DOCSLIB.ORG

Automated Dating of the Worlds Language Families Based On

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Automated Dating of the Worlds Language Families Based On Automated Dating of the World’s Language Families Based on Lexical Similarity Author(s): Eric W. Holman, Cecil H. Brown, Søren Wichmann, André Müller, Viveka Velupillai, Harald Hammarström, Sebastian Sauppe, Hagen Jung, Dik Bakker, Pamela Brown, Oleg Belyaev, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Johann-Mattis List, Dmitry Egorov Reviewed work(s): Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 52, No. 6 (December 2011), pp. 841-875 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/662127 . Accessed: 30/11/2011 03:11 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Chicago Press and Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Current Anthropology. http://www.jstor.org Current Anthropology Volume 52, Number 6, December 2011 841 Automated Dating of the World’s Language Families Based on Lexical Similarity by Eric W. Holman, Cecil H. Brown, Søren Wichmann, Andre´Mu¨ller, Viveka Velupillai, Harald Hammarstro¨m, Sebastian Sauppe, Hagen Jung, Dik Bakker, Pamela Brown, Oleg Belyaev, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Johann-Mattis List, and Dmitry Egorov CAϩ Online-Only Material: Supplement A PDF This paper describes a computerized alternative to glottochronology for estimating elapsed time since parent languages diverged into daughter languages. The method, developed by the Automated Sim- ilarity Judgment Program (ASJP) consortium, is different from glottochronology in four major respects: (1) it is automated and thus is more objective, (2) it applies a uniform analytical approach to a single database of worldwide languages, (3) it is based on lexical similarity as determined from Levenshtein (edit) distances rather than on cognate percentages, and (4) it provides a formula for date calculation that mathematically recognizes the lexical heterogeneity of individual languages, including parent languages just before their breakup into daughter languages. Automated judgments of lexical similarity for groups of related languages are calibrated with historical, epigraphic, and archaeological divergence dates for 52 language groups. The discrepancies between estimated and calibration dates are found to be on average 29% as large as the estimated dates themselves, a figure that does not differ significantly among language families. As a resource for further research that may require dates of known level of accuracy, we offer a list of ASJP time depths for nearly all the world’s recognized language families and for many subfamilies. for items on such a list are replaced in individual languages The greater the degree of linguistic differentiation within over time at a more or less constant rate, Swadesh devised a a stock, the greater is the period of time that must be formula, using cognate percentage as input, for calculating assumed for the development of such differentiations. the length of time since a language divergence occurred. (Sapir 1916:76) Glottochronology, as formulated by Morris Swadesh (1950, Scientist in the Department of Linguistics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, 1955), is a method for estimating the amount of elapsed time Germany). Andre´Mu¨ller is a student of linguistics and Chinese since phylogenetically related languages diverged from a com- studies at the University of Leipzig (Fachschaftsrat Linguistik, mon ancestral language. This approach involves determining Geisteswissenschaftliches Zentrum, Beethovenstraße 15, D-04107 the percentage of words that are cognate in a standard list of Leipzig, Germany). Viveka Velupillai is Research Fellow in the basic vocabulary. Working with the assumption that words Department of English at the Justus-Liebig-Universita¨t Gießen (Otto- Behaghel-Straße 10 B, D-35394 Gießen, Germany). Harald Hammarstro¨m is Postdoctoral Fellow in the Centre for Language Eric W. Holman is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Studies at Radboud Universiteit (Postbus 9103, NL-6500 HD Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles (405 Hilgard Nijmegen, The Netherlands) and in the Department of Linguistics Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90095-1563, U.S.A.). Cecil H. Brown at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology is Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus at Northern Illinois (Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany). Sebastian Sauppe University and Faculty Associate at the University of West Florida is Research Assistant in the Department of Linguistics at the Max (1700 Scenic Highway, Apartment 601, Pensacola, Florida 32503, Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Deutscher Platz 6, U.S.A. [[email protected]]). Søren Wichmann is Senior D-04103 Leipzig, Germany). Hagen Jung is Computer Scientist at ᭧ 2011 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2011/5206-0003$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/662127 842 Current Anthropology Volume 52, Number 6, December 2011 Glottochronology has had a checkered history since its for- torical, epigraphic, and archaeological dates of language di- mulation some 60 years ago. An early review by Hymes (1960) vergence gathered from published sources. This calibration was generally favorable. Later, Embleton (1986) provided a not only facilitates estimation of dates but also allows quan- judicious summary of both positive and