The Language of a Lost Russian Region in the Historical Context of Russia’s Eastward Expansion

The article was submitted on 10.01.2020.This paper presents the results of a pilot field study of the Russian language of a group of East Siberian old settlers in the context of their ethnic and cultural history and their role in Russian expansion eastward, including Alaska between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From a linguistic perspective, the regional features of the old settlers’ Russian language testify to the cultural and historical processes that involved various groups of the Russianspeaking population of Eastern Siberia. This paper aims at comparing these linguistic materials to the data on the Russian language of Alaska found by the authors, which may help clarify the historical processes that shaped the Russian linguistic and cultural landscape of Alaska, the only overseas Russian region. Linguistic data from Siberia are checked against those of Alaskan Russian – a language of intercultural communication in Alaska from the beginning of the Russian America period (mid-eighteenth century) and through to the mid-twentieth century. The research on Alaskan Russian is based on the variant spoken in Ninilchik (Kenai Peninsula) that has survived until the present time. The lexical, grammatical, and phonological features of Ninilchik Russian demonstrate both contact features of this idiom and its peculiarities as a variant of Russian. This description is followed by data from the language of the so-called “teamster old settlers” from the Pokrovsk region in Yakutia. It is known that Russian old settlers from Siberia, and especially teamster old settlers, made up a considerable part among the Siberian Russians who were coming to Alaska in the nineteenth century. However, drawing on a comparison of the two sets of linguistic data, the authors conclude that the dialect they speak is quite different from the varieties of Russian spoken in Alaska.Представлены результаты пилотного полевого исследования русского языка старожилов северо-востока Сибири в контексте их этнокультурной истории и роли в реализации российской экспансии на восток (включая Аляску) в XVIII–XIX вв. Региональные особенности русского языка старожилов рассматриваются как свидетельство культурно-исторических процессов, в которые были включены различные группы русскоязычного населения Северо-Восточной Сибири. Цель настоящей статьи состоит в том, чтобы сопоставить эти данные с имеющимися у авторов данными по русскому языку Аляски, что могло бы пролить свет на исторические процессы, которые сформировали русский языковой и культурный ландшафт Аляски, единственного «заморского» региона России. Языковой материал, полученный в Сибири, сравнивается с аляскинским русским – языком межкультурной коммуникации на Аляске с первых дней Русской Америки (середина XVIII в.) и до середины XX в. Представленные исследования аляскинского русского базируются на том его варианте, который до последнего времени сохранялся в пос. Нинильчик (Кенайский полуостров). Краткое описание лексических, грамматических и фонетических черт нинильчикского русского демонстрирует и контактные черты этого идиома, и его специфику как варианта русского языка. Это описание сопоставляется с данными языка так называемых «ямщицких старожилов» (Покровский район, Якутия). Известно, что представители русских старожилов Сибири, и в особенности ямщицких старожилов, составляли значительную часть тех россиян, которые прибывали в течение XIX в. на Аляску из Сибири. Но на основании сопоставленных в статье языковых данных авторы делают вывод, что диалект, на котором говорят покровские старожилы, значительно отличается от разновидности русского языка, представленного на Аляске.The article was prepared within the framework of the HSE University Basic Research Program.The research underlying this article was supported by a RSF grant 17–18–01649

Vowel-Length Contrasts and Phonetic Cues to Stress: An Investigation of their Relation

The functional load hypothesis of Berinstein (1979) put forward the idea that languages which use a suprasegmental property (duration, F0) contrastively will not use it to realise stress. The functional load hypothesis is often cited when stress correlates are discussed, both when it is observed that the language under discussion follows the hypothesis and when it fails to follow it. In the absence of a more wide-ranging assessment of how frequently languages do or do not conform to the functional load hypothesis, it is unknown whether it is an absolute, a strong tendency, a weak tendency or unsupported. The results from a database of reported stress correlates and use of contrastive duration for 140 languages are presented and discussed. No support for the functional load hypothesis is found

