Pub Date : 2021-09-08DOI: 10.1515/lingty-2021-2087
A. Schapper, Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm
{"title":"Introduction to special issue on areal typology of lexico-semantics","authors":"A. Schapper, Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm","doi":"10.1515/lingty-2021-2087","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2021-2087","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45834,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Typology","volume":"26 1","pages":"199 - 209"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43538398","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-03DOI: 10.1515/lingty-2021-2089
M. Mithun
Abstract As observed by Koptjevskaja-Tamm and Liljegren, the impact of language contact on grammatical typology is well recognized, but the field of lexico-semantic areal typology is still young. Here some mechanisms leading to an areal pattern are explored in the domain of certain sets of basic verbs in languages indigenous to the North American West. The patterns involve the apparent evocation, as part of the meanings of the common verbs, of certain features of the most immediately involved participant, particularly number, animacy, shape, and/or consistency. Two mechanisms apparently underlie the areal patterns. First, bilinguals accustomed to distinguishing such features lexically in verbs in one of their languages may simply choose more specific verbs in another language on a regular basis until, over time, original hyponyms come to be basic level terms. Second, shadows of compounding and derivation can be seen in some pairs of verbs in some languages. Patterns elsewhere in the language or in a neighbor can stimulate such formations and accelerate their lexicalization, ultimately blurring their internal structure and hastening their ascent to basic-level status.
{"title":"Sitting and talking together: packaging meaning into verbs with the neighbors","authors":"M. Mithun","doi":"10.1515/lingty-2021-2089","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2021-2089","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract As observed by Koptjevskaja-Tamm and Liljegren, the impact of language contact on grammatical typology is well recognized, but the field of lexico-semantic areal typology is still young. Here some mechanisms leading to an areal pattern are explored in the domain of certain sets of basic verbs in languages indigenous to the North American West. The patterns involve the apparent evocation, as part of the meanings of the common verbs, of certain features of the most immediately involved participant, particularly number, animacy, shape, and/or consistency. Two mechanisms apparently underlie the areal patterns. First, bilinguals accustomed to distinguishing such features lexically in verbs in one of their languages may simply choose more specific verbs in another language on a regular basis until, over time, original hyponyms come to be basic level terms. Second, shadows of compounding and derivation can be seen in some pairs of verbs in some languages. Patterns elsewhere in the language or in a neighbor can stimulate such formations and accelerate their lexicalization, ultimately blurring their internal structure and hastening their ascent to basic-level status.","PeriodicalId":45834,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Typology","volume":"26 1","pages":"375 - 402"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48515954","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-23DOI: 10.1515/lingty-2020-0128
D. Nikolaev
Abstract This article provides a new precise algorithmic definition of the notion “phonological-inventory gap”. On the basis of this definition, I propose a method for identifying gaps, provide descriptive data on several types of consonant-inventory gaps in the world’s languages, and investigate the relationships between gaps and inventory size, processes of sound change, and phonological segment borrowing.
{"title":"A typology of consonant-inventory gaps","authors":"D. Nikolaev","doi":"10.1515/lingty-2020-0128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2020-0128","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article provides a new precise algorithmic definition of the notion “phonological-inventory gap”. On the basis of this definition, I propose a method for identifying gaps, provide descriptive data on several types of consonant-inventory gaps in the world’s languages, and investigate the relationships between gaps and inventory size, processes of sound change, and phonological segment borrowing.","PeriodicalId":45834,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Typology","volume":"26 1","pages":"161 - 186"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47973027","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-27DOI: 10.1515/lingty-2021-2082
Antoinette Schapper
Abstract In this article I demonstrate that there is a pervasive lexico-semantic association bones are strength in the languages of Melanesia, but that its linguistic expression is highly varied; languages are scattered along a lexical-to-clausal cline in their expression of the association between bone and strength, with a large number of language-specific idioms based on the association to be observed in Melanesia. I argue that the striking areality of this lexico-semantic association is readily missed in top-down approaches to lexical semantic typology that rely, for instance, on databases of word lists, or on narrow search domains limited to the meanings of simplex lexemes.
