Lexical Accent in Languages with Complex Morphology
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Computational Challenges for Polysynthetic Languages
Computational Modeling of Polysynthetic Languages Judith L. Klavans, Ph.D. US Army Research Laboratory 2800 Powder Mill Road Adelphi, Maryland 20783 [email protected] [email protected] Abstract Given advances in computational linguistic analysis of complex languages using Machine Learning as well as standard Finite State Transducers, coupled with recent efforts in language revitalization, the time was right to organize a first workshop to bring together experts in language technology and linguists on the one hand with language practitioners and revitalization experts on the other. This one-day meeting provides a promising forum to discuss new research on polysynthetic languages in combination with the needs of linguistic communities where such languages are written and spoken. Finally, this overview article summarizes the papers to be presented, along with goals and purpose. Motivation Polysynthetic languages are characterized by words that are composed of multiple morphemes, often to the extent that one long word can express the meaning contained in a multi-word sentence in lan- guage like English. To illustrate, consider the following example from Inuktitut, one of the official languages of the Territory of Nunavut in Canada. The morpheme -tusaa- (shown in boldface below) is the root, and all the other morphemes are synthetically combined with it in one unit.1 (1) tusaa-tsia-runna-nngit-tu-alu-u-junga hear-well-be.able-NEG-DOER-very-BE-PART.1.S ‘I can't hear very well.’ Kabardian (Circassian), from the Northwest Caucasus, also shows this phenomenon, with the root -še- shown in boldface below: (2) wə-q’ə-d-ej-z-γe-še-ž’e-f-a-te-q’əm 2SG.OBJ-DIR-LOC-3SG.OBJ-1SG.SUBJ-CAUS-lead-COMPL-POTENTIAL-PAST-PRF-NEG ‘I would not let you bring him right back here.’ Polysynthetic languages are spoken all over the globe and are richly represented among Native North and South American families. -
Linguistics 203 - Languages of the World Language Study Guide
Linguistics 203 - Languages of the World Language Study Guide This exam may consist of anything discussed on or after October 20. Be sure to check out the slides on the class webpage for this date onward, as well as the syntax/morphology language notes. This guide discusses the aspects of specific languages we looked at, and you will want to look at the notes of specific languages in the ‘language notes: syntax/morphology’ section of the webpage for examples and basic explanations. This guide does not discuss the linguistic topics we discussed in a more general sense (i.e. where we didn’t focus on a specific language), but you are expected to understand these area as well. On the webpage, these areas are found in the ‘lecture notes/slides’ section. As you study, keep in mind that there are a number of ways I might pose a question to test your knowledge. If you understand the concept, you should be able to answer any of them. These include: Definitional If a language is considered an ergative-absolutive language, what does this mean? Contrastive (definitional) Explain how an ergative-absolutive language differs from a nominative- accusative language. Identificational (which may include a definitional question as well...) Looking at the example below, identify whether language A is an ergative- absolutive language or a nominative accusative language. How do you know? (example) Contrastive (identificational) Below are examples from two different languages. In terms of case marking, how is language A different from language B? (ex. of ergative-absolutive language) (ex. of nominative-accusative language) True / False question T F Basque is an ergative-absolutive language. -
What Are the Limits of Polysynthesis?
