Languages and Linguistics
Literature references and annotations by Dick Grune, dick@dickgrune.com.
Last update: Sun Sep 15 11:01:27 2024.
These references and annotations were originally intended
for personal use and are presented here only in the hope
that they may be useful to others.
There is no claim to completeness or even correctness.
Each annotation represents my understanding of the text
at the moment I wrote the annotation.
No guarantees given; comments and content criticism welcome.
For the (macro-)Altaic languages and Yeniseian
see North-Asiatic.html.
For the Indo-European languages
see Indo-European.html.
Dicky Gilbers,
Lianne Koster,
De plaats van /o:/ en /ɔ/ in het Nederlandse klinkersysteem,
(in Dutch: The Positions of the /o:/ and the /ɔ/ in the Dutch Vowel System),
2024,
pp. 18.
The o-sound in Standard Dutch comes in two variants: closed and long, as in
poot /po:t/ (leg of an animal); and open and short, as in pot /pɔt/
(pot). There are no words /pɔ:t/ or /pot/ in Dutch, nor could there be
since they contain vowel variants that do not exist in Standard Dutch.
Formants F1 and F2 of the pronunciation of poot and pot were recored
from 20 persons in their twenties and from 20 persons in their sixties. The
main result is that for the juniors the positions of the/ɔ/ and the /o:/
are closer together than for the seniors.
Detailed explanations are given for these changes, which were
caused by the disappearance of the short /o/ in the last century in Dutch,
which created an empty position in the vowel system which exerted a pull on
the remaining vowels.
See also Grune (2022).
Dick Grune,
Open en gesloten korte o in een klein deel van Oost-Nederland,
(in Dutch: Open and closed short o in a small area of the East of the Netherlands),
2022,
pp. 20.
Although Standard Dutch has no short closed /o/ (the only o variants being
/ɔ/ and /o:/), some older people from the East of the Netherlands, among
them the author, have preserved the short /o/ in their speech, in opposition
with the short /ɔ/.
The textbook example is bok (he-goat) /bok/ versus hok (pen, coop)
/hɔk/].
A number of rules are suggested to predict if a word has /o/ or /ɔ/, but
only one rule is without exceptions: before -r we always find /ɔ/.
For strong
verbs we have that those with -e- in the present tense have -ɔ- in the
past tense:
treffen - trof /trɔf/ - getrɔffen -- to hit
Similarly the strong verbs with -i- have -o- in their past forms.
There is also a clear correlation with English: if a related word exists in
English and is written with -o-, the Dutch word is very likely to
have /ɔ/: Eng. moss = Dutch mos /mɔs/, whereas English written
-u- corresponds with /o/: Eng. bush = Dutch bos /bos/.
But these rules predict the o-variant correctly only in a limited number of
cases; in the end a word just has /o/ or /ɔ/.
The last 11 pages of the paper contain a list of about 1100 words with written
short -o- (sometimes in more than one syllable), with their pronunciation(s).
Five sources of pronunciation info have been used:
• the author's own pronunciation;
• a list of about 260 words from a 1940 book by the speech therapist B. van
Dantzig (see van Dantzig (1940));
•
a list of about 450 words from the entry 'o als letterklank' (o as a written
sound) from the "Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal" (Dictionary of the Dutch
Language, 43 volumes) from 1869;
• a list of about 290 words from an 1849 paper by
D. Bomhoff Hz. from Zutphen, who contributes the Gelderland pronunciation;
• email correspondence with J.F. Kikstra, of Frisian descent, rejecting the
author's pronunciation of 76 words and confirming the rest.
See also Gilbers & Koster (2024).
Rouard, X.,
Did Indo-European Languages Stem from a Trans-Eurasian Original Language? An Interdisciplinary Approach,
2021,
pp. 35.
A summary and examination of the theories of the origin of the Indo-Europeans
in the light of genetic, linguistic, and religious similarities. The arguments
are supported by maps of movements of peoples. On the linguistic side Appendix
1 lists several hundred Gaulish stems that can be
recognized in unrelated (or far-off) languages like Kartvelian, Dravidian,
Burushaski, and Elamite.
Appendix 2 does the same for English stems. Some of these stems
might be of Trans-Eurasian origin (not Robbeets' Transeurasian).
For the conclusions see Rouard (2022).
Manaster Ramer, A.,
The Early Turkic Numerals 20 and 11-19, 21-29, 31-39, etc.,
2020,
pp. 5.
Somewhat confusing (tongue in cheek? dyslexia?) paper about
"Oberstufenzählung" or the "anticipating counting system" in Early Turkic.
The author refutes Erdal's and Clark's idea that this phenomenon is related to
people numbering the first element in a series by 0 (e.g. Ground Floor, First
Floor, etc.).
Instead the author proposed that people counted by bending fingers from 1 to
10, and the stretch them again from 11 to 20.
This is then extended to form an explanation of the vigesimal system.
This leads to the suggestion that the Early Turkic (and proto-Indo-European)
words for 10 and 20 would have meant `closed hand' and `open hand', resp.
This is not illustrated further.
[DG: Oberstufenzählung also (and even primarily) occurs in German time-of-day
terminology: Viertel Zwei `quarter two' for 1h15.
The author's finger counting explanation cannot hold here, so either it is
wrong or Oberstufenzählung in German and anticipating counting system in Early
Turkic have different explanations (unlikely).
The explanation of the German time-of-day terminology is pretty obvious:
Viertel Zwei is a quarter into the second hour.]
Alfieri, L.,
Is Burushaski an Indo-European Language? On a Series of Recent Publications by Professor Ilija Čašule,
2020,
pp. 22.
Level-headed analysis of Čašule's publications on the subject.
Conclusions:
1. Čašule shows that there is a lot of Indo-European material in
Burushaski.
2. The given etymologies are far removed from forming the interlocking system
required to prove genetic relationship.
3. The hypothesis that Phrygian was the main source of the IE material is
untenable; the material, if genuine, most likely comes from an unknown branch
of IE.
4. Burushaski data cannot assist in the reconstruction of proto-Indo-European.
The author does not say outright that it is madness to compare a 5 millennia
old language to a modern language.
The paper gives an example of an accepted failure of the comparative method:
"Nobody rejects the IE origin of Germ. Mutter ‘mother'
and Tch.B mācer, although the expected outcomes of PIE
*méh2ter- are Germ. **Muder and Tch.B **mocer (Germ. Bruder,
Tch.B procer < *bhréh2ter-)."
In this case one accepts analogy with the word for ‘father' as an explanation.
Huehnergard, J.,
Proto-Semitic,
2019,
pp. 36.
Systematic description of same.
From the looks of it, proto-Semitic differed somewhat less from Modern Hebrew
than Beowulf from Modern English.
Proto-Semitic personal pronouns: 1sg: ɂana; 2masc: ɂanta; 2fem: ɂanti.
Fedden, S.,
Corbett, G.G.,
Gender and Classifiers in Concurrent Systems: Refining the Typology of Nominal Classification,
2017,
pp. 47.
It is tempting to consider gender as just another classifier, but gender and
classifiers have very different properties (Dixon, 1986).
Basically classifiers are much less strict than gender:
they dnned not apply to all nouns;
they are usually not incorporated in verb forms;
they may vary with speech style and/or level; and
they may be context-dependent.
Gender markers and classifiers must be viewed as two different domains.
In this light the Bantu noun classes are actually genders: the sometimes more
than 10 classes of the Bantu languages require as strict agreement as the 3
genders in Latin or the 2 genders in Hebrew. Gender is wider than sex: the
numerous Bantu classes cannot all be based on sex, and even Latin involves a
non-sex gender: neuter.
The paper gives examples from LamNso, a Bantu language with 6 genders from
Cameroon.
A gender-classifier concurrent system is a system that has both gender and
classifiers.
Languages featuring them are found in South America, and in a few other
isolated places. Languages with gender-number concurrency are found closer to
home: for example, number (singular/plural) and gender (masculine/feminine)
form an orthogonal concurrent system in Italian.
The authors disturb this system by introducing other criteria,
e.g. animate/inanimate, and demonstrate the effect in examples in various
fictitious "dialects" of Italian, which is kind of creepy.
A clear example of a language with both a gender-based and a classifier-based
system is the TNG language Mian.
The gender is expressed in the definite article, which is a
one-vowel clitic, as follows:
sing. plur.
masculine =e =i
feminine =o =i
neuter 1 =e =o
neuter 2 =o =o
There are 6 classes; the class of a noun expresses itself as a short syllable
prefix to a transitive verb, as follows:
M-classifier dob-
F-classifier om-
Long tob-
Bundle gam-
Covering gol-
Residue ob-
A 4 by 6 table of gender versus class is provided, in which only 8 out of the
24 boxes are occupied by nouns, showing that the combined system is far from
orthogonal: all nouns that are not in the two human classes are of gender
neuter 1, and all neuter 2 nouns are used with F-classifier. Also, there are
only two words that are used with the Bundle classifier. The author calls such
sets inquorate, i.e. too small to warrant a decision by voting, and
suggests just treating them as irregular.
[DG: seems a matter of economy of expression.]
Mian personal pronouns: 1sg: ne; 2sgm: kebo, 2sgf:ob.
Hamori, F.,
The Etruscan Language,
2017,
pp. 23.
Defending Alinei (2003) and regretting the lack of an English translation of
same.
Contains a long list of Etruscan ~ Modern Hungarian correspondences, with
sound laws.
Sansò, A.,
Where Do Antipassive Constructions Come From?,
2017,
pp. 44.
Antipassive constructions originate from grammaticalization of mainly one of
four forms:
agent nouns;
verb forms with generic or indefinite items in the object slot;
action nouns + optional auxiliary verb; and
morphemes for reflexive or reciprocal actions.
Viti, C.,
On Degrammaticalization: Controversial Points and Possible Explanations,
2015,
pp. 39.
Grammaticalization occurs when small grammatical words connect to the main
word to form conjugations, declinations, etc.
Degrammaticalization occurs when they fall apart again.
The author gives more than 40 examples of degrammaticalization, among which:
the detachment of the first-person plural ending -muid into an independent
pronoun "we" in Irish;
the pseudo-numeral tig `a convincingly large number of ...' in Dutch, from
twintig `20', dertig `30', etc.;
the development of the Proto-Semitic accusative marker -Vt into a
preposition ʔet in Modern Hebrew
[DG: but ʔet is also the construct state of ʔot `sign, marker' and is
followed by ha-, just like any other construct state ...]; and
the change of conjunctions to nouns ("ifs and buts").
Some examples are contrived: in to go boldly → to boldly go,
the "bound morpheme" to is said to become a "free morpheme", as if the
original was togo boldly.
Examples of degrammaticalization are often contested (see above), and in the
bulk of the paper the author
gives criteria, e.g. distinguishing it from back-formation and misinterpreted grammaticalization.
Nikolaeva, I.,
On the Expression of TAM on Nouns: Evidence from Tundra Nenets,
2015,
pp. 44.
Tundra Nenets nouns are inflected for number, case, and, optionally,
possessor. But the possessor may be shifted into the future by using the infix
-də-:
kniga-də-mt° m΄iŋa-d°m
book-future-your(ACC) give-I = I gave you a book
[DG: where does the past tense in `gave' come from?]
Note that there is no dative in this sentence: the beneficiary is indicated as
the future possessor.
But if there is already a possessor, the beneficiary must be supplied
separately:
kniga-m΄i n΄aənt° m΄iŋa-d°m
book-my(ACC) you(DAT) give-I = I gave my book to you
The paper gives full analysis of this phenomenon.
Audring, J.,
Calibrating Complexity: How Complex Is a Gender System?,
2015,
pp. 26.
Shows how difficult it is to formalize common sense. Everybody can see that
Russian is more complex than Bahasa Indonesia, but why exactly is that? And
everybody knows that Dutch is easier than German, but is it?
This paper concentrates on gender, a property that can have only a (very)
finite number of values.
The vocabulary of the paper is idiosyncratic and needs getting used to:
"canonical" seems to mean "describing the system if it were exceptionless",
but most technical terms are explained in the text.
Gender systems can be decomposed into the following 6 components, called
"dimensions" here, because they are considered to be measurable on an
(ordinal) scale of complexity.
1. Controllers: they emit gender informations; e.g. nouns, pronouns. (6 dpts.)
2. Agreement targets: they receive the gender information and and incorporate
it into their form; e.g adjectives, verb forms. (9 dpts.)
3. Domains: the part of the sentence (or sub-conversation) over which the
gender information can be picked up; e.g. noun phase, clause. (1 dpt.)
4. Values: the nominal values of the gender variable; includes (Bantu) noun
classes, but not (East Asian) classifiers. (3 dpts.)
5. Assignment rules: given a controller, they determine which gender
information it emits; e.g. in German monosyllabic nouns ending in /ʃ/ are
masculine. (3 dpts.)
6. Conditions: interrelations of the behavior of gender with other
"dimensions" in the language; e.g. most Indo-European languages distinguish
gender only in the 3rd person of the personal pronoun system
[DG: seems a misnomer for "correlations" to me; a condition has to be
"fulfilled", whereas these "conditions" emerge from the language all by
themselves.].
In the next 14 pages, the above "dimensions" are analysed one by one, data
points (or "variations"; the terminology in the paper is vague)
on their complexity scales are determined (with far too few examples;
mostly the reader is referred to handbooks of the pertinent languages), and
ordinal rules for them are determined.
An example of a data point is the redundancy of the gender marking on the
target.
Normally (canonically) that marking is redundant, because the gender was
already knows after meeting the controller: ma sœur[f] est forte[f]; but
sometimes the target resolves an ambiguity: je[m/f] suis forte[f].
The existence of this situation makes the gender system more complicated.
This is captured in the (ordinal) rule
"Gender value on target is redundant" < "Gender value on target is informative"
[DG: These rules are ordinal because they order the data points, but do not
specify the magnitude of their difference.]
German is analysed according to the 23 data points determined above. On the
following points, German is more complicated than a canonical language:
dpt 3. No overt marking on controller (i.e. German nouns don't directly show
their gender, unlike e.g. (most) Italian words).
dpt 8. Portmanteau gender marker (G. des combines masculine with genitive
and determined).
dpt 9. Gender marker is syncretic (G. die serves for feminine and plural).
dpt 12. Gender markers can have different forms per value (the German masculine
gender marker for the genitive on the noun can be -s, -es, and
-en).
dpt 20. Redundancy rules (i.e. there are hardly any synchronic rules to
determine the gender of a noun).
dpt 21. Higher number of rules (i.e if an attempt is made to find such rules, a
very high number is required (Köpcke (1982) required 44 different rules to
explain the gender of 90% of the mono-morphemic nouns in German).
dpt 22. Several types of rule (i.e. these rules draw information from all over
the place).
Although these scales are not rational (i.e. not based on proportions) the
author (and everybody else) identifies dpts 20-22 (i.e. the fact that you
basically have to learn the gender of each German noun separately) as "the
main source of the notoriety of the German gender system"; this analysis shows
that for the rest it is "a fairly run-of-the-mill, even simple gender system".
[DG: Roughly the same pertains to Dutch, with two gender values rather than
three. In Hebrew gender can be deduced from the form of the word in all except
perhaps a hundred nouns.]
Adiego, I-X.,
The Etruscan Texts of the Pyrgi Golden Tablets: Certainties and Uncertainties,
2015,
pp. 22.
Given the fact that the Phoenician part of the Pyrgi tablets is not at all a
direct translation, and that Semiticists cannot agree on many details of its
translation, the author sets out to analyze the Etruscan part on its own
strength, without any reference to the Phoenician semi-equivalent.
Observing that several sentences in the text come in matched pairs, the author
is able to clarify the use of some determinatives, and to identify a
relative-clause construction. A reasonable translation with many unidentified
verbs results.
Piispanen, P.,
Evaluating the Uralic-Yukaghiric Word-Initial, Proto-Sibilant Correspondence Rules,
2015,
pp. 37 (237-273).
The word initial consonants of corresponding words in proto-Uralic and
proto-Yukaghir show an unmistakable but not a straightforward correlation,
and the question is if this correlation should be seen as genetic or areal
(borrowing).
The author gives 18 phonetic correspondence rules for the sibilants
(s-, ś-, š-, ć-, and č-; l- and θ- and Ø-
(deletion) are also involved), which can help to distinguish loans from
cognates.
LaPolla, R.J.,
review of Evans V `The language myth: Why language is not an instinct',
2015,
pp. 18.
The author of the review expresses amazement at the fact that Evans thought it
necessary to beat to death such an outmoded theory as that of the innate
language module, but finds that Evans points out that an influential scientist
as Chomsky claims that the language instinct originated as a single
mutation about 60.000 years ago, and that the term Universal Grammar is still
found in scientific and especially in popular science publications.
[DG: Any summary of a publication in a field notorious for its heated
discussions is necessarily a gross over-simplification.]
[DG: See also Guy Deutscher (2005).]
Vyvyan Evans,
The Language Myth -- Why Language is not an Instinct,
Cambridge Univ. Press,
2014,
pp. 304.
Refutes the Chomsky and Pinker thesis that language and grammar are based in
modules in the brain by refuting the arguments C & P give for their thesis.
Both the arguments and the refutations are actually rather unconvincing.
Daniel A. Foxvog,
Introduction to Sumerian Grammar,
2014,
pp. 170.
Matter-of-fact description of the Sumerian language, based on lecture notes,
with warnings and hints for avoiding pitfalls when particles or constructions
might be confused or misinterpreted. The author is not given to theorizing,
and does not even begin to suggest why there would 7 different signs that are
pronounced gu, although sometimes alternative analyses are presented.
The explanations are clear, with neat tables and enough
examples, but their relationship to the surrounding material is sometimes
puzzling. There is an appendix of 16 exercises, ranging from simple to
serious; the exercises refer to a "glossary" but it is not in the book, nor is
it an accompanying publication that I can find.
The book is a typographical disaster, printed in a spidery non-proportional
font with very long lines, and any structure present in the text is hardly
mirrored in the layout. But then, for 5 quid what am I complaining.
Norde, M.,
Quirky Quotes and Needles in the Haystack: Tracing Grammatical Change in Untagged Corpora,
2013,
pp. 17.
Linguistic changes are reported in big jumps, but in fact occur in a large
number of very small steps (`micro-stories').
[DG: Just like chemical reactions:
the decomposition of ozone occurs in three steps:
O3 → O2 + O (O very reactive)
O + O3 → O4 (O4 very unstable)
O4 → 2 O2
whereas the overall big jump is written as 2 O3 → 3 O2.]
Jacques, G.,
The Sound Change s- to n- in Arapaho,
2013,
pp. 16.
Proto-Algonquian initial *s- yields n- in Arapaho, which is strange.
Three hypotheses are put forward, each based in sequences of well-known sound
laws:
Picard (1994): *s- → *h- → *ç- → *y- → *l- → n-.
Goddard (2001): *s- → *z- → *r- → n-.
