2004) suggests that some of what is assumed to be part of UG may be learned rather than innate. M... more 2004) suggests that some of what is assumed to be part of UG may be learned rather than innate. Mielke (2004) proposes that phonological features are learned, evidenced by the fact that three widely assumed feature sets are inadequate to capture some patterns found in the world’s languages.
One of the exciting aspects of working on a “field language ” is that virtually everything is ope... more One of the exciting aspects of working on a “field language ” is that virtually everything is open to investigation. Not only can and must researchers address issues that arise simultaneously in the phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics etc., but also the complex interrelations that sometimes exist between the
Wendianne Nan) a, whose participation in elicitation sessions has greatly improved our transcript... more Wendianne Nan) a, whose participation in elicitation sessions has greatly improved our transcriptions. This research has been funded by the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages at UC Berkeley.
The traditional model of contour tone distribution (see, e.g., Hyman 2003) uses phonological unit... more The traditional model of contour tone distribution (see, e.g., Hyman 2003) uses phonological units to describe which syllable types can bear rising or falling tones (see Zhang 2004 for an overview). A common pattern is one in which contour tones are permitted on long vowels but not on short vowels;
Phonologically conditioned suppletive allomorphy (PCSA) was only recently overtly acknowledged in... more Phonologically conditioned suppletive allomorphy (PCSA) was only recently overtly acknowledged in the literature (Carstairs 1988) and has not been studied systematically since Mester (1994) first proposed using OT to model it. Syllable-counting allomorphy (SCA) is a particularly common and interesting subtype of PCSA. It was studied and discussed by Kager (1996) but without the benefit of a large database. In this paper, I focus on SCA because it is the subject of Kager’s (1996) claim that PCSA is output optimization. An example of SCA is seen in Dyirbal (Pama-Nyungan, Australia; Dixon 1972: 42, 224). Among vowel-final stems, disyllabic stems mark ergative with gu, while longer stems take -gu, as in (1).
Furthermore, the accession of George Grekoff’s Chimariko notes to the archives of the Survey of C... more Furthermore, the accession of George Grekoff’s Chimariko notes to the archives of the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages makes this a good time to reassess the status of the Hokan stock generally. A clearly necessary step towards this is the development of a proper reconstruction of Proto-Palaihnihan to bring it to the level of reconstruction which we have for Proto-Pomo (McLendon (1973)) and Proto-Yuman (Wares (1968), Langdon (1970, 1976)).
This paper discusses variation in the gender of nouns in Maay, a language of Somalia. Lan-<br&... more This paper discusses variation in the gender of nouns in Maay, a language of Somalia. Lan-<br> guages of the Eastern Omo-Tana subgroup of East Cushitic (including Maay, Somali, Rendille,<br> and Tunni) have gender systems wherein every noun is masculine or feminine. Masculine<br> nouns take k-initial variants of suffixes including the definite marker, demonstratives, and<br> possessive markers; these suffixes are t-initial with feminine nouns. As is now well known,<br> gender in these languages is sensitive to plurality in various ways: in some languages, gen-<br> der 'polarity' reverses the gender of nouns in the plural; in others, feminine nouns change<br> to masculine when their plurals are formed with certain suffixes but not others. In Maay,<br> plurals are all masculine regardless of how they are formed, but the gender of many singu-<br> lar nouns is inconsistent across individuals. The masculine plural pattern make...
As has been the case for clitics in Indo-European languages, the precise nature of object markers... more As has been the case for clitics in Indo-European languages, the precise nature of object markers has long been an area of study for Bantu languages, with the main proposals centering on whether they are essentially pronouns, or essentially agreement morphemes. In the same spirit, in this paper we investigate the nature of the object marker in Kuria, concluding that it ought to be analyzed as a clitic, the same sort of syntactic element as Indo-European clitics. This is an empirical claim more than a theoretical one, as a unified and explanatory analysis of clitics continues to be an interesting puzzle for
This paper discusses variation in the gender of nouns in Maay, a language of Somalia. Languages o... more This paper discusses variation in the gender of nouns in Maay, a language of Somalia. Languages of the Eastern Omo-Tana subgroup of East Cushitic (including Maay, Somali, Rendille, and Tunni) have gender systems wherein every noun is masculine or feminine. Masculine nouns take k-initial variants of suffixes including the definite marker, demonstratives, and possessive markers; these suffixes are t-initial with feminine nouns. As is now well known, gender in these languages is sensitive to plurality in various ways: in some languages, gender ‘polarity’ reverses the gender of nouns in the plural; in others, feminine nouns change to masculine when their plurals are formed with certain suffixes but not others. In Maay, plurals are all masculine regardless of how they are formed, but the gender of many singular nouns is inconsistent across individuals. The masculine plural pattern makes the gender of singular nouns unrecoverable from their plurals, so nouns that are frequently plural are...
