Events

Upcoming events

Event Information:

  • Tue
    10
    Dec
    2019

    DiaLing-BantUGent: Double Lecture by Lorenzo Maselli (Pisa) and Hilde Gunnink (Ghent)

    1:00 pmCamelot Room (Blandijnberg 2, 3rd floor)

    Lorenzo Maselli (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa): "The importance of integrated articulatory and acoustic analysis for consonant identification: Some preliminary data from Ethiosemitic and Jukunoid".

    Abstract:
    While it is generally believed that the first step towards the phonological description of a language is the study of minimal pairs and allophonic variation, it is also true that the exact identification of what sounds we deal with in natural languages requires some level of acoustic analysis. There is a variety of spectral phenomena which serve as reliable cues to the phonetic properties of sounds, but a lot of important distinctions are left untouched. A fairly well-known example is that of voicing in English: while VOT is a generally reliable cue for stops, low frequency energy (the so-called “voicing bar”) is a less clear marker for fricatives, although the opposition is arguably just as salient throughout the phonology (Abramson & Whalen 2017). I will take into account some less common from African languages as cases in point. Amharic ejectives are traditionally considered “weak” (i.e. less acoustically salient than, for example, Tigrinya ones; cf. Kingston 1985), but preliminary data from L2 acquisition points in the direction of some categorical restructuring in the absence of clearer articulatory evidence. Likewise, while there is a long-standing notion that functional load plays little phonological role (King 1967), it was recently claimed that “peripheral phonemes” seem to behave in a fairly different way than more common ones (Babel 2017). Even salient oppositions may require different phonological treatment on the basis of, e.g., morphological variation, as is the case for Italian /m/ vs /n/. The exact determination of what sounds take part in an alternation could benefit from more detailed production analysis. An example will be drawn from Win Lau, a poorly described Jukunoid language of Nigeria, where [+back] spread can yield an as yet phonetically undescribed uvular or epiglottal consonant before back vowels. From this angle, closer interaction between articulatory, perceptual and acoustic evidence seems to be desirable, even for field research.

    References
    Abramson, A. S., Whalen, D. H. (2017) “Voice Onset Time (VOT) at 50: Theoretical and Practical Issues in Measuring Voicing Distinctions”, Journal of Phonetics 63, 75–86
    Babel, A. M. (2017) “Aspirates and ejectives in Quechua-influenced Spanish”, Spanish in Context 14, n. 2, 159-185
    King, R. D. (1967) “Functional load and sound change”, Language 43, n. 4, 831-842
    Kingston, J. (1985) “The Phonetics and Phonology of the Timing of Oral and Glottal Events”, PhD dissertation, Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley

     

    Hilde Gunnink (UGent): "Contact between Bantu and Khoisan languages in southern Africa: morphological borrowing in Yeyi".

    Abstract: In southern Africa, there has been long-standing language contact between between Khoisan languages, some of which have been spoken since time immemorial, and Bantu languages, who arrived in the region in the last two millenia. The Bantu language that has been influenced most extensively by Khoisan contact is Yeyi, spoken in northwestern Botswana and northeastern Namibia. This Bantu language has acquired a large number of clicks, crosslinguistically highly uncommon phonemes that only occur natively in Khoisan languages and are therefore a clear indicator of language contact. In this paper, I investigate the extent of Khoisan influence in the morphology of Yeyi, showing that Yeyi has acquired certain bound affixes from neighbouring Khoisan languages. Such morphological borrowing is relatively uncommon in languages, and suggests that contact between Yeyi and Khoisan must have been fairly intensive, and, unlike many other Bantu-Khoisan contact situation in the subcontinent, may have involved a certain degree of proficiency in Khoisan languages on the part of the Yeyi speech community. As such the contact-induced changes attested in Yeyi can be used to shed light on the contact situation in which they arose, and provide a clearer picture of Bantu-Khoisan interactions.

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Past events

Event Information:

  • Thu
    27
    Apr
    2017

    The reconstruction of proto-Burmish: a case study in the computational implementation of the comparative method

    3:00 pmGrote Vergaderzaal (Blandijn, 3de verdieping)

    Prof. dr. Nathan Hill & Johann-Mattis List (School of Oriental and African Studies/CNRS):

    The reconstruction of proto-Burmish: a case study in the computational implementation of the comparative method

    The use of computational methods in comparative linguistics increases ever in popularity. Nonetheless, the fruits of such methods have so far been meagre when compared to the results the traditional comparative method. This paper explores a dataset of Burmish languages as a case study in improving the methodology of computational reconstruction. In particular are aim is not replace or modify the comparative method, but rather to implement the traditional method using computational tools.

    Our database comprises 400 concepts and their translational counterparts in a dozen Burmish langauges. Concepts are linked to the Concepticon (List et al. 2016), languages are linked to Glottolog. The primary data comes from Huáng et al. (1992.), as digitized by STEDT (Matisoff 2011), but we supplement this with other sources. We employ an iterative workflow combining the absolute rigor of a computer with the insightful intuitions of trained historical linguists. After providing all of the data with unambiguous phonetic interpretations, including the explicit encoding of underdetermined segments, the computer provides a preliminary alignment and reconstruction. These reconstructions are then adjusted with an eye to the relevant literature on proto-Burmish. The adjustments are made inside of the workflow system so that the algorithm and general methodology will be enhanced and made more robust.

    References
    Hammarström, Harald & Forkel, Robert & Haspelmath, Martin & Bank, Sebastian (2015): Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology (Available onlie at http://glottolog.org. Accessed on 2016-03-15).
    Huáng Bùfán 黄 布 凡 et al. eds. (1992). Zàng-Miǎn yǔzú yǔyán cíhuì 藏缅语族语言词汇. Běijīng: Zhōngyāng mínzú xuéyuàn chūbǎnshè 中央民族学院出版社.
    List, Johann-Mattis & Cysouw, Michael & Forkel, Robert (eds.) 2015. Concepticon. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at http://concepticon.clld.org, Accessed on 2016-03-15.)
    Matisoff, James (2011): STEDT. The Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus. University of California at Berkeley (available online at: http://stedt.berkeley.edu).

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