negative views. More titative evaluation of the accuracy of the calculated dates. The recently, the pros and cons of the method were discussed in observed level of accuracy can serve as the basis for informed numerous chapters of a collection edited by Renfrew, Mc- decisions as to how to use dates calculated by the same Mahon, and Trask (2000). We do not intend to continue the method for other groups. debate on the theoretical merits and demerits of glottochro- nology. Instead, we describe a new approach that infers lan- guage divergence from lexical similarity without the pro- The Automated Similarity Judgment tracted linguistic analysis required for cognate identification. Program Project Several distinct processes can cause lexical similarity among genetically related languages to diminish with the passage of The present approach is developed within the Automated time. One process is systematic change in sounds, whereby Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP),1 first described by commonly inherited words in related languages become pho- Brown et al. (2008). Brown et al. also review previous research nologically different. Other processes involve replacement of on computerized lexicostatistics, which commenced with words by totally different words for the same referents. Such Grimes and Agard (1959). A major goal of ASJP is the de- replacement may be due to conditions internal to individual velopment of a database of Swadesh (1955) lists for all of the languages, such as processes of semantic change or the bor- world’s languages, with all words transcribed into a standard rowing of a word from one language into another where it orthography called “ASJPcode.” Brown et al. (2008:306–307) is then used as a substitute for a native word. If two languages give a description of this orthography, including International copy the same word from a third source, then borrowing may Phonetic Alphabet equivalents of the ASJPcode symbols. The actually increase the similarity between the two languages. For principal advantage of ASJPcode is that it can be produced lexical similarity to be useful for dating, the net effect of all with any QWERTY keyboard and thus is highly accessible to these processes must be to reduce similarity at an approxi- transcribers; a disadvantage is that it ignores some features mately constant rate through time. such as tone, vowel length, and suprasegmental traits. A com- This paper describes a large-scale empirical test of the ac- puter program was written to measure the overall lexical sim- curacy of dates produced when assuming a constant rate of ilarity of all possible pairs of languages in the database. In decrease for lexical similarity. The test is performed on a Brown et al. (2008) the program was applied to a database database of computer-readable basic vocabulary lists for about consisting of 100-item Swadesh lists from 245 globally dis- one-half of the world’s recorded languages. Judgment of lex- tributed languages, all transcribed into ASJPcode. The auto- ical similarity is entirely automated and therefore approaches mated lexicostatistical classifications of many language fam- total objectivity. For a set of 52 language groups, lexical sim- ilies were found to be similar to classifications by expert ilarity determined through automation is calibrated with his- historical linguists. Holman et al. (2008) subsequently determined the relative the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Deutscher stability of each item on the 100-referent list. A subset of the Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany). Dik Bakker is Associate 40 most stable of the 100 items
Load more

Recommended publications
  • North Digul River Family)
    [Text version of database, created 11/11/2019]. Annotated Swadesh wordlists for the Awbono-Bayono group (North Digul River family). Languages included: Kovojab [kov]; Enamesi [ena]; Awbono [awh]. DATA SOURCES I. Kovojab. Wilbrink 2004 = Wilbrink, Ans. 2004. The Kopkaka of Papua. Provisional notes on their language, its language affiliation and on the Kopkaka culture. Master's thesis. Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Hischier 2006 = Hischier, Phyllis. 2006. Exploration of the remote Kopayap and Urajin areas in West Papua, Indonesia: A First Contact in Kopayap and Urajin. Manuscript. II. Bayono. Wilbrink 2004 = Wilbrink, Ans. 2004. The Kopkaka of Papua. Provisional notes on their language, its language affiliation and on the Kopkaka culture. Master's thesis. Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. III. Awbono Wilbrink 2004 = Wilbrink, Ans. 2004. The Kopkaka of Papua. Provisional notes on their language, its language affiliation and on the Kopkaka culture. Master's thesis. Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. NOTES 1. General. The North Digul River family consists of the Becking and Dawi Rivers languages (see: 1 de Vries, Lourens. 2012. Some notes on the Tsaukambo language of West Papua. Language and Linguistics in Melanesia. Special Issue 2012 Part I: 165-193, and: de Vries, Lourens, Ruth Wester and Wilco van den Heuvel. 2012. The Greater Awyu language family of West Papua. Language and Linguistics in Melanesia. Special Issue 2012 Part I: 269- 312) and the Awbono-Bayono family, hitherto considered to be an isolate. A draft reconstruction of proto-North Digul River and its subgroups can be found on the Newguineaworld website under the title "North Digul River." It is part of a larger family which includes Central Digul River (a.k.a.
