Consonant clusters and verb stems: making sense of distributional gaps

This paper investigates an apparent gap in the distribution of nasal + stop clusters, as well as certain aspects of the diachronic emergence of this gap, in Latin and Hungarian. The phenomenon investigated is the absence of a frequent consonant cluster ([nt] in Latin, [ŋk] in Hungarian) from a position at the end of verb stems. An important property of the missing consonant cluster in both languages is that it also functions as a person marker in the verbal inflection. It is argued that in Latin this gap is functionally motivated: it represents a case of syntagmatic pressure to avoid repeating the same sequence at too close an interval. In Hungarian, by contrast, the absence of [ŋk] from verb stem-final position is arguably unrelated to the identical phonological form of the 1Plural affix and is simply the result of accidents of diachronic development

Vṛddhi traces in Hindi denominal derivation

This paper considers vṛddhi as an inherited feature in Modern Standard Hindi. As a phenomenon, vṛddhi is most commonly discussed in reference to Old Indo‐Aryan (OIA), particularly with a focus on inflectional patterns in Sanskrit. However, the inherited pattern in New Indo‐Aryan (NIA) languages presents specific analytical challenges and its status as a morpho‐phonological feature in the present‐day languages is not straightforward to establish. In this paper, the focus is given to the operation of vṛddhi in denominal derivations in both OIA and present‐day Hindi. This leads to a discussion of the evolution of vowel systems in the history of Indo‐Aryan. Regarding the question of how synchronic vṛddhi‐alternations can be accounted for theoretically, I present two possibilities: (i) that vṛddhi constitutes a phonologically active process of vowel lowering/tensing in Hindi; and (ii), that vṛddhi is a suppletive phenomenon synchronically, and thus, not derived by phonological rule

On the PIE root-structure constraint prohibiting repeated consonants

This paper confronts and resolves the problem of apparent exceptions to the constraint prohibiting the co-occurrence of identical consonants in both syllable margins of the PIE root: schematically, †… Ci … E … Ci …, where † indicates the prohibition of the root structure following it, Ci = the identical consonant, E = the ablauting vowel, and … = optional additional consonants in the syllable margins. In advancement of previous work addressing this problem — most recently exemplified in Cooper (2009), Corbeau (2013) and Weiss (2020) — it eliminates several potential exceptions to the constraint and proposes that, once a cross-linguistic absence-of-contrast principle is taken into account which determines the relation of laryngeal features (glottalization, aspiration, and voicing) to the syllable margins that contain them, no clear-cut exceptions remain

Bangime: secret language, language isolate, or language island? A computer‐assisted case study

We report the results of a qualitative and quantitative lexical comparison between Bangime and neighboring languages. Our results indicate that the status of the language as an isolate remains viable, and that Bangime speakers have had different levels of language contact with other Malian populations at various points throughout their history. Bangime speakers, the Bangande, claim Dogon ancestry. The Bangande portray this connection to Dogon through the fact that the language has both recent borrowings from neighboring Dogon varieties and more rooted vocabulary from Dogon languages spoken to the east from whence the Bangande claim to have come. Evidence of multilayered long‐term contact is clear: lexical items have even permeated even core vocabulary. However, strikingly, the Bangande are seemingly unaware that their language is not intelligible with any Dogon variety. We hope that our fiindings will influence future studies on the reconstruction of the Dogon languages and other neighboring language varieties to shed light on the mysterious history of Bangime and its speakers

Frequency-predicted shifts independent of word-specific phonetic details

Some sound changes seem to proceed at different rates depending on lexical frequency; these are often interpreted as reflecting phonetically detailed exemplar memories, with changes spreading via lexical diffusion (Pierrehumbert 2002; Bybee 2012). However, such patterns do not necessarily require word-specific phonetic details. Variation associated with lexical frequency also exists when there is no evidence for a change in progress, which might be explained by the process of lexical access: Higher lexical frequency facilitates activation, causing faster and more reduced productions (Gahl et al. 2012, Kahn & Arnold 2012, Jurafsky et al. 2002). This work examines how repeated exposure to particular words influences listeners’ category boundary between aspirated and unaspirated stops in those words. Listeners’ VOT category boundary is lowered after exposure to shortened VOT stimuli and also after exposure to lengthened VOT stimuli. These results suggest that frequency-related sound change can largely be explained by frequency directly influencing reduction in phonetic implementation and perceptual access. The size of the effect differed based on the acoustic characteristics of the exposure stimuli; this may suggest a role of word-specific phonetic details, but could also reflect different levels of activation due to the prototypicality of the stimuli

