Bu çalışmanın amacı Bask dilindeki ünsüzlerin kullanım sıklıklarını belirlemek ve Bask dilinin ses dizisini diğer dillerin ses dizisi ile karşılaştırmaktır. Ünsüzlerin kullanım sıklıkları diller arasındaki tipolojik yakınlığın göstergelerinden biridir. Bask dilindeki ünsüzlerin kullanım sıklığı bulunduktan sonra bu dil ile diğer diller arasındaki tipolojik yakınlık, uzaklık belirlenebilecektir

Yuri Tambovtsev

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Phonological sim ilarity betvveen Basque and other world languages based on the frequency o f occurrence o f  certain typoiogical consonantal featuresYıtri Tambovtsev Novosibirsk Pedagogicai UniversityBu çalışmanın amacı Bask dilindeki ünsüzlerin kullanım sıklıklarını belirlemek ve Bask dilinin ses dizisini diğer dillerin ses dizisi ile karşılaştırmaktır. Ünsüzlerin kullanım sıklıkları diller arasındaki tipolojik yakınlığın göstergelerinden biridir. Bask dilindeki ünsüzlerin kullanım sıklığı bulunduktan sonra bu dil ile diğer diller arasındaki tipolojik yakınlık'uzaklık belirlenebileeektir.The aim of the preseııt typoiogical study o f the Basque language based on the frequency of occurrence ofconsonants is to compare its sound chain to sound chains of various vvorld languages. Then. one can construct typoiogical distances betvveen Basque and other vvorld languages.The structure o f the frequency of occurrence of consonants in the speech sound chain is a good clue of understanding the typoiogical closeness of languages. Typoiogical investigation of human languages involves the task of the analysis of their speech chains by a human being or Computer. A human being can reaiise that this or that language sounds closer to his ovvn nati'.e language without understanding the meaning. At the stage when it is hard to teach Computer to understand a human language, it is quiîe possible to make it recognise the sound closeness of a language to this or that language on the basis of the analysis of its sound speech chain. We have computed the firequency of phonernic occurrence of 1 19 vvorld languages as a teaching sample for the Computer. Then we took Basque as a token language. Actually, Basque was chosen for only one reason. It vvas taken up mainly because Basque as vvell as Japanese, Korean, Ainu, Burushaski, Nivh (Gilyak). Yukaghir are considered to be isolated languages, i.e. languages that do not belong to the known ianguage families. In fact, they may be relics o f form er family of languages (Crystal, 1992:425). Basque is a fair example of an isolate language. Efforts have been made to shovv a relationship vvith Caucasian languages, North African languages, and Iberian, but none has been convincing (Crystal, 1992:40). Merritt Ruhlen considers John Bengtson to be correct to inciude Basque, Burushaski and Shumerian into the new Dene-Caucasian family (Ruhlen. 1994:25).R. L. Trask believes Basque to be unquestionably the last surviving pre-Indo- European language in Europe. He links Basque vvith the dead Aquitanian language (Trask, 2001:72). We tried to find out the distances betvveen vvorld languages vvith the help of Computer in order to achieve the optimal and unbiased results. The70 Dilbilim Araştırmaları 2003Computer had to measure the distances betvveen a chosen language and the rest of the languages in the set. Then, the Computer had to put it in a matrix: closer to some languages and far away from the others. We have chosen Basque and the other isolated languages (e.g. Basque, Yukaghir, Nivh, Korean and Japanese) because they are not categorically assigned to any language family. İt is interesting to compare hovv the Computer and hovv different linguists place them in different language families and super-families: Indo-European, Turkic, Finno-Ugric, Tungus-Manchurian, Uralic, Ural-Altaic, Paleo-Asiatic; Sino-Tibetan; Austro-Asiatic; ete. We measure the distances betvveen Basque and the other vvorld languages in the same way we did it vvith Japanese (Tambovtsev, 1988:19).W e believe that under the circumstances even some traits and hints from the typological point may help to fınd the languages genetically related to Basque (Tambovtsev, 2001:83-85).