No Stress System Requires Recursive Feet

A recursive foot is one in which a foot is embedded inside another foot of the same type: e.g., iambic (iaσ(iaσσ́)) or trochaic (tr(trσ́σ)σ). Recent work has used such feet to model stress systems with full or partial ternary rhythm, in which stress falls on every third syllable or mora. I show here that no stress system requires recursive feet, that phonological processes in such languages likely don't either, and that the notion of recursive foot is theoretically suspect.Un peu mètric recursiu és aquell que està incrustat dins d'un altre peu del mateix tipus: p. ex., un peu recursiu iàmbic (iaσ(iaσσ́)) o un peu recursiu trocaic (tr(trσ́σ)σ). Alguns treballs recents han fet servir aquest tipus de peu per modelar sistemes accentuals amb ritme ternari total o parcial, en què l'accent recau sobre cada tercera síl·laba o mora. En aquest article mostro que cap sistema accentual requereix peus recursius, que els processos fonològics d'aquestes suposades llengües no hi fan referència, i que la noció de peu recursiu és sospitosa des d'un punt de vista teòric

Etymological notes on Aleut (III). With methodological notes on (Eskimo-Aleut) historical linguistics

[EN] The goal of this contribution is twofold: on the one hand, to review two relatively recent contributions in the field of Eskimo-Aleut historical linguistics in which it is proposed that Eskimo-Aleut languages are related genealogically to Wakashan (Holst 2004) and?/or Nostratic (Krougly-Enke 2008). These contributions can be characterized by saying that their authors have taken little care to be diligent and responsible in the application of the comparative method, and that their familiarity with the languages involved is insufficient. Eskimo-Aleut languages belong to a very exclusive group of language families that have been (and still are) used, sometimes compulsively, in the business of so-called “long-range comparisons”. Those carrying out such studies are very often unaware of the most basic facts regarding the philological and linguistic traditions of those languages, as a result of what mountains of very low quality works with almost no-relevancy for the specialist grow every year to the desperation of the scientific community, whose attitude toward them ranges from the most profound indifference to the toughest (and most explicit) critical tone. Since Basque also belongs to this group of “compare-with-everything-you-come- across” languages, it is my intention to provide the Basque readership with a sort of “pedagogical case” to show that little known languages, far from underrepresented in the field, already have a very long tradition in historical and comparative linguistics, i.e. nobody can approach them without previous acquaintance with the materials. Studies dealing with the methodological inappropriateness of the Moscow School’s Nostratic hypothesis or the incorrectness of many of the proposed new taxonomic Amerindian subfamilies (several of them involving the aforementioned Wakashan languages), that is to say, the frameworks on which Krougly-Enke and Holst work, respectively, are plenty (i.a. Campbell 1997: 260-329, Campbell & Poser 2008: 234-96), therefore there is no reason to insist once more on the very same point. This is the reason why I will not discuss per se Eskimo-Aleut–Wakashan or Eskimo-Aleut–Nostratic. On the contrary, I will focus attention upon very concrete aspects of Krougly-Enke and Holst´s proposals, i.e. when they work on “less ambitious” problems, for example, dealing with the minutiae of internal facts or analyzing certain words from the sole perspective of Eskimo-Aleut materials (in other words, those cases in which even they do not invoke the ad hoc help of Nostratic stuff). I will try to explain why some of their proposals are wrong, demonstrate where the problem lies, and fix it if possible. In doing so, I will propose new etymologies in an attempt at showing how we may proceed. The main difference between this and handbook examples lies in the reality of what we are doing: this is a pure etymological exercise from beginning to end. I will try to throw a bit of light on a couple of problematic questions regarding Aleut historical phonology, demonstrating how much work should be done at the lowest level of the Eskimo-Aleut pyramid; it is technically impossible to reach the peak of the pyramid without having completed the base. As far as Aleut is regarded, I will mainly profit not only from the use of the traditional philological analysis of Aleut (and, eventually, of Eskimo) materials, but also of diachronic typology, bringing into discussion what in my opinion seems useful, and in some cases I think decisive, parallels. It is worth noting that this paper makes up yet another part of a series of exploratory works dealing with etymological aspects of the reconstruction of Proto-Eskimo-Aleut, with special emphasis on Aleut (vid. i.a. Alonso de la Fuente 2006/2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2010a), whose main goal is to become the solid basis for an etymological dictionary of the Aleut language, currently in progress