Jacques (2013): *s- → l̥- → *l- → n-.
Kenanidis, I.,
Yet Another Suggestion about the Origins of the Sumerian Language,
2013,
pp. 15.
Several people have tried to connect Sumerian to the Common Turkic (z-Altaic)
languages. The author associates it to Proto-Bulghar/Chuvash, the r-Altaic
branch, supplying 39 sound rules. Remarkably in the examples Sumerian words are
connected to Common Turkic words, sidestepping Bulghar/Chuvash by
incorporating the Common Turkic / Chuvash rules into the 39 Sumerian / Common
Turkic rules, as in Sumerian kul ~ Old Turkic qoš `to run'.
Carrasquer Vidal, M.,
A Grammatical Sketch of Proto-Nostratic,
2013,
pp. 25.
Rather an overview of a form of Nostratic which includes Basque, Afro-Asiatic,
and Georgian, based on pronouns and plurality markers.
Extensive lists of pronouns in many languages.
Joseph Biddulph,
Twenty Languages of Africa,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd,
2013?,
pp. 56.
The languages are (stripped of their class prefixes):
Baga, Bambara, Beja, Kunda, Dangme, Giryama, Herero, Igbo, Kafa,
Kalendin+Nanji, Lala (Nigeria), Lala (Zambia),
Lamba (Northern Togo), Lamba (Zambia's Copperbelt), Mahass, Makonde, Ngambai,
Old Coptic, Shona, Yao+Mwera.
Each language is described in between 5 lines and five pages, apparently
depending on the information available to the author.
The larger descriptions may contain conjugations and word lists.
Yoshioka, Noboru,
A Reference Grammar of Eastern Burushaski,
(dissertation),
2012,
pp. 626.
The title says it all: 220 pages of grammar; 68 pages of theory; 180 pages of
stories; and 120 pages of vocabulary, of Hunza and Nagar Burushaski.
Joseph Biddulph,
Byways and Beasts of Sacred Scripture,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
2012,
pp. 56.
In his other religio-linguistic works the author advocated taking the bible
literally as long as possible.
Here the author turns to a number of passages where a literal interpretation is
no longer possible: the day the sun stood still; dragons and liliths; etc.
Joseph Biddulph,
Gwyliwch y gwagle -- Mind the Gap,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
2012,
pp. 56.
Personal thoughts of the author, linguistic and otherwise, from his wanderings
in the English-Welsh border region around Pontypridd.
De Schepper, K.,
Against a Minimal-Augmented Analysis of Number,
2012,
pp. 13.
Introduction to Minimal-Augmented Analysis of Number:
"Plural" means "more than one", but that does not work well with
pronouns.
"We" is not actually the plural of "I"; it is not more than one I-s.
Also some languages have a dual, in addition to singular and plural, used
when there are two objects.
For personal pronouns the term dual is used to mean "you and me",
more or less.
Indonesian is an example.
It has a 1st person singular aku `I', but its dual, kita means
"you and me and possibly other(s)" and can easily cover 3, 4 people;
and its plural kami means
"me and other(s) (but not you)".
In this case the terms plural and dual are not really
appropriate, and a better description should be possible.
1. The word "possibly" in the above description of kita shows that it
actually has two meanings, "you and me" and "you and me and other(s)",
just as the English "you" has two meanings,
"you (alone)" and "you and others"
(Dutch: jij and jullie, resp.).
2. Many languages that have a personal pronouns dual use
it as a specific personal pronoun, meaning "us-two", on par with
"I", "you", "we", etc.
This suggests that the properties separating aku from kami are not
singular and plural, but rather alone and with others.
The technical terms for alone and with others are "minimal" and
"augmented".
So for Indonesian we get:
person minimal augmented
1st person aku "I alone" kami "I and others"
1+2 person kita "us-two alone" kita "us-two and others"
2nd person kamu "you alone" kalian "you and others"
and for the Philippine language Ilocano, which differentiates between
1+2 person minimal and 1+2 person augmented, we get:
1st person co "I alone" mi "I and others"
1+2 person ta "us-two alone" tayo "us-two and others"
2nd person mo "you alone" yo "you and others"
This minimal-augmented view is helpful for many Austronesian and Australian
languages, and a few isolated languages elsewhere. It is not incompatible with
other languages, though.
Criticizing a proposal by
Bobajik (2008, "Missing persons: A case study in morphological universals")
to make minimal-augmented the standard description of pronouns in all
languages, and using numerical data from various papers on the pronominal
systems in a wide range of languages, the author argues that since
"more paradigms in the languages of the world can be explained by a
singular-plural analysis of number than a minimal-augmented analysis, speakers
predominantly look at both nouns and pronouns with a singular-plural
perspective."
Thus the minimal-augmented analysis is an unnecessary complication, requiring
a different concept for number in pronouns and nouns whereas "a single category
of number covering both nouns and pronoun still suffices."
[DG: I cannot agree:
1. In many Australian languages minimal-augmented analysis clarifies a lot;
2. Even in languages that do not "require" it, the minimal-augmented analysis
allows the question "Is 'we' really the plural of 'I'?" to be answered by
"No, it is the augmented of 'I'";
3. That languages profiting from minimal-augmented analysis are a
minority cannot be an argument.]
Kulinov, L.,
Voice Typology,
2011,
pp. 31.
This is Chapter 18 of Jae-Jung Song's
`The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Typology'.
The Leningrad-St Petersburg Typology Group (1970-) has developed a formalism
for the possible relations between the two main representations of the
linguistic structure of a phrase: the semantic level, which features semantic
roles (Agent, Patient, Experiencer, etc.) and the grammatical, syntactic
representation with Subjects, Direct Objects, Indirect Object, Oblique Object,
etc.
Each such relation is a "diathesis". The formalism can express very many
different diatheses; only a few occur in natural languages, and most of these
have names:
active voice (Actor: Subject; Patient: Direct Object),
passive voice (Patient: Subject; Actor: Oblique Object | Empty),
(both as in English), antipassive, benefactive, etc.
The diatheses in a language have interrelationships; between some (active ↔
passive) the interrelationships involves no (fundamental) change of semantics,
others (e.g. active ↔ benefactive) involve a change (increase) of semantics.
[DG: Active and passive don't have the same connotation, but that is
apparently ignored here.]
The field suffers from techincal term pollution; the author gives four
additional terms for `diathesis' and four terms for verbs that can both be
transitive and intransitive.
The body of the paper consists of the systematic enumeration of the diatheses
found in natural languages, often (but unfortunately by no means always) with
examples.
I missed for instance an example of the use of the particle -ax used in
Nivkh exclusively to mark the person who is made to do something in a
causative construction; and I missed the German "anti-benefactive":
Man hat mir das Fahrrad geklaut `They stole me the bicycle'.
This is not a frivolous complaint: interesting things are going on
here. Compared to the standard higher-level
Man hat mein Fahrrad gestohlen, we see that the possessor indication has
moved from the possessive pronoun to the anti-benefactive pronoun mir.
This seems linguistically significant and matches the tendency of German not
to specify information twice, as in
ein alter Mann versus der alte Mann
(rather than der alter* Mann).
I was surprised to see the be- in the German verb
bearbeiten `to work a material' from arbeiten `to work'
called an "applicative prefix", but when one comes to think about it, it makes
sense:
beschreiben `to write on something',
befahren `to drive on something (road)', but it does not work (today?) for
behaupten `to state, to claim'.
Holman, E.W.,
Brown, C.H.,
et al.,
Automated Dating of the World’s Language Families Based on Lexical Similarity,
2011,
pp. 36.
Exactly what is says in the title: old techniques spruced up and improved.
All datings in years before present, with a proclaimed accuracy of 25-29%.
With critical letters and rebuttals.
Joseph Biddulph,
Ethiopic -- A Straightforward Introduction to the Classical Language,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
2010,
pp. 56.
Exactly what it says in the title, with an eye to reading, or at least
decyphering the bible books of which copies have survived in Ge'ez.
Joseph Biddulph,
Bible Linguistics and Apocrypha,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
2010,
pp. 56.
Part 2 of "The Tractate of Khons."
Discusses and criticises the interpretation of linguistic properties of the
bible text by some bible experts, for example as to dating the various parts.
Joseph Biddulph,
The Tractate of Khons, and Other Red Herrings,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
2010,
pp. 56.
Plea, in a very personal style, for a method of text exegesis in which the
text is taken at face value and assumptions like "later editing", "textual
corruption" and "author error" are shunned, at least until all avenues to
explain the text within these limits are exhausted.
(The Tractate of Khons is an inscription on a 5-th century BC stele in Egypt
concerned with exorcism, which is used by H. St. John Tackeray to declare the
Book of Tobit a derivative, a view that is fought by the author of this
booklet.)
Joseph Biddulph,
Too Many Syllables? -- The Languages of the Sanskrit World,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
2010,
pp. 56.
More than 300 small notes about the Sanskrit footprint on the world:
languages, historical figures, grammatical terms, etc.
"A sample of a sample", as it says in the preface.
Anatoly Liberman,
Word Origins,
Oxford University Press,
Oxford, UK,
2009,
pp. 325.
This book makes one realize that there are two kinds of etymologies: one
that tries to explain terms like "hackney" and "jack-o-lantern"; and one
that tries to explain terms like "hand" and "bring". The first makes you
search through medieval tomes and books about ancient crafts; the second
causes one to delve into ablaut series and next to unpronounceable
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) words that look more like formulas (which they
partly are). The first yields a number of anecdotal and often amusing stories,
the second dry-as-dust formal word derivations. The author, although
acknowledging the existence of the second, is clearly much more interested in
the first; PIE figures only sporadically in the text and does not even occur
in the index.
This approach makes the book a juicy read, especially on "funny" English
words; the sections on ablaut series etc. lack the same flourish and are
mercifully small. Yet even in the juicy part there are quite a number of
promising paragraphs that lead nowhere. For example, on page 101 we learn that
"Cockney" has an interesting origin, but that origin is never revealed.
Much too much to my taste is attributed to sound symbolism (page 212: the
b in "to beat" is suggested to be "imitative (echoic)" of the beating
action; the argument is that out of 115 synonyms of "beat, strike" about 20
begin with a b) or explained as "baby words" (pig - big - bag for "swollen
things").
I think such claims are warranted only when supported by similar phenomena
from several non-Indo-European languages. I personally cannot find any of
these sound symbolisms in Hebrew, the only Non-IE language I know well. Latin
capere (to take), Finnish kappan (to seize) and Hebr. kaf (hollow
hand) may very well be related (and I think they probably are) but I don't
hear any sound symbolism in them (page 43).
For that matter, Hebr. chataf (he grabbed) sounds much more like seizing.
The editing is far from perfect; one problem is that the Old-English/Icelandic
letter "thorn" (a p with an upward stick like a b) is often printed as a p
(f.e. page 83). In summary, the subtitle "Etymology for Everybody" is fully
justified, but it is a limited form of etymology.
Paulien Cornelisse,
Taal is zeg maar echt mijn ding,
(in Dutch: I'm so into languages, I really am),
Contact,
2009,
pp. 212+19.
A hundred or so newspaper columns about the sillier uses of the Dutch language,
sometimes hilarious, sometimes sarcastic, often both.
Jeremy Butterfield,
Damp Squid: The English Language Laid Bare,
OUP,
2009,
pp. 192.
Annotated statistical data of the English language, based on the Oxford
Corpus, containing over 2 billion words.
The title is a corruption of 'damp squib', where 'squib' is a small piece of
firework.
Joseph Biddulph,
A New Method in Aramaic,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
2008,
pp. 56.
Details the four scripts in which Aramaic was written:
Samaritan, Hebrew, First Syriac, and Second Syriac
(but none of these looks even remotely like Hebrew handwriting, since that is
a 13th century development).
Starting from a Palmyrene inscription in a Roman camp in South Shields,
Northumbria, the author supplies enough vocabulary and grammar of Aramaic to
explain parts of the bible written in Aramaic and parts translated into Syriac.
Roger D. Woodard,
The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia,
Cambridge Univ. Press,
Cambridge, UK,
2008,
pp. 262.
This is volume five of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient
Languages, a collection of 45 entries covering in principle all languages of
which sufficient recorded material is available from before 476 AD to write a
meaningful entry about.
All entries are of superb quality, so I'll restrict myself to specific
comments on the entries in this volume.
This is the least exciting of the five volumes, not because of the text
itself, but because the languages of the Near East are so similar; no juicy
Etruscan, Hurrian, or Elamite here.
The volume covers Ugaritic, Hebrew, Phoenician/Punic, Canaanite dialects,
Aramaic, Ancient South Arabian, and Ancient North Arabian.
Most of Ugaritic is written in its own cuneiform, without any vowels, except
a, i, and u when precede by an aleph.
This obscures much morphology, especially in the verb forms, which is an
obstacle to the study of the language; many vowels must be guessed on the
basis of the other Semitic languages.
Another problem is that the language used in prose differs considerably from
that used poetry.
Ugaritic is much more conservative than Hebrew, with the three traditional
Semitic cases nominative (-u), genitive (-i), and accusative (-a)
still fully operative.
The construct state is still in its infancy, and the genitive construction is
still usual:
malku qarīti = the king (nom.) of the city;
malka qarīti = the king (acc.) of the city.
Only in the dual and plural a shorter (construct) form may appear:
malkū qarīti = the kings (nom.) of the city, rather than
malkūma qarīti = the kings (nom.) of the city.
Short forms do, however, occur before personal pronouns:
malkūhu = his kings.
There is no article, prefix or postfix.
The verb has full singular, dual, and plural conjugations, for perfect,
imperfect, jussive and imperative.
The usual Semitic prepositions b-, l-, and k- are present, all
governing the genitive, but mi- is missing: motion in any direction is
indicated by l- and the appropriate verb.
There is no preposition for the direct object either, since its function is
performed by the accusative.
Although I am reasonably familiar with the subject, I had to read several
explanations twice, because they are often less than intuitive.
An example (page 31): "Personal pronouns agree ... with an appositional verb."
Huh? I thought the verb agreed with the personal pronoun (actually both agree
with the person, of course).
Hebrew:
Since the development of Hebrew from Proto-North-west Semitic is mainly driven
by vowel and stress shifts, these are treated in depth, e.g. kotèvet (=
she writes) from katibt.
We also learn that the glottal stop in z'ev (=wolf) from zi'b is a
hypercorrectism (even in those days!) since it should have been left in
unpronounced position, just as in -se't (=to carry) from -si't.
Hebrew lost the Proto-NWS case endings, resulting in stress on the
last syllable.
A table of how the 6 vowel classes of the Proto-NWS verb fared in Hebrew
clarifies many of the perceived irregularities of the H. verb.
Unfortunately there is no discussion of the origin of the article ha-
(= the) nor why it would cause lengthening of the following consonant.
Phoenician/Punic:
The differences between Phoenician/Punic and Hebrew are minute,except that
they are written in different alphabets and that P/P is written entirely
without vowels.
Some differences are:
1. the article ha- is often pronounced as 'a- or even a- (as it
does in Modern Hebrew).
2. negation is not expressed by lo' but by bal or 'i-, the latter
also known from Hebrew.
Comparison of the Phoenician alphabet in the table in this chapter with the
text on the cover of the book shows how far practice can deviate from theory.
The chapter on the Canaanite languages is actually a high-level theoretical
discussion of what offsets the Canaanite languages from the other Semitic
languages.
Not a single word of Moabite, Edomite, etc.
Aramaic was and is spoken from about 1500 BC to the present day; it was
written from about 950 BC until about 700 AD. It was written in two scripts,
Tiberian (= Hebrew) and Syriac (Estrangelo).
Old Aramaic had more emphatics than Hebrew, which developed differently.
This accounts for much of the difference between them,for example H. 'arets
(=land) = A. 'argha, both from original 'arł', the last sound being
a voiceless glottalized lateral fricative.
It shares with Hebrew the property that b alternates with v, etc.
In addition to Absolute and Construct, the author introduces a state Emphatic,
but since it is always formed by the suffix -'ā, it can just as well
be considered a postfixed definite article .
Some Aramaic dialects have prefixes n- or l- for the 3rd person
instead of y-, forms totally absent in Hebrew.
Unlike Hebrew, Aramaic had already early on a progressive/habitual form
consisting of the present participle + the verb hwh = to be. Such forms
were developed much further in Syriac.
The determinate direct object is marked by 'yt, as in Hebrew, or,
remarkably, by l-.
The unmarked word order is VSOI, but other orders are readily found.
All Aramaic text in this chapter is written without vowels, although in many
cases the vowels are known.
Somehow this gives the language a more arcane flavour than is necessary.
Ancient South Arabian, spoken from the 8th century BC until the 6th century AD
in and around Yemen, was written in an impressive monumental script, of
letters sometimes 30 cm. high, practically without vowels.
At the other extreme, thousands of wooden sticks have come to light in Yemen
in the 1970s, inscribed with minuscule letters.
The main Ancient South Arabian dialect is Sabaic.
The noun has three states: indeterminate, determinate, and construct,
characterized by endings -n, -nhn, and -w/-y, resp., in the plural.
Case endings would not have been written, but an occasional -w/-y suggest
an unsurprising -u for the nominative and -i for the genitive. The
probable -a for the accusative would have no chance of ever being written.
The indefinite in -n returns in mn = who (Hebr. mi), and mhn =
what (Hebr. mah).
The suffix conjugation of the verb uses -k- rather than -t- in 1st and
2nd singular.
The chapter features a very extensive and illuminating section on the syntax
of Ancient South Arabian, in which quite complicated sentences are
analyzed.
The literature references show that this is a specialty of one of the authors.
The vocabulary of Ancient South Arabian differs considerably from that of the
other Semitic languages and from that of Modern South Arabian.
Dictionaries of related languages are of limited use, and many texts
have only been partially deciphered.
Especially the wooden sticks still pose many riddles.
Ancient North Arabian consists of a dozen dialects, one for each oasis and
then some, written in a very variable alphabet that left great freedom to the
individual scribent as to letter form and writing direction: some text is
written vertically or in a spiral.
Tens of thousands of small texts have been found.
Tables are given of how the Proto-Semitic sibilants fared in Ancient North
Arabian (two dialects), and in Arabic (before and after the 9th century AD).
The second step in table 2, however, cannot be correct, since the two
occurrences of sh interfere. Presumably the top line occurred before the
bottom line.
Ancient North Arabian cannot be the parent of Classical Arabic, since it has
already lost the -n at the end of a syllable, as in Hebrew, while this
-n is still present in Classical Arabic (or is Classical Arabic an
artifact in which the -n has been restored? DG).
Many verb forms in the various binyanim are known and reported here, mostly of
the 3rd person.
Here we finally find some hard evidence on the origin of the Hebrew determinate
article ha- with gemination of the following consonant.