İn this study vve have used the procedures that are usually used in pattern recognition. First of ali, one must choose the features vvhich should be necessary and sufficient (Zagoruiko, 1972). We believe the chosen features to be the most informative from the phonetic point of vievv.Basque, as any other human language, has a specifıc strueture of the speech sound chain. It can be distinguished by its strueture from any other language. Every language has a unique strueture of distributions of speech sounds in its phonemic chain. The distribution of Basque vovvels vvill not be considered until the second stage of the investigation, that is, if the data on the frequency of occurrence of consonants vvill not allovv us to distinguish betvveen the languages under investigation. Let us point out that consonants bear the semantic load in the vvord, not vovvels. Therefore, it is more possible to understand the meaning of the message by consonants, rather by vovvels. Some vvriting systems (Hebrevv, Arabic, ete.) are a fair example of that since they denote only consonants. Hovvever, if  vve fail to recognise and distinguish tvvo languages by consonantal groups, then vve resort to the second stage of investigation, in vvhich the frequency strueture of occurrence of vovvels in the speech sound chain is taken into consideration. While comparing languages, it is necessary to keep to the principle of commensurability. Having it in mind, it is not possible to compare languages on the basis of the frequency of occurrence of separate phonemes, because the sets of phonemes in languages are usually different.The articulatory features may serve as the basic features in phono-typological reasoning.First of ali, it is the classification of consonants according to the vvork of the aetive organ of speech or place of articulation (4 features: labial, front, palatal, velar).Secondly, it is the classification from the point of vievv of the manner of articulation or the type of the obstruction (3 features: sonorant, occlusive, fricative).Yur i Tambovısev 71Thirdly, it is the classification according to the \vork of the vocal cords (1 feature: voiced).In this way, 8 basic features are obtained: 1) labial; 2) front; 3) mediolingual or palatal; 4) back or velar; 5) sonorant; 6 ) occlusive; 7) fricative; and 8 ) voiced consonants.It is necessary to mention that the total of these 8 features embrace ali the main space of features vvhich serve as the fundamental for the characteristics of consonants from the point of vievv of its production in any human language. Every language is being characterised as a point in the 8 dimensiona! space. This is why it is important to take the features vvhich do not cross, i.e. vvhich can be derived from one another. Our 8 features comprise the complete articulation system. One can hardly find any other basic articulatory feature. This is vvhy one can be sure that our typological classification is not just one more arbitrary typological classification of languages since it involves ali the basic articulatory features of consonants.One should take the values of the frequency of occurrence of these 8 features in the speech chain of Japatıese and compare them to those of the other languages. On the basis of the "chi-square" test and Euclidean distance, vve have developed our ovvn method of measuring the phono-typological distances betvveen languages (Tambovtsev, 2001). Hovvever, here our measurements use the vvell-knovvn formula of Euclidean distance:D = V x 1 - x 2 f  + (y 1 - y2)2 + (z I - z2)2 + ete.vvherex 1 ■ is the