When more is more : the mixed language Light Warlpiri amalgamates source language phonologies to form a near-maximal inventory

This paper presents a combined analysis of the perception and production study of the mixed language Light Warlpiri (Australia), which systematically combines elements of Warlpiri, Kriol and English. The perception and production results suggest that the Light Warlpiri phonological inventory consists of a voiced and voiceless series of stops and affricates, differentiated by Voice Onset Time (VOT) word-initially and by Constriction Duration (CD) medially, by incorporating English-like VOT differentiation and Constriction duration differences found in Kriol and also in a number of traditional Indigenous Australian languages. The results also show that Light Warlpiri speakers perceptually differentiate stops and fricatives at the same POA, but that voicing distinctions in fricatives are more difficult to discriminate than voicing distinctions in stops. The large phonological inventory of Light Warlpiri combines most features of the source languages, allowing speakers of Light Warlpiri to maintain sufficient phonemic contrasts to accommodate vocabulary items in Light Warlpiri sourced from English/Kriol as well as Warlpiri

The diachronic emergence of retroflex segments in three languages

The present study shows that though retroflex segments can be considered articulatorily marked, there are perceptual reasons why languages introduce this class into their phoneme inventory. This observation is illustrated with the diachronic developments of retroflexes in Norwegian (North- Germanic), Nyawaygi (Australian) and Minto-Nenana (Athapaskan). The developments in these three languages are modelled in a perceptually oriented phonological theory, since traditional articulatorily-based features cannot deal with such processes

On the universal structure of human lexical semantics

How universal is human conceptual structure? The way concepts are organized in the human brain may reflect distinct features of cultural, historical, and environmental background in addition to properties universal to human cognition. Semantics, or meaning expressed through language, provides direct access to the underlying conceptual structure, but meaning is notoriously difficult to measure, let alone parameterize. Here we provide an empirical measure of semantic proximity between concepts using cross-linguistic dictionaries. Across languages carefully selected from a phylogenetically and geographically stratified sample of genera, translations of words reveal cases where a particular language uses a single polysemous word to express concepts represented by distinct words in another. We use the frequency of polysemies linking two concepts as a measure of their semantic proximity, and represent the pattern of such linkages by a weighted network. This network is highly uneven and fragmented: certain concepts are far more prone to polysemy than others, and there emerge naturally interpretable clusters loosely connected to each other. Statistical analysis shows such structural properties are consistent across different language groups, largely independent of geography, environment, and literacy. It is therefore possible to conclude the conceptual structure connecting basic vocabulary studied is primarily due to universal features of human cognition and language use.Comment: Press embargo in place until publicatio

Phonetics in the Field

it seems generally the case that little detail on specifically phonetic matters is provided in a typical grammar, nor is there much use of phonetic techniques to provide insights on other matters, such as adding precision to observations of phonological alternations or testing whether supposed syntactic ambiguities are actually disambiguated at the phonetic level. While syntactic patterns are documented with example sentences, often from natural discourse or texts, the phonetic facts are rarely if ever documented by the presentation of hard evidence. In order to see if this impression was justified a survey of twenty grammars published or submitted as doctoral dissertations in the period of a dozen years from 1989 to 2000 was conducted

Measurement of the VOT of voiceless plosives: multiple bursts in Western Andalusian Spanish

Multiple bursts (MBs) of plosives have been frequently reported but not sufficiently quantified. This study sought to examine experimentally MBs in a Spanish variety and to reveal the role of MBs when analyzing the VOT of voiceless plosives. 567 productions of /p t k/ by twenty-one speakers were analyzed. Findings indicated that two VOT measurement methods in the presence of MBs produced substantially different VOT values. MBs were also conditioned to different degrees by place of articulation, vowel height, and speech rate. This study has significant implications for research on VOT of voiceless plosives