In many Ancient North Arabian dialects the article is h-, as in Hebrew,
but in some it is hn- before aleph, ayin and chet: hn-'lt = the goddess
(vocalized han'elit?).
The author interprets this as a local development, but assimilation of the
n to the following consonant would explain the gemination.
And this han- could be related to Hebrew hineh = this-is.
Another explanation could come from the occurrence of the article hal-, a
contraction of ha- and the Arabic article 'al (also interpreted
differently by the author). Vowelless -l- is known to cause gemination in
Hebrew: yiqqaħ (= he will take) for yilqaħ from lqħ = to
take.
Ancient North Arabian uses the construct state (called here 'annexation') to
express possession, but because of the lack of vowels, its existence is
visible only in particular contexts.
There is no sign of a particle indicating the accusative.
Modern North Arabian languages have been of help in determining the meanings
of some words in Ancient North Arabian.
Afro-Asiatic:
The appendix has the title 'Afro-Asiatic', but after a short survey of the
Afro-Asiatic languages and an even shorter (less than a page) treatment of
Afro-Asiatic as a language, the chapter covers Proto-Semitic only.
The first Semitic words are found as Akkadian loans in Sumerian texts of
about 3300 BC, and the first full Akkadian texts are from about 2500 BC.
Much information is given about the development of the Afro-Asiatic consonants
in the various daughter languages.
For example, s before vowels changed to h in Semitic, except...
when there are too many forms of the same root in which the s is not in
front of a vowel, root consistence overrides phonetic shift.
The Proto-Semitic sum (= they) turned into Hebrew hem; the root
srq (= to steal; Akkadian sharraaqum = thief remained srq,
however, due to the prevalence of forms like yisraq which could not
change.
It is interesting and illuminating to see this stylized and no doubt
simplified form of a Semitic language, in which many properties of the
daughter languages can be recognized.
Proto-Semitic had the endings -at and -t for feminine; the first led
to -ah in Hebrew, the second to -eth.
The Proto-Semitic genitive in -i is related to the all-purpose adjective
ending -īy.
The plural in Proto-Semitic was originally formed by inserting a between
second and third radical.
The plural in an ending (-im in Hebrew) originated from adjectives
followed by a pronoun (hem in Hebrew).
(The Hebrew feminine plural ending -ot can be explained as inserting a
in the last syllable: malkat → malkaat. DG)
There were independent pronouns and suffixed pronouns.
The latter existed in a nominative form (salim-ta = you are well) to be
used after adjectives, and a genitive/accusative form (baytu-ka = your
house) to be used after nouns, resp. verbs.
The first resulted in the suffix conjugation in Hebrew, the second in the
possessive forms of the noun.
There was a declinable relative pronoun, θū, which, remarkably,
agreed with the antecedent rather than with its position in the subordinate
sentence:
baytu ba`lim θī 'anθ'aru = the house of the lord whom (genitive!)
I guarded.
Remarkably some Semitic languages use mah for "who" and min for
"what", and others use the reverse.
But there is always 'ayy-, as in Hebrew 'e-ze =which, 'e-fo =
where, etc.
The Proto-Semitic verb had two forms, the 'perfective' with pattern
yap`ul, which led to forms like yisgor in Hebrew, and an
'imperfect' with pattern yapa``al, which was lost in Hebrew.
The verb had several participles, which, being adjectives, were combined with
the nominative endings; these led to the suffix conjugation in Hebrew.
In addition to the qal (G-stem), three more stems are reconstructed for
Proto-Semitic: the N-stem (passive); the C-stem (causative), with a prefixed
s- (which changed into a h- in Hebrew); and a D-stem, in which the
second radical is doubled.
Each of these stems could further obtain a prefixed t-, indicating
reflexivity, etc.
There may have been an R-stem, with reduplication of the third radical.
Proto-Semitic word order was VSO. Akkadian word order SOV is ascribed to
Sumerian influence.
Proto-Semitic and Proto-Indo-European had some words in common, f.e. PS qarn- = PIE kr-n- = horn.
Maltese is missing from the list of Semitic languages in Section 2.1.
Classical Arabic is too young to be included in this series, unfortunately.
These five books are going to get prime estate in my book case!
Roger D. Woodard,
The Ancient Languages of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Aksum,
Cambridge Univ. Press,
Cambridge, UK,
2008,
pp. 250.
This is volume four of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient
Languages, a collection of 45 entries covering in principle all languages of
which sufficient recorded material is available from before 476 AD.
All entries are of superb quality, and describe all aspects of the language
in some depth, often even diachronically.
So I'll restrict myself to specific comments on the entries in this volume.
The Sumerian entry alone is worth the money.
Sumerian is heavily nesting: sa'a dummu lugal.ak.ak.she = cat-1 son-2
king-3 of-3 of-2 to-1 = "to the cat of the son of the king", where the numbers
are nesting depths.
It is structurally completely different from the surrounding languages, and
looks vaguely like a North-Caucasian language.
Its verb system is split-ergative.
The description of cuneiform is deferred to the entry on Akkadian.
Elamite was described in contemporary texts of the surrounding countries as
weird and twisted.
The phonetic inventory that has been recovered is very normal and tame, so we
are probably missing something here.
The purported relationship to the Dravidian languages is reported but neither
endorsed nor rejected.
The Akkadian and Eblaite entry starts with a good explanation of cuneiform and
its developments; a full list of signs was given in an appendix in volume two.
The infamous homonymy of the signs (there are 27 ways to write ge!) is
explained away by the fact that at any given moment in time only perhaps two
or three of these signs were in use, and their use was fixed by tradition.
Since Akkadian and Eblaite are East-Semitic languages, they differ
considerably from Arabic, Hebrew, etc., but the main morphology is easily
recognizable as Semitic.
The Egyptian language (Afro-Asiatic but not Semitic) covers 4400 years
(±3000 BC - ±1400 AD, from Early Egyptian to Coptic), and it is not
surprising that
the text feels cramped for space; even Loprieno's book 'Ancient Egyptian -- A
Linguistic Introduction', which is ten times bigger, makes dense reading.
An enormous lot of information is supplied, but sometimes in highly technical
prose (like what is a 'prospective'? Ah, I see, it is a stem used in future
forms, etc.; what is a 'rheme'? I still haven't found out).
Hieroglyphs are explained very well, and demystified in a few paragraphs:
the usual form of a word consists of one to three signs each contributing a
few consonants to the consonant skeleton, plus a determinative sign, which
specifies the class of the object or the action; together that is almost
always enough to figure out what is written.
Quite some attention is paid to Coptic.
A 25 page appendix with a structured list of about 750 hieroglyphs closes the
entry.
Ge`ez (Classic Ethiopian) is the language of Aksum (Axum) in Ethiopia; it is
much neglected in linguistics, but here you find lots of information.
The interesting/weird Ethiopian syllabary with its corresponding phonetics is
explained in detail.
The language is South-Semitic and may not differ more from Hebrew than German
from English, in spite of there being more than 1500 kilometer between the two.
This allows interesting comparisons between Akkadian (above) and Ge`ez, some of
which are worked out in the text.
Roger D. Woodard,
The Ancient Languages of Europe,
Cambridge Univ. Press,
Cambridge, UK,
2008,
pp. 261.
This is volume three of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient
Languages, a collection of 45 entries covering in principle all languages of
which sufficient recorded material is available from before 476 AD to write a
meaningful entry about.
All entries are of superb quality, so I'll restrict myself to specific
comments on the entries in this volume.
In the last two millennia BC the north half of the Mediterranean was a
hotchpotch of recorded languages.
The introduction divides them into three classes of accessibility: 1. the
language's existence is known, but little else is; 2. there is a reasonable
guess at the language's affiliation; 3. enough is known to sketch a grammar.
The first two classes are covered in the introduction, leading to a
bewildering variety of scripts and languages; a map is sorely missing.
The further chapters cover class 3:
Attic Greek, Greek dialects, Latin, Sabellian languages, Venetic, Etruscan,
Celtic, Gothic, and Nordic.
Attic Greek, 400 BC. The language is shown in considerable detail, with, for
example, 10 pages of verb morphology, deriving many forms from PIE.
What is missing is an explanation of the pronunciation of the zeta, which at
times and places seems to have been pronounced as dz, zd, and z.
Remarkably, and probably superfluously, (but consistently) all Greek texts are
also transcribed in Latin letters.
The Greek dialects entry makes confusing reading, not surprisingly.
After all the author tries to describe a three-dimensional object, an aquarium
whose length and width are the length and width of the Mediterranean area, and
whose height is time; dialects form stalagmites and stalactites in this
aquarium.
Fortunately in this case a map is supplied, although 2D.
As expected the labiovelars of PIE are pretty distinctive:
some languages have delphis, others belphis, for "dolphin";
some have tettares, others pettares, for "four"; etc.
Hundreds of such differences are given and explained.
The authors place Latin, the Sabellian languages, and Venetic in three
different chapters, since there are fundamental differences between the three
groups, but they fail to tell what these are and on what the split is based.
This is confusing, because the languages as presented seem to differ no more
than German, Dutch, and Frisian.
(The EB explains that one reason is that the three branches form the perfect
tense in fundamentally different ways, by v, t, and s, resp.:
Lat. donavit, Osc. duunated, Ven. donasto = he gave, which points
to an ancient split; and that the similarities arose from almost a millennium
of contact.)
The Latin entry shows conclusively that Latin is simpler than Greek: the Latin
verb forms take only 5 pages to explain.
There are three Sabellian languages known to us: Umbrian, South Picene, and
Oscan; almost nothing is known about South Picene, so the entry is about the
other two.
Umbrian and Oscan differ considerably from each other, and from Latin, and
from just looking at it it is difficult to tell which difference is larger.
A representative word is water: Umbr. utar, Lat. akwa, Osc. āpa.
This seems reasonably comparable to Dutch hoofd, Frisian holle, German
Kopf = head.
Oscan is often written in an extended Etruscan alphabet (250 BC), which uses
diacritics to express its three front vowels (i, é, è),
where Etr. had only two, i and e, and its two back vowels (u and
o) where Etr. had only one.
Umbrian uses a similar alphabet but without diacritics, in spite of the fact
that it has three back vowels, u, ó, and ò).
The first two are written u, the third with a.
We know this because some words are also found written in the Latin alphabet,
and then some us are written o (i.e. ó), and some as are
written o (i.e. ò):
Umbr. script pihaz = Lat. script pihos (= purified),
so we have an ò (and a z expressed as a s in Latin letters); and
Umbr. script puplum = Lat. script poplom (= people),
so we have two ós.
Oscan is characterized by palatalization of both consonants and vowels:
múinikú (= common), deivai (= divine), tiurri (= tower).
Umbrian has no palatalization and no diphthongs (except recent ones).
South Picene had words ending in -h: matereih = to the mother.
In spite of purported ancient differences Venetic cannot have been too
different from Latin: of the 10 Venetic words with known PIE etymologies, 10
have very similar Latin forms, e.g. vhraterei = to the brother (vh =
f), Lat. fratri.
It may have felt some Celtic influence (genitive in -oiso rather than
-osio) from neighboring Lepontic.
As with the Sumerian entry in volume four, the entry on Etruscan in this
volume is by itself worth the money: all recent information about Etruscan
from the expert in 24 pages.
A few notes:
1. Etruscan had two sibilants, s and sh, written with three different
characters, using mappings that differ in the north, the south, and the far
south.
This causes major transliteration problems; the author solves them by writing
s as s, and sh as σ, and modifies them with accents to show which
character was used in the original text.
It works (but it's still complicated).
2. Although the Etr. φ, θ, and χ are usually interpreted as
aspirates, ph, th, and kh, Rix has a different view, explaining
the vast discrepancy in frequency of φ, θ, and χ: rather than
aspirated, these sounds are palatalized.
That is, next to the unmarked stops, there is a series of palatalized stops,
py, written φ;
ty, written θ; and
ky, changed into ts in Pre-Etruscan times and written z.
Next comes a series of fricatives,
labial f;
dental, the English th, also written θ;
and velar, written χ, which has a variant h at word initial.
In the same vein there are two sibilants, an unmarked one, written s, and a
palatalized one, written σ.
This neatly ties together all Etruscan consonants.
(There are more arguments: it explains why the Romans copied Θefarie as
Tiberius rather than as Thiberius; and there is the regional argument: no
other language in Italy, then or now, has aspirated consonants, but several
have palatalized ones. DG)
(It also makes Etr. a lot more easy to pronounce!)
3. The author contradicts himself with
σa = 6 on page 152, and
σa = 4 on page 159.
4. The translation (from German, I think) is described as "masterful" in the
preface, but contains a few strange sentences; I'd like to see the original.
The Continental Celtic chapter covers Hispano-Celtic, with its own interesting
alphabet; Lepontic, written in a modified Etr. alphabet; and Gaulish, both in
Greek and Latin letters.
Enough material exists to reconstruct noun declensions for all three
languages, but conjugated verbs are scarce.
Unfortunately on pages 180 and 181 the translations are missing, which leaves
the reader seriously guessing.
Gothic: at last a language again about which enough is known for a coherent
description without question marks or guesswork.
And the author makes full use of it: all the robust Germanic sounds laws are
explained and then used to derive large numbers of Gothic forms straight from
PIE, through Proto-Germanic and East-Germanic (unfortunately laryngeals do not
figure in the derivations, although they are occasionally mentioned).
Very illuminating!
Differences between Gothic and Old High German are also pointed out: f.e.
Gothic giban, OHD geeben (= to give).
In spite of its importance in Gothic, vowel length is not indicated; ah, well,
there is always Wright to fill in the details.
Ancient Nordic: between 40 and 50 inscriptions, in futhark.
As with Celtic, it is enough to reconstruct much of the noun declensions, but
little of the verb conjugations beyond forms like nam (= he took),
was, tawō (= I make), tawidō (= I made)
(I suppose the latter are from a verb related to Eng. to do).
The last chapter is about Proto-Indo-European.
I hesitate to call it a language;
it's more a container of the reduction of our knowledge of the IE languages,
it has too many weird features.
1. It is described as having three laryngeals, h1, h2, and h3, consonants,
with three accompanying vowels, on par with y/i, w/u, n/vocalic-n, etc.,
i.e. the known semi-vowel and vowel pairs.
Does any language have laryngeals which are in a semi-vowel/vowel relation to
vowels?
Wouldn't these vowels then perhaps just be e, a, and o?
And what are the semi-vowels belonging to e, a, and o?
(The text obscures the issue by introducing new terminology: nonsyllabics
versus syllabics.)
2. Roots can optionally be preceded by an s-, without any semantic effect;
does any language have such a feature?
3. There is an unexplained and seemingly incomprehensible set of restrictions
on allowable roots.
The chapter is quite high-level, meaning: many paragraphs with rules, with
hardly an example; grades (full, e-, zero, and lengthened) are listed, but no
hint of their application and their relation to pitch is given (some
explanation can be found in the chapter on Greek, around and in Table 2.3).
A word consists of a root, followed by zero of more suffixes, followed by an
ending.
Suffixes can modify meaning, or make verbs from nouns, or vice versa; the
ending terminates the word.
As a result PIE is more regular than its children, more agglutinative.
There are five moods to the verb, indicative, subjunctive, optative,
injunctive, and imperative, but two of them, the subjunctive and the optative,
are constructed with suffixes; they are not separate paradigms.
The paradigms for indicative (active, middle, and perfect; there is no
passive) and imperative are given; the injunctive is not shown.
There is a thematic paradigm (= with connecting vowel) and an athematic one.
The original (secondary) endings can, and usually are extended with a -i
to yield the primary ones.
In the thematic indicative singular there are two completely different sets,
earlier and later ones, the latter derived from the athematic ones (the
presentation in the book in Tables (8) and (9) is confusing).
The endings show a strong relationship to the reconstructed personal pronouns.
Unfortunately the pitch positions on the endings are not given, so the
application of the grades in the two examples comes as a surprise.
The index of this volume leaves much to be desired:
1. it is structured on main languages; as a result one has to know that, for
example, Phocian is a Greek dialect before one can find it in the index;
2. it is far from complete: for example, North Picene (one paragraph in the
Introduction) is not in it, neither under North nor under Picene.
In spite of these criticisms these five books are going to get prime estate
in my book case!
Roger D. Woodard,
The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor,
Cambridge Univ. Press,
Cambridge, UK,
2008,
pp. 184.
This is volume two of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient
Languages, a collection of 45 entries covering in principle all languages of
which sufficient recorded material is available from before 476 AD to write a
meaningful entry about.
All entries are of superb quality, so I'll restrict myself to specific
comments on the entries in this volume.
Where Attic Greek, Latin, Gothic, Ancient Nordic, the Sabellian languages,
etc., are easily recognized as Indo-European (and as even fairly similar in
morphology), one has to look very hard at Hittite (and at Armenian!) to get
any feeling of familiarity.
Only when one reaches the verb conjugation, some recognition dawns.
Most of Hittite is written in cuneiform; cuneiform is covered in the entry on
Akkadian in volume four of this series.
The Anatolian languages are the only ones in which the PIE laryngeals have
direct consonantal representations, as hh, however that may have been
pronounced.
The gender system of Hittite, animate vs. inanimate, differs profoundly from
that of PIE (masculine, feminine, neuter); this has given rise to a lot of
controversy.
The author's view is that the Anatolian languages inherited the PIE system,
lost the feminine, and were left with an animate/inanimate system.
[DG: That is a lot of change; the simplest explanation seems to me that PIE just
had a suffix (among its many suffixes) -eh2-, for constructing a feminine
word when needed, something like Eng. -ess, that Hittite didn't get this
suffix, and that it took off in the other branches of PIE to form a
full-fledged feminine paradigm.]
There is no dualis either.
The difference between animate and inanimate shows moderately in the
morphology of nouns, but, more importantly, affects the syntax: inanimate
subjects of action verbs are not in the nominative but in a special case, the
ergative; this seems to reflect the idea that inanimate objects cannot act.
Unfortunately the text does not give an example, so I'll have to make one up:
"The ball rolls" is expressed by something like
"Rolling happens by/to the ball", where "by/to" is the ergative case.
(The actual situation is more complicated, since there are two sets of action
verbs.)
Hittite has two classes of verbs: mi-verbs and hi-verbs. They differ it the
singular: -mi, -shi, -zi versus -hi, -ti, -i.
Again the origin is controversial; the author attributes the hi-conjugation to
an old perfect (but it also looks quite similar to the old secondary endings; DG).
(Hittite religious texts contain embedded fragments of Hattic, the language of
the older inhabitants of Anatolia; this is the only source of Hattic material,
and there is not enough of it to warrant a description in this encyclopedia;
it may be remotely related to Hurrian, which see below.)
Much, much less is known from the other Anatolian languages, although the
author claims that "Luvian was arguably the most widely spoken member of the
Anatolian subgroup of IE".
In addition to cuneiform, Luvian was also written in home-made hieroglyphs; a
sample is shown in the text and the signs look like rebus drawings, quite
recognizable.