trequeney of occurrence of the fîrst feature in the first ianguage; in this case the frequency of labial consonants in Basque;x2 - is the frequency of occurrence of the first feature (labials) in the second language (any other \vorld language);yİ - is the frequency of occurrence of the second feature (dentals and alveolars) in the first language;v2 •• is the freauency of occurrence of the second feature (dentals and alveolars) in the second language;zl - is the frequeney of occurrence of the third feature (palatals) in the first language;z2 - is the frequency of occurrence of the third feature (palatals) in the second language; ete.in this way Basque is compared to ali the languages of the vvorld taken for this study.Therefore, one can see that this formula allovvs us to take any number of features and any number of languages. İt is very important that the number of features and languages is not limited. Hovvever, novv one should bear in mind that it takes into account the frequency of occurrence of the 8 basic consonantal groups mentioned above and builds up the overvvhelming mosaic of the language sound picture.We could not find the data on the frequency of occurrence of Basque language;72 Dilbilim Araştırmaları 2003that is vvhy vve think that it is calculated for the fîrst time.We computed several Basque texts from two books. The first of them is "Emakume biboteduna" - The woman with a moustache (Xabier Montoia, 1992) vvith 3 tales in it and the second one is "Sei İpuin Amodiozko”- Six stories o f love (Xabier Mendiguren Elizegi, 1992) vvith 6 tales.We thank tvvo native speakers of Basque, Kepa Sarasola and Maite Oronoz, for their help and useful advice.We defined Basque phonological segment inventory the same as lan Maddieson (Maddieson, 1981:168) and R. L. Trask (Trask, 2001:73-74).The first text that we computed vvas "Amusa Margarita" by Xabier Mendiguren Elizegi. After computing the first Basque text, we received the following results:Frequene\ % to ali phonemes % to consonamsLabial: 1021 5.09 9.69Front: 7496 37.36 71.15Palatal: 100 0.50 0.95Velar: 1919 9.56 18.21Sonorant: 4458 22.22 42.32Oeclusive: 4233 21.10 40.18Frieative: 1845 9.19 17.50Voiced: 2480 12.36 23.54Consonant total - 10536 phonemes or 52.51%.Vouel total - 9530 phonemes or 47.49%.Consonantal coefficient. i.e. ratio of consonants to vowels - 1.11 Basque first linguistic sample - 20 066 phonemes.The frequency of occurrence of Basque phonemes in the greater sample (130 550 phonemes) of 9 different stories shovved simiiar results.After computing the greater Basque sample, we received the follovving results:Labial:Frequency7470% to ali phonemes 5.72% to consonants 11.13Front: 46857 35.89 69.87Palatal: 602 0.47 0.92Velar: 12130 9.29 18.08Sonorant: 26410 20.23 39.38Occlusive: 28613 21.92 42.67Frieative: 12036 9.22 17.95Voiced: 17046 13.06 25.42Consonant total - 67059 phonemes or 51.37%.Vouel total - 63491 phonemes or 48.63%.Consonantal coefiieient. i.e. ratio of consonants to vo\vels - 1.06 Basque linguistic sample - 130 550 phonemes.First of ali, vve measured the phonostatistical distances betvveen Basque and 40Yari TambovtsevIndo-European languages. One can see the details in Tab. 1. The typologically closest language is Romany (7.8()), the farthest-Vedic (21.09). The closest Finno- Ugric language is Ludikov diaîect o f Karel (6.90). the farthest-the Northern diaiect of Mansi (23.30), see fab. 2. Turkic languages seeırı to be the closest to Basque: Kazakh (5.31), Tofalar (5.96), Tuvin (6.83), Altai-Chalkan (7.00), Shor (7.04), Kirgiz (7.09). Uzbek (7.42). Hakas (7.70). Tatar-Kazan (7.73). Turkish (7.84). Ten Turkic languages are closer to Basque. then the closest Indo-European language- Romany (Tab. 3). Mongolian ianguages are also close enough: Mongolian (7.28). Buriat (8.48) and Kalnıyk (8.81). Tungus-Manchurian languages seem to be rather far avvay (Tab. 4): the nearest Nanai (12.51). Paleo-Asiatic languages are also far away (Tab. 5): the closest Koriak (18.07). The isolated languages have the follovving order: Korean (9.64), Ket (13.05), Yukaghir (20.43) and Nivh (24.29).