Papers from the 28th annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, edited by Julie Larson an... more Papers from the 28th annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, edited by Julie Larson and Mary Paster. The PDF link below has the key information from the cover pages of the original print version of this issue.
, and participants in the UC San Diego Linguistics Department Colloquium for helpful feedback on ... more , and participants in the UC San Diego Linguistics Department Colloquium for helpful feedback on various parts of this research. Thanks also to my consultants Daouda Camara (Pulaar) and Emelia Asiedu and Kojo Darpaah (Asante Twi). 2. The 'P >> M' approach McCarthy & Prince (1993a, b): P(honological) constraints can outrank M(orphological) constraints in OT-Although it was assumed from the inception of OT, 'P >> M' is not crucial to OT-Therefore, rejecting P >> M does not entail rejecting all OT models of phonology/morphology. Example: In Ulwa (Misumalpan, Nicaragua; Hale & Lacayo Blanco 1989), possessive markers occur immediately after primary stressed syll. (McCarthy & Prince 1993a: 79, 109-110; stress marks added). (1) bás-ka 'his/her hair' siwá,ka,nak 'his/her root' sú:,ka,lu 'his/her dog' kí:-ka 'his/her stone' ás,ka,na 'his/her clothes' saná-ka 'his/her deer' sapá:-ka 'his/her forehead' aná:,ka,la:ka 'his/her chin' McCarthy & Prince (1993a: 110) propose a P constraint to account for this (Ft' is the head foot):
Maay is a Cushitic language of Somalia. It has not yet been established whether Maay is a Somali ... more Maay is a Cushitic language of Somalia. It has not yet been established whether Maay is a Somali dialect or a separate language, but Saeed (2006: 548) reports that the two are mutually unintelligible, and in this paper we point out significant differences between Maay and the Somali dialects described in the literature (Hyman 1981; Saeed 1982, 1987, 1999, 2006). In this paper we describe the Lower Jubba Maay dialect (LJM; see also Paster 2007). Our consultant is a 27 year-old (2006) male from Kowan, Lower Jubba (Fig. 1). LJM is his native language and he uses it regularly at home.
The traditional model of contour tone distribution (see, e.g., Hyman 2003) uses phonological unit... more The traditional model of contour tone distribution (see, e.g., Hyman 2003) uses phonological units to describe which syllable types can bear rising or falling tones (see Zhang 2004 for an overview). A common pattern is one in which contour tones are permitted on long vowels but not on short vowels; this is explained in the traditional model by assuming that the mora is the tone-bearing unit (TBU) and there is a one-tone-per-mora restriction that prohibits contour tones on short vowels. An alternative to the phonological approach is one in which contour tone distribution is phonetically based (see, e.g., Gordon 2001, 2006, Zhang 2001, 2004). In the phonetic model, there is no role for the mora in determining contour tone distribution; instead, it is duration and/or sonority that determine whether a contour can occur on a given syllable. In this paper, we show how Luganda bears on the choice between the two models, favoring the phonological approach over the phonetic one. As we will s...
This paper advocates an approach to interspeaker linguistic variation that aligns with the ‘I-lan... more This paper advocates an approach to interspeaker linguistic variation that aligns with the ‘I-language’ view (Chomsky, 1986). On this view, the object of study in linguistics is mental grammar; language is understood as being internal to the individual, in contrast to the ‘E-language’ approach, where language is external to individual speakers. This paper considers a case study from Maay (a Cushitic language spoken in southern Somalia) in which interspeaker variation in a refugee community defies analysis in E-language terms. An I-language approach allows for a straightforward analysis of the observed variation, specifically in the domains of plural noun formation and vowel length alternations.