    [Show full text]
  • North Caucasian Languages
    The Turkish Online Journal of Design, Art and Communication - TOJDAC April 2017 Special Edition COMPARISON OF VARIOUS QUANTITATIVE MEASURES OF PROXIMITY OF LANGUAGES: NORTH CAUCASIAN LANGUAGES Galeev Timur Ildarovich Kazan federal university (KFU), Kazan, Russia [email protected] Solovyev Valery Dmitrievich Kazan federal university (KFU), Kazan, Russia ABSTRACT A comparison of North Caucasian languages is performed in the article according to various measures of proximity constructed using grammatical, lexical and genetic databases. Statistical methods are applied to the study of correlations among these proximity measures, and also between them and both geographical proximity and genealogical kinship. A full correlation has been found among language kinship, geographic situation and genetic kinship of peoples. Also, a high correlation was found between each of them and lexical similarity. In general these correlations persist at different levels – starting at the whole set of studied languages until the level of the smallest groups of related languages. It is shown that a significant factor in the analysis of geographical situation is the existence of a common boundary between the regions of distribution of languages. Keywords: Various Quantitative Measures, geographical situation common boundary, Creativity, languages 1. INTRODUCTION The classification of languages by genetic kinship, developed in the last two centuries within the framework of historical linguistics applying the comparative historical method, offers a qualitative characteristic of language proximity by including them into macrofamilies, families, branches, groups, etc. Glottochronology provides a quantitative measure of proximity that, in particular, allows assessing the age of families and other language groups. Unfortunately, in many cases there is no consensus among experts about languages kinship; it must be said also that lexicostatistical data are controversial.
    [Show full text]
  • 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:
    [Show full text]
  • Linguistics for Archaeologists: Principles, Methods and the Case of the Incas
    Linguistics for Archaeologists Linguistics for Archaeologists: Principles, Methods and the Case of the Incas Paul Heggarty1 Like archaeologists, linguists and geneticists too use the data and methods of their dis‑ ciplines to open up their own windows onto our past. These disparate visions of human prehistory cry out to be reconciled into a coherent holistic scenario, yet progress has long been frustrated by interdisciplinary disputes and misunderstandings (not least about Indo‑European). In this article, a comparative‑historical linguist sets out, to his intended audience of archaeologists, the core principles and methods of his discipline that are of relevance to theirs. They are first exemplified for the better‑known languages of Europe, before being put into practice in a lesser‑known case‑study. This turns to the New World, setting its greatest indigenous ‘Empire’, that of the Incas, alongside its greatest surviving language family today, Quechua. Most Andean archaeologists assume a straightforward association between these two. The linguistic evidence, however, exposes this as nothing but a popular myth, and writes instead a wholly new script for the prehistory of the Andes — which now awaits an archaeological story to match. 1. Archaeology and linguistics genetic methods from the biological sciences now being applied to language data. In a much discussed Recent years have seen growing interest in a ‘new syn- paper in Nature, Gray & Atkinson (2003) put forward thesis’ between the disciplines of archaeology, genetics a phylogenetic analysis of Indo-European languages, and linguistics, at the point where all three intersect based on comparative vocabulary lists, which falls in seeking a coherent picture of the distant origins of neatly in line with the ‘out of Anatolia’ hypothesis.