Change in Buchan vowel harmony

English is not typically considered to be a vowel harmony language, and yet one of its cousins, Buchan Scots, clearly shows vowel-harmonic patterns. This involves a type of height harmony which is blocked by certain consonants and consonant clusters (which do not form a natural class). The front vowel /ɪ/ has historically functioned as a high vowel but seems to have changed into a non-high vowel in the inland dialectal variant. This article considers whether this change has also occurred in the costal variant of the dialect. From newly collected data, I observe that /ɪ/ continues to behave as a high vowel in the Buchan Scots spoken on the coast. However, there are some indications that the group of blocking consonants is shifting to include simple nasals and /r/. While simple nasals have been documented as blocking consonants in some varieties, /r/ has not

What are cognates?

The popularity of computational methods in historical linguistics has primarily been motivated by mere access to the new methods themselves, rather than by looking for tools to solve problems. Investigators have looked for problems with which to showcase their tools. This dynamic is one reason why eye‐catching but long solved problems, such as the homeland of the Indo‐Europeans (Gray & Atkinson 2003) have received more attention than genuinely unsolved or controversial questions, such as how to incorporate the Hittite ḫi‐conjugation into an understanding of the Indo‐European verbal system (Jasanoff 2003). One assumption of Bayesian methods is that cognacy can be conceptualized as binary. Although this is how historical linguists themselves often speak, it is not how they work. The goal of this essay is to more precisely delimit what is meant when we call two words cognate, to emphasize that this is not a binary relation, but to suggest that this relationship can still be modeled formally

On comparative Proto-Mǐn *Dʰ- and putting conjectural morphology in its place

Recent conjectural morphological (‘word family’) approaches to early Chinese assign the aspirated causative verbs of the Mǐn group to Jerry Norman’s comparatively reconstructed Proto-Mǐn voiced aspirated *Dʰ-, proposing on this basis that *Dʰ- reflects prefixation of Old Chinese provenance. In this article, I argue that comparative phonological work on Mǐn has never suggested *Dʰ- for these items. In this case as elsewhere, morphological models can be of use but require grounding in comparative results

Phonological units for phonological change: synchrony shall provide them

The question of what types of units and domains are needed in order to capture phonological change is a reasonable one to ask. To answer this question, however, we first need to properly define how we understand phonological change, and the definition that we adopt for that clearly depends on the phonological framework that is assumed. I consider several influential frameworks here and then come to the conclusion that the same condition holds for all of them: change can only be described in terms of the same units (and domains) as are used for synchronic description. This leads to the following conclusion: the set of units for phonological change is a subset of the set of units that are needed for synchronic phonological description. However, it is also unlikely that some units needed for synchronic description can be fully ignored for all descriptions of changes, which leads us to the conclusion that the set of units that are needed for phonological change is also a superset of that set. The sets are thus equal: the phonological units needed for synchronic description are the units needed to account for phonological change, and the question above is meaningless

On the treatment of super-heavy syllables in Arabic Dialects: an Optimality Theoretic approach to historical typology

This study provides a historical typological Optimality Theoretic analysis of the treatment of potential super-heavy syllables in six Arabic varieties: Hijazi, Egyptian, Emirati, Kuwaiti, Algerian, and Palestinian. The analysis in this study uses the same violable OT constraints for all languages, and the differences between the grammars are represented by the order in which the constraints are ranked relative to one another. The similarities and differences between these varieties are examined from the point of view of one approach to historical OT (Cho 1998), which states that individual pairs of constraints may be ranked or unranked in relation to one another, one operation at a time, meaning that switching the order of two constraints takes two steps historically. According to Cho (1998, 45), “each step of a sound change should be viewed as a change in the ranking of constraints.” Cho’s approach in detecting the historical typological differences between varieties by counting the steps of constraint reranking is compatible with a common approach to historical linguistics. Specifically, Wichmann et al. (2010) provide a quantitative method for determining the geographic homeland of a group of related languages, which takes into account a simple linguistic-difference metric and the geographic distance between the languages. Using constraint reranking in place of Wichmann et al.’s linguistic-difference metric to calculate the homeland of Arabic dialects results in an area around Hijaz as the homeland of Arabic dialects, since Hijazi, Egyptian and Emirati dialects form a cluster of geographically close, but linguistically diverse dialects