Palaic was written in cuneiform only; scarcely a dozen inscriptions are known.
It has an f, but probably only in Hattic loans.
Lycian is known from some 150 inscriptions and was written in a Greek-like
alphabet, so we know pretty well how it was pronounced.
It is then not surprising that it shows greater phonetic variety than the
previous three, including sounds like th and dh.
Lycian comes in two dialects, Lycian A and Milyan.
It has nasal vowels, which were not always distinguished; many
accusatives ended in -ĩ from -in, which is indistinguishable from
nominative -i.
Many consonants are doubled in writing, even at the beginning of a word; it is
unknown what this means (except that the writers were not satisfied with one
consonant).
Lycian shows some signs of the feminine-forming suffix -eh2-.
Lydian is written in another Greek-like alphabet; it is known from perhaps a
100 inscriptions.
It differs so much from the above Anatolian languages, that little of the
contents is understood; Hittite apa (= that) shows up as bi.
It had weird consonant clusters, or else sibilants are syllabic:
kśbλa- or dçtdid.
Carian script looks like Greek-derived, but it turns out many of the symbols
don't have their normal values; it's kind of an Anatolian futhark.
Much of the text is still not understood.
Phrygian was recorded in two separate periods, centuries 8-6 BC, and 1-2 AD;
the language of the second period is the direct continuation of the first.
Phrygian is written in a Greek alphabet, without the letters for the
aspirates; its morphology looks very Greek, but it uses many words we don't
know, so much of the Phrygian text is still obscure.
The entry does not address the question whether Phrygian and Ancient Greek
form a subgroup or if both are independent branches of IE.
Hurrian was spoken over a wide area, from Mesopotamia to Asia Minor;
material is known from the entire second millennium BC.
Most Hurrian text was written in Akkadian cuneiform (= syllabic), but a
part was written in Ugaritic cuneiform (= alphabetic), so we know pretty well
how Hurrian was pronounced.
Hurrian is considered a language-isolate; a possible connection to the
North-Caucasian languages is mentioned.
It distinguished between voiced and voiceless in the stops and the fricatives,
but voicedness was automatic, controlled by rules.
The simple version is: initial and clusters of stops and fricatives were
voiceless; internal, final, and mixed clusters were voiced.
The syllabic scribes understood this, and used only one or the other for a
given syllable, thus reducing the number of different cuneiforms needed; the
alphabetic scribes wrote in full, which is how we know.
Hurrian is unusual in Anatolia in having a large set of fricatives: f/v,
s/z, th/dh, hh/gh; for historical reasons the th/dh is
transcribed as sh/zh.
The general form of a Hurrian word is:
root, complements, suffixes, ending.
The root+complements determine the basic meaning; the suffixes determine
details; and the ending specifies the grammatical function.
For nouns this boils down to:
root+complements, plurality_1, possession, plurality_2, case ending.
Example: eniffazhuzh = en - - iff - azh - uzh = god - - our - plural -
ergative = our gods.
Verbs are more complicated; example:
shid-ar-ill-oo-m X = curse - verbalizer - beginning - past - ergative =
he started to curse X (-ar- is a complement; -ill- and -oo- are
suffixes).
There are zillions of complementers and suffixes, for modes, tenses, negation,
valence switching, etc., but there are many of unknown meaning.
(Since most of them have the form VC, easily pronounceable words result.)
Hurrian is an ergative language, but ergativity means different things in
different languages.
The ergative conjugation is used only for transitive verb forms with explicit
object (as is the X above).
Only the ergative conjugation is a real conjugation, in that it has endings
for the person of the subject; the other verbal constructions just use the
absolutive of the pronoun (ishte = I, fe = you) as an enclitic to the
verb or some other suitable word in the sentence.
Surprise: the numbers 6 and 7 are shezhe and shindi in Hurrian,
repeating a pattern found in IE (Eng. six, seven), Semitic (Hebrew
shesh, sheva'), and Etruscan (σa, semφ).
Although more recent (two centuries around 800 BC) much less is known about
Hurrian's sister language Urartian.
There are several reasons for this: the language is written in a variant of
syllabic cuneiform in which often CV and VC syllables are swapped (perhaps for
good reasons, but we don't know); except for a small Urartian-Assyrian
one, there are no bilinguals; and the Urartian texts are about military
affairs, the Hurrian ones are religious, and they do not have many words in
common.
Decipherment rests solely on its similarity to Hurrian and the one bilingual.
The general structure is like that of Hurrian; ergativity must have worked a
bit different, though: in Hurrian the subject of an intransitive verb and the
object of a transitive verb are in the same case (the absolutive), but in
Urartian they can be different, in the first person singular anyway:
nom. ishtid0, acc. shuk0, erg. iesh0
(cf. Hurr. abs. ishte, erg. izhazh).
(The sample sentences in the text lack a verbatim translation, which leaves the
non-Uratian speaker puzzling about which word means what.)
The Armenian alphabet was designed in the beginning of the fifth century AD,
and the first texts are from the middle of that century, just in time to be
included in this encyclopedia.
With Classical Armenian we are back in the IE realm, but it takes an expert to
see that.
The language is notorious for the weird transformations it has undergone
through the ages; for example, the Old Armenian lateral ł developed
into the voiced uvular fricative G.
The most famous transformation is that of dw- to erk-, occurring in
several words, among which dwo → erkow = two.
A possible scenario is:
1. dw- → dg- (w → g occurs elsewhere);
2. dg- → edg- (to ease pronunciation);
3. edg- → erg-;
4. erg- → erk- (during a voiced-to-voiceless period).
Armenian has no gender, not even in the pronouns; this is very un-IE.
There are seven cases, but only some pronouns have that many different forms;
for all nouns we have in the singular: nom. = acc., and gen. = dat.;
in the plural we have gen. = dat. = abl., and acc. = loc. .
Armenian has a definite article; actually it has three of them, enclitics
-s, -d, and -n, depending on whether the "the" was a weak form of
"this", "that", or "yon".
With berem, beres, berê, = I carry, etc., we are back on firm
IE ground, but the numerals again tax our derivative powers; some easier ones
are hing = 5 (cf. pente), and k`san = 10 (cf. dekem).
The chapter shows that the weirdness of Modern Armenian is not the product of
the last millennium and a half; Classical Armenian was already that way.
The last chapter is about Early Georgian; not exactly Asia Minor, but it's
interesting, so who cares.
Modern Georgian is notorious for its consonant clusters, and Early Georgian is
no different.
The reason is that various restricted consonant clusters are considered as
single consonants.
One such restriction that the articulation moves from front to back and the
voicedness stays the same; and example is sx.
Such "single consonants" can be preceded and/or followed by m or r,
allowing such clusters as msxr-.
Like Armenian, Georgian nouns have seven cases and no gender, but unlike
Armenian, nouns have all seven forms, and the pronouns have fewer.
There is a short and a long declination, the application of which is depends
on the context, vaguely similar to the strong and weak declination of the
Germanic adjective.
Plurals using the suffix -eb- are syntactically singular (collectives?)
Genitives additionally get the case endings of the words they belong to:
c'iaγ abraham-is = the bosom of Abraham;
c'iaγ-ta abraham-is-ta = into the bosom of Abraham.
The Early Georgian verb has 13 skreeves (term not used here), grouped in three
series; the good thing is that the nature of these three series can be
understood:
Series I (present) was originally an antipassive:
X sees Y = X-abs. Y-dat. sees
(X is busy seeing (intr. → X-abs.), using Y (indirect → Y-dat.).
Series II (aorist) is just the standard ergative construction:
X saw Y = X-erg. Y-abs. saw.
Series III (perfect) was originally a passive, later modified into an active
without changing the construction (its passive is still the simplest verb
form):
X has seen Y = X-dat. Y-abs has-seen (by X (indirect → X-dat.) Y (intrans. →
Y-abs) has-been-seen).
And so it all makes perfect sense...
The Early Georgian verb form has fourteen slots, with 2 preverbs, several
slots for object, subject, and plural combinations, tense, mood, the works;
the author explains them all.
Unusual is that there is a slot, after the preverbs, for an additional
enclitic; apparently the preverbs still had some independence in Early
Georgian.
The language uses "normal" subordinate sentences, with the relative pronoun
romel- = which, that; this is surprising, since most languages of
this structure use participles or special verb forms.
The volume closes with an appendix with a list of cuneiform signs;
unfortunately the Borger numbers of the signs are not given.
These five books are going to get prime estate in my book case!
Roger D. Woodard,
The Ancient Languages of Asia and the Americas,
Cambridge Univ. Press,
Cambridge, UK,
2008,
pp. 264.
This is volume one of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient
Languages, a collection of 45 entries covering in principle all languages of
which sufficient recorded material is available from before 476 AD.
The book also exists in one volume, but at 1150 pages I take my copy in five
manageable parts any day; the price difference is next to negligible depending
on where you buy.
The volumes are not numbered; I derived my ordering from the order of the
descriptions in the ads at the end of the books, and the ISBN numbers, which
happen to agree.
The EWAL is a marvelous opportunity to get information about a large
number of languages from long ago.
All entries are of superb quality, describing all aspects of the language
(history, writing system (with tables), phonetics, morphology, syntax, lexicon)
in some depth, often even diachronically, and are written by experts in the
field.
Nevertheless there are some things I'd rather have seen different.
This part covers
Sanskrit, Middle Indic, Old Tamil, Old Persian, Avestan, Pahlavi, Ancient
Chinese, Mayan, Epi-Olmec and Zapotec.
For some scripts the direction is not specified, e.g. Sanskrit (left-to-right)
and Pahlavi (right-to-left).
It is, I think, a pity that Vedic Sanskrit and Classic Sanskrit were not given
different entries.
Separate treatment would have made both more understandable: much
of the morphological complexity of Vedic Sanskrit is motivated and made
understandable by its pitch accent, but shows up as next to incomprehensible
irregularity in Classic Sanskrit, which has an unrelated stress accent.
The entry on Old Tamil is very interesting; not much is readily available on
it elsewhere.
But many of the sample text fragments have (unexplained) XML-like structure
information in them in the form of numbered or marked brackets.
This makes the samples hard to read, and since it is not referred to in the
text it adds little or nothing.
The words (characters) in the Old Chinese samples are given in their modern
pin-yin pronunciation (without tones to boot), rather than in the reconstructed
phonetics of Old Chinese; it says so right in the second paragraph of the
entry and it does.
This is like having a grammar of Beowulf English with all the words replaced
by their modern English equivalents!
For example, we are told in the morphology section that Old Chinese has
prefixes n-, t-, s-, etc., but we never get to see them since modern Chinese
does not allow consonant clusters.
As the nineteenth century was the age of decipherment of the ancient oriental
languages, the last few decades of the twentieth are the age of the
decipherment of the ancient meso-american languages; I somehow suspect that
this was one of the reasons to publish this encyclopedia now.
It is impressive to see how much progress has been made in deciphering the
Mayan language.
Here "decipherment" is to be taken literally: the language was not the
problem since it is the parent of several well-known present-day Meso-American
languages; but the script was.
It left so much to the artistic freedom of the scribes (chiselers?) that
almost all signs are different: for example, any cartouche containing a
picture of a man, a man's head or a vulture was an acceptable sign for
'ahaw (= ruler).
The script is explained extensively, and the Old-Mayan language is then
described in the same format as the other languages.
Epi-Olmec is a (non-Mayan) language with a completely different script, which
is still being deciphered.
This shows clearly in some of the purported translations: a translation like
"Four are your elsewhere [otherworldly] sky pillars" does raise some
eyebrows.
Still a large number of translated fragments make sense.
Unlike the other entries in the encyclopedia, this entry contains an
approx. 100-word dictionary of all known words; I don't know how much this
adds; I'd rather seen more translations from steles instead.
This entry uses the transliteration usual in Native-American linguistics
(7 for the glottal stop; j for h; x for sh) and so is out
of step with the rest of the books.
(In the meantime the decipherment has been criticized by Houston and Coe, and
that criticism has been criticized by Mora-Marin; in short - decipherment in
progress.)
A two-and-a-half page report on the decipherment of the Zapotec script
concludes the entry.
The last section of the book concerns the techniques of proto-language
reconstruction.
The author advocates a very cautious and conservative approach, showing by
example that anything but iron-clad proof can be misleading.
(The section numbers in this entry are missing.
Editing is better or even unnoticeable (= perfect) in the later parts.)
The above remarks are only minor gripes.
These five books are going to get prime estate in my book case!
John Kruse,
The Etruscan Language -- A Brief Introduction,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
2008,
pp. 32.
In spite of the subtitle "Zich Raśnal" (Etruscan Writing) in Etruscan
letters on the cover this book is more a treatise on the Etruscan language
than a description of it.
The introduction describes the position of E. among the almost 20 languages
spoken in ancient Italy, ranging from Lepontic around present-day Lugano to
Elymian on the western tip of Sicily.
The 6 chapters cover sources, script, and outline grammar of the Etruscan
language, and personal names, cultural relations, and origin of the Etruscans.
Campbell, L.,
What Can We Learn about the Earliest Human Language by Comparing Languages Known Today?,
2008,
pp. 33.
The paper goes into two questions: What can be learn about the lexicon of the
earliest language; and what can we learn about its structure.
The author claims that the rules for global etymologies as used by
long-rangers are so lax that a required word can always be found.
There is, however, a challenge by Bengtson and Ruhlen concerning the
proto-World words KUNA `woman' and the Amerind word TUNA `girl'.
Whereas KUNA can be found all over the world, TUNA is restricted to the New
World. If it is so easy to find a required word, then why can TUNA not be
found in the Old World?
In answer the author comes up with six examples from Spanish alone [DG:
although one is from South American Spanish].
Using the "superficial resemblance check" of the long-rangers on the Swadesh
100 list of English, Hindi, and Maori, the author shows that there are 9
matches between English and Hindi, 15 between English and Maori
(f.e. `hair' ~ `huruhuru'), and 10 between Hindi and Maori.
This shows that the superficial resemblance method yields meaningless results.
Hindi and English spilt about 6000 years ago, and in that time their
similarity had dropped to 15%. Equating the first use of human language with
the rise of the modern human at about 100.000 years ago, there surely is no
hope of finding cognates from that time at present.
[DG: That statement can be strengthened quite a bit.
Assuming an initial basic vocabulary of about 2000 non-derived non-composite
roots, after 6,000 years we have 15% of 2000 = 300 of them left in common;
after 12,000 years we have 15% of 300 = 45 left;
after 18,000 years 6,75; after 24,000 years 1; and after 30,000 years 0,15
root words in common.
Actually it is worse: The 15 matches between English and Maori and the 10
matches between Hindi and Maori are all false positives, noise, and these do
not diminish with time. So for our 2000 roots there will always between 200 to
300 false positives. This means that after 6000 years the 300 true positives
may still be discernible between the 200 to 300 false positives (using the
comparative method) but even with a time depth of 12,000 years the expected 45
true positives will be invisible among the 200 to 300 false positives;
The signal-to-noise ratio will be far below 1.]
Some long-rangers claim that speech originated only 35,000 years ago, but that
is impossible because people reached Australia 40,000 years ago.
The most frequent word order today is SOV, but that means nothing, because
languages can easily switch to other word orders.
[DG: Dutch switched its word order considerably over the last millennium,
ending up today with SVO in main sentences and SOV in subordinate sentences.]
Languages become more complicated through grammaticalization but become
simpler through erosion. It is likely that language started out simple, but
it may even after a few millennia have become quite complex.
Researchers have tried to find correlations between the size of a society and
the complexity of its language, and although the general trend is of small
societies to have complicated languages and vice versa, there many exceptions.
Logic suggests that language began simple, in a small population, which is
against this trend, so no help here.
Researchers have made lists of "design features" for languages, but they are
extensive and define fully grown languages.
[DG: But see Guy Deutscher, `The Unfolding of Language', 2005.]
The author concludes that we basically can learn nothing about the early
language; we can only learn why we cannot learn something.
John Kruse,
Joseph Biddulph,
The Native American Languages,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
2007,
pp. 40.
After a lament on the treatment of the American Indians at the hands of the
white, the author examines the state of the art of research in the Native
American languages through the ages.
In the 16th and 17th centuries the Indian was seen as a fellow soul in need of
conversion to some form of Christianity, and reasonable good grammars and
dictionaries were made, albeit based on the structure of Latin.
In the 18th and 19th centuries the Indian was seen as an obstacle, and any
research or recording there was served commerce, and was in the hands of
amateurs.
These often misjudged the prefix-root-suffix nature of many Amerind language,
which resulted in incorrect identification of forms, for example k-nisk
for 'hand' where the actual meaning is 'your hand' (from a white man holding
up his hand and asking "What do you call this?").
Also, glottalization and tone were often not recorded (or heard).
The second part is an annotated list of about 170 languages from North and
South America, in the same style as 'Some Languages of the Pacific Region' by
the same author.
Joseph Biddulph,
Notes on Old Nubian,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
2007,
pp. 41.
Old Nubian is known from 8-th century Gospel translations.
Its relationship to the modern Nubian languages is not obvious, and these
notes collect some information on the subject.
It consists of several parts: introduction; notes on Coptic, Egyptian,
Meroitic, Greek, Old Nubian, modern Nubian language, and Nandi; language trees
for the region; conclusion.
No firm conclusions drawn.
Colignatus, Thomas,
A Measure of Association (Correlation) in Nominal Data (Contingency Tables), Using Determinants,
2007,
pp. 27.
Exploratory paper on the possibility of obtaining a methodologically sound
correlation coefficient for contingency tables indexed by nominal values.
[DG: My last look at statistics was in 1966, hence this small refresher.]
A contingency table is a matrix M the columns of which are labeled with
attributes A1..Ak from one category A and the rows with
attributes B1..Bk from another category B.
Each element Mi,j of the matrix contains the number of samples
(the "frequency") that have been observed that have both attribute Ai and attribute
Bj. A standard example has
"gender" as category A, with attributes "male" and "female", and
"political affiliation" as category B, with attributes "Democrat" and
"Republican". The correlation coefficient should then express the degree of
correlation between gender and political affiliation.
(In the original design the correlation coefficient was supposed to express
in how far political affiliation was "contingent" upon gender, but this
interpretation implies causation, which the table cannot provide.)
Correlation coefficients are traditionally defined for sets of pairs of
numeric values (xi, yi); x could be soil acidity and y
crop yield per squre meter.
A correlation coefficient of +1 means that xi and yi grow and
shrink in lock-step, 0 means that they are independent, −1 means
that if one is larger, the other is smaller, etc. No values outside [−1..+1]
occur.
This does not apply directly to contingency tables: there is no set of pairs
of numerical values but rather a frequency table indexed by nominal values.
Still, intuitively both types of data seem to contain similar information: the
degree of interdependence of two sets of data, numeric for vectors (xi and
yi), and nominal for contingency tables (the labels on the rows and columns).