{"title":"Baring the bones: the lexico-semantic association of bone with strength in Melanesia and the study of colexification","authors":"Antoinette Schapper","doi":"10.1515/lingty-2021-2082","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2021-2082","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this article I demonstrate that there is a pervasive lexico-semantic association bones are strength in the languages of Melanesia, but that its linguistic expression is highly varied; languages are scattered along a lexical-to-clausal cline in their expression of the association between bone and strength, with a large number of language-specific idioms based on the association to be observed in Melanesia. I argue that the striking areality of this lexico-semantic association is readily missed in top-down approaches to lexical semantic typology that rely, for instance, on databases of word lists, or on narrow search domains limited to the meanings of simplex lexemes.","PeriodicalId":45834,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Typology","volume":"54 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138539979","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-26DOI: 10.1515/lingty-2021-2080
Henrik Liljegren
Abstract The Hindu Kush, or the mountain region of northern Pakistan, north-eastern Afghanistan and the northern-most part of the Indian-administered Kashmir region, is home to approximately 50 languages belonging to six different genera: Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Nuristani, Sino-Tibetan, Turkic and the isolate Burushaski. Areality research on this region is only in its early stages, and while its significance as a convergence area has been suggested by several scholars, only a few, primarily phonological and grammatical, features have been studied in a more systematic fashion. Cross-linguistic research in the realms of semantics and lexical organization has been given considerably less attention. However, preliminary findings indicate that features are geographically bundled with one another, across genera, in significant ways, displaying semantic areality on multiple levels throughout the region or in one or more of its sub-regions. The present study is an areal-typological investigation of kinship terms in the region, in which particular attention is paid to a few notable polysemy patterns and what appears to be a significant geographical clustering of these. Comparisons are made between the geographical distribution of such patterns and those of some other linguistic features as well as with relevant non-linguistic factors related to shared cultural values or identities and a long history of small-scale cross-community interaction in different parts of the region.
{"title":"Kinship terminologies reveal ancient contact zone in the Hindu Kush","authors":"Henrik Liljegren","doi":"10.1515/lingty-2021-2080","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2021-2080","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Hindu Kush, or the mountain region of northern Pakistan, north-eastern Afghanistan and the northern-most part of the Indian-administered Kashmir region, is home to approximately 50 languages belonging to six different genera: Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Nuristani, Sino-Tibetan, Turkic and the isolate Burushaski. Areality research on this region is only in its early stages, and while its significance as a convergence area has been suggested by several scholars, only a few, primarily phonological and grammatical, features have been studied in a more systematic fashion. Cross-linguistic research in the realms of semantics and lexical organization has been given considerably less attention. However, preliminary findings indicate that features are geographically bundled with one another, across genera, in significant ways, displaying semantic areality on multiple levels throughout the region or in one or more of its sub-regions. The present study is an areal-typological investigation of kinship terms in the region, in which particular attention is paid to a few notable polysemy patterns and what appears to be a significant geographical clustering of these. Comparisons are made between the geographical distribution of such patterns and those of some other linguistic features as well as with relevant non-linguistic factors related to shared cultural values or identities and a long history of small-scale cross-community interaction in different parts of the region.","PeriodicalId":45834,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Typology","volume":"26 1","pages":"211 - 245"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1515/lingty-2021-2080","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44019848","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-15DOI: 10.1515/lingty-2021-2081
M. Urban
Abstract On the basis of a sample of 424 languages or dialects, this article provides a typological-comparative investigation of designations for three major internal organs of the torso, the ‘heart’, the ‘liver’, and the ‘lungs’. While colexification patterns are relatively unconstrained, the data show a skewing in morphologically complex terms: ‘heart’ and ‘liver’ often serve as head nouns in complex terms for ‘lungs’, but the reverse is rare. Another recurrent phenomenon is that two of the organs –sometimes ‘heart’ and ‘lungs’, but more frequently ‘liver’ and ‘lungs’– share their head noun, and are distinguished from one another by modifiers that refer to their most salient characteristics, as in Azerbaijani aɣ ǯiyær ‘white ǯiyær’ = ‘lungs’ and gara-ǯiyær ‘black-ǯiyær’ = ‘liver’. Having thus set the typological stage, I move on to discuss two different regions of the world in which such terms for ‘lungs’ and ‘liver’ have spread through language contact. This has happened in Eurasia, where the abovementioned pattern, which I call “explicitly dyadic”, was brought from Turkish to vernaculars of the Balkans and, most likely through Azerbaijani influence, to languages of the Southern Caucasus. Similar explicitly dyadic terms, but based on a head noun meaning ‘heart’, also occur in the Andes, where they appear to have spread from Quechuan to Barbacoan languages. The evidence not only shows that ‘liver’ and ‘lungs’ form a “semantic dyad” in which designations make use of “opposed characteristics” in different regions of the world, but also that such designations are salient and therefore prone to spread in language contact situations.