    [Show full text]
  • The West Papua Dilemma Leslie B
    University of Wollongong Research Online University of Wollongong Thesis Collection University of Wollongong Thesis Collections 2010 The West Papua dilemma Leslie B. Rollings University of Wollongong Recommended Citation Rollings, Leslie B., The West Papua dilemma, Master of Arts thesis, University of Wollongong. School of History and Politics, University of Wollongong, 2010. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/3276 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact Manager Repository Services: [email protected]. School of History and Politics University of Wollongong THE WEST PAPUA DILEMMA Leslie B. Rollings This Thesis is presented for Degree of Master of Arts - Research University of Wollongong December 2010 For Adam who provided the inspiration. TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION................................................................................................................................ i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................. ii ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................................... iii Figure 1. Map of West Papua......................................................................................................v SUMMARY OF ACRONYMS ....................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION ..............................................................................................................................1
    [Show full text]
  • Comparative-Historical Linguistics and Lexicostatistics
    COMPARATIVE-HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS AND LEXICOSTATISTICS Sergei Starostin COMPARATIVE-HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS AND LEXICOSTATISTICS [This is a translation, done by I. Peiros and N. Evans, of my paper "Sravnitel'no-istoričeskoe jazykoznanie i leksikostatistika", in "Lingvističeskaja rekonstrukcija i drevnejšaja istorija Vostoka", Moscow 1989. I have introduced, however, a number of modifications into the final English text — basically rewritten it again, since the English version needs English examples and etymologies, not Russian ones.] The last two decades have witnessed a fundamental advance in the techniques of comparative linguistic research. A prolonged period of comparative work with a wide range of language families has laid the foundation for the study of genetic relationships between remotely related languages or language groups. The first step in this direction was taken by V.M. Illich-Svitych in his seminal work 'Towards a comparison of the Nostratic languages' in which, with a combination of rigorous methods and intuitive flare, he begins to demonstrate the relatedness of a number of languages of the Old World. This new level of comparative studies appears completely legitimate. In fact, if we take the theory of language divergence as axiomatic, we have to concede the fact that from around the sixth millenium B.C. to the first millenium B.C. there was quite a number of different reconstructable proto-languages throughout the world. Once the level of reconstruction of various proto-languages is improved, the question inevitably arises: are any of these proto-languages genetically related and, if so, can we prove this relationship? To the first part of this question we must now answer in the affirmative.
    [Show full text]
  • Pacific News from Mānoa NEWSLETTER of the CENTER for PACIFIC ISLANDS STUDIES, UNIVERSITY of HAWAI‘I
    Pacific News from Mānoa NEWSLETTER OF THE CENTER FOR PACIFIC ISLANDS STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I No. 3 August–December 2012 and the new host communities, and how they are engaging with this global phenomenon. INSIDE The President of the Republic of Kiribati, His PACS 108 Workshop 2 Excellency Anote Tong, will present the keynote address on Watada Lecture by Teresia Teaiwa 2 Thursday, 4 April. President Tong has played a prominent Pan Pacific Association’s 2nd Trivia Night 3 role in creating regional and international awareness of the Wantok Night 3 impacts of climate change on small island places and Pacific News from Mānoa Goes All Electronic 3 communities. He is an advocate for creative responses and CPIS Seminars 4 adaptations to climate change at the local, regional, and Student and Alumni Activities 7 international levels. Faculty and Staff Activities 7 Information for registering and the schedule of speakers Publications and Moving Images 9 will be available in late February at Conferences and Meetings 11 10http://www.hawaii.edu/cpis/2013conf/index.htm . Bulletin Board 11 OCEANIA RISES WAVES OF CHANGE: CLIMATE “Oceania Rises” is an event organized by CPIS students and CHANGE IN THE PACIFIC ISLANDS staff. The purpose of the event is to help foster multicultural and pan-Pacific unity, while privileging Pacific Islander AND IMPLICATIONS FOR HAWAIʻI voices. ”Oceania Rises” will help to promote awareness of The Center for Pacific Islands Studies is pleased to announce Pacific cultures and new approaches to academia that build its 2013 conference, “Waves of Change: Climate Change on interdisciplinary approaches to research.
