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The mixed nominative-neutral-inverse morphological alignment of Sakhalin Ainu
No full textThis paper discusses the Sakhalin Ainu morphological alignment. Starting from previous studies that focused primarily on Hokkaidō Ainu, the author presents a new proposal for the diachronic development of the Sakhalin Ainu person agreement system. He argues that the Proto Sakhalin Ainu person agreement system originally exhibited a mixed nominative-neutral alignment, in which with time portmanteau prefixes that syncretize over different first-second person interactions within the transitive paradigm arose under phonological and discoursive pressure. More recently in the history of the language, the emergence of a marker of person referentiality mismatch provided the means to mark subjects in sap-to-sap contexts and eased the development of what is tentatively discussed as an instantiation of inverse alignment
Areal-linguistic approach to the diversity of the generic term for ‘music’ in the world’s languages
No full textThis study uses an areal-linguistic approach to investigate etymologies and to illustrate the geographical distribution of generic terms for ‘music’ in 263 languages from around the world. Of main interest is the issue of borrowing, wherein words spread from certain source languages that are culturally dominant in specific areas. In the present study, six source languages with generic terms for ‘music’ in six musical areas are defined. In addition to these areas, there are also languages that do not borrow, but instead keep or invent native terms for ‘music’. This shows the variation among the different degrees of positive and negative attitudes by language authorities toward internationalism and influence from certain cultural centres in the area, which are reflected in the diversity of the general terms for ‘music’
Chinese Word Order in the Comparative Sino-Tibetan and Sociotypological Contexts
No full textThe present study discusses typology and variation of word order patterns in nominal and verb structures across 20 Chinese languages and compares them with another 43 languages from the Sino-Tibetan family. The methods employed are internal and external historical reconstruction and correlation studies from linguistic typology and sociolinguistics. The results show that the head-final tendency is a baseline across the family, but individual languages differ by the degree of head-initial structures allowed in a language, leading to a hybrid word order profile. On the one hand, Chinese languages consistently manifest the head-final noun phrase structures, whereas head-initial deviants can be explained either internally through reanalysis or externally through contact. On the other hand, Chinese verb phrases have varied toward head-initial structures due to contact with verb-medial languages of Mainland Southeast Asia, before reinstalling the head-final structures as a consequence of contact with verb-final languages in North Asia. When extralinguistic factors are considered, the typological north-south divide of Chinese appears to be geographically consistent and gradable by the latitude of individual Chinese language communities, confirming the validity of a broader typological cline from north to south in Eastern Eurasia
Areal-linguistic approach to the diversity of the generic term for ‘music’ in the world’s languages
Get PDFOvaj rad primjenjuje arealnolingvistički pristup istraživanju etimologije generičkih naziva za ‘glazbu’ u 263 jezika iz cijeloga svijeta te njihovoj ilustraciji i zemljopisnoj rasprostranjenosti. Pitanje posuđivanja od temeljnoga je interesa, osobito riječi koje su se rasprostranile iz izvornih jezika koji su kulturno dominantni u određenim područjima. U radu se analizira šest izvornih jezika s generičkim nazivima za ‘glazbu’ u šest glazbenih područja. Osim njih također se navode jezici koji ne posuđuju, nego umjesto toga zadržavaju ili kuju izvorne nazive za ‘glazbu’. Time se pokazuje varijacija u različitim stupnjevima pozitivnih i negativnih stavova koje nadležna jezična tijela imaju prema internacionalizmima i utjecaju određenih kulturnih centara u tim područjima, što se odražava u raznolikosti općih naziva za ‘glazbu’.This study uses an areal-linguistic approach to investigate etymologies and to illustrate the geographical distribution of generic terms for ‘music’ in 263 languages from around the world. Of main interest is the issue of borrowing, wherein words spread from certain source languages that are culturally dominant in specific areas. In the present study, six source languages with generic terms for ‘music’ in six musical areas are defined. In addition to these areas, there are also languages that do not borrow, but instead keep or invent native terms for ‘music’. This shows the variation among the different degrees of positive and negative attitudes by language authorities toward internationalism and influence from certain cultural centres in the area, which are reflected in the diversity of the general terms for ‘music’