How languages solve the grammatical problem of agreeing with conjoined arguments is a well-known ... more How languages solve the grammatical problem of agreeing with conjoined arguments is a well-known area of cross-linguistic variation. This paper describes these patterns for Kuria (Bantu, Kenya), documenting a pattern of agreement that has not been previously reported. We show the relevant patterns involving a range of noun classes, showing that human noun classes trigger different effects than non-human noun classes. We also demonstrate distinctions in the grammar between subject marking and object marking: whereas subject marking allows for resolved agreement forms, object marking does not. The paper also includes a brief survey of notable patterns in other Bantu languages to put Kuria in a relevant context.
This paper provides robust empirical evidence for floating tones in Ga, a Kwa language of Ghana. ... more This paper provides robust empirical evidence for floating tones in Ga, a Kwa language of Ghana. As will be shown, floating tones are crucial to an analysis of verbal tense/aspect/mood distinctions. I begin by describing two tonal processes, the HL rule and Plateauing. While these are regular processes of the language, both are blocked in the perfective. I show that the blockage is the result of a floating low tone that marks the perfective, and that the floating tone marker explains other anomalous tonal effects in the perfective. I then give an analysis of floating tone prefixes that mark certain tenses/aspects/moods by associating to the subject prefix, thus overwriting the lexical tone of the subject prefix. Finally, I give examples of suffixed floating tones that mark tense/aspect/mood by associating to verb stems, causing the underlying stem tones to delink. In these tenses/aspects/moods, we find evidence for an underlying L vs. toneless contrast, constituting another phenomenon where, as with floating tones, there is a mismatch between the number of tones and tonebearing units. Thus, a major prediction of Autosegmental Phonology (Goldsmith 1976, Clements and Ford 1979) is borne out in Ga.
This paper advocates an approach to interspeaker linguistic variation that aligns with the ‘I-lan... more This paper advocates an approach to interspeaker linguistic variation that aligns with the ‘I-language’ view (Chomsky, 1986). On this view, the object of study in linguistics is mental grammar; language is understood as being internal to the individual, in contrast to the ‘E-language’ approach, where language is external to individual speakers. This paper considers a case study from Maay (a Cushitic language spoken in southern Somalia) in which interspeaker variation in a refugee community defies analysis in E-language terms. An I-language approach allows for a straightforward analysis of the observed variation, specifically in the domains of plural noun formation and vowel length alternations.
2004) suggests that some of what is assumed to be part of UG may be learned rather than innate. M... more 2004) suggests that some of what is assumed to be part of UG may be learned rather than innate. Mielke (2004) proposes that phonological features are learned, evidenced by the fact that three widely assumed feature sets are inadequate to capture some patterns found in the world’s languages.
One of the exciting aspects of working on a “field language ” is that virtually everything is ope... more One of the exciting aspects of working on a “field language ” is that virtually everything is open to investigation. Not only can and must researchers address issues that arise simultaneously in the phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics etc., but also the complex interrelations that sometimes exist between the
Wendianne Nan) a, whose participation in elicitation sessions has greatly improved our transcript... more Wendianne Nan) a, whose participation in elicitation sessions has greatly improved our transcriptions. This research has been funded by the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages at UC Berkeley.
The traditional model of contour tone distribution (see, e.g., Hyman 2003) uses phonological unit... more The traditional model of contour tone distribution (see, e.g., Hyman 2003) uses phonological units to describe which syllable types can bear rising or falling tones (see Zhang 2004 for an overview). A common pattern is one in which contour tones are permitted on long vowels but not on short vowels;
Phonologically conditioned suppletive allomorphy (PCSA) was only recently overtly acknowledged in... more Phonologically conditioned suppletive allomorphy (PCSA) was only recently overtly acknowledged in the literature (Carstairs 1988) and has not been studied systematically since Mester (1994) first proposed using OT to model it. Syllable-counting allomorphy (SCA) is a particularly common and interesting subtype of PCSA. It was studied and discussed by Kager (1996) but without the benefit of a large database. In this paper, I focus on SCA because it is the subject of Kager’s (1996) claim that PCSA is output optimization. An example of SCA is seen in Dyirbal (Pama-Nyungan, Australia; Dixon 1972: 42, 224). Among vowel-final stems, disyllabic stems mark ergative with gu, while longer stems take -gu, as in (1).