    [Show full text]
  • 0=AFRICAN Geosector
    2= AUSTRALASIA geosector Observatoire Linguistique Linguasphere Observatory page 123 2=AUSTRALASIA geosector édition princeps foundation edition DU RÉPERTOIRE DE LA LINGUASPHÈRE 1999-2000 THE LINGUASPHERE REGISTER 1999-2000 publiée en ligne et mise à jour dès novembre 2012 published online & updated from November 2012 This geosector covers 223 sets of languages (1167 outer languages, composed of 2258 inner languages) spoken or formerly spoken by communities in Australasia in a geographic sequence from Maluku and the Lesser Sunda islands through New Guinea and its adjacent islands, and throughout the Australian mainland to Tasmania. They comprise all languages of Australasia (Oceania) not covered by phylosectors 3=Austronesian or 5=Indo-European. Zones 20= to 24= cover all so-called "Papuan" languages, spoken on Maluku and the Lesser Sunda islands and the New Guinea mainland, which have been previously treated within the "Trans-New Guinea" hypothesis: 20= ARAFURA geozone 21= MAMBERAMO geozone 22= MANDANGIC phylozone 23= OWALAMIC phylozone 24= TRANSIRIANIC phylozone Zones 25= to 27= cover all other so-called "Papuan" languages, on the New Guinea mainland, Bismarck archipelago, New Britain, New Ireland and Solomon islands, which have not been treated within the "Trans-New Guinea" hypothesis: 25= CENDRAWASIH geozone 26= SEPIK-VALLEY geozone 27= BISMARCK-SEA geozone Zones 28= to 29= cover all languages spoken traditionally across the Australian mainland, on the offshore Elcho, Howard, Crocodile and Torres Strait islands (excluding Darnley island), and formerly on the island of Tasmania. An "Australian" hypothesis covers all these languages, excluding the extinct and little known languages of Tasmania, comprising (1.) an area of more diffuse and complex relationships in the extreme north, covered here by geozone 28=, and (2.) a more closely related affinity (Pama+ Nyungan) throughout the rest of Australia, covered by 24 of the 25 sets of phylozone 29=.
    [Show full text]
  • 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.
    [Show full text]
  • Zerohack Zer0pwn Youranonnews Yevgeniy Anikin Yes Men
    Zerohack Zer0Pwn YourAnonNews Yevgeniy Anikin Yes Men YamaTough Xtreme x-Leader xenu xen0nymous www.oem.com.mx www.nytimes.com/pages/world/asia/index.html www.informador.com.mx www.futuregov.asia www.cronica.com.mx www.asiapacificsecuritymagazine.com Worm Wolfy Withdrawal* WillyFoReal Wikileaks IRC 88.80.16.13/9999 IRC Channel WikiLeaks WiiSpellWhy whitekidney Wells Fargo weed WallRoad w0rmware Vulnerability Vladislav Khorokhorin Visa Inc. Virus Virgin Islands "Viewpointe Archive Services, LLC" Versability Verizon Venezuela Vegas Vatican City USB US Trust US Bankcorp Uruguay Uran0n unusedcrayon United Kingdom UnicormCr3w unfittoprint unelected.org UndisclosedAnon Ukraine UGNazi ua_musti_1905 U.S. Bankcorp TYLER Turkey trosec113 Trojan Horse Trojan Trivette TriCk Tribalzer0 Transnistria transaction Traitor traffic court Tradecraft Trade Secrets "Total System Services, Inc." Topiary Top Secret Tom Stracener TibitXimer Thumb Drive Thomson Reuters TheWikiBoat thepeoplescause the_infecti0n The Unknowns The UnderTaker The Syrian electronic army The Jokerhack Thailand ThaCosmo th3j35t3r testeux1 TEST Telecomix TehWongZ Teddy Bigglesworth TeaMp0isoN TeamHav0k Team Ghost Shell Team Digi7al tdl4 taxes TARP tango down Tampa Tammy Shapiro Taiwan Tabu T0x1c t0wN T.A.R.P. Syrian Electronic Army syndiv Symantec Corporation Switzerland Swingers Club SWIFT Sweden Swan SwaggSec Swagg Security "SunGard Data Systems, Inc." Stuxnet Stringer Streamroller Stole* Sterlok SteelAnne st0rm SQLi Spyware Spying Spydevilz Spy Camera Sposed Spook Spoofing Splendide
    [Show full text]
