Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1987.

The English Noun Phrase in its Sentential Aspect

The phenomenon of language contact, and how it affects the structure of languages, has been of great interest to linguists. This study looks at how grammatical forms and structures evolve when speakers of two languages come into contact, and offers an interesting insight into the mechanism that induces people to transfer grammatical structures from one language to another. Drawing on findings from languages all over the world, Language Contact and Grammatical Change shows that the transfer of linguistic material across languages is quite regular and follows universal patterns of grammaticalization - contrary to previous claims that it is a fairly irregular process - and argues that internal and external explanations of language structure and change are in no way mutually exclusive. Engaging and informative, this book will be of great interest to sociolinguists, linguistic anthropologists, and all those working on grammaticalization, language contact, and language change.

https://assets.cambridge.org/97805216/08282/copyright/9780521608282_copyright.pdf

Language Contact and Grammatical Change

UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Report (2005) To appear in Bert Remijsen & Vincent J. van Heuven (eds), Special Thematic Issue of Phonology, “Between Stress and Tone” (submitted July 2005, revised November 2005) Word-Prosodic Typology Larry M. Hyman University of California, Berkeley If stress is monarchic, and length oligarchic, we may say that tone is democratic. (Greenberg & Kaschube 1976:9) Introduction Over the past several decades, many linguists have made pronouncements on how prosodic systems should be typologized. While no other area of phonological typology has attracted as much attention, it is not clear how much consensus there is on where things currently stand. Linguists sometimes speak or write on the subject with great conviction, but the views that are expressed often conflict on both general and specific issues, e.g. whether all human languages must have “stress”, whether the prosodic system of Tokyo Japanese is “tonal” vs. “accentual”, and so forth. In this paper I attempt to sort out some of the complexities of word-prosodic typology. I begin in §2 with a brief discussion of problems inherent in doing typology, particularly when applied to phonology. In the next two sections I give brief definitions of tone (§3) and stress-accent (§4), followed by a longer section (§5) which addresses the more problematic notions of “accent” and “pitch-accent”. I argue that the highest-level typological cut consists of identifying two prototypes, one with stress-accent, the other with tone. While it is possible to define these prototypes and establish a set of properties that typically cooccur in each, establishing a third pitch- accent prototype is more elusive. This is, in part, because languages which have been identified as pitch- accent freely “pick and choose” between the prototypical properties of stress-accent systems vs. tone systems. In other words, there are many intermediate word-prosodic systems which are not best seen as discrete types. While most of the discussion centers around typological issues resulting from structural or systemic difference, §6 addresses the role of phonetics in typologizing prosodic systems. §7 provides a brief conclusion. * Typology Since the concern of this study is to address the typology of word-prosodic systems, it seems appropriate to begin by asking the questions: What is typology? phonological typology? word-prosodic typology? Concerning the first question, Hagege (1992:7) provides a traditional definition of typology as “... a principled way of classifying the languages of the world by the most significant properties which distinguish one from another.” Vajda (2001) answers the second question in a similar fashion: “...it is possible to classify languages according to the phonemes they contain.... typology is the study of structural features across languages. Phonological typology involves comparing languages according to the number or type of sounds they contain.” It is significant that the above definitions speak of classifying LANGUAGES rather than subsystems of languages. In any case, only certain parameters impress linguists enough to establish language types: Within phonology, there is a class of “click languages”, but not “implosive languages”, “open syllable languages”, but not “onset languages” (meaning that every syllable has to have an onset). The question is whether there is any reality in classifying languages rather than analyzing the properties of the relevant subsystems. This issue is particularly pronounced in the area of prosody, where the practice of distinguishing “stress languages” from “tone languages” is well- established and has encouraged some to propose additional types: “pitch-accent language”, “restrictive tone language”, and so forth. However, as Greenberg (1974:14) notes, “the same data can be utilized either for a typology of linguistic properties or a typology of individual languages.” A major aim of this study is to show that there is considerably more diversity in prosodic systems than such labels have thus far distinguished. Most phonologists would probably agree that there is little, if any, difference between doing phonological typology vs. phonological theory. At the very least, it is unlikely that one can do insightful This paper was first presented as an invited talk at the conference Between Stress and Tone (BeST). I would like to thank Bert Remijsen and Vincent Van Heuven for the invitation and those in attendance for their helpful comments. I have particularly profited from extended discussions with Carlos Gussenhoven and Jose Hualde on the tone vs. accent question and good Bantu exchanges with David Odden and Gerard Philippson. I also would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their very thoughtful comments on the original manuscript.

