass, d. lightfoot, k. rice, i. roberts, s. romaine, n. v. smith Indo-European Linguistics An Introduction In this series: j. allwood, l.-g. anderson and o.¨ dahl Logic in Linguistics d. -
The Primary Laryngeal in Uralic and Beyond
JUHA JANHUNEN THE PRIMARY LARYNGEAL IN URALIC AND BEYOND 1. Laryngeals in synchronic systems Many languages, though not all, have in their phonemic inventory one or more segments that may be classifi ed as “laryngeals”, that is, as segments belonging to what may be called the “laryngeal range” of the consonantal paradigm. In a narrow sense of the term, the laryngeal range would comprise of only seg- ments produced with a laryngeal (glottal) primary articulation, but in a broad understanding this may be conveniently defi ned as comprising of any velar or postvelar consonants that are distinct from the basic velar stops [k ɡ] in terms of either the place or manner of articulation. Most laryngeals are continuants produced as either fricatives (with a relatively strong frication) or spirants (with a relatively weak frication) in the velar, uvular, pharyngeal, epiglottal or glottal zones of the vocal tract (cf. e.g. Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996: 39–46), though there are also non-continuant laryngeals produced as stops or affricates in the uvular and glottal zones. With the exception of the glottal stop [ʔ], which is pro- duced with a closure of the vocal chords, the segments classifi able as laryngeals can be either voiced or voiceless. It is synchronically typical of laryngeals that they often involve a consider- able lability of the articulatory parameters. Most languages have a very limited set of segments classifi able as laryngeals, which is why features such as place of articulation and voice are rarely fully exploited to distinguish one laryngeal from another. Many languages have only one segment in the laryngeal range, in which case its phonetic value can vary within a broad range.