İn order to see if the distances given above are small enough. iet us compare them to the distances between some other languages.İt is interesting to find out that Korean value of the consonantal coeffieient obtained here (1.16) is close to those of Japanese (1.08). Oroch ( 1.00), Nanaj (1.02) and Ulch (1.10). which ali belong to the Tungus-Manchurian language family (Tambovtsev, 1985).Having compared Korean and Japanese to some languages bv the formula of Euclidean distance, \ve received the follo\ving phono-typological distances: Korean- Baraba T atar (5.19); Korean-Turkish (5.63); Korean-Ujgur (5.69). It is interesting to find out that the plıonostatistical distance to japanese is greater Ihan to the three Turkic languages mentioned above: Korean-Japanese (6 .6 6 ). On the other hand, it is Invportant to see that Japanese is also close to the Turkic ianguages: Japanese-Ujgur (6.77). One can see that Korean is closer to the Turkic languages than Japanese. Let’s compare some distances: Korean-Jakut (7.58) and Japanese-Jakııt (8.26): Karean-Kazakh (7.52) and Japanese Kazakh (9.02); Korean-Turkish (5.63) and Japanese-Turkish (9.05); Korean-Baraba Tatar (5.19) and Japanese-Baraba Tatar (9.76); Korean-Uzbek (S.6 7) and Japanese-Uzbek (10.63); Korean Kazan Tatar(7.52) and Japanese-Kazan Tatar (11.07) and so on. İt is interesting to measure the phonological distances betvveen Korean, Japanese, Ket, Nivh, Yukhagir and other isolated languages to American indian languages since some scholars consider it possible that they are related. We obtained the follovving ordered series betvveen Japanese and Korean on the one hand. and some of the American İndian languages on the other. the fırst number is tor Japanese, the second for Korean: Siriano (1 1.71- 12.20), Inga (11.72-9.13), Nahuatl (12.73-10.94), Marn (13.47-14.66), Kadiweu (13.52-15.69), Cofan (13.57-18.48), Guambian (14.91-11.69), Kaiwa (16.87-19.54), Pokomchi (17.05-17.34), Guarani (18.18-19.42), Totonak (18.28-18.42), Apinave (19.06-15.38), and Secoya (20.87-23.57). So, one can see, that Japanese and Korean have more or less the same values of distances, which show that they are not typologically close to the American indian languages taken for this study.74 Dilbilim Araştırmaları 2003One can see that Ujgur, Jakut, Kazaklı, Turkish, Baraba Tatar, Uzbek and Kazan T atar are T urkic languages. Nanaj is a T ungus-Manchurian language. Therefore, one can notice that Japanese is closer to the so-called Altaic languages which include Turkic, Mongolian and Tungus-Manchurian languages. Ali in ali 120 world languages were compared to Japanese. We can not show ali the distances here for the lack of space. Hovvever, the maximum distances were found for Japanese- German (22,24); Japanese-English (19.83); Japanese-Runıanian (15,08) and Japanese-Svvedish (17.03). As a conclusion, we can State that speech sound picture of Japanese is rather far away from the languages that are geographically close: Korjak (15.35), Nivh (20.23), İtelmen (17.85) or Chookchee (19.53). İt was a surprise to us. Our data State that the speech sound pattern of Japanese resembles that of Ujgur - one of the Turkic languages spoken in the Middle Asia. The Ujgur people are often linked to the Old Turkic tribes, who used to 1 ive in the steppes of Southern Russia before the Tatar-Mongols captured them in the IXth century A.D. We must point out that it is not a coincidence since the other native Altaic people have a very similar data of closeness to Japanese. Turkic and Tungus-Manchurian tribes may have had a sort of common origin with Japanese.Our typological results may verify