Steps Towards a Typology of Partial Agreement
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Séminaire FieldLing Phonology Sebastian Fedden Université Paris 3/ LACITO 4 Sept 2018 Mianmin 2004 A brief CV • PhD with Nick Evans in Melbourne (2003-2007) • Research fellow at the MPI for Psycholinguistics with Steve Levinson (2007-2009) • Research fellow at the Surrey Morphology Group with Grev Corbett (2009-2014) • Assistant Professor at the University of Sydney with Nick Enfield (2015-2016) • Since 2016 Professor of Linguistics at Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle / LACITO 2 My research - Papuan languages • A grammar of Mian (2011) • Synchronic and diachronic study of the structure of Mian and other Papuan languages • Tone • Gender • Ditransitives • Reciprocals • ‘Switch-reference’ • Grammaticalization • Trans New Guinea 3 My research - Typology • Nominal classification (gender and classifiers) • Corbett, Greville G., Sebastian Fedden and Raphael A. Finkel. 2017. Single versus concurrent feature systems: nominal classification in Mian. Linguistic Typology 21. 209-260. • Fedden, Sebastian & Greville G. Corbett. 2017. Gender and classifiers in concurrent systems: Refining the typology of nominal classification. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 2(1). 34, 1-47. • Corbett, Greville G. & Sebastian Fedden. 2016. Canonical gender. Journal of Linguistics 52. 495-531. • Referential hierarchies and argument marking • using psycholinguistic experimentation (specially prepared video stimuli) 4 Overview • My research (New Guinea) • Segmental phonology • Tonal phonology 5 MY RESEARCH Séminaire FieldLing - Phonology 6 Google map New Guinea 7 Indigenous languages • New Guinea Area (‘Papuasphere’) • About 1200 languages • Many as different as English and Cantonese • About one quarter are Austronesian languages • The rest are Papuan (or Non-Austronesian languages) 8 Google map New Guinea 9 Papuan languages • Between 650 and 800 Papuan languages, depending on the definition of language and dialect • Largest family: Trans New Guinea family with about 300-500 languages • Largest language: Enga (TNG) with about 230.000 speakers • Many Papuan languages have fewer than 1000 speakers 10 Papuan languages • Papuan languages do not constitute a single family, like Indo- European, at least we cannot show relations because of the time depth (several 10,000 years) • Comparison: Expansion of the Indo-Europeans was less than 10,000 years ago • Papua – widely used term, shorthand for the non-Austronesian and non-Australian languages of the south-west Pacific 11 12 The Mianmin • Mianmin area: east of the border to Papua • Telefomin District, Sandaun Province • Mianmin itself (two villages plus airstrip) • First contact in the 1930s 13 The Mian language • ‘Mian’ is not a Mian word • But means ‘dog’ in a neighbouring language • Traditionally just wéng ‘sound, voice, language’ • Belongs to the Ok family of languages (ok ‘river’) • About 20 Ok languages (cf. Glottolog) • Mountain Ok (Mian, Telefol, Faiwol, ...) • Lowland Ok (Muyu, Ninggerum, ...) • Ngalum • Oksapmin 14 The Mian language • Spoken in Telefomin District, Sandaun Province, Papua New Guinea • Two main dialect areas (west and east) • Eastern dialect has approx. 1,400 speakers, 11 months of fieldwork • Western dialect (aka Suganga) has approx. 350 speakers 15 Mr Kasening Milimap (with his father’s headgear, 2008) 16 Mr Kasening Milimap (with his father’s headgear, 2008) 17 segmental PHONOLOGY Séminaire FieldLing - Phonology 18 How to start? • Start simple! • Be careful not to ask too detailed and specific questions too soon • “[Y]ou are asking someone to give you details of their language when, as far as they can tell, you have no knowledge of the fundamentals of the language” (Rice 2001: 247) 19 How to start? • Elicit from a basic vocabulary list • Ideally from several speakers (variation) • body parts (incl. possessives) • with a few hundred words start working out the phonology of the language, minimal pairs, etc. • starting point for building short clauses • Use a narrow transcription until you know the relevant features • Make sure you always read back transcribed words and sentences (Dimmendaal 2001: 66; Mosel 2006: 75; Bowern 2008: 35, 63) 20 Word lists • Using word lists: Potential issues • Method is questionable on both linguistic and psychological grounds • embarrassment: Native speakers might not know/understand the word or has forgotten what it means in their language • taboo (e.g. careful with body parts!) (Mosel 2006: 75) 21 Word lists • Explain the use of the wordlist • Discuss suitable semantic fields (e.g. food and cooking) • Elicit words by semantic field • fruit and vegetables, edible animals • dishes • activities • tools (Mosel 2006: 75-6) 22 Word lists • Ask for example: • tell me the names of fruit and vegetables you grow and eat (apples, spinach, beans, potatoes ...) • what do you do when you make a dish with potatoes? (wash, peel, boil, fry ...) • what kind of things do you use? (knife, spoon, tongs, pot ...); (Mosel 2006: 75-6) 23 Word lists • Start working on sentences when you have phonological control • sounds • syllable structure (Hale 2001: 85) 24 Transcriptions • Make transcriptions with your consultant, material you don’t transcribe in the field is useless unless you know the language rather well • Generally time-consuming, never calculate less than a 4:1 (probably 5:1 or 6:1) ratio between transcriptions and recordings (Sakel and Everett 2012: 207) • ELAN (https://tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/elan/download/) 25 Transcriptions • Know the IPA (https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/content/ipa-chart) • Use a simple transcription system, no fancy symbols • E.g. Mian vowel system (Fedden 2011: 28-31) Phonemically: Transcribe as: /i/ /u/ <i> <u> /ɛ/ /ɔ/ <e> <o> /a/ /aʕ/ <a> <aa> 26 During the session • Monitor your recorder while you’re working • Batteries! • Record level! • Tape/SD card space! • Look for signs of boredom or fatigue • schedule short sessions (~ 1h) • take breaks • Listen and take notes 27 Church and airstrip at Mianmin 28 A kitchen 29 A kitchen 30 Toilets 31 Soccer and basketball fields 32 Fieldwork is holistic • You always have to do everything at the same time • No isolating the traditional levels of language description (“Stop, that’s syntax, I only do phonology!”) • Preparation: session script (Hale 2011: 84) • Deviations are possible, but it provides something to fall back on 33 Phoneme inventory • Phoneme inventories differ widely • E.g. Mohawk (Iroquoian) distinguishes two oral stops: /t, d/ • Central Pomo (Pomoan) distinguishes 17 oral stops: /p, ph, p’, b, t̪, th, t̪’, d, ṭ, ṭh, ṭ’, k, kh, k’, q, qh, q’/ • Getting a feeling for the phonology (sounds, syllable structure) of another language takes time (Mithun 2001: 36) 34 Phoneme inventory • Approach the phoneme inventory as you would a class phonology problem • Make list of segments and their environments, identify complementary distribution • Number examples • Note any minimal pairs • Note down segments you are fairly sure about (e.g. on a phoneme chart) • Write down all phones and circle all the allophones of a single phoneme • Note the environment of allophones • Make a list of everything that you aren’t sure about 35 Example 1: Mian allophonic variation [d, l, nd, r, ɾ ] . Alternative pronunciations 36 Example 2: Mian tone ‘nest’ vs. ‘moss’ Ldeit LHdeit Lam ‘house’ LHaam ‘wild pandanus sp.’ LHLaam ‘older sister’ 37 Be skeptical • Read and value previously published materials on a language • But always be skeptical • For example, for Mian, Smith and Weston (1974a, 1974b) • Smith and Weston (1974a) say that <aa> is a “nasalized” vowel 38 Pharyngealization • Phonemic distinction between a pharyngealized /aˤ/ (spelled <aa>) and a plain /a/ • The contrast of a low, long, glottalized or pharyngealized vowel against another /a/ typical of Sepik languages; possibly a diffused feature Minimal pairs: Near-minimal pairs: al ‘faeces’ aal ‘skin’ am ‘house’ âam ‘older sister’ ayal ‘light’ ayaal ‘tree sp.’ mak ‘other’ daak ‘down’ 39 Pharyngealization • Lower frequency of the third and a higher frequency of the first formant (Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996) Figure 2. Spectogramm of /Lal/ ‘faeces’ Figure 3. Spectogramm of /Laˤl/ ‘skin’ F3 a l F1 aa l /al/ (L) /aal/ (LH) ‘faeces’ ‘skin’ 40 0 1.609 0 1.495 Time (s) Time (s) Harmonic structure of Harmonic structure H 1 H 2 al ‘ faeces ’ ) 40 z H / B d ( l e v 20 e l e r u s s e r p d 0 n u o S 41 0 2.205·104 Frequency (Hz) Harmonic structure of Harmonic structure H1 H 2 aal ‘skin’ ) ) z z H H / / 20 B B d d ( ( l l e e v v e e l l e e r r u u 0 s s s s e e r r p p d d n n u u o o S S -20 42 0 2.205·104 Frequency (Hz) Knife and fork 43 Arrow 44 Arrow 45 Tongs for ground oven 46 MIAN TONE Séminaire FieldLing - Phonology 47 Mian tone (Fedden 2011: 49) 48 Mian tone (Fedden 2011: 49) 49 Tone in New Guinea • Within TNG - Ok - Mek - Engan, e.g. Kewa (Franklin 1971) - Chimbu-Wahgi, e.g. Kuman (Hardie 2003), Golin (Evans and Stoakes 2004), Dom (Tida 2006) - Gorokan, e.g. Fore (Scott 1990) - Turama-Kikorian, e.g. Kairi (Rumu) (Newman and Petterson 1990) Map. Tone languages in New Guinea (Donohue 2003: 330; conservative estimate) • Outside TNG • Phonemic tone in many TNG languages - Skou (Donohue 2003) • Not reported for the languages of the Sepik-Ramu area (Foley 1991: 19), the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomon Islands 50 A tone typology (Donohue 1997) • Types are based on the domain of contrast which is phonemically exploited, rather than the number and identity of tones in a system Syllable tone system: Word tone system: T T T T T T T T T | | | | | | |