(De-)Altaicisation as convergence and divergence between Japonic and Koreanic languages
Get PDFFollowing an initiative to include Japanese and Korean into the Altaic macro-family by Philipp von Siebold (1832) and a systematic linguistics-oriented investigation in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries by Gustav John Ramstedt (1952, 1957, 1966), the question whether the Altaic macro-family is a genealogical unity (Miller 1971; Menges 1984; Robbeets 2005) or just a group of languages that share similar typology (Janhunen 2007; Vovin 2009; Tranter 2012) is still disputed. On the other hand, the existence of a common ancestor between Japanese and Korean has recently gained more supporting linguistic evidence (Whitman 1985; Francis-Ratte 2016), although a large group of proposed Proto-Japanese-Korean lexical items are not completely unproblematic when applying strict criteria of regular sound correspondences and semantic field (e.g., Janhunen 1999: 10; Vovin 2010).
Instead of directly revisiting their origin, the present study devotes attention to typological features that distinguish Japonic and Koreanic from the other Altaic languages both on the synchronic and diachronic levels by taking into account also historical languages. As a main method, a quantitative-typological approach also allows comparison of various languages spoken in Northeast Asia without any assumption about their common origin, unlike in etymological studies (cf. Unger 2013; Francis-Ratte 2016)
Dōngyà hǎiàn yǔyán qūyù jí qúntǐ zhìtú (东亚海岸语言区域及群体制图) [Mapping linguistic areas and populations in Coastal East Asia]
No full textThis study adopts a quantitative approach to examining the diversity of languages spoken along Coastal East Asia. Based on the typological features of 140 language varieties from 17 different affinities, we divide Coastal East Asia into eight micro-areas, in which we observe structural convergence regardless of the genetic affiliations of the languages involved. Another interesting implication of the current mapping lies on the coastal locations where the boundary lines cross from the continent into the sea. In terms of history, these locations, mostly connected to seaways, have clearly been war zones and/or trade centres where a mass of people from various ethnic and linguistic backgrounds have encountered. The mechanisms under multilingualism and possible language shift are likely to lead the convergence of newcomers’ language into the same direction as one of the (more) indigenous languages and, likewise, to diverge the language from its sister languages that remain in their own zone
Clustering and evolution of phonological systems across languages in Coastal East Asia
Get PDFThe present study employs a quantitative method to investigate phonological profiles of languages spoken across the coastline of East Asia, ranging from the Chukotka Peninsula to the Malay Peninsula. The sampling includes 264 linguistic varieties from 17 different genealogical units. 20 typological features related to various domains of phonology, including qualities and contrasts in vowels and consonants, as well as components in the syllable structure and tones are considered. Attention is paid to three points of focus: areal distribution, diachronic change, and learnability. Across Coastal East Asia, there is a north-south divide running across the boundary between Northeast and Southeast Asia. Within these zones, numerable groups of languages share similar phonological features and thereby form Sprachbünde, the formation of which can be traced back to the existence of (pre)historical political entities, population movements and subsequent encounters among speakers of different language families. Under areal diffusion, languages in contact have acquired similar tendencies of retention and innovation for individual phonological features, resulting in deviation across cognate languages spoken in different Sprachbünde. In several cases, a statistical method reveals an obvious signal of particular language families being the source of areal patterns. Among the phonological features under investigation, several features have a lower degree of learnability, especially among L2 speakers in the scenario of language shift, and this is largely due to typological differences from their L1. Cross-cutting between areality and learnability, those features with a higher degree of complexity, such as consonant clusters, tend to reveal more clearly the area-specific tendencies
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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