Linguitect: Recent Episodes
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Welcome to Linguitect, where we explain linguistic topics and talk about how to build them into your conlang!
Logo designed by Matt.
You can e-mail us any questions at linguitect@gmail.com
You've heard of vowel harmony, now get ready for consonant harmony! In this episode, Rowan explains how consonant harmony is realized across different languages, and we take a dip into featural and autosegmental phonology.
Resources:
http://www.artoflanguageinvention.com/papers/features.pdf
https://phoible.org/
https://books.google.com/books/about/Introducing_Phonology.html?id=V-VRAgAAQBAJ
https://cloudfront.escholarship.org/dist/prd/content/qt2qs7r1mw/qt2qs7r1mw.pdf
http://idiom.ucsd.edu/~rose/RoseWalkerHarmonysystemsch8.pdf
https://twpl.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/twpl/article/download/6198/3187
https://twpl.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/twpl/article/download/6930/3946/0
In this episode, Matt and Rowan talk about all sorts of ergative phenomena, and how to use them for conlanging. We will cite our sources by section they are first relevant towards, and also length.
0:14 Intro
Ergativity by R. M. W. Dixon - a book compiling the data and theories of the man who made Ergativity popular in modern linguistics - long
Linguitect 'Accusativity' episode - http://linguitect.libsyn.com/episode-6-accusativity
'Ergativity Handbook' by Amy Rose Deal - http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~ardeal/papers/Deal-ergativity-handbook.pdf - of the many things in here, one is about how the "ergative" property is not the same as the "absolutive" property - medium length
'Ergativity and Depth of Analysis' by Martin Haspelmath - https://www.academia.edu/41122863/Ergativity_and_depth_of_analysis - defends "ergativity" as a single category as being useful for cross-linguistic comparison - short
4:02 My Problems with the naïve definition
'Blue Bird of Ergavity' by Scott Delancey - http://celia.cnrs.fr/FichExt/Documents%20de%20travail/Ergativite/3dDelancey.htm - an overview of why the unitary definition of "ergativity" does not explain linguistic data - short
Linguitect 'Non-Default Cases' episode - http://linguitect.libsyn.com/episode-8-non-default-case-marking
'Ergativity as Transitive Unaccusativity' by José-Luis Mendívil-Giro- https://www.academia.edu/905847/Ergativity_as_Transitive_Unaccusativity - medium length
'Split Ergativity is not about Ergativity' by Jessica Coon & Omer Preminger - http://ling.umd.edu/assets/publications/Coon-Preminger-17-SplitErgativity.pdf - medium length
21:01 - History and Context
Google N-Gram search showing how recently linguists started talking about "ergativity" - https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=ergative%2Cergativity%2Cabsolutive&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Cergative%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bergative%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BErgative%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cergativity%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bergativity%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BErgativity%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cabsolutive%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Babsolutive%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BAbsolutive%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BABSOLUTIVE%3B%2Cc0
23:54 - What langauges do Ergativity
https://linguisticmaps.tumblr.com/image/141437592433
'Manifestations of Ergativity in Amazonia' by Francesc Queixalós and Spike Gildea - https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6b70/b7024341e6f051cefe87bd3ccc377ee272d0.pdf - medium length
26:31 - marginally ergative phenomena
36:38 - Ways to be Ergative
Valpal - http://valpal.info/
WALS chart that could help you make European non-Basque Ergativity - https://wals.info/chapter/62
Ergativity in Amazonia edited by Francesc Queixalós and Spike Gildea - https://amerindias.github.io/curso2015/referencias/gilque10ergativityamazonia.pdf - long
'A Movement Theory of Ergativity' by Mark Campana - https://research.uni-leipzig.de/lomo/ergativity/Campana1992.pdf - explains raising ergativity in depth, including giving examples of the extraction asymmetry I talked about - long
'The rise of ergativity in Hindi' by Saartje Verbeke & Ludovic De Cuypere - https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/55760161.pdf - ergativity arising in Hindi - short
55:07 - Ideas for how to implement ergativity
A few example sentences used in this episode:
Warlpiri
[ngatyu] ka -(rna) purlami
[I (abs)] tense - (1sg.nom) shout
I shout
[ngatyu-lurlu] ka -(rna)-ngku nyuntu nyanyi
[I (erg)] tense -(1sg.nom) -2sg.acc you(abs) see
I see you
Samoan
perfective
na va’ai-a [A e le tama] [P le i'a]
pst look.at-prfv [ERG the boy] [the fish]
‘The boy spotted the fish.’
imperfective
na va’ai [A le tama] [P i le i'a]
pst look.at [A the boy] [P OBL the fish]
‘The boy looked at the fish.’
Bhojpuri
agentive
ham phuul mahaknii
I-NOM flower-ACC smell-1S-PST
‘I smelled the flowers’
non-agentive
hamraa gais mahakal
I-DAT gas-NOM smell-3S-PST
‘I smelled gas’
In this mini-episode, Matt and Rowan talk about how to explore ideas in conlanging through sketches.