{"title":"Red, black, and white hearts: ‘heart’, ‘liver’, and ‘lungs’ in typological and areal perspective","authors":"M. Urban","doi":"10.1515/lingty-2021-2081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2021-2081","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract On the basis of a sample of 424 languages or dialects, this article provides a typological-comparative investigation of designations for three major internal organs of the torso, the ‘heart’, the ‘liver’, and the ‘lungs’. While colexification patterns are relatively unconstrained, the data show a skewing in morphologically complex terms: ‘heart’ and ‘liver’ often serve as head nouns in complex terms for ‘lungs’, but the reverse is rare. Another recurrent phenomenon is that two of the organs –sometimes ‘heart’ and ‘lungs’, but more frequently ‘liver’ and ‘lungs’– share their head noun, and are distinguished from one another by modifiers that refer to their most salient characteristics, as in Azerbaijani aɣ ǯiyær ‘white ǯiyær’ = ‘lungs’ and gara-ǯiyær ‘black-ǯiyær’ = ‘liver’. Having thus set the typological stage, I move on to discuss two different regions of the world in which such terms for ‘lungs’ and ‘liver’ have spread through language contact. This has happened in Eurasia, where the abovementioned pattern, which I call “explicitly dyadic”, was brought from Turkish to vernaculars of the Balkans and, most likely through Azerbaijani influence, to languages of the Southern Caucasus. Similar explicitly dyadic terms, but based on a head noun meaning ‘heart’, also occur in the Andes, where they appear to have spread from Quechuan to Barbacoan languages. The evidence not only shows that ‘liver’ and ‘lungs’ form a “semantic dyad” in which designations make use of “opposed characteristics” in different regions of the world, but also that such designations are salient and therefore prone to spread in language contact situations.","PeriodicalId":45834,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Typology","volume":"26 1","pages":"349 - 374"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45940065","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-06DOI: 10.1515/lingty-2021-2083
Lameen Souag
Abstract Updating the methodology of Hayward, Richard J. 1991. A propos patterns of lexicalization in the Ethiopian language area. In Daniela Mendel & Ulrike Claudi (eds.), Ägypten im afroorientalischen Kontext. Special issue of Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere, 139–156. Cologne: Institute of African Studies, using the concept of colexification (François, Alexandre. 2008. Semantic maps and the typology of colexification: Intertwining polysemous networks across languages. In Martine Vanhove (ed.), Studies in language companion series, vol. 106, 163–215. Amsterdam: John Benjamins), this paper, for the first time, provides quantitative evidence that the languages of the West African Sahel/Savanna form a lexical-typological language area characterised by shared colexifications absent further north. It then uses the linguistic comparative method to determine how languages entering or leaving this area, or coming into increasing contact with it at its edges, have converged with their new neighbours within the past millennium. The results indicate sharp differences in the respective roles and rates of borrowing and calquing, with the latter acting almost exclusively to increase shared colexifications.