A major obstacle to grafting the techniques for vectors to the tables is that
the numeric values in the vectors can be manipulated algebraically, allowing
ordering, taking the average, etc., whereas all that is impossible for nominal
values.
An inroad can be made by considering the basic idea on which correlation
coefficient calculation for vectors is based: comparing the observed situation
with what would be expected if no correlation existed. This comparison leads to
the xi − x-bar forms in statistics (x-bar is the expected value
of the stochastic variable x). For lack of better information the expected
value is estimated as the average of all xi. Summing the
squares of these deviations from average yield, after some adjustments, the
χ² measure. Unlike the correlation coefficient above, a χ² value
is always >= 0; if 0, there is a complete correlation between the data, and
the higher the χ² value the more independent the data are.
Along the same lines the expected frequencies in a contingency table can be
computed from the averages of the rows and columns in which each frequency
resides, and a χ² measure can be constructed. Its normalized form
(scaled to a value between 0 and 1) is known as "Cramér's V". It is,however,
methodologically unsound because it uses the numerical average of sets of
frequencies, but these sets (rows and columns of the matrix) have no
probability distribution. It is this problem that this paper is trying to
solve/evade.
It is a small step to view a contingency table as an m×n
matrix. If the matrix is square (n×n), it has a determinant.
Each row in the matrix defines a point in an n-dimensional space, plus
a vector from the origin of the n-dimensional space to that point.
These n vectors span up a geometric solid in the shape of an
n-dimensional rhomboid (parallelepiped).
This rhomboid lives in an n-dimensional box the sides of which
have lengths equal to the sums of the n columns of the matrix, and its
volume is equal to the absolute value of the determinant of the matrix.
So far the vector algebra; now for the statistics.
If the rows in the matrix are closely related the vectors they define are all
pointing roughly in the same direction, and the volume of their rhomboid
is small, but when they are strongly independent, their vectors are more
perpendicular to each other, and the volume they span fills almost the entire
n-dimensional box.
So the volume ratio of the box that is occupied by the
rhomboid spanned up by the vectors is indicative for the independence of the
data in the contingency matrix!
Although this Volume Ratio as a measure of association in contingency tables is
not based on any statistical model, it has several properties that suggest that
it is not a completely crazy choice:
• The Volume Ratio is automatically normalized to lie between 0 (full
association) and 1 (full independence).
Cramér's V requires a somewhat heuristic normalization.
• The Volume Ratio for (2×2) tables is identical to Cramér's V.
• If there is only one non-zero frequency in each row and column, each row
is specifically associated wit one column, and vice versa. Such a matrix is
orthogonal, so the Volume Ratio is 1 (as with Cramér's V): total
non-association, which means total independence.
• If all frequencies are equal each row is equally associated with each
column. The Volume Ratio method and Cramér's V both yield 0, confirming total
association.
• The Volume Ratio does not change when two rows or columns are swapped (as
with Cramér's V).
• The Volume Ratio is independent of scale: it does not change when all
table entries are multiplied by the same factor (as with Cramér's V).
But other phenomena are harder to explain:
• For a table filled with random numbers from the range [1..999], the
Volume Ratio approaches 0
(0.00018... for 6×6, 0.000000... for 12×12), implying total association,
whereas Cramér's V still shows considerable independence
(0.26... for 6×6, 0.16.. for 12×12). [DG: own observation.]
Problems arise when the contingency table is not square; in that case it does
not have a determinant, and the above method cannot be applied directly.
This is solved by considering square sub-matrices and their relationships, as
explained in the rest of the text of the paper. The text proper is followed by 8
appendices with notes, detailed examples, explanations, and considerations.
[DG: I applied both methods to the gender-class correlation tables from two
Papuan languages, Burmeso (non-TNG), described by M. Donohue, and Mian (TNG),
described by S. Fedden and G.G. Corbett.
Background: When natural languages classify nouns into groups they usually do
this on the basis of gender: French le soleil, la lune.
Other languages classify according to size, shape, etc.: Swahili mtoto
child, kitoto little baby.
Very few languages use both systems simultaneously, with each noun having both
a gender and a class.
Using gender to label the columns and class for the rows, the number of nouns
having gender i and class j can be put in element [i, j] of
the gender-class correlation table. The correlation coefficient would then
indicate how independent the notions of gender and class are in the language.
For the languages Burmeso and Mian the obtained vales are
Burmeso (6×6): Cramér's V = 0.488549; value_free = 0.600000; Volume Ratio = 0.000040
Mian (4×6): Cramér's V = 0.726651; value_free = 0.833333; Volume Ratio = ---
Indeed the Mian table looks more orthogonal than the one for Burmeso, in
accordance with the above values. The measure used in those papers, however,
is the ratio of the number of empty entries to the maximum number of empty
entries a non-trivial table of the given dimensions can have. This is a
value-free measure, because it does not depend on the actual values in the
table, only on their presence.
The values from the value-free method are also given above and are seen to
agree reasonably well with Cramér's V, thereby validating the value-free
method somewhat. Also, its computation does not require a computer.]
Jean Dubois,
Herni Mitterand,
Albert Dauzat,
Dictionnaire étymologique & historique,
Librairie Larousse,
Paris,
2007,
pp. 893.
Disappointing, like its English counterpart, in that it stops at Latin
and does not make any connection to Indo-European.
Joseph Biddulph,
Some Forgotten Languages of Europe,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
2006,
pp. 40.
List of about 240 minority languages and (mainly English) dialects of Europe,
with annotations, in a style similar to Biddulph's "Some Languages of the
Pacific Region".
The most glaring omission is Luxemburgian, the sole remaining Frankish
language.
Joseph Biddulph,
The Five Languages -- Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
2005,
pp. 60.
Short initial reading aid to the five "original languages of the Scriptures
and their earliest translations".
For each language, the booklet supplies the alphabet, some grammar, some basic
vocabulary, and, except for Syriac, a short fragment from the Scriptures with
translation.
Not everything is transliterated, and the author relies heavily on the
reader's ability to learn foreign alphabets fast, which with the 251
(33x7+4x5) characters of Ethiopic is beyond me.
Hickey, R.,
Language Change,
2005,
pp. 65.
Causes and results of language change, in short understandable paragraphs.
Excellent source of examples --in the English language-- of all kinds of
language change phenomena: palatalization, umlaut, contamination, metathesis,
grammaticalization, you name it.
Discussions of methods for lexical reconstructions, language typology,
language contact, and pidgins and creoles.
Hans-Jorg Bibiko,
Hagen Jung,
Claudia Schmidt,
Martin Haspelmath,
Matthew S. Dryer,
David Gil,
Bernard Comrie,
The World Atlas of Language Structures,
Oxford University Press,
Oxford,
2005,
pp. 695 + CD-ROM.
[This summary is concerned with the 2005 book. There is a regularly updated
Internet version that may differ.]
More than a hundred world maps of language features, with locations and
extents of their occurrences; each map is preceded by a careful explanation
and analysis of the feature in question.
There is, of course, a wealth of material; some noteworthy observations are:
1. Rounded front vowels are really rare; they are effectively restricted to
Eurasia.
2. Although gutturals occur in clusters, the th does not; it is just rare.
3. Australian phonetics is often the odd man out: no fricatives.
4. The large majority of the languages is concatenative (agglutinative).
5. A large majority of the languages expresses possession by an affix.
6. The ordering of fragments (SV/VS), (OV/VO) is more important than the usual
distinction SVO/SOV/... (map 81-94).
7. Wichita stands out as having the most complicated verb forms (map 22),
as I long suspected.
It does not feel right to criticise such a monumental book, but it is
inevitable that a work of this magnitude should include some statements that
might raise some eyebrows.
1. The a in the Spanish
Maria vio a Juan `Mary saw John' is considered a case form;
the et in Ivrit Miryam ra'ata et Yohanan is not.
2. The vowel management in Hebrew is called "ablaut".
3. French is considered a no-case language, English a 2-case one.
4. Map 70 shows German to have no imperative plural.
Unfortunately Dutch is not one of the 500+ languages included; too similar to
German, I suppose.
Robert Craig,
Zeaxysch Vor To-Dai,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
2005,
pp. 56.
Seems to be an attempt to construct the language that would have
resulted if the West-English dialects had given rise to the "main" language.
No reasons are given for the design decisions.
The spelling is atrocious and seems intentionally complicated.
Joseph Biddulph,
The Mercian Language,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
2004,
pp. 56.
Dissatisfied with the many complicated books on Anglo-Saxon and Old English,
which make the language next to inaccessible to the speakers of Modern
English, the author describes the 11th to 12th century Mercian language,
claimed to be the direct precursor to Modern English, in layman terms.
The last 14 pages contain annotated samples of the language, A Hymn of Praise,
Layamon's "Brut", The Legend of St. Kenelm, and Magnificat (untranslated).
The Japan Foundation,
Basic Japanese-English Dictionary, 2nd Ed.,
Oxford University Press,
Oxford,
2004,
pp. 1024.
Unlike its first edition (1984), the entries in this one are in kana order
rather than in alphabetic order, which makes it pretty useless to anybody
interested in Japanese but lacking the time or unwilling to spend the effort
to learn to read Japanese script.
Also, the additions are minimal.
Marlies Philippa,
et al.,
Etymologisch woordenboek van het Nederlands,
(in Dutch: Etymological Dictionary of Dutch),
vol. I, II, III, IV,
Amsterdam University Press,
Amsterdam,
2003,
pp. 725, 659, 659, 687.
Far superior to any of its predecessors.
(But I keep my de Vries, "Nederlands Etymologisch Woordenboek" (1971) still
on a top shelf!)
Joseph Biddulph,
Platt and Old Saxon,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
2003,
pp. 60.
The first half covers Plattduuts with some grammar, mostly from Buxtehude,
with many examples and amusing stories; not everything is translated, which
may be an obstacle for those unfamiliar with any English or German dialect.
The second half concerns Old Saxon, with lots of grammar and excerpts from
charm books and the Heliant.
Mario Alinei,
Etrusco -- Una forma arcaica di ungherese,
(in Italian: Etruscan -- An archaic form of Hungarian),
Il Mulino -- Ricerca,
Bologna,
2003,
pp. 450.
The author attaches Etruscan to the Finno-Ugric language tree, after Finnish
and Hungarian split, but before Hungarian, Khanty and Mansi split.
Chronologically this is problematic, but the author is also the author of the
Continuity Theory, which holds, among other things, that the time scale of the
cultural and linguistic development is much larger than traditional science
tells us.
This view allows the author to translate Etruscan by comparing each word to
Hungarian.
The methodology of this is not described in detail, but seems to be based on
"looks like", sometimes with reasonable results.
For example, Etruscan words ending in -nac, -nal, -ve/va and
-u are often assumed to contain the Hungarian postfix particles
-nak ("to"), -nál ("at, near"), -ve/va (gerund) and ó
(present participle / actor), and are analysed accordingly.
This leads immediately to
Etr. maru (land surveyer) ~ Hung. mérö (somebody who measures),
Etr. pazu (on the wall of the tomb Gollini I, near a picture of a cook) ~
Hung. fözö (somebody who cooks),
Etr. parliu (on the same wall, near another cook) ~ Hung. parló
(somebody who distills/steams), and several others.
Some correspondences are quite striking: the Etruscans named the north of
their territory Felsina, the middle region Velsna, and the southern
region Alsina. The author compares this to Hung. felsö (above),
belsö (inside) and alsó (beneath).
Some, however, strain the reader's credulity to the limit and
most are of a "could be" quality.
Occasionally the author makes the Etruscan read like a Hungarian dialect --
on a cup: Etr naceme uru iθal θilen is read as
Hung. nekem úr ital teljen, litt. to-me master drink may-he-pour,
Eng. "May the master pour a drink into me", corresponding to some Latin
inscriptions on cups.
The book consists of six chapters, three of which (1, 5, 6) seem to be
separate papers (the first about Etruscan titles, and the others about the
place of the Etruscans in Continuity Theory).
Chapter 2 covers the phonetic and morphologic relationships between old
Hungarian and Etruscan, based on words and place names.
Chapter 3 uses these relationships to translate many small and several larger
texts, among which the Pyrgi Tablets; unfortunately the Tabula Cortonensis is
not among them.
Chapter 4 gives phonetic developments from old Hung. to modern Hung.,
indicating where the Etr. forms fit in.
Joseph Biddulph,
A Love of Languages,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
2002,
pp. 56.
Autobiographical account of his contact with and love of languages,
interspersed with snippets of language lore.
John Colarusso,
A Grammar of the Kabardian Language,
University of Calgary Press,
2002,
pp. 254.
Kabardian is spoken by about 300,000 people in the North Caucasus.
It is an East-Caucasian language; East- and West-Caucasian differ
enough to be considered different languages.
The key word is 'very complicated':
it is phonetically very complicated,
morphologically very complicated,
syntactically very complicated, and
semantically very complicated.
On the other hand, it is surprising how much it looks like an American Indian
language, f.e. Wichita.
Kabardian (and the other Caucasian languages), have a large number of different
consonants: there are several laterals and several gutturals, and almost all
consonants come in groups of three, voiced, voiceless, and glottalized, just
as proposed for PIE, to a total of 48.
One of the weirdest is a glottalized f; I don't think any Amerind language
has one.
But there are no θ or ð, and more remarkably there is no l (a
lateral approximant); the three Kabardian laterals are fricatives: voiced,
voiceless, and glottalized.
Words (= noun forms and verb forms) consist of chains of morphemes, each
being either a root or a morphological particle.
A morpheme consists of one or sometimes two consonants, usually a vowel, and
possibly another consonant.
There are two underlying vowels, a, and ə.
The a belongs strictly to the morpheme, but the ə can often be
predicted, in which case the morpheme can be considered to have no vowel.
But other morphemes always carry a ə.
Under influence of the surrounding consonants, the underlying vowels can turn
into any of the standard vowels, following precise and well-described rules.
The general principle is that the noun and verb forms consist of one or more
roots embellished with a number of particles, mostly prefixes.
The application of one or more of the 24 phonetic transformation rules then
turns the sequence of morphemes into the pronounced word.
Nouns have no gender.
There are three cases: the absolutive, in -r; the oblique, in -m; and
the predicative, in -w.
The oblique can be extended with the suffix -k'ya to form an instrumental.
The predicative is used as a predicate, in a comparison, for the object in a
subclause, etc.
There is an indeterminate form of the noun, in which the absolutive and the
oblique have no endings.
There are no irregular nouns.
The plural is formed with the suffix -ha-, inserted between noun and case
ending.
That is, however, exactly the place where numbers go in numbered nouns, so
-ha- may also be considered a numeral with the meaning 'more than one'.
Possession is indicated just by the personal pronoun particle followed by the
particle -y- = 'of', placed before the noun:
w-əy-wəna = you-of-house = your house.
The personal pronouns are:
sa = I;
wa = you;
a = he,she,it;
da = we;
fa = you;
a-ha = they.
They are declined as nouns.
Verbs, and sometimes nouns, in American Indian languages are often described
by specifying a list of slots into which particles and roots can be inserted.
From the looks of it, the same could be done for Kabardian, but the author
uses 'autolexical grammar' (Sadock, 1991), with too little explanation.
Even after reading Sadock, I could follow the discussion of the
language only by analyzing the examples.
The formalism has the advantage that it can describe the structure of both
nouns, verbs, and sentences.
It is not used in Chapter 6, Syntax, though.
The series-of-slots nature of Kabardian is shown in such simple forms as
sa wa wə-s-a-w-lhaaghw =
I you you-I-present-progressive-see = I am seeing you,
and in many much more complicated forms.
Remarkably the personal pronouns sa and wa are not dropped here, and
they occur in mirror image order, as if nesting in a context-free grammar.
For good measure there are a couple of situations in which these slots are
shuffled around.
The verb has intransitive, transitive, ergative, causative, anti-passive and
passive patterns.
Passives can also be made with an auxiliary verb.
Semantics:
Kabardian has few roots, each with a fairly general meaning, and many words
are compounds based on these roots, f.e.
lhə-sh'ə-zhə-n = blood-make-again-ing = vendetta,
and f'a-zh-a-a-p'a = sharp-throw-on-connective-place = hat peg, in close
correspondence to similar constructions in Navaho.
The semantics and application of some particles is surprising, f.e. the
particle q'ə = 'belonging to the sphere of the speaker'.
An application is
sa wa txəlh=ər -w=a-s-tə=agh-sh =
I you book=abs it-you=to-I-give=past-yes =
I gave the book to you; versus
sa wa txəlh=ər -q'ə-w=a-s-tə=agh-sh =
I you book=abs it=(in-my-sphere)-you=to-I-give=past-yes =
I lent the book to you.
Sentences can, with some modification, be used as nouns:
xyəbahr-z-y-a-ħ-a = news-who-to-dat-carry-dat =
carries-news-to-someone = 'messenger', a construction reminiscent of
"Dances-with-wolves".
The book closes with a fully analyzed 'Nart' saga: 4 ½ pages of Kabardian,
11 pages of detailed analysis, and 4 pages of translation.
It is great that a book on this weird and exotic language exists.
It demands a great deal from the reader (and says so in several places), but
it may not be possible to make the language any more accessible.
This is not a textbook for learning the language; if it is a textbook of
anything it is so of theoretical linguistics, using Kabardian as its only
running example.
(But then, there are probably more theoretical linguistics in the world than
tourists who want to learn Kabardian.
I am not certain what a textbook of Kabardian should look like; interesting
question.)
Accessibility is even more impaired by the use of the autolexical formalism in
several chapters, except perhaps for the real specialist.
That said, the book gives much more information about the language than any
other source, the Internet included, if only through the more than 1500
example sentences and a fully analyzed 'Nart' saga.
In summary, the book is a definite must for the theoretical linguist, a great
source of entertainment for the amateur linguist, and a cure for any linguist
who thinks he has seen it all.
Not for the faint of heart.
The book lacks an index, which is awkward; for example, although Kabardian has
no dative, the term is used in many places, (f.e. Section 6.4.2) and I would
like to find where it was introduced.
It has an extensive table of contents, though.
Haspelmath, M.,
The European Linguistic Area: Standard Average European,
2001,
pp. 19.
[DG: see also Michael Cysouw (1999).]
Makes a strong case for Europe as a linguistic area quite different from the
rest of the world.
More than two dozen features are put forward that are either predominant in
Europe and virtually absent elsewhere (or more particularly in the direct
neighbourhood) or virtually absent in Europe and quite common elsewhere.
The most prominent are:
1. Both definite and indefinite articles
(Dutch: both: de/een;
Hebrew: definite only: ha-;
Korean: none).
2. Relative clauses with relative pronouns. The relative pronoun can be
interrogative or demonstrative: the man who ... / the money that ....
Alternatives are a relative particle and a pre-nominal participle.
(Dutch: de man die ... / de plaats waar ...;
Hebrew: particle: ha-ish she ...;
Korean: pre-nominal participle: ...eun saram).