the Altaic hypothesis of Japanese and Korean origin, since Korean shovved a greater closeness to the Altaic languages than Japanese. İt is especially vivid, when the Austro-Oceanic, Austronesian, Austro- Asiatic and other languages do not show such a closeness: Japanese-Chinese(17.52); Burmanese (20.24); Tagalog (14.36); İndonesian (10.33); Hawaiian (23.97); Samoan (21.56), but for Sea Dajak (8 .8 6 ), which is a Polynisian language. The Dajaks live on the Kalimantan island.As a conclusion, we can say that the phonostatistical distances allow us to find out how similar Basque is to the other world languages under investigation.ReferencesCrystal. D. (1992). An Encydopedic Dictionaıy of Language and Languages. Oxford: Blacku'ell. 428 pages.Garry. J. and Rubino. C. (eds). (2001). Facts Aboııt the IVorld's Languages: An Encvclopedia of the IVorld's Majör Languages, Past and Present. Ne w York: The H. W. Wilson Company. 896 pages.Ramstedt. G. J. (1951). A Korean Grammar. Moskva: İzdlnostrLiter. 23ü pages.Ruhlen. M. (1994). On the Origin of Languages (Studies in Language Taxonomy). Stanford: Stanford University Press. 342 pages.Tambovlsev, Y. (1985). The consonantal coefficient in selected languages. İn Canadian Journal of Lingııistics, Vol.30. ü 2. p. 179-188._____________. (1988). The linguistics distances aırıong some languages of Asia. İn TheSfıtdy ofSoıınds. Vol.22. p. 17 - 34. Tokyo____________(2001a). Kompendium osnovnyh statisticheskih harakteristikfunktsıonirovanija soglasnyh fonem v z\nıkovoj tsepochke anglijskogo, nemetskogo, frentsuzskogo i drugih indoevropejskihjazykov. /Compendiıım o f theYur i Tambovtsev 75busic statistica! characteristics offunctioning of consnnants in the speech chain of English, German. Frendi and ot her IndoEuropean languagesj. Novosibirsk: Novosibirskij Klassichcskij Instiluı. 129 pages.____________ . (2001b). Funktsionirovanie soglasnyh fonem v zvukovoj tsepochke ııralo-altajskih jazykov / Funct 'ıoning o f consonants in the speech chain o f Ural-Altaic languages]. Novosibirsk: Novosibirskij klassichcskij institut. 132 pages._____________ . (2001c). Aekotoıye teoreticheskie polozhenija tipologii upor'adochennostifonenı v z\nıkoroj tsepochke jazyka i kompendium osnovnvh group soglasnyh [Some Theoretical foundations o f the typology o f orderliness o f phonemes in the language soıınd chain and compendium of statistica! characteristics of the basic groııps of consonants]. Novosibirsk: Novosibirskij klassicheskij institut. 130 pages.Trask. R. L. (2001). Basque. İn Garry. Jane and Rubino. Cari (cds.). Facts About the H'orld's Languages: An Encyclopedia o f the li’or/d's Majör Languages. Past and Preseni. New York: The H. W. Wilson Companv. 896 pages.Zagoruiko. N. Cı. (1972). The Methods of Pattern Recognition and their Application /in RussianJ. Moskva: Sovetskoe Radio. 206 pages.Tab. 1Distances bet\veen Basqııe and lndo-Huropean languagesBasque 0Romany 7.89Spanish 8.03Moldavian 8.63Bengal 8.96Nonvegian 9.34Lal v i an 9.36Persian 9.36Osetian 9.36Italian 9.68Esperanto 10.04Marathi 10.14Latin 10.54Portuguese 10.70Dutch 10.71Russian 10.84Rıımanian 11.21Old (jreek 11.27SerboCro. 11.44Lithuanian 11.64Armenian 11.67Old Hnglish 11.80Hindi 12.00Tadjik 12.05Albanian 12.36(Jreek 12.75Sanscrit 12.97Czech 13.32Dilbilim Araştırmaları 2003Slovak 13.72English 13.78Bulgarian 14.06Belorussian 14.31German 14.45Danish 15.71French 16.10Irish 16.16Prakrit 17.55Ukrainian 17.68Gudjarati 17.73Polish 18.52Vedic 21.09

Phonological similarity between Basque and other world languages based on the frequency of occurrence of certain typological consonantal features

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Phonological similarity between Basque and other world languages based on the frequency of occurrence of certain typological consonantal features

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