摘要更新海沃德的方法论,Richard J.1991。埃塞俄比亚语区词汇化的命题模式。在Daniela Mendel和Ulrike Claudi(编辑)中,gypten im afroorientalichen Kontext。《非洲文化报》特刊,139-156。科隆:非洲研究所,使用colexification的概念(François,Alexandre,2008)。语义图与共诱导的类型学:跨语言的多义词网络交织。Martine Vanhove(编辑),《语言研究》配套系列,第106卷,163–215。Amsterdam:John Benjamins),这篇论文首次提供了定量证据,证明西非萨赫勒/萨凡纳的语言形成了一个词汇类型学语言区,其特征是在更远的北方没有共同的集体语言。然后,它使用语言比较方法来确定在过去的千年里,进入或离开这一地区,或在其边缘与之接触越来越多的语言是如何与新邻居融合的。研究结果表明,借贷和calquing各自的作用和比率存在显著差异,后者几乎完全是为了增加共同的嗜睡症。
{"title":"How a West African language becomes North African, and vice versa","authors":"Lameen Souag","doi":"10.1515/lingty-2021-2083","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2021-2083","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Updating the methodology of Hayward, Richard J. 1991. A propos patterns of lexicalization in the Ethiopian language area. In Daniela Mendel & Ulrike Claudi (eds.), Ägypten im afroorientalischen Kontext. Special issue of Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere, 139–156. Cologne: Institute of African Studies, using the concept of colexification (François, Alexandre. 2008. Semantic maps and the typology of colexification: Intertwining polysemous networks across languages. In Martine Vanhove (ed.), Studies in language companion series, vol. 106, 163–215. Amsterdam: John Benjamins), this paper, for the first time, provides quantitative evidence that the languages of the West African Sahel/Savanna form a lexical-typological language area characterised by shared colexifications absent further north. It then uses the linguistic comparative method to determine how languages entering or leaving this area, or coming into increasing contact with it at its edges, have converged with their new neighbours within the past millennium. The results indicate sharp differences in the respective roles and rates of borrowing and calquing, with the latter acting almost exclusively to increase shared colexifications.","PeriodicalId":45834,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Typology","volume":"26 1","pages":"283 - 312"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43069671","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-09eCollection Date: 2022-05-01DOI: 10.1515/lingty-2021-2079
Anna Bugaeva, Johanna Nichols, Balthasar Bickel
Some languages around the Pacific have multiple possessive classes of alienable constructions using appositive nouns or classifiers. This pattern differs from the most common kind of alienable/inalienable distinction, which involves marking, usually affixal, on the possessum, and has only one class of alienables. The Japanese language isolate Ainu has possessive marking that is reminiscent of the Circum-Pacific pattern. It is distinctive, however, in that the possessor is coded not as a dependent in an NP but as an argument in a finite clause, and the appositive word is a verb. This paper gives a first comprehensive, typologically grounded description of Ainu possession and reconstructs the pattern that must have been standard when Ainu was still the daily language of a large speech community; Ainu then had multiple alienable class constructions. We report a cross-linguistic survey expanding previous coverage of the appositive type and show how Ainu fits in. We split alienable/inalienable into two different phenomena: argument structure (with types based on possessibility: optionally possessible, obligatorily possessed, and non-possessible) and valence (alienable, inalienable classes). Valence-changing operations are derived alienability and derived inalienability. Our survey classifies the possessive systems of languages in these terms.
{"title":"Appositive possession in Ainu and around the Pacific.","authors":"Anna Bugaeva, Johanna Nichols, Balthasar Bickel","doi":"10.1515/lingty-2021-2079","DOIUrl":"10.1515/lingty-2021-2079","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Some languages around the Pacific have multiple possessive classes of alienable constructions using appositive nouns or classifiers. This pattern differs from the most common kind of alienable/inalienable distinction, which involves marking, usually affixal, on the possessum, and has only one class of alienables. The Japanese language isolate Ainu has possessive marking that is reminiscent of the Circum-Pacific pattern. It is distinctive, however, in that the possessor is coded not as a dependent in an NP but as an argument in a finite clause, and the appositive word is a verb. This paper gives a first comprehensive, typologically grounded description of Ainu possession and reconstructs the pattern that must have been standard when Ainu was still the daily language of a large speech community; Ainu then had multiple alienable class constructions. We report a cross-linguistic survey expanding previous coverage of the appositive type and show how Ainu fits in. We split alienable/inalienable into two different phenomena: argument structure (with types based on possessibility: optionally possessible, obligatorily possessed, and non-possessible) and valence (alienable, inalienable classes). Valence-changing operations are derived alienability and derived inalienability. Our survey classifies the possessive systems of languages in these terms.</p>","PeriodicalId":45834,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Typology","volume":"26 1","pages":"43-88"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2021-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11585906/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41730093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}