Furthermore, the accession of George Grekoff’s Chimariko notes to the archives of the Survey of C... more Furthermore, the accession of George Grekoff’s Chimariko notes to the archives of the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages makes this a good time to reassess the status of the Hokan stock generally. A clearly necessary step towards this is the development of a proper reconstruction of Proto-Palaihnihan to bring it to the level of reconstruction which we have for Proto-Pomo (McLendon (1973)) and Proto-Yuman (Wares (1968), Langdon (1970, 1976)).
This paper discusses variation in the gender of nouns in Maay, a language of Somalia. Lan-<br&... more This paper discusses variation in the gender of nouns in Maay, a language of Somalia. Lan-<br> guages of the Eastern Omo-Tana subgroup of East Cushitic (including Maay, Somali, Rendille,<br> and Tunni) have gender systems wherein every noun is masculine or feminine. Masculine<br> nouns take k-initial variants of suffixes including the definite marker, demonstratives, and<br> possessive markers; these suffixes are t-initial with feminine nouns. As is now well known,<br> gender in these languages is sensitive to plurality in various ways: in some languages, gen-<br> der 'polarity' reverses the gender of nouns in the plural; in others, feminine nouns change<br> to masculine when their plurals are formed with certain suffixes but not others. In Maay,<br> plurals are all masculine regardless of how they are formed, but the gender of many singu-<br> lar nouns is inconsistent across individuals. The masculine plural pattern make...
As has been the case for clitics in Indo-European languages, the precise nature of object markers... more As has been the case for clitics in Indo-European languages, the precise nature of object markers has long been an area of study for Bantu languages, with the main proposals centering on whether they are essentially pronouns, or essentially agreement morphemes. In the same spirit, in this paper we investigate the nature of the object marker in Kuria, concluding that it ought to be analyzed as a clitic, the same sort of syntactic element as Indo-European clitics. This is an empirical claim more than a theoretical one, as a unified and explanatory analysis of clitics continues to be an interesting puzzle for
This paper discusses variation in the gender of nouns in Maay, a language of Somalia. Languages o... more This paper discusses variation in the gender of nouns in Maay, a language of Somalia. Languages of the Eastern Omo-Tana subgroup of East Cushitic (including Maay, Somali, Rendille, and Tunni) have gender systems wherein every noun is masculine or feminine. Masculine nouns take k-initial variants of suffixes including the definite marker, demonstratives, and possessive markers; these suffixes are t-initial with feminine nouns. As is now well known, gender in these languages is sensitive to plurality in various ways: in some languages, gender ‘polarity’ reverses the gender of nouns in the plural; in others, feminine nouns change to masculine when their plurals are formed with certain suffixes but not others. In Maay, plurals are all masculine regardless of how they are formed, but the gender of many singular nouns is inconsistent across individuals. The masculine plural pattern makes the gender of singular nouns unrecoverable from their plurals, so nouns that are frequently plural are...
Papers from the 28th annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, edited by Julie Larson an... more Papers from the 28th annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, edited by Julie Larson and Mary Paster. The PDF link below has the key information from the cover pages of the original print version of this issue.
, and participants in the UC San Diego Linguistics Department Colloquium for helpful feedback on ... more , and participants in the UC San Diego Linguistics Department Colloquium for helpful feedback on various parts of this research. Thanks also to my consultants Daouda Camara (Pulaar) and Emelia Asiedu and Kojo Darpaah (Asante Twi). 2. The 'P >> M' approach McCarthy & Prince (1993a, b): P(honological) constraints can outrank M(orphological) constraints in OT-Although it was assumed from the inception of OT, 'P >> M' is not crucial to OT-Therefore, rejecting P >> M does not entail rejecting all OT models of phonology/morphology. Example: In Ulwa (Misumalpan, Nicaragua; Hale & Lacayo Blanco 1989), possessive markers occur immediately after primary stressed syll. (McCarthy & Prince 1993a: 79, 109-110; stress marks added). (1) bás-ka 'his/her hair' siwá,ka,nak 'his/her root' sú:,ka,lu 'his/her dog' kí:-ka 'his/her stone' ás,ka,na 'his/her clothes' saná-ka 'his/her deer' sapá:-ka 'his/her forehead' aná:,ka,la:ka 'his/her chin' McCarthy & Prince (1993a: 110) propose a P constraint to account for this (Ft' is the head foot):
Maay is a Cushitic language of Somalia. It has not yet been established whether Maay is a Somali ... more Maay is a Cushitic language of Somalia. It has not yet been established whether Maay is a Somali dialect or a separate language, but Saeed (2006: 548) reports that the two are mutually unintelligible, and in this paper we point out significant differences between Maay and the Somali dialects described in the literature (Hyman 1981; Saeed 1982, 1987, 1999, 2006). In this paper we describe the Lower Jubba Maay dialect (LJM; see also Paster 2007). Our consultant is a 27 year-old (2006) male from Kowan, Lower Jubba (Fig. 1). LJM is his native language and he uses it regularly at home.