3. Perfect tense formed with passive past participle + `to have',
as in `I have written'.
Alternatives are
active past participle + `to be': `I am having-written';
with `after': `I am after writing'.
(Dutch: Ik heb geschreven;
Hebrew: no past perfect; Korean: no past perfect.)
4. Nominative experiencers, as in `I like it'. In many languages this requires
a dative or locative.
(German: mixed strategy: nominative in Ich mag es `I like it', but
dative Mir ekelt `I am disgusted';
Hebrew: mixed strategy: nominative ka`asti `I was angry',
but dative nimɂas li `I am fed up with it';
Korean: with optional focus: [naneun] cohayo `[as-for-me] it-is-good' =
`I like it'.)
5. Passive formed with passive participle + `to be',
as in `The letter was written'.
Widely spread in Europe, with only Welsh (`Terry got his hitting by a
snowball') and Basque outside.
Alternatives are: morphological: and no passive at all.
(Dutch: several forms: De brief werd/is/was geschreven;
Hebrew: morphological: ha-mixtav ni-xtav `the-letter was-written';
Korean: almost no passive, but infix -ci- for some verbs.)
6. Anticausative prominence: many verbs that describe change come in pairs, a
causative one (`to break [something]') and
an anticausative (`to break [by itself]').
The author claims it turns out that in Europe predominantly the anticausative
is the basic word and the causative is derived from it, while in the rest of
the world the ratio is reversed, but gives no examples.
[DG: That would be difficult because in English, Dutch and German the two words
are usually the same. Even German brechen (neutral) and zerbrechen
(formally a causative) can fulfill both functions: die Tasse zerbrach
`the cup broke'.]
(Hebrew: antipassive derived from basic word: shavar `he broke [something]'
versus ni-shbar `it broke [by itself]';
Korean: occasionally with the infix -hi-, in both directions.)
7. Negative pronouns (without also negating the verb), as in `Nobody comes'.
Alternatives are: no negative pronouns; negative pronouns and negating the
verb (Italian Non ho visto nessuno).
(Dutch: Er komt niemand;
Hebrew: no negative pronouns: Ish lo' ba' `Man not comes' = `Nobody comes';
Korean: question pronoun + negated verb:
Nugu an wayo `who[ever] not comes'.)
8. Verb fronting in yes-no questions, as in `Did you see him?'.
This is particular to North-West Europe.
Alternatives are: intonation (Italian: L'hai visto?); question particle;
morphological verb form.
(Dutch: verb fronting: Heb je hem gezien? `Have you ...';
Hebrew: question particle: Ha'im ra'ita oto? `whether you-saw him?';
Korean: morphology: pwass-seupnikka? `have-seen polite-question')
9. Comparative marking of adjectives + syntactic particle,
as in `the dog is bigg-er than the cat'.
Alternatives are: two particles, one for the adjective and one for the syntax;
syntax only.
(Dutch: De hond is grot-er dan de kat;
Hebrew: adjective particle is optional: Ha-kelev gadol [yoter] me-ha-chatul
`The-dog big [more] than-the-cat';
Korean: syntactic particle only: gae-ga goyangi buteo kheoyo
`dog-subj cat comparison-particle big-is'.)
And another nine follow.
[DG: And I'd like to add having masc./fem./neut. gender.
The author could not include this because it is an Indo-European feature, not
a specifically European feature.
Most languages don't have gender; gender is almost exclusively restricted to
a vertical Europe-Africa belt. Outside that belt there are a few languages
that make an animate/inanimate distinction. Many languages in Africa have 6 or
more "classes". Only some languages in the Caucasus and Burushaski stand out
with 4 genders.
The point is that the distribution is very uneven.]
The above common European features were largely absent in antiquity, and
almost completely present in the Middle Ages. This suggests that the features
arose in the turmoil of the Great Migrations, although evidence is difficult
to find.
[DG: I find it hard to imagine how verb fronting in yes-no questions
originated at all.]
Joseph Biddulph,
Bantu Byways -- Some Explorations among the Languages of Central and Southern Africa,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
2001,
pp. 56.
About 22 Bantu languages are examined, at about 2.5 page per language, to
demonstrate both the unity and the differences among the Bantu languages; as
usual in Africa, there is choice enough.
The Bantu verb morphology is treated on the basis of the Ila language, with
its rich set of prefixes and postfixes and its two roots for each verb.
Tones are discussed briefly in the basis of the Ekoi languages, while the
Mwera language serves to demonstrate the Bantu class system.
George Carcas,
A Reference Grammar of Icelandic,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
2001,
pp. 56.
As it says in the preface, this is an aid both for the author and the reader
to remember the fine points of Icelandic grammar.
So pages 5-30 are mainly tables.
Pages 31-37 contain translation (Icelandic to English) exercises based on
short fragments of the Icelandic bible.
The next five pages give short pieces of literature, from a saga, a text about
cats, and a poem, with translation.
A 14 page vocabulary closes the booklet.
Naoko Chino,
All About Particles,
Kodansha Int.,
Tokyo,
2001,
pp. 149.
Detailed description of 53 noun particles and 16 sentence particles, with
example sentences in romaji and kana/kanji.
Nordlinger, R.,
Sadler, L.,
Tense as a Nominal Category,
2000,
pp. 18.
Head-driven phrase structure grammars (HPSG) are based [DG: among other
things] on the assumption that sentence-level information (Tense, Aspect,
Modality, TAM for short) is stored in and derives from the head of the sentence.
This assumption is not universally valid.
Examples are mala-mu `the tomorrow-sea' and mala-y `the
yesterday-sea' from Kayardild, and the too-obvious English
You'll be leaving `The future you is leaving'.
(The English example is rejected by many because "the 'll is a clitic, not
an ending, on the you.)
Many more examples are provided, sometimes very subtle ones, and the
phenomenon is explained in the Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) model.
Examples from Polish and Welsh are also treated.
Witzel, M.,
The Languages of Harappa,
2000,
pp. 44.
Concludes that the language(s) of Harappa cannot have been Dravidian, because
the substratum words in the oldest parts of the Rigveda do not have properties
of Dravidian words.
The author then speculates about the order in which the Indo-Aryans and the
Dravidians entered India.
Joseph Biddulph,
Tongues of Prester John -- An Overview of Ge`ez and Amharic,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
2000,
pp. 56.
[According to legend Prester (=Presbyter) John was the ruler of a Christian
kingdom lost in Muslim lands, more concretely Ethiopia.]
Equally divided between Ge`ez and Amharic.
Amharic is linguistically not the continuation of Ge`ez, but a South-Semitic
language with its own history, just as Aramaic is not the continuation of
Hebrew.
The syllabary (incorrectly called an alphabet in the book) is composed of 33
base letters, to which seven vowels can be added as diacritics that have
become ligatures; in this is differs from hiragana, in which there is no
relation between characters for the same consonant followed by different
vowels.
Although the ligatures are in principle unpredictable, decomposing them is a
help in recognizing the 231 combination.
The base character represents the consonant followed by ä.
The -u form is usually formed by adding a stroke with closed circle to
the right.
The -i form is usually formed by adding a stroke with closed circle to
the bottom right.
The -a form is usually formed by shortening the left side or lengthening
the right side.
The -e form is usually formed by adding an open circle to
the bottom right.
The form without following vowel is usually formed by modifying or nicking
the left side in some way.
The -o form is usually formed by adding an open circle to the top right,
and/or shortening the right side.
The language has long consonants; the difference cannot be expressed in the
script.
Name: Ge`ez
Affiliation: South-Semitic
Location: Ethiopia (~ 500 BC - ~ 1500 AD)
Phonetics:
consonants: the semitic set;
vowels: a, e, i, o, u.
Nouns: gender/classes: masc./fem.;
number: 2;
cases: 2;
possessor indication: status constructus.
Pre/postpositions: pre.
Pronouns:
'ana = I,
'anta = you(m),
'anti = you(f),
we'etu = he,
ye'etu = she,
neħna = we,
'antemmu = you all(m),
'anten = you all(f),
'emuntu = they (m),
'emantu = they (f),
# = they (n).
Numbers:
1 'aħadu,
2 kel'e (probably from a Bantu language),
3 shalas,
4 'arba',
5 ħams, etc.
Adjectives: precede the noun.
The book then spends two pages on Tigré, the living language most closely
related to Ge`ez.
The next 18 pages of the book concern Amharic.
For historic reasons the transliteration of Amharic uses Italian orthography;
this is not followed here.
Name: Amharic.
Affiliation: South-Semitic.
Location: Ethiopia.
Phonetics:
consonants: the semitic set;
vowels: a, e, i, o, u, and ä.
Nouns: gender/classes: masc./fem.;
number: 2;
cases: 2, acc. = direct object;
possessor indication: constr. state or yä- = of, preceding the owner:
of-the-man the-hat.
Pre/postpositions: small ones prefixed, larger ones post-posed.
Pronouns:
ine = I,
antä = you(m),
anki = you(f),
issu = he,
isswa = she,
inya = we,
innant = you all,
innäsu = they (m).
Numbers: are not so clearly Semitic as in Ge`ez:
1 and,
2 hulät,
3 sost,
4 arat,
5 ammist.
Adjectives: preceding the noun.
Verbs:
less clearly Semitic than Ge`ez;
there are two conjugations: one which doubles the middle consonant in some
forms, and one which always doubles the middle consonant;
has a polite 2nd person sing. in -wo.
Word order: SOV, strictly.
Relative clauses: use yä = 'of':
bäreun (the ox, direct object)
yägäddälä (of "it has killed")
anbässa (lion) =
lion of "it has killed the ox" = the lion which has killed the ox.
The book closes with two chapters on the other languages of Ethiopia and the
Ethiopian calendar.
George Carcas,
A Reference Grammar of Afrikaans,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
2000,
pp. 48.
Although Afrikaans has little morphology (except for the plurals of nouns), it
has lots of prepositions, connecting words, and sentence constructions.
These are presented with examples of almost all of them.
Like the author's `A Reference Grammar of Icelandic', exercises are based on
fragments of the bible, and a vocabulary closes the booklet.
There are no longer sample texts, however.
Giulio M. Facchetti,
L'enigma svelato della lingua Etrusca,
(in Italian: The Riddle of the Etruscan Language Unveiled),
Newton Compton,
Roma,
2000,
pp. 295.
Books that promise to "unveil the riddle of the Etruscan language" should be
approached with caution, especially when they are published by a firm which
also publishes books like "300 Simple and Original Recipes for Cooking with
Nutella"...
But unlike for example Mario Alinei's book, this book is main-stream, and
safely based on Rix and Agostiniani.
The author is an expert on Roman and Etruscan law, and uses his knowledge of
the first to interpret texts in Etruscan about the second, based in the idea
that contracts in both languages often phrase similar things similarly.
For example, the Latin words for the three possible obligations,
facere, dare, praestare (to do, to allow, to refrain from) are found to
correspond to Etr. acilune, turune, scune.
The book consists of 14 chapters + an appendix on grammar.
Some of the chapters are on general subjects, for example "Doni sacri e
profani", others are concrete, for example "La 'tavola di Cortona'", but their
internal structure is similar: the subject is explained using many short
Etruscan texts with word-by-word translation.
The translation of almost each word is motivated; in addition, longer texts
are also summarized in a natural translation.
All this makes the text easily accessible.
There are many detailed drawings of inscriptions and Etruscan objects.
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza,
Genes, Peoples, and Languages,
University of California Press,
Berkeley,
2000,
pp. 228.
Factual and fairly dry but not very systematic description of the mechanisms
that cause correlations between genes, peoples, and languages, and of those
that disturb those correlations.
Bernd Heine,
Derek Nurse,
African Languages -- An Introduction,
Cambridge Univ. Press,
Cambridge, UK,
2000,
pp. 396.
This book has a combined purpose: teaching about African languages and
teaching linguistics using them.
Of course "African languages" is not a linguistic notion, and that is both a
weakness and a strength.
The weakness shows in generalizations like "The large majority of the African
languages are tonal." True, but less than informative: almost all
Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Congo and Khoisan languages are, but almost none of the
Afroasiatic ones are.
The strength is that in teaching linguistic features, the authors can choose
from hundreds of languages from four vastly different phyla.
The book consists of 12 chapters, each written by a different author/expert,
usually a big name in the field.
It is divided in three parts:
I. the African languages (chapters 2-5, covering Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan,
Afroasiatic, and Khoisan);
II. Elements of linguistics (chapters 6-9, covering Phonology, Morphology,
Syntax and Typology); and
III. Linguistics (chapter 10-12, Comparative linguistics, Language and
history, and Language and society).
Not surprisingly with so many authors (15) the style, terminology and quality
is variable (which only adds to the realism in linguistics).
There is an excellent analysis (section 6.7) of the research on the tonal
system of Bambara, i.e. what the rules AND how these rules were discovered.
The weakest point in African linguistics, the validity of the Nilo-Saharan
phylum, is given extensive attention (sections 3.3 and 11.2), thus showing
linguistics in action in a very educational way.
In summary the book is a very good introduction to linguistics for people who
have affinity with African languages, and very informative for anybody
interested in both its subjects.
Its main drawback is its unevenness.
Nancy Yaw Davis,
The Zuni Enigma,
W.W. Norton,
New York,
2000,
pp. 318.
Defends the premise that about 1350 AD (not BC!) a group of Japanese pilgrims
went to America, mingled with Indians (Anasazi or their neighbors) to form
the Zuni.
The book lists those aspects of Zuni and Japanese culture and language in
which the author sees enough correspondence.
The linguistic part is unconvincing; if anything it more suggests a long-range
relationship to Eurasian.
I think a serious problem with Davis' thesis is that 14th century Japanese
pilgrims would have known about writing, and it is hard to believe that they
would have given it up.
And even so, one would expect remnants of script to appear ornamentally.
As the author says in the last paragraph: "These finding may nor be
conclusive, but together they are suggestive."
Whether it is more than that is doubtful.
Anne van der Meiden,
Biebel in de Twentse Sproake, Nieje Testament, deelen 1, 2 en 3,
(in Twents: Bible in the Twents (Tubantian) Language, New Testament, Parts 1, 2 and 3),
Stichting Twentse Bijbelvertaling,
Enschede,
1999, 1998, 2001,
pp. 412, 316, 390.
The bible in Twents, a Saxon language spoken in Twente, eastern Overijssel,
the Netherlands.
The spelling (for which no standard exists) has been chosen so as to
look as much as possible like Dutch; this is an unusual choice.
Diacritical marks are used only for ö; the difference between ò
and ó is not indicated.
The language differs slightly from what I used to speak; for example,
the text has "breeve" for "letters", where I say "breem'm" (for
"breev'n").
Van Dale Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal -- A-I, J-R, S-Z,
(in Dutch: Van Dale's Major Dictionary of the Dutch Language, in 3 volumes),
Van Dale Lexicografie,
Utrecht,
1999,
pp. 1-1484, 1485-2912, 2913-4295.
The authoritative definition of the Dutch vocabulary.
Cysouw, M.,
Singular Pronominal Marking, or Exotic Aspects of Some Germanic Languages,
1999,
pp. 13.
The personal markings on the verb may be all different or there may be
syncretisms between them. There are the following possibilities:
1 2 3
SA A B C
SB A B B
SC A B A
SD A A B
SE A A A
[DG: The table looks irregular because the line marked SB should be
B A A.]
The research question is: as we descend in the table, are pronouns getting
more obligatory, and languages more non-pro-drop?
SA: Many examples: Russian is non-pro-drop, the other Slavic languages are
more or less pro-drop. Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian are fully pro-drop.
SB: Dutch is type SB and is non-pro-drop, but the author found that
Lengua (Mascoian, Paraguay),
Chitimacha (Gulf, USA), and
many New Guinea languages (e.g. Wambon)
are type SB and pro-drop.
SC: Rarer than the above; the author knows only three examples:
Koiari (Koiarian, Papua New Guinea), non-pro-drop;
Icelandic (in the preterit tense), non-pro-drop; and
Ika (Chibchan, Peru), largely pro-drop.
(Middle Dutch past tense was also SC:
ik maeckte, gij maecktet, hij maeckte.)
SD: This equally rare type occurs in
English (present tense),non-pro-drop;
Hunzib (Nakh-Dagestanian, Dagestan), non-pro-drop; and
Waskia (Isumrud, Papua New Guinea), largely non-pro-drop.
SE: The author provides no examples of languages of type SE, but mentions
French (present tense in pronunciation), non-pro-drop, in a footnote.
It is easy to find further examples: Bahasa Indonesia (non-pro-drop), Korean
and Japanese (pro-drop), Hopi (non-pro-drop). etc.
The conclusion is that there is no real correlation between syncretism in the
personal verb markings and being pro-drop or non-pro-drop. English and French
did not become non-pro-drop because their verb markings eroded away.
[DG: The paper treats the absence of an ending as just another ending, which
is formally correct. Still I feel that in this case we are losing
information. For example, all languages of type SE I know just use the stem,
without ending, in the present singular.]
[DG: In spite of the author's conclusion the above data show that there is
a slight correlation between syncretism and non-pro-drop. After all syncretism
causes uncertainly and pronouns take that uncertainty away. Languages like
Korean and Japanese show that people can handle lots of uncertainty, but
others (Russian) are belts-and-suspenders. It seems to me that the core
question is how well the speakers tolerate uncertainty.]
Yoon Jeong-Me,
A Critical Survey of GB/Minimalist Research on Case and A-Chains in Korean,
1998,
pp. 53.
Deeply steeped in Government-Binding/Minimalist terminology.
Contains good and interesting examples of cross-linguistically unusual use of
case in Korean.
Especially example 28a is very interesting. Example 26a
Cheolsu-ga bal-i neolb-da
C-NOM foot-NOM wide-DECL
'Chelswu has wide contacts.' (plus literal reading)
can be explained by considering Cheolsu-ga as the subject of a
(compound) descriptive verb bal-i neolb- with two meanings, the literal
one, `to have the property that the feet are wide', and the idiomatic one.
(Grune,
.
Example 28a, however, is harder to explain:
Cheolsu-ga Tongsu-ege-neun abeonim-i apeu-si-n geos gad-da
Ch-NOM T-DAT-TOP father-NOM sick-HON-PRES-COMP seem-DECL
'To Tongswu, Chelswu's father seems to be sick.'
Here Cheolsu-ga is the subject of the (very composite) descriptive verb
'having the property that the father (subject) seems (honorably) sick to
Tongswu'.
ZZ
Jay Rubin,
Making Sense of Japanese,
Kodansha Int.,
Tokyo,
1998,
pp. 136.
The booklet starts with a litany on the myth that Japanese is a mysterious
language in which things just happen in Zen fashion, without anybody doing
them.
Two main parts follow, both short pieces about various issues in Japanese.