Resources:
- http://miniatureconlangs.blogspot.com/
- https://badconlangingideas.tumblr.com/
- https://crazyninjageeks.wordpress.com/2015/11/28/introduction-to-kayfdanfsantaptvlirtsangbesputvombngagtvlimpkayfsnafkayfgaf-boptvegpdaffshofbompvlimpgafvlimpgaf/
Join Rowan and Matt as they discuss the Standard Average European sprachbund (SAE). This is a language area that is centered mostly on Western European Romance and Germanic languages (think, French and German), but some features of it extend much farther into the Caucasus Mountains, etc.
Haspelmath's formulation of the sprachbund can be found in this paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247869081_The_European_linguistic_area_Standard_Average_European
A summary of that paper, intended for conlangers: http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/sae.html
Wikipedia for the overlapping (or subset, depending on definition) Balkan Sprachbund: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkan_sprachbund
WALS chapter on Haspelmath's feature 12, intensive vs. reflexive pronouns: https://wals.info/chapter/47
WALS chapter on comparative constructions: https://wals.info/chapter/121
Paper on equative constructions: https://zenodo.org/record/814964/files/EquativeConstructions_2016b.pdf?download=1
Today, Matt and Rowan talk about every sort of flavor in the ice cream Sandhi bar (ow! Rowan! that hurts!)
Sandhi is an umbrella term for phonological processes that occur at boundaries - between words (external sandhi, like in Sanskrit vowel blending) or within a word between morphemes (internal sandhi, like in Latin assimilation)
It can occur between two vowels (Sanskrit vowel blending, Latin elision, English intrusive R), between two consonants (Latin assimilation), between vowels and consonants together (French and Korean liaison, English linking R), between two tones (Mandarin tone sandhi), a weird mix of tones and syllable boundaries (Soyaltepec Mazatec tone sandhi), or even between two tones depending on consonants in between (Taiwanese Hokkien tone sandhi)
References:
Beal, Heather D. "The segments and tones of Soyaltepec Mazatec." (2012).
This episode has Matt and Rowan talking about case marking, a way to indicate what each noun is doing in the sentence. Specifically, what Matt refers to as "non-default case marking" - parts of languages where cases behave in ways that don't fit with their canonical uses in the rest of the language.
Paper mentioned: https://mitcho.com/subjex/aldridge.pdf
Many of the examples are from Ergativity by R.M.W. Dixon
In this episode, Rowan and Matt talk about pitch accent! We cover controversies in the definition of pitch accent and the wide variety of systems that have been called "pitch accent."
References from this episode:
- Hulst, Harry van der, and Norval Smith. 2010. Autosegmental Studies on Pitch Accent. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110874266.
- Hyman, Larry M. "How (not) to do phonological typology: the case of pitch-accent." Language Sciences 31, no. 2-3 (2009): 213-238.
- Evans, Jonathan P. "Is there a Himalayan tone typology?." Senri Ethnological Studies (2009).
- Ding, Picus Sizhi. "The pitch accent system of Niuwozi Prinmi." Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 24, no. 2 (2001): 57-83.
- Ding, Picus Sizhi. "A typological study of tonal systems of Japanese and Prinmi: Towards a definition of pitch-accent languages." Journal of Universal Language 7, no. 2 (2006): 1-35.
In this episode, Matt and Rowan discuss "accusativity" - the organizing idea behind many languages' syntax. It's very widespread, in languages as diverse as English, Swahili, Latin, Arabic, and Korean, but in a later episode, we'll go over other organizing principles as well. Matt discusses some history, theory, and examples of phenomena that occur in these "nominative-accusative languages."
Resources discussed in this episode:
- https://wals.info/chapter/32 - contains an overview of semantic domains and gender in Russian
Join Rowan, Matt, and Liam as they talk about sprachbunds - areas where most or all of the languages share certain features through contact.
Resources referenced in this episode:
- https://afbo.info/ - A world-wide survey of affix borrowing
Join Matt and Rowan in talking about conceptual metaphor - a framework for some really fascinating semantics
References for this episode:
- Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson
- Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, Lakoff
- "The semantics of gender in Bininj Gun-Wok" in "Systems of Gender Assignment" by Greville G. Corbett, WALS Online
Rowan, Matt, and Liam discuss what you can do with verb morphology outside of person agreement and TAM (tense/aspect/mood).
Resources from this episode:
https://wals.info/chapter/22
In this episode, Matt and Rowan (but mostly Matt) talk about issues with the International Phonetic Alphabet, and why it's not a one-size-fits-all for every language.
Resources mentioned or relevant to this issue:
https://phoible.org/
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~saphon/en/phonemes.php
https://magurevitch.github.io/clickable-ipa/
In this episode, we talk about honorific systems in different languages, and how to work them into your conlang!
This episode is just Rowan and Matt, and Matt's introduction is of the multiple honorific systems in Korean.
Wikipedia pages on Korean honorifics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_honorifics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_speech_levels
Victor Mair's post on royal language in English and Nepali:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=21466