International Symposium on Polysynthesis in the World's Languages February 20-21, 2014 NINJAL, Tokyo What are the limits of Polysynthesis? Michael Fortescue, Marianne Mithun, and Nicholas Evans Of the various labels for morphological types currently in use by typologists ‘polysynthesis’ has proved to be the most difficult to pin down. For some it just represents an extreme on the dimension of synthesis (one of Sapir’s two major typological axes) while for others it is an independent category or parameter with far- reaching morphosyntactic ramifications. A recent characterization (Evans & Sasse 2002: 3f.) is the following: ‘Essentially, then, a prototypical polysynthetic language is one in which it is possible, in a single word, to use processes of morphological composition to encode information about both the predicate and all its arguments, for all major clause types [....] to a level of specificity, allowing this word to serve alone as a free-standing utterance without reliance on context.’ If the nub of polysynthesis is the packing of a lot of material into single verb forms that would be expressed as independent words in less synthetic languages, what exactly is the nature of and limitations on this ‘material’? The present paper investigates the limits – both upwards and downwards – of what the term is generally understood to cover. Reference Evans, N. & H.-J. Sasse (eds.). (2002). Problems of Polysynthesis. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. 1 2014-01-08 International Symposium on Polysynthesis in the World's Languages February 20-21, 2014 NINJAL, Tokyo Polysynthesis in Ainu Anna Bugaeva (National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics) Ainu is a typical polysynthetic language in the sense that a single complex verb can express what takes a whole sentence in most other languages. -
Reconstructing Proto-Sahaptian Sounds
Reconstructing Proto-Sahaptian Sounds Noel Rude Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation Sahaptin and the mutually unintelligible Nez Perce comprise the Sahaptian language family. This paper attempts to reconstruct the sound system of the parent language of that family. There is little dialect variation in the available data for Nez Perce, whereas Sahaptin divides into three definable dialect clusters: Columbia River (Umatilla, Tenino, Celilo, etc.); Northwest (Klickitat, Upper Cowlitz, Yakima, etc.); Northeast (Priest Rapids, Walla Walla, Palouse, etc.). Various features distinguish the dialects, e.g., long vowels derived from certain VCV sequences are more common in the Northern dialects and in Nez Perce, the Northeast dialects and Nez Perce are more likely to preserve the glottal stop, and the palatalization of *k is most extensive in the Columbia River dialects. The reconstructions proposed here are, as always, more or less tentative. Unless otherwise indicated the examples labeled Sahaptin (S) are from Umatilla.1 Figure 1. The Sahaptian language family Proto-Sahaptian Nez Perce Sahaptin Columbia River Northern Northwest Northeast 1 For the connection between Sahaptin and Nez Perce, see Aoki (1962), Rigsby (1965), Rigsby and Silverstein (1969), and Rude (1996, 2006). For the relationship with Plateau Penutian, see Aoki (1963), Rude (1987), and Pharis (2006). For a possible relationship within the broader Penutian macro-family, see DeLancey & Golla (1979) and Mithun (1999), also Rude (2000) for a possible connection with Uto-Aztecan. For Sahaptin grammars, see Jacobs (1931), Millstein (ca. 1990a), Rigsby and Rude (1996), Rude (2009), and for published NW Sahaptin texts, see Jacobs (1929, 1934, 1937). Beavert and Hargus (2010) provide a dictionary of Yakima Sahaptin, Millstein (ca. -
Vowel Harmony in Two Even Dialects Dialects
400 220 Natalia Aralova Natalia Aralova Natalia Aralova Vowel harmony in two Even Vowel harmony in two Even dialects dialects Production and perception Production and perception This dissertation analyzes vowel systems in two dialects of Even, an endangered Northern Tungusic language spoken in Eastern Siberia. The data were collected during fieldwork in the Bystraia district of Central Kamchatka and in the village of Sebian-Küöl in Yakutia. The focus of the study is the Even system of vowel harmony, which in previous literature has been assumed to be robust. The central question concerns the number of vowel oppositions and the nature of the feature underlying the opposition between harmonic sets. The results of an acoustic study show a consistent pattern for only one acoustic parameter, namely F1, which