They treat wa/ga, yaru/ageru/kudaseru/kureru, morau/itadaku,
kara da/wake da/no da, hodo, shiru/wakaru, tame, tsumori,
kimeru/kimaru, aru/de aru, kite, and many others.
The book ends with a thorough analysis of two sentences from Ienaga
Saburō's history book Taiheiyō Sensō, "The Pacific Wars", one of
18 and one of 50 words; very instructive!
There are many trunk-bearing and disappearing elephants in this book.
The example zō wa hana ga nagai ('Elephants have long trunks') is even
worse than the author describes: hana means both 'nose/trunk' and
'flower'.
Now there is little chance of misunderstanding, but tone marks would have
helped: zō wa ha'na ga naga`i for 'trunks' as opposed to
zō wa han'a` ga na'ga`i for 'flowers'.
This also shows that Sansom's remark about writing Japanese with a [Latin]
alphabet is not entirely true: one needs the tone marks.
And it seems to me that orenji itadakimasu ka (page 117) just means 'Do I
humbly receive the honor of [getting you] an orange?' = 'May I get you an
orange?' This fits the language -- 'I' is the natural subject of
itadakimasu and the '[getting you]' is supplied by the context as the
obvious task of a waiter-- and it fits the semantics.
Joseph Biddulph,
Mandingo, Malinké, Bambara: Speeches of Mali,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
1998,
pp. 36.
The three named languages are actually almost a single language, and are
treated as one in this booklet, called Mandingo.
It is a West-African language of the Mande group, and with between 8 and 10
million speakers it is the second largest language in Africa, after Swahili.
Pages 3-12 are concerned with the languages of the region in general; the rest
concentrates on Mandingo.
Name: Mandingo/Bambara
Affiliation: Mande
Location: in and around Ghana
Phonetics:
consonants: the usual + γ, R, kp, gb;
vowels: 9, short, long and nasal;
tones: none.
Nouns: gender/classes: none
number: 2, plural by suffix -u
cases: none
possessor indication: juxtaposition: mansa ba = 'king mother' =
the king's mother
Pre/postpositions: post
Pronouns:
ne = I,
i = you,
e = he, she, it,
ana = we,
alu = you all,
u = they.
Adjectives: are verbs
Verbs: root is only used as imperative; all other uses require the auxiliary
verb 'to be', which is only marked for tense, mode, and negation.
Word order: SOV
Relative clauses: with connective mi = where.
In summary, Mandingo is a very simple language: no gender, no classes, no
tones (not even stress), no declination and minimal conjugation: the verb
bè = 'to be' has 18 forms, 9 positive and 9 negative (actually only 5 +
5, since 'past' is expressed by tun- prefixed and assimilated to the
non-past forms).
T. Burrow,
M.B. Emeneau,
A Dravidan Etymological Dictionary,
South Asia Books,
1998,
pp. 574.
Complete and systematic record of the whole available Dravidian
vocabulary.
Covers 4 major lit. languages.
Dick Grune,
Burushaski: An Extraordinary Language in the Karakoram Mountains,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
1998,
pp. 40.
Covers the phonetics, the grammar of nouns, adjectives and verbs,
the syntax and the numerals of the Yasin dialect of Burushaski, in an
informal though detailed style.
Possible parallels with the Yeniseian language Ket are pointed out.
The Hunza dialect of the language is introduced in a short comparison.
A small annotated bibliography concludes the booklet.
Joseph Biddulph,
An Introduction to Malagasy -- The Language of Madagascar,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
1997,
pp. 32.
Confusing account of a remarkable language, in spite of the author's efforts
to make things clear.
Understanding is not helped by the fact that words often are translated only
the first time; this is especially a problem since Malagasy words change both
at their fronts and at their ends, as in Welsh, so related forms are often
hard to recognize, f.e. mamonóa = 'kill!' vs. vonòy ny omby =
'the ox must be killed', from mono = 'to kill'.
Also, the accent system is not explained, but is apparently significant:
àzy = 'him, her', ázy = 'them'.
Word order is VOS.
There are three voices, active, passive and instrumental, which place in
subject position the actor, the patient and the instrument, resp., similar to
Tagalog.
Manaster Ramer, A.,
Nostratic from a Typological Point of View,
1997,
pp. 26.
Information-dense paper, refuting objections to features of Nostratic by
several scholars, mainly by providing counterexamples.
Serebennikov criticizes the Nostratic proposals of Illitch-Svitych for its
phonetic rules judged impossible by Serebennikov.
The author shows that each of these rejected phonetic rules corresponds to a
real phonetic change in a real language.
The same applies to typological features, e.g. having tones, which is a
property that languages can acquire and lose over time.
Serebennikov's claim that Nostratic has too many vowels and consonants is
shown to be unfounded (e.g. Cracovian Polish has more).
Klimov claims that the Kartvelian languages cannot be Nostratic, because they
are ergative and Nostratic is not. But ergativity has risen in Indo-Iranian,
which developed out of Old Indic, which was an accusative language.
Illitch-Svitych has one word in Nostratic for both `wolf' and `dog' and Hamp
claimed that that is unnatural. But South Arabic languages have only one word
for both.
Doerfer objects to the Nostratic affricates becoming clusters in Indo-European
and Kartvelian, but the author reconstructs them as s+stop, which solves the
problem.
The author proposes a shuffling of the notions voiceless, voiced , and
glottalized in Nostratic to better fit the expected statistical distribution
and the development of stops to the stops in the daughter phyla.
Lots of statistics about many other languages (often Australian) follow.
Finally the author emphasizes that "just because Nostratic reconstruction
meets a number of typological criteria of naturalness, it does not means that
Nostratic ever existed."
Bescherelle -- 1. La Conjugaison pour tous,
(in French: Conjugation for everybody),
Hatier,
Paris,
1997,
pp. (not numbered).
All the ins and outs of the French verb.
Bescherelle -- 2. L'Orthographe pour tous,
(in French: Spelling for everybody),
Hatier,
Paris,
1997,
pp. (not numbered).
All the ins and outs of French spelling.
Bescherelle -- 3. La Grammaire pour tous,
(in French: Grammar for everybody),
Hatier,
Paris,
1997,
pp. (not numbered).
All the ins and outs of French grammar.
Anatole V. Lyovin,
An Introduction to the Languages of the World,
Oxford Univ. Press,
Oxford,
1997,
pp. 491.
The purpose of this book is to teach languages; some linguistics is taught in
the process, but the emphasis is on languages.
The main body of the book consists of six chapters, one for each continent
(Oceania is grouped with Australia), and one for pidgin languages.
The surrounding material consists of chapters on classification of languages
and writing systems, and a set of language maps.
Each chapter in the main body starts with a summary of the languages found in
the region concerned, followed by "sketches" of two languages from the region;
exercises introducing a few more languages and selected literature references
conclude the chapter.
This approach gives quite a balanced view of the languages of the world.
The languages featured are:
Europe: Russian and Finnish (with exercises about Turkish and Sanskrit);
Asia: Mandarin Chinese and Classical Tibetan (+ Hmong and Japanese);
Africa: Modern Literary Arabic and Swahili (+ !Xũ (Khoisan));
Oceania: Hawaiian and Dyirbal (+ Tagalog, Fijian and Buang (Papuan));
Americas: Yup'ik (Eskimo) and Quechua (+ Hixkaryana, Aztec, and Huave);
Pidgin and Creole: Tok Pisin (+ Hawaiian Creole English).
Each "sketch", which is actually a description of reasonable depth, covers
the background, phonetics, morphology, and syntax of the language, in about
twenty pages.
This knowledge is then applied to analyse a small (about fifteen sentences)
text; the analysis consists of a literal morpheme-by-morpheme translation,
explanatory notes and a translation to normal English.
These sketches are of high quality; seriously working your way through such a
"sketch" gives one a good grasp of the language and may well allow one to
decipher simple texts in it, using a dictionary.
The treatment of the languages in the exercises is of course much more
restricted.
The chapter in pidgins and creoles has this same structure, and Tok Pisin (Talk
Pidgin) gets the same treatment as, for example, Finnish or Quechua.
It is remarkable how much Tok Pisin looks like a normal language under
this treatment, even though it is evident that the English original is never
far away: Dispela man i kam asde em i papa bilong me = This-fellow man he
come yesterday him he father belong me = This man who came yesterday is my
father.
In summary this book gives the student/reader some knowledge of a very wide
range of languages and their features, supplemented by more in-depth knowledge
of a dozen or so specific languages; a good combination it seems to me.
Having finished the book I came away with the intuitive impression that
actually all languages are the same.
For example, some languages have prepositions, some have postpositions, and
others have case endings, and so on, but even these differences repeat
themselves so often that they become next to meaningless.
Steven Roger Fischer,
Glyphbreaker,
Copernicus/Springer-Verlag,
New-York,
1997,
pp. 234.
Consists of two parts, one about the Phaistos Disk and the other about
Rongorongo.
A decipherment of the Phaistos Disk is offered as follows:
1. One glyph, PD 12, is given the semantic value "and" because it is used very
often as a connective.
2. Glyphs that resemble Linear B glyphs are given their Linear B values.
3. Given 2, names of Mediterranean tribes are discerned in the text, yielding
more glyph values.
4. A few more glyphs suggest the text is basically Greek.
5. The pictures of still unknown glyphs were translated to Greek and then
reduced to one syllable.
6. Mapping rules from Greek to the syllabary were devised.
Running these rules in reverse allows a text in an ancient form of Greek to be
constructed.
7. The resulting text is a call to arms for the impending invasion of the
Carians.
The arguments are reasonably convincing, and the decipherment might be
correct.
There are three problems with it.
1. The mapping is so loose that one suspects any kind of text could be
retrofitted to the Disk, but that might be more difficult than it seems.
2. The Minoans wrote Linear A, which certainly is not Greek, ancient or
otherwise. The author makes a feeble attempt to turn it into Greek anyway.
3. There are five, very similar very short inscriptions in glyphs similar to
those of the Phaistos Disk; they seem to translate into "belonging to Sara",
where the author suggests that Sara is an old form of Hera, which it may be.
The Rongorongo sticks are deciphered as follows.
1. The last person to claim to be able to read Rongorongo, Daniel Ure Va'e Iko
had recited from them, and much of his recitation has been taken down.
This text was analysed, and contains mainly of "X and Y begot Z".
2. Rongorongo consists of about 55 different glyphs, most of which also occur
with a phallic extension.
3. This phallic extension is taken to be an end-of-line marker, or a
representation of "begot".
4. The Rongorongo sticks are memory devices for reciting the story of
creation.
The pictures mainly represent the objects they represent, or abstracta that
sound similar in Old Rapanui.
Sounds quite reasonable, and seems to explain all the known facts.
George L. Campbell,
Handbook of Scripts and Alphabets,
Routledge,
London,
1997,
pp. 131.
Excerpt from Campbell's Compendium of the World's Languages (1991).
Joseph Biddulph,
A Handbook of West Country Brythonic -- Old Devonian,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
1996,
pp. 36.
Extremely hypothetical reconstruction of the Celtic language spoken in Devon
around 700 AD, based on the analysis of place names and developmental
processes in Cornish and Breton.
Being a reconstruction it is more stylized than an actual language and as such
it gives a good -but necessarily overly simple- impression of a Celtic
language.
Name: West Country Brythonic -- Old Devonian.
Affiliation: Celtic.
Status: hypothetical reconstruction.
Location: Devon, about 700 AD.
Phonetics:
consonants: the usual + th (as in "thin"), dh (as in "there"), ch (as
in "loch");
vowels: 5, short.
Nouns: gender: masc. , fem.;
number: 2, + dualis by prefixing dou-, for pairs;
cases: none
possessor indication: by juxtaposition: tir dafat = land of sheep;
mutations (p → t, etc.) occur in several positions.
Pre/postpositions: pre-; combine with the pronouns: ar = on, arnaf = on me.
Pronouns:
mi = I,
ti = you,
ef = he, it
hi = she,
ni = we,
hui = you all,
i = they.
Adjectives:
Verbs: often with infinite and auxiliary.
Word order: VSO?
Relative clauses: connected with a, or negatively with nak.
Paul Kekai Manansala,
The Austric Origin of the Sumerian Language,
Language Forum,
vol. 22,
#1-2,
1996,
pp. 9-28.
Impressive list of possible cognates, without sound correspondences.
But maybe the only thing the list proves is that it is always possible
to find a Sumerian-looking word of similar meaning in one or more of the
hundreds of Austric languages (the author even includes Japanese
occasionally!).
Needs solid statstics, badly; or systematic sound correspondences.
Skip the skull measurements.
Cefas van Rossem,
Hein van der Voort,
Die Creol Taal -- 250 years of Negerhollands texts,
Amsterdam Univ. Press,
Amsterdam,
1996,
pp. 325.
Negerhollands, like Afrikaans, derives from the colonization by the
Dutch, in this case of the island of St. Thomas in the Caribbean.
The Dutch arrived around 1670, imported slaves, but abandoned the island
soon afterwards.
The slave population continued to use Dutch, which then developed
independently of Dutch.
The language was thought to have died out in the 1940s, but around 1980
a last speaker, Mrs. Alice Stevens, was found, and research was reopened.
Negerhollands differs about as much from Dutch as Afrikaans does, and
has undergone some similar simplifications; it is about equally readable
to a Dutchman as Afrikaans is: 80% of the text is understood
immediately, and another 10% can be figured out.
Remarkably, the handwriting specimens are easily readable.
The book features a historical introduction, some linguistic
considerations, and all known texts with morphological and English
translation; no grammar, no dictionary.
John Mook,
Kimberley O'Neil,
Trekking in the Karakoram and Hindukush,
Lonely Planet,
Hawthorn, Australia,
1996,
pp. 322.
Contains short (about 50 words, 30 phrases and 20 numerals) vocabularies
of Urdu, Balti, Burushaski, Kalasha, Khowar, Shina, and Wakhi (Xikwor).
And of course descriptions of dozens of foot trips and tons of advice.
Jonathan Lotan,
From A to Aleph -- 3 steps to Writing in Hebrew,
Qualum Publ.,
London,
1996,
pp. 182.
The Hebrew alphabet explained as a contorted Roman alphabet and vice
versa.
E.J. Furnée,
Etruskische etymologie; de Kartveelse these bevestigd,
(in Dutch: Etruscan Etymology -- The Kartvelian Hypothesis Confirmed),
Furnée,
Den Haag,
1996,
pp. 186.
Mainly a list of 752 etyma, about 90% of them proper names.
The Kartvelian hypothesis is explained in previous books by Furnée (1993,
1992, 1992, and primarily 1990): Proto-Kartvelian (reconstructed
Proto-Old-Georgian, about 1800 BC) and Etruscan (oldest forms about 600 BC)
are hypothesized to have a not too distant common ancestor, Proto-Tyrrhenian
(perhaps 3000 BC or so), which can be reconstructed by examining the children.
Source of Proto-Kartvelian was Fähnrich and Sardzhveladze,
"Etymological Lexicon of the Kartvelian Languages" (in Georgian)
(Tbilisi, 1990), of Etruscan Rix "Etruskische Texte" (Tübingen, 1991).
Two dominant features of the Kartvelian hypothesis.
1.
As in Georgian and Svan, sa-, a- and la- are prefixes, which are
followed by the stem; often this stem is again followed by some suffix, which
leaves it in zero grade.
As a result the root of an Etruscan word is often the
consonant cluster in the middle; this is also suggested by the not infrequent
occurrence of names with identical consonant clusters, for example
Nucrtele, Śacrtuna, Cretlu, and Crutlunia; or Secne, Lecne; and many others.
As an example, the Etr. name Satre is analysed as sa-tr-e, and the root
-tr- is identified as tur- = to give, which leads to the meaning of the
name: Giver, Giver of Gifts.
With a different suffix this yields sa-tr-ne, from which Lat. Saturnus
is then derived, for which a Proto-Indo-European derivation seems to be
lacking (etymon 488).
Another example is the Etr. name Acle = a-cl-e, from PKartv. -k.l- = to
kill, which makes Acle = Butcher; this may find confirmation in two known
E. words: Calu = god of death (with part. pres. in -u), and cleva =
sacrifice (cp. Georg. sa-k.l-avi = sacrificial animal), and in the name
Thevruclna (thevru-cl-na = bull-kill-family name = Bullkiller)
(etyma 23, 119, 162; and pg. 164, Ad p, 22 of Furnée 1993).
An example not involving a name is na-per (a surface measurement) and
per-as =? the act of measuring, cp. Georg. per- = to fit (etymon 677).
2.
When a PTyrrh. root contains a guttural preceded by a stop, the stop
gets aspirated and the guttural disappears (reasonably enough).
Example: Etr. auth =? lightning is derived here from PKartv. -deγ-
= to shine, or more in particular auth = a-u-th = a-u-dγ =
that-which-shines.
The reconstructed meanings of the names are unverifiable; those of the nouns
fit.
All examples are from word formations; Etr. morphology is based in
suffixes and leaves the word intact, as far as we know.
So Etruscan is structurally similar to Georgian in word formation only; no
skreeves.
Viacheslav A. Chirikba,
Common West Caucasian,
PhD Thesis,
Research School CNSW,
Leiden,
1996,
pp. 452.
Reconstruction of the phonological system and parts of the lexicon and
morphology of Common West Caucasian, starting from reconstructions of
Common Abkhaz, Common Circassian and Ubykh;
since the latter had no direct relatives,
external reconstruction of its predecessor is not possible.
The above reconstructions are also by the same author, and are based on
detailed information about the present languages and dialects, including
the Sadz dialect of Abkhaz, recently recovered in Turkey by the author.
These reconstructions are also described in the thesis, all in great
detail and with many (all?) examples.
In a final chapter the author argues that Hattic was a West-Caucasian
language, supplies some 100 etymologies with extensive comments and
suggests some new interpretations, especially for some pronouns.
Tej K. Bhatia,
Colloquial Hindi -- The Complete Course for Beginners,
Routledge,
London,
1996,
pp. 343.
Lots of explanation, and a slow introduction to Devanagari.
Joseph Biddulph,
Northumbrian and Other Languages of the Old North,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
1995,
pp. 36.
History of the languages of North Britain from Roman times to the 13th/14th
century, based in part on place names and local inscriptions.
Aside from Pictish, which is treated very scantily, the primary dialects of
the Old North were Old North Welsh, the precursor to present-day Welsh.
In the first centuries AD is gave way to (Irish) Gaelic from the west and
Anglo-Saxon from the east.
This Old North Welsh is discussed using a poem by Taliesin.
The Gaelic was often written in the Ogham alphabet, which is discussed, and
Old North welsh and Gaelic are compared.
Northumbrian was the version of Anglo-Saxon spoken in the Old North (different
from Mercian in the South).
It is written in runes, and discussed using the inscription on the Ruthwell
Cross.
The next arrivals were the Vikings, who spoke Old Norse.
It is compared to Anglo-Saxon, and the variety of runes in which it was
written, including the twig runes, is discussed.
