Browsing by Subject "Historical linguistics"
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Item Aspects of the phonology and morphology of Zenzontepec Chatino, a Zapotecan language of Oaxaca, Mexico(2014-08) Campbell, Eric William; Woodbury, Anthony C.This dissertation is an analysis of aspects of the phonology and morphology of Zenzontepec Chatino (ISO 639-3: czn), a Zapotecan (Otomanguean) language spoken in a remote area of Oaxaca, Mexico (16°32"N, 97°30"W). There are an estimated 8,000 speakers of the language, but its vitality is weakening due to accelerating shift to Spanish. The phonological analysis begins with the segmental inventory. After that, the autosegmental contrasts are treated, with the highlight being the tone system. The tone bearing unit is the mora, which may bear high tone /H/, mid tone /M/, or no tone Ø. In tone systems with a three-way contrast, the unspecified category is usually the mid-level one. Therefore, Zenzontepec Chatino is typologically unusual in this respect. Special chapters are devoted to phonotactics and phonological processes, including a play language of "speaking backwards" that sheds light on crucial phonological questions, such as the status of glottalization and the limits of prosodic domains. There are also chapters on special topics in phonology: regional variation, Spanish loanwords, and sound symbolism. Another chapter bridges the phonology and the morphology, defining and comparing the phonological word versus the grammatical word, and outlining the basic morphological building blocks: roots, affixes, clitics, and particles. After that, lexeme classes are defined using morphosyntactic criteria, providing a syntactic sketch of the language. The language is strongly head-marking with somewhat agglutinating and synthetic morphology. Another chapter gives an overview of verbal morphology, which is the locus of most of the language's morphology. The dissertation is the beginning of a full descriptive grammar and is part of a larger project to document Zenzontepec Chatino, complementing a dictionary and a documentary text corpus recorded in the community with native speakers. The theoretical approach is one in which the language is explored as much as possible on its own terms using naturalistic textual data supplemented by lexicographic and elicited material. The analysis is not bound by any formal framework, but it is informed by socio-cultural and diachronic considerations. It is situated in a typological perspective to offer more of a contribution to the scientific understanding of the structure of human language.Item The development the use of the negation particles miš and mā…š in Egyptian colloquial Arabic(2010-05) Town, Rosalie Melissa; Pat-el, Na'ama; Schulte-Nafeh, MarthaThe negation system in Modern Egyptian Colloquial Arabic does not follow an obvious set of rules. The particle that negates most verbal predicates also negates nominal predicates, and the particle that negates most nominal predicates also negates verbal predicates. By examining the behavior of these particles over time and comparing them to negation systems in other languages, it is possible to see the reasons for this complicated negation system.Item Gender assignment in loan words in the history of Icelandic : a synchronic and diachronic analysis(2014-05) Brown, Collin Laine; Pierce, MarcSome such as Schwink (2004) have analyzed diachronic developments in Germanic gender as a whole, while others like Steinmetz (1985, 2001) and Trosterud (2006) have looked at diachronic changes in grammatical gender in the North Germanic languages. Specifically within the history of Icelandic, Steinmetz and Trosterud both argue for a neuter-default gender system for Old Norse (and for Modern Icelandic). This report looks at loan words from the Old Norse period drawn from historical sources, such as the Heimskringla (History of the Kings of Norway) and Laxdœla Saga, and compares their gender assignment then with their gender in Modern Icelandic in order to see if any of their originally assigned genders changed in the modern language. That none of the loans analyzed in this report changed their gender assignment from neuter to masculine as in West Germanic supports Steinmetz' and Trosterud's notions of Icelandic having a neuter-default gender system. These findings also support Schwink's view (2004:99), when he writes that Icelandic's gender system remains relatively unchanged from that of Old Norse.Item Linguistic inheritance, social difference, and the last two thousand years of contact among Lowland Mayan languages(2011-05) Law, Daniel Aaron; Stross, Brian; England, Nora C.; Epps, Patience; Stuart, David; Hanks, William; Woodbury, AnthonyThe analysis of language contact phenomena, as with many types of linguistic analysis, starts from the similarity and difference of linguistic systems. This dissertation will examine the consequences of linguistic similarity and the social construction of difference in the ‘Lowland Mayan linguistic area’, a region spanning parts of Guatemala, Southern Mexico, Belize and Honduras, in which related languages, all belonging to the Mayan language family, have been in intensive contact with each other over at least the past two millennia. The linguistic outcomes of this contact are described in detail in the dissertation. They include contact-induced changes in the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the languages involved of a type and degree that seems to contravene otherwise robust cross-linguistic tendencies. I propose that these cross-linguistically unusual outcomes of language contact in the Maya Lowlands result, in part, from an awareness of the inherited similarities between these languages, and in part from the role that linguistic features, but not languages as whole systems, appear to have played in the formation of community or other identities. This dissertation investigates two complementary questions about language contact phenomena that can be ideally explored through the study of languages with a high level of inherited similarity in contact with one another. The first is how historically specific, dynamic strategies and processes of constructing and asserting group identity and difference, as well as the role that language plays in these, can condition the outcomes of language contact. The second is more language internal: what role does (formal, structural) inherited similarity play in conditioning the outcome of language contact between related languages? These two questions are connected in the following hypothesis: that inherited linguistic similarity can itself be an important resource in the construction of identity and difference in particular social settings, and that the awareness of similarity between languages (mediated, as it is, by these processes of identity construction) facilitates contact-induced changes that are unlikely, or even unavailable without that perception of sameness. This proposal carries with it a call for more research on contact between related languages as related languages, and not as utterly separate systems.Item A re-examination of the origins of Romani(2013-12) John, Vijay George; Hancock, Ian F.Romani Studies as an academic discipline emerged in the 18th century with scholars such as Rüdiger (1782) and Grellmann (1783). At that time, two main hypotheses regarding the origin of the Roma formed that, in some variation, still have their adherents today. Rüdiger argued that the Roma’s ancestors left India because of invading armies, whereas Grellmann argued that they were social outcasts. This thesis argues in support of a military origin of the Roma and a koïné origin of the Romani language by bringing together linguistic, sociohistorical, and genetic evidence.Item Towards a sociohistorical reconstruction of pre-Islamic Arabic dialect diversity(2013-08) Magidow, Alexander; Brustad, Kristen; Epps, Patience, 1973-This dissertation develops a new framework for reconstructing the diversity of a language at a given historical time period. It applies this framework to the problem of reconstructing the diversity of Arabic dialects immediately prior to the Islamic conquests, which spread speakers of these dialects across much of North Africa and the Middle East. The study first establishes a theoretical framework for reconstructing historical speech communities, defined as groups of speakers linked by shared allegiance. It then analyzes the tribal and non-tribal social organization in Pre-Islamic Arabia, and provides a detailed historical overview of how the Islamic conquests contributed to the Arabization of the conquered territories. Finally, the dissertation reconstructs the linguistic history of the Arabic demonstratives, using them as a variable to determine which speech communities existed in pre-Islamic Arabic, where they were located in time and space, and how the diversity of those communities is related to the diversity of modern Arabic dialects.