  • Bridging Constructions in Korowai Lourens De Vries Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
    Chapter 7 Online and offline bridging constructions in Korowai Lourens de Vries Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Korowai has two main types of bridging constructions, recapitulative linkage (also known as “tail-head linkage”) and summary linkage with generic verbs of doing, each with two subtypes that follow from the grammatical distinction between chained and adverbial or thematic types of clause combining. Recapitulative link- age with chained, switch reference marked clauses is by the far the most frequent type of bridging construction. It has three functions. First, a processual function, to give the speaker and addressee a processing pause in between two often lengthy clause chains. Second, it creates chains of clause chains, so called chaining para- graphs. The third function is to enable the speaker to continue referential tracking in the transition from one clause chain to the next. Recapitulative linkage with the- matic subordinate clauses shares the processual function wih the chained type but it signals discourse discontinuity: it disrupts the event and participant lines and the speaker goes off the event line. Summary linkage allows speakers to be less specific in the scope of their anaphoric linkage, not necessarily taking the final clause of the previous sentence as their reference clause. 1 Introduction Korowai is a Papuan language of the Greater Awyu family spoken by around 4000 persons in the area between the upper Becking and Eilanden Rivers and east of the headwaters of the Becking River in Indonesian West Papua, in the Boven-Digul regency (van Enk & de Vries 1997; de Vries et al. 2012). Korowai is a synthetic language, with agglutinating morphology and some fusion.
    [Show full text]
  • Time Depth in Historical Linguistics”, Edited by Colin Renfrew, April
    Time Depth 1 Review of “Time Depth in Historical Linguistics”, edited by Colin Renfrew, April McMahon, and Larry Trask Brett Kessler Washington University in St. Louis Brett Kessler Psychology Department Washington University in St. Louis Campus Box 1125 One Brookings Drive St. Louis MO 63130-4899 USA Email: [email protected] FAX: 1-314-935-7588 Time Depth 2 Review of “Time Depth in Historical Linguistics”, edited by Colin Renfrew, April McMahon, and Larry Trask Time depth in historical linguistics. Ed. by Colin Renfrew, April McMahon, and Larry Trask. (Papers in the prehistory of languages.) Cambridge, England: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2000. Distributed by Oxbow Books. 2 vol. (xiv, 681 p.) paperback, 50 GBP. http://www.mcdonald.cam.ac.uk/Publications/Time-depth.htm This is a collection of 27 papers, mostly presentations at a symposium held at the McDonald Institute in 1999. Contributions focus on two related issues: methods for establishing absolute chronology, and linguistic knowledge about the remote past. Most papers are restatements of the authors’ well-known theories, but many contain innovations, and some do describe new work. The ideological balance of the collection feels just left of center. We do not find here wild multilateral phantasms, reconstructions of Proto-World vocabulary, or idylls about pre-Indo-European matriarchal society. Or not much. These are mostly sober academics pushing the envelope in attempts to reason under extreme uncertainty. One of the recurrent themes was that the development of agriculture may drive the expansion of language families and therefore imply a date for the protolanguage. Colin Renfrew describes his idea that that is what happened in the case of Indo-European (IE): PIE was introduced into Europe at an early date, perhaps 8,000 BC.
    [Show full text]