The traditional model of contour tone distribution (see, e.g., Hyman 2003) uses phonological unit... more The traditional model of contour tone distribution (see, e.g., Hyman 2003) uses phonological units to describe which syllable types can bear rising or falling tones (see Zhang 2004 for an overview). A common pattern is one in which contour tones are permitted on long vowels but not on short vowels; this is explained in the traditional model by assuming that the mora is the tone-bearing unit (TBU) and there is a one-tone-per-mora restriction that prohibits contour tones on short vowels. An alternative to the phonological approach is one in which contour tone distribution is phonetically based (see, e.g., Gordon 2001, 2006, Zhang 2001, 2004). In the phonetic model, there is no role for the mora in determining contour tone distribution; instead, it is duration and/or sonority that determine whether a contour can occur on a given syllable. In this paper, we show how Luganda bears on the choice between the two models, favoring the phonological approach over the phonetic one. As we will s...
This paper advocates an approach to interspeaker linguistic variation that aligns with the ‘I-lan... more This paper advocates an approach to interspeaker linguistic variation that aligns with the ‘I-language’ view (Chomsky, 1986). On this view, the object of study in linguistics is mental grammar; language is understood as being internal to the individual, in contrast to the ‘E-language’ approach, where language is external to individual speakers. This paper considers a case study from Maay (a Cushitic language spoken in southern Somalia) in which interspeaker variation in a refugee community defies analysis in E-language terms. An I-language approach allows for a straightforward analysis of the observed variation, specifically in the domains of plural noun formation and vowel length alternations.
How languages solve the grammatical problem of agreeing with conjoined arguments is a well-known ... more How languages solve the grammatical problem of agreeing with conjoined arguments is a well-known area of cross-linguistic variation. This paper describes these patterns for Kuria (Bantu, Kenya), documenting a pattern of agreement that has not been previously reported. We show the relevant patterns involving a range of noun classes, showing that human noun classes trigger different effects than non-human noun classes. We also demonstrate distinctions in the grammar between subject marking and object marking: whereas subject marking allows for resolved agreement forms, object marking does not. The paper also includes a brief survey of notable patterns in other Bantu languages to put Kuria in a relevant context.
This paper provides robust empirical evidence for floating tones in Ga, a Kwa language of Ghana. ... more This paper provides robust empirical evidence for floating tones in Ga, a Kwa language of Ghana. As will be shown, floating tones are crucial to an analysis of verbal tense/aspect/mood distinctions. I begin by describing two tonal processes, the HL rule and Plateauing. While these are regular processes of the language, both are blocked in the perfective. I show that the blockage is the result of a floating low tone that marks the perfective, and that the floating tone marker explains other anomalous tonal effects in the perfective. I then give an analysis of floating tone prefixes that mark certain tenses/aspects/moods by associating to the subject prefix, thus overwriting the lexical tone of the subject prefix. Finally, I give examples of suffixed floating tones that mark tense/aspect/mood by associating to verb stems, causing the underlying stem tones to delink. In these tenses/aspects/moods, we find evidence for an underlying L vs. toneless contrast, constituting another phenomenon where, as with floating tones, there is a mismatch between the number of tones and tonebearing units. Thus, a major prediction of Autosegmental Phonology (Goldsmith 1976, Clements and Ford 1979) is borne out in Ga.
This paper advocates an approach to interspeaker linguistic variation that aligns with the ‘I-lan... more This paper advocates an approach to interspeaker linguistic variation that aligns with the ‘I-language’ view (Chomsky, 1986). On this view, the object of study in linguistics is mental grammar; language is understood as being internal to the individual, in contrast to the ‘E-language’ approach, where language is external to individual speakers. This paper considers a case study from Maay (a Cushitic language spoken in southern Somalia) in which interspeaker variation in a refugee community defies analysis in E-language terms. An I-language approach allows for a straightforward analysis of the observed variation, specifically in the domains of plural noun formation and vowel length alternations.
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