can harmony in two Even dialects Vowel be phonologically interpreted as a feature [±height]. This acoustic study is supplemented by perception experiments. The results of the latter suggest that perceptually there is no harmonic opposition for high vowels, i.e., the harmonic pairs of high vowels have merged. Moreover, in the dialect of the Bystraia district certain consonants function as perceptual cues for the harmonic set of a word. In other words, the Bystraia Even harmony system, which was previously based on vowels, is being transformed into new oppositions among consonants. ISBN 978-94-6093-180-2 Vowel harmony in two Even dialects: Production and perception 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: Even reindeer herder Anatoly Afanasyevich Solodikov, Central Kamchatka. -
Stress Chapter
Word stress in the languages of the Caucasus1 Lena Borise 1. Introduction Languages of the Caucasus exhibit impressive diversity when it comes to word stress. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the stress systems in North-West Caucasian (henceforth NWC), Nakh-Dagestanian (ND), and Kartvelian languages, as well as the larger Indo-European (IE) languages of the area, Ossetic and (Eastern) Armenian. For most of these languages, stress facts have only been partially described and analyzed, which raises the question about whether the available data can be used in more theoretically-oriented studies; cf. de Lacy (2014). Instrumental studies are not numerous either. Therefore, the current chapter relies mainly on impressionistic observations, and reflects the state of the art in the study of stress in these languages: there are still more questions than answers. The hope is that the present summary of the existing research can serve as a starting point for future investigations. This chapter is structured as follows. Section 2 describes languages that have free stress placement – i.e., languages in which stress placement is not predicted by phonological or morphological factors. Section 3 describes languages with fixed stress. These categories are not mutually exclusive, however. The classification of stress systems is best thought of as a continuum, with fixed stress and free stress languages as the two extremes, and most languages falling in the space between them. Many languages with fixed stress allow for exceptions based on certain phonological and/or morphological factors, so that often no firm line can be drawn between, e.g., languages with fixed stress that contain numerous morphologically conditioned exceptions (cf. -
COMPARING HUMANS and BIRDS by Daniel C. Mann a Dissertation
STABILIZING FORCES IN ACOUSTIC CULTURAL EVOLUTION: COMPARING HUMANS AND BIRDS by Daniel C. Mann A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2019 2019 DANIEL C. MANN All rights reserved ii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Linguistics in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. JULIETTE BLEVINS Date Chair of the Examining Committee GITA MARTOHARDJONO Date Executive Officer MARISA HOESCHELE DAVID C. LAHTI MICHAEL I. MANDEL Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii Abstract STABILIZING FORCES IN ACOUSTIC CULTURAL EVOLUTION: COMPARING HUMANS AND BIRDS By Daniel C. Mann Advisor: Professor Juliette Blevins Learned acoustic communication systems, like birdsong and spoken human language, can be described from two seemingly contradictory perspectives. On one hand, learned acoustic communication systems can be remarkably consistent. Substantive and descriptive generalizations can be made which hold for a majority of populations within a species. On the other hand, learned acoustic communication systems are often highly variable. The degree of variation is often so great that few, if any, substantive generalizations hold for all populations in a species. Within my dissertation, I explore the interplay of variation and uniformity in three vocal learning species: budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus), house finches (Haemorhous mexicanus), and humans (Homo sapiens). Budgerigars are well-known for their versatile mimicry skills, house finch song organization is uniform across populations, and human language has been described as the prime example of variability by some while others see only subtle variations of largely uniform system. -
The Dative-Ergative Connection Miriam Butt
Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 6 O. Bonami & P.Cabredo Hofherr (eds.) 2006, pp. 69–92 The Dative-Ergative Connection Miriam Butt 1 Introduction The classic division between structural vs. inherent/ lexical case proposed within Gov- ernment-Binding (Chomsky 1981) remains a very popular one, despite evidence to the contrary that the inner workings of case systems are far more complex than this simple division would suggest and that individual case markers generally make a systematic structural and semantic contribution that interacts in a generalizable manner with the lexical semantics of a predicate (see Butt 2006 for a survey of theories and data, Butt 2006:125 and Woolford 2006 for a proposed disctinction between inherent (general- izable) and lexical (idiosyncratic) case.).1 That is, the semantic contribution of case cannot (and should not) be relegated to the realm of lexical stipulation because there are systematic semantic generalizations to be captured. This fact has been recognized in more and more recent work. One prominent ex- ample is the work engaged in understanding the semantic generalizations underlying so-called object alternations, perhaps the most famous of which is the Finnish parti- tive alternation shown in (1)–(2). In Finnish, the accusative alternates with the parti- tive on objects. This alternation gives rise to readings of partitivity (1) and aspectual (un)boundedness (2).2 (1) a. Ostin leivän bought.1.Sg bread.Acc ‘I bought the bread.’ Finnish 1I would like to thank the organizers of the CSSP 2005 for inviting me to participate in the conference. I enjoyed the conference tremendously and the comments I received at the conference were extremely constructive, particularly those by Manfred Krifka. -
Nez Perce Verb Morphology Phillip Cash Cash University of Arizona, 2004
Nez Perce Verb Morphology Phillip Cash Cash University of Arizona, 2004 1.0 Introduction In this paper, I present an introduction to Nez Perce verb morphology. The goal of such a study is to describe the internal structure of Nez Perce verb form and meaning. It takes as its task identifying the constituent elements of words and examining the rules that govern their co-occurrence. The Nez Perce language is a polysynthetic language and, as such, it displays an enriched morphological system whereby complex propositions can be expressed at the level of a single word. Typologically, utterances of the polysynthetic type suggest that speakers of these languages employ a structural principle of dependent-head synthesis that treats the minimal units of meaning, that is, its morphemes, in ways different from other world languages. This is simply to say that the morphology plays a more prominent role at the clausal level than in synthetic languages like English. Consider a concrete example as in /hiwlé·ke•yke/ ‘He/she/it ran.’ When we examine the structure of a morphosyntactic word in Nez Perce, we are interested in i) identifying the pairing of each morpheme’s phonological form, often called its surface structure, with the content specified in its lexical entry, and ii) identifying how morphemes are organized and combined with respect to grammatical principles. First, we begin by examining a morphosyntactic word through its component parts. Four main representations of words are used in this analysis, these are i) the surface form, ii) the morphological form, iii) the morphological gloss, and iv) the free translation. -
Lexical Transfer Between Southern Interior Salish and Molalla-Sahaptian
Lexical Transfer between Southern Interior Salish and Molalla-Sahaptian Nicholas Pharris & Sarah Thomason University of Michigan Speakers of Montana Salish and Nez Perce have long been in close cultural and social contact. In this paper, we investigate the effects of these contacts on the vocabularies of the two languages, Whenever possible, we broaden our focus to encompass the Southern Interior Salish (SIS) and Molalla Sahaptian (Mol-Sah) families generally, building on previous work by Haruo Aoki and Bruce Rigsby. Most of the shared lexical items fall into six broad categories-inanimate nature, flora, fauna, cultural items, ethnonyms, and onomatopoetic forms-with a residue of miscellaneous items. Both nominal and verbal elements are represented. Some sets are restricted to Montana Salish-Spokane-l<.alispel and Nez Perce; others are widespread in both families and likely very old. The great majority of the loans appear to predate the palatalization of velars in Montana Salish and Coeur d'Alene, which occurred approximately 150 years ago. Structural influences between SIS and Mol-Sah are also briefly examined. In his important 1975 paper 'The East Plateau linguistic diffusion area', Haruo Aoki first discusses cultural and structural areal features and then lists and analyzes twenty-three definite and possible shared lexical items, focusing on Southern Interior Salish and Nez Perce. In this paper we extend Aoki's list with additional lexical items and expanded analyses. Wherever possible, we also move beyond this Sahaptian focus to consider Molalla as well; there is now substantial evidence to support the proposal that Sahaptian and Molalla are related (Pharris 2005), and this extension helps in the effort to determine the source language, or family, for some of the shared lexical items. -