Word-prosodic typology

In the previous sections I have presented a number of arguments in favor of the view that suffix ordering in Bantu is templatic in the default case. In almost all Bantu languages, causative and applicative suffixes must appear in a single fixed order. Where suffixes occur in two different orders, e.g. CAUS and REC, one sequence is licensed by the general CARP template, while the other is attributable to a specific MIRROR constraint referring to that sequence. The striking conclusion to drawn from this study is that there is no evidence that Bantu suffix ordering is driven by semantic compositionality or by a general Mirror Principle. Instead, these pressures are low-ranked in Bantu and, when present, have a limited effect on the overall system, as we have seen.27 That Bantu suffix ordering is largely templatic is also supported by phonological conditions which enter into the realization of suffix combinations.28 As I have also implied, the elaborated synchronic CARCP template in (28) is in part arbitrary, the product of history. This conclusion thus challenges the fundamental approach of those who have cited Bantu derivational suffixes in support of a non-arbitrary relation between morphology and syntax, or between morphology and semantics. Whether or not such relations occur elsewhere, Bantu suffixation provides strong evidence for the autonomy of morphology.

/pdf/suffix-ordering-in-bantu-a-morphocentric-approach-34rfc7b63o.pdf

Suffix ordering in Bantu: a morphocentric approach

Written by an international team of experts, this comprehensive volume presents grammatical analyses of individual Bantu languages, comparative studies of their main phonetic, phonological and grammatical characteristics and overview chapters on their history and classification.

It is estimated that some 300 to 350 million people, or one in three Africans, are Bantu speakers. Van de Velde and Bostoen bring together their linguistic expertise to produce a volume that builds on Nurse and Philippson’s first edition.

The Bantu Languages, 2nd edition is divided into two parts; Part 1 contains 11 comparative chapters, and Part 2 provides grammar sketches of 12 individual Bantu languages, some of which were previously undescribed. The grammar sketches follow a general template that allows for easy comparison.

Thoroughly revised and updated to include more language descriptions and the latest comparative insights.

New to this edition:

• new chapters on syntax, tone, reconstruction and language contact

• 12 new sketch grammars

• thoroughly updated chapters on phonetics, aspect-tense-mood and classification

• exhaustive catalogue of known languages with essential references

This unique resource remains the ideal reference for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of Bantu linguistics and languages. It will be of interest to researchers and anyone with an interest in historical linguistics, linguistic typology and grammatical analysis.

The Bantu Languages

Bantu grammatical reconstructions

De tonen van subjunktief en imperatief in het Bantoe

This article is being published äs a memorial to Professor A. E. Meeussen, who died on February 9, 1978, at the age of sixty-five. It is a translation (with minor editorial corrections) of bis article \"Klinkerlengte in het Oerbantoe\", which originally appeared in Dutch in Kongo-Overzee 20:423-31 (1954) [reprinted here in translation with the permission of the editor]. This particular article has been chosen for translation and re-publication because, though it marks an important Step in compaiative Bantu studies, it has generally been inaccessible. It also represents a fine example of Meeussen's numerous works: original in content and concise in form, combining morphological and phonological analysis, and leading to substantial improvements in the reconstruction of Proto-Bantu. While the article itself has often been neglected, its results have been incorporated in all subsequent major works on comparative Bantu. Twenty-five years later, it still remains the most comprehensive Statement on its subject. Interestingly, the provocative question with which the article closes has so fax found little response. The suspiciously high degree to which vowels in ProtoBantu appear to be conditioned by the morphological composition of the words in which they occur raises doubts about the historical Status of the remaining long vowels. Nevertheless, to this day, comparisons within Bantu have still failed to provide a solution to the problem. [Paul Newman and Thilo C. Schadeberg]

Vowel Length in Proto-Bantu

Possible Linguistic Africanisms.

On the basis of the data presented in Shibatani (1972) it is possible to re-analyse the Japanese accentual system as purely tonal, although this tone system is subject to fairly strong restrictions, even in depth. In the following, first the different types of morphemes will be presented, with their systematic tone set up by way of initial hypothesis; the second hypothesis will be a set of ordered, non-cyclical rules; finally the restrictions on the systematic tones will be examined.

Japanese Accentuation as a Restricted Tone System

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A. E. Meeussen

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