Peter Arkadiev & Yury Lander October 2018 Version. Submitted to Maria
THE NORTHWEST CAUCASIAN LANGUAGES Peter Arkadiev & Yury Lander October 2018 version. Submitted to Maria Polinsky (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Languages of the Caucasus. 1. The languages and their speakers The Northwest Caucasian (NWC) family, also known as West Caucasian or Abkhaz- Adyghe, comprises five languages, which are grouped into three branches: • Abkhaz-Abaza: o Abkhaz (including the Sadz, Ahchypsy, Bzyp, Tsabal, and Abzhywa dialects), o Abaza (nominally including the Tapanta and Ashkharywa dialects), • Ubykh, • Circassian: o West Circassian (also known as Adyghe, including the Bzhedugh, Shapsugh, Abzakh/Abadzekh, and Temirgoy dialects), o Kabardian (also known as East Circassian and including the Besleney, Baksan, Mozdok, Malka, Terek, and Kuban dialects). This conventional division is based on heterogeneous linguistic and sociolinguistic considerations and hence is a kind of simplification. For example, Abaza consists of two dialects, Tapanta and Ashkharywa, of which the latter is closer to Abkhaz than to Tapanta, West Circassian and Kabardian are often considered by their speakers to constitute a single Adyghe (or Circassian) language (despite the absence of mutual intelligibility), and some dialects of Abkhaz (e.g., Sadz) and West Circassian (e.g., Shapsugh) may be treated as separate languages. Nonetheless, below we use the language list as given above with a proviso that whenever it is possible we will try to overtly mark the variety referred to – with the exception of Abaza, whose examples always belong to the Tapanta dialect. During the centuries, the speakers of the languages of the family inhabited areas to the North and partly to the South of the Western part of the Caucasian Ridge including the Northeast coast of the Black Sea. -
DOCUMENT RESUME ED 357 635 FL 021 222 AUTHOR Redden, James E., Ed. TITLE Papers from the Hokan-Penutian Languages Conference
DOCUMENT RESUME ED 357 635 FL 021 222 AUTHOR Redden, James E., Ed. TITLE Papers from the Hokan-Penutian Languages Conference (Santa Barbara, CA, June 27, 1992) and the J. P. Harrington Conference (Santa Barbara, CA, June 24-27, 1992). Occasional Papers on Linguistics, Number 17. INSTITUTION Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale. Dept. of Linguistics. PUB DATE 92 NOTE 154p. PUB TYPE Collected Works Conference Proceedings (021) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC07 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *American Indian Languages; *Anthropological Linguistics; Consonants; *Distinctive Features (Language); Language Research; Nouns; Phonetics; Sentence Structure; *Structural Linguistics; Syntax; Vocabulary; Vowels; Word Lists IDENTIFIERS Chumash; Hualapai; *Langdon (Margaret); Miwok (Tribe); Phrasing; Yavapai; *Yuman Languages ABSTRACT Dedicated to Margaret Langdon at the University of California, San Diego, for her contributions to Yuman studies, this volume of occasional papers contains papers presented at two conferences on Hokan-Penutian languages. The papers and presenters are as follows: "Yuman Linguistics: The Work of Margaret Langdon". (Leanne Hinton), which is both a narrative of Margaret Langdon's career and a comprehensive list of her publications; "John P. Harrington's Phonetic Representations of Obispeno Chumash Palatal Consonants' (Kathryn A. Klar); "The Vocabularies of Scouler, Tolmie and Coulter: A Reappraisal" (Anthony P. Grant); "Descent of Lake Miwok" (Catherine A. Callaghan); "Maiduan Noun Phrase Structure" (Eric J. Bakovic); "An Early Dieguena Wordlist" (Margaret Langdon); "-k and -m in Yuma Narrative Texts" (Amy Miller); "Statives in Walapai" (James E. Redden); "Vowel Length in Yavapai Revisited" (Kimberly Diane Thomas); and "Comparatives in Yuman Languages" (Pamela Munro). Contains approximately 125 references. (LB) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.