Then came the Normans from Normandy, who spoke Norman French.
That language penetrated to the North, witness many Scottish surnames.
It is discussed using three stanzas from the Jeu d'Adam (c. 1150).
The last change was effected not by migration but by diffusion, which brought
Middle English.
A section on the modern dialects of the North close the booklet.
Dick Grune,
Hopi -- Survey of an Uto-Aztecan Language (Arizona),
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
1995,
pp. 26.
Treats the general structure, phonetics and details like nouns,
adjectives, verbs, sentence particles and numerals in an informal
fashion.
George L. Campbell,
Concise Compendium of the World's Languages,
Routledge,
London,
1995,
pp. 670.
Excerpt from Campbell's Compendium of the World's Languages (1991),
covering 108 languages.
Antonio Loprieno,
Ancient Egyptian -- A Linguistic Introduction,
Cambridge Univ. Press,
Cambridge, UK,
1995,
pp. 322.
[ with lots of Coptic ]
Kan Qian,
Colloquial Chinese,
Routledge,
London,
1995,
pp. 345.
Entirely in Pinyin, with tones.
Václav Blažek,
D. Bengtson,
Lexica Dene-Caucasica,
Central Asiatic J.,
vol. 39,
1995,
pp. 11-50,161-164.
A set of 219 etymologies linking Basque, Caucasian, Burushaski,
Yeniseian, Sino-Tibetan, Na-Dene and occasionally Sumerian, Nahali and
Kusunda.
The etymologies generally involve 3 to 4 members of the groups
mentioned.
The time depth of the Dene-Caucasian family is estimated at some 11000
years.
A table of sounds correspondences is given.
The literature references are ample, to say the least.
Jacques B.M. Guy,
The incidence of chance resemblances on language comparison,
Anthropos 90,
1995,
pp. 223-228.
A program is presented that attempts to simulate the mass language
comparison process as performed by Greenberg, Ruhlen et al. on random
data.
The program includes the option to allow semantic shift inside a notion.
Parameters of the program are: the number of languages compared, the
size of the notion list (called "word list" here), the probability of
chance resemblance between two unrelated words, and the size of the
semantic domain (the number of subnotions allowed in a notion).
The result shows that when comparing 20 languages, using a notion list
of 200 notions, a resemblance chance of 1/250 and a semantic domain of 8
subnotions per notion, we will find about 80 instances of words attested
by 4 languages, 12 attested by 5 languages, 1 by 7 languages and next to
zero chance of words attested by more than 7 languages.
Other parameter sets yield similar results.
The author draws the conclusion that "strongly attested, yet spurious
resemblances are certain to occur", and that "language comparison based
on a small number of different possibles(!) instantiations, such as word
order, tonality, etc., are also certain to yield abundant false evidence
for classification".
Greenberg, Ruhlen, et al. would probably agree; as far as I can see
they use only words that are attested by at least half the languages,
and they certainly do not consider word order or intonation as evidence
for classification.
Jacques B.M. Guy,
Merritt Ruhlen: On the Origin of Languages,
(book review),
Anthropos: revue internationale d'ethnologie et de linguistique,
vol. 90,
#4-6,
1995,
pp. 638-639.
Devastating critique of Merritt Ruhlen: On the Origin of Languages.
The author's main gripe is lack of explicit methodology.
Martin B. Atchison,
Dobuan Grammar,
ed. by Raoul Zamponi,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
1995,
pp. 56.
Remarkably detailed grammar (36 pages) of Dobuan, followed by 14 pages of
"How to Say it Dobuan".
Dobuan is a Melanesian language spoken on the islands at the easter-most tip of
Papua New Guinea.
Its relatedness to Hawaiian can be recognized, but not easily;
Dobuan seems more complicated.
Name: Dobuan
Affiliation: Melanesian / Milne Bay
Location: D'Entrecasteaux Islands, Papua New Guinea
Phonetics: all syllables have the form CV;
consonants: usual + glottal stop; b, g, k, m, p, and the
glottal stop can be labialized in front of a and e;
vowels: the usual 5 + some diphthongues.
Nouns: gender/classes: none;
number: 2, expressed only when not obvious otherwise;
cases: see pre/postpositions.
possessor indication:
there are 3 levels of possession, just ownership, indicated by possessive
pronouns of the i- series (i-gu kedewa = my dog), personal items,
using pronouns of the a- series (a-gu masula = my food), and
inalienable, using suffixes (deba-gu = my head).
Pre/postpositions: by suffixes; these suffixes also combine with the pronouns:
eguya = to me, emuya = to you for the suffix -ya = towards.
Pronouns:
ya = I,
u = you,
i = he, she, it,
ta = we (I+you),
a = we (we-you),
wa = you all,
si = they (m), they (f), they (n).
Adjectives: most derive from verbs; they follow the noun, except for the
demonstratives.
Verbs: three tenses, past, present, future; the "regular" verb with root R
has past R-na, present RR, and future rR, where r is
the reduplicated first syllable of R: sapina, sapisapi, sasapi
= to hit; the object is suffixed to the verb using the possessive suffixes.
Word order: sentences tend to end in SV, but other parts of speech may
surround them.
Martin Orwin,
Colloquial Somali -- A Complete Language Course,
Routledge,
London,
1995,
pp. 295.
Fourteen extensive lessons, each containing a dialog, grammatical
explanations, vocabulary, reading and translation exercises and notes.
With tables of conjugations (which clearly show its relation to Hebrew)
and a 30-page dictionary.
David Cohen,
Dictionnaire des racines sémitiques,
(Fascicule 1: '/H - 'TN),
Peeters,
Brussels,
1994,
pp. xxxiv + 36.
Not an etymological dictionary, but does not claim to be one; it is a list of
almost exclusively triliteral roots, with their occurrences in the Semitic
languages where they exist; occasionally possible Egyptian and/or Berber
cognates are given.
Much material for study, nothing in the way of analysis; lots and lots of
references, though.
P.J. Hillery,
Georgian -- The Kartvelian Literary Language,
Languages Information Centre,
Pontypridd, Wales,
1994,
pp. 32.
Compact but comprehensive account of the Georgian grammar, with a very
accessible treatment of the verb, in 24 pages, all in the Latin
alphabet.
Next come 5 pages of sample text, in Georgian and in transcription,
fully analysed.
Material on Old Georgian and a bibliography conclude the book.
Unsurprisingly, the print is very small.
Patrik Bye,
Basque the Mysterious,
Languages Information Centre,
Pontypridd, Wales,
~1994,
pp. 33.
Broad and occasionally in-depth information about the Basque dialects, where
Batua ("official Basque") is treated as just another dialect. This approach
allows some comparisons, but is more often confusing.
Includes thoughts about the provenance of the Basques, and affiliation of the
language (tentatively Caucasian).
Name: Basque
Affiliation: unknown
Location: Spain/France
Phonetics:
consonants: simple, but x = sh, z = sharp (English) s,
s = broad (Spanish) s;
vowels: the usual 5.
Nouns: gender/classes: none;
number: 2;
cases: many (11 to 16), among which an ergative and many
location-related ones, as suffixes;
possessor indication: using a genitive;
nouns are easily formed by suffixes and/or composition, thus limiting
the number of roots needed.
Pre/postpositions: covered by the cases.
Pronouns:
ni = I,
hi = thou,
zu = you,
hura = he, she, it,
gu = we,
zuek = you all,
haik = they.
Number: 2.
Adjectives: noun + following adjective(s) form a unit to which all suffixes
are appended.
Verbs: there are 6 tenses times 4 moods, for a total of 17 combinations.
Normally the verb is in an infinitive form, and the auxiliary "to have" or
"to be" scoops up subject, indirect object, direct object, tense and mood, all
in a single form.
This is the basis of the saying "A Basque verb can have 2000 forms", but only
the auxiliaries have full conjugations. Only 9 other verbs ("to go", "to
take", etc.) have some conjugation.
The rest has 4 (regular) infinitives only.
The conjugated verbs have different forms for masc. and fem. 2 sg.
Using the auxiliary "to be" with a transitive verb constructs a passive form.
Word order: strict, actor (ergative) - indirect object - direct object -
infinitive - finite synthetic auxiliary; different, equally strict orders
exist for negative sentences and questions.
Archibald Norman Tucker,
A grammar of Kenya Luo (Dholuo),
Rüdiger Köppe Verlag,
Köln,
1994,
pp. 626, in 2 vol..
Note: Luo has a complicated phonetic structure and is written in an extended
form of the Latin alphabet richly sprinkled with diacritics.
The spelling used here is a coarse approximation and should be ignored.
The language --
Name: Luo, Dholuo = Luo language.
Affiliation: West-Nilotic; it is described as "lacking the exotic features of
some of its relatives"...
Location: Near Lake Victoria.
Phonetics:
Distinguished between dental d and t (written dh and th) and alveolar
(d and t).
Has the usual 5 vowels, short and long, but in two "categories", open and
closed (raised).
The the vowels in the root, which is usually CVCV, are of the same category,
and prefixes and suffixes match them (category harmony).
Luo has 7 tones in long syllables and 8 in short ones, for a total of 9 tones.
This gives 150 combinations, all distinguished in the orthography by using
diacritics over (for tone), after (for length), and under (for quality) the
five vowel letters.
The tonal pattern of Luo is complicated by Downdrift, the gradual lowering of
the pitch through a sentence; and Downstep, a syntactic device that for
example marks the transition between subject and imperfect verb.
Pronouns:
an = I,
in = you,
en = he/she/it,
wan = we,
un = you all,
gin = they.
Forms without the -n are used as prefixes (for subjects) and suffixes (for
objects and possessors).
Nouns: have no gender or cases.
They can be modified with one of several prefixes to obtain new meanings:
dho-luo = Luo language, ja-luo = Luo person.
The possessor is indicated by a suffix:
leep = tongue, leew-a = my tongue.
Prepositions also get suffixes:
kood = with,
kood-a = with me,
kood-i = with you,
kood-e = with him/her/it,
kod-wa = with us,
kood-u = with you all,
kod-gi = with them.
Verbs can be modified with one of several suffixes to obtain a gamut of
related meanings.
Verbs have prefixes indicating the subject and suffixes for the object:
riinggo = to run,
a-riinggo = I run,
o-riinggo = he/she/it runs,
wa-riinggo = we run, etc.
With different tones they mean "I ran", etc.
With an object: o-nen-a = he/she/it sees me.
Word order: mainly SVO
The book --
Meticulous description of the language, with variants and pronouncements on
the certainty of some observations, in technical prose, for the specialist.
Part 2 contains a thorough analysis of the tones, a more formal grammar and a
word list.
Rossana McKeane,
Italian Vocabulary Handbook,
Berlitz,
Oxford,
1994,
pp. 245.
Subject-oriented word lists.
Merritt Ruhlen,
The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue,
Wiley,
New York,
1994,
pp. 239.
In defense of the broad classification of languages of Greenberg and
Ruhlen, for the educated layman.
Using tables of about 12 words in about 12 languages, the author guides
the reader to classify first the families of the Indo-European phylum,
then the languages of Asia (including Yukagir as Uralic), Africa, the
Americas.
Next the reader can identify the super-phyla Eurasian, Dene-Caucasian,
Austronesian and Khoisan, the latter two as phylum-isolates.
And finally a table (Table 10) shows that all languages of the world are
related.
The resulting structure is supported by comparison with population DNA data.
There is a polemic discussion of why these ideas have not been
universally accepted.
The obvious reason, difference over acceptable methodology, is mentioned
but not pinpointed precisely.
What is lacking in this entire discussion is good statistics.
Of course there are correlations, but are they significant?
Vincenzo Lo Cascio,
Annelies Kooijman,
De taalvos -- Valstrikken in the Italiaanse taal,
(in Dutch: The Language Buff -- Pitfalls of the Italian Language),
Thomas Rap,
Amsterdam,
1994,
pp. 96.
Humorous account of pitfalls of the Italian Language for the Dutch,
including gestures.
Dana Gall,
Beginner's Romanian,
Hippocrene Books,
New York,
1994,
pp. 105.
[ Type-written ]
Merritt Ruhlen,
On the Origin of Languages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy,
Stanford University Press,
Stanford, Ca.,
1994,
pp. 342.
A collection of fourteen papers of varying nature and polemic content:
considerations about genetic classification in general, in which the
enemy is not spared;
specific etymology lists of the Khoisan, Yeniseian, Na-Dene and Amerind
language families;
a world-wide pronoun list and a list of 27 world-wide etymologies, some
of which are very convincing;
and several papers on Amerind, including some very specific etymologies.
All this amounts to large quantities of very interesting data, but it is
up to the reader to judge their quality; but then, it always is.
Zillions of literature references.
E.J. Furnée,
Etruskisch en Burushaski: vijf opstellen,
(in Dutch: Etruscan and Burushaski -- Five Essays),
The Hakuchi Press,
Leiden,
1993,
pp. 172.
Compilation of five earlier essays by the author:
Etruscan -- Once More (1990),
Four understandable lines of Etruscan? (1991),
Burushaski -- Member of a Family? (1991),
Prefixing in Proto-Burushaski (1992), and
Proto-Tyrrhenian -- Precursor to Etruscan and Lemnian (1992).
Bernard Leeman,
Ongamoi (KiNgassa) -- A Nilotic Remnant of Kilimanjaro,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
1993,
pp. 20.
In spite of its title, out of the 20 pages of this booklet, 5 pages are
about Kanuri (Nilo-Saharan), Luo (West Nilotic) and Karamojong
(East Nilotic); 5 are about Nandi (South Nilotic); 4 contain a word list
of Ongamoi (again East Nilotic); and 3 are comparative word lists of
Chagga (a Bantu language(!)).
Each of them interesting enough, but it took me some detective work to
find all this out.
Hoyrup, J.,
Sumerian: The Descendant of a Proto-Historical Creole? An Alternative Approach to the `Sumerian Problem',
1993,
pp. 68.
The author's hypothesis in broad outline is as follows.
In the fifth and early fourth millennium BZ the region between the Euphrates
and Tigris rivers was marsh land, flooded regularly and was essentially
uninhabitable, but the surrounding area was relatively densely populated by
miscellaneous tribes.
When the sea level dropped in the middle of the fourth millennium, the area
became arable, and peoples flooded in from all sides, importing numerous
different languages. One tribe happened to be better organizers
than the rest and became the ruling class. Each of the other (now lower class)
tribes developed a pidgin to communicate with the rules. Around 3000 BZ the
ruling class disappeared / was assimilated and the pidgins formed a creole
language: pre-Sumerian, which then developed into (post-creole) Sumerian.
This hypothesis is supported by a careful analysis of the chronology of the
development of the written Sumerian language in its first 1000 years.
The analysis shows that initially the symbols used in writing were just
references to objects and had no phonetic or syntactic function.
Only from 2700 BZ onwards the symbols were arranged in the order to be read,
and formed sentences.
The creole aspect is supported by enumerating the criteria for creole
languages set up by Mintz (1971), and showing that they are fulfilled by
Sumerian.
Several creole properties of Sumerian are discussed in depth, e.g. the small
lexicon, which is extended by combining notions into more complex notions.
The author points out that Sumer was a very religious society, with priests
and temples, and still the word for `to pray' is a triple compound:
`nose-hands-hold'. This is evidence that Sumerian still had strong creole
properties when it was already the state language.
Unlike most creoles, Sumerian has noun classes: it distinguishes
persons from non-persons. Only persons can be subjects, agents, used in the
dative case and in the plural, only non-persons can be used in the locative
and instrumental, etc.
The ergativity of Sumerian is discussed extensively, delving into the various
theories of its origin, in general and in Sumerian, but the author points out
that the question is moot for creoles: when there is no grammaticalized case
and no verbal agreement, "ergative" and "nominative-accusative" are
indistinguishable.
Sumerian roots are very simple. Many native place names and words for
tools contain comsonant clusters and thus do not fit the structure of Sumerian
words. These anomalous terms are, quite hesitantly, explained as remnants of
the language of the (disappeared) ruling class.
This is not an easy paper to read. It exposes many quite complicated ideas,
presents them in long sentences, and hardly illustrates them with examples.
The author assumes the reader has
M.-L. Thomsen's `The Sumerian Language' (1984),
D. Bickerton's `Creole Languages' (1981), and several other works close at
hand, liberally referring to them by page number and not always telling what
they say.
Jack Halpern,
NTC's New Japanese-English Character Dictionary,
National Textbook Comp. / Kenkyusha Ltd.,
Lincolnwood, Ill.,
1993,
pp. 1992.
Contains 3587 character descriptions.
For each character the following information is given in about half a
page:
The printed character,
stroke composition,
Chinese version,
frequency/radical information,
basic meaning,
a dozen or so ON compounds,
some KUN constructions,
synonyms and homonyms,
information about usage.
The access system does not use radicals but is based on the general
pattern of the character.
An index using radicals is provided.
Many other appendices and indices.
Fewer characters than Nelson and far fewer compounds, but more
information on the character itself.
More a dictionary of characters than a dictionary of Japanese.
A useful addition to Nelson.
Joseph Biddulph,
A Short Ibo Grammar,
Languages Information Centre,
Pontypridd, Wales,
1992,
pp. 20.
Short but very concentrated sketch of the grammar of Ibo. Tones are explained
in the last few pages, but used sparingly elsewhere in the booklet.
Name: Ibo
Affiliation: Atlantic Niger-Congo (i.e. very remotely related to the Bantu
languages).
Location: Nigeria
Phonetics:
consonants: usual + gb, kp;
vowels: 7: open and closed e and o;
tones: 2, high and low.
Nouns: gender/classes: no gender, but can be expressed when needed;
number: a few words have a number distinction, but plural can be
expressed when needed;
cases: none, but many prepositions;
possessor indication: juxtaposition or with nke = "of".
Pre/postpositions: Pre.
Pronouns:
mu = I,
ngi = you,
o = he, she, it,
ayi = we,
unu = you all,
fa = they.
Adjectives: a few important ones precede the noun, most follow it.
Verbs: The verb system is three-dimensional: it has tenses:
indefinite, present, past, perfect, pluperfect and future; a continuous and
non-continuous aspect; and positive or negative. This leads to 12 combinations,
each expressed by suffixes to the verb.
In addition there is a subjunctive, an irrealis, and a positive and negative
imperative.
The verb form is not conjugated for subject, except in the first person
singular (!); the object pronoun can, however, be suffixed.
There is an impersonal, which is used to produce a passive:
a-kpò-lu-m = someone call perfect-tense me = I was called.
Word order: SVO
Relative clauses: using na = that, ka = so that, or leaving the
particle out, like in English.
Joseph Biddulph,
Meet me at Windhoek: Notes on Four Bantu Languages of Namibia -- Herero, Ndonga, Kwanyama, Dhimba,
Languages Information Centre,
Pontypridd, Wales,
1992,
pp. 24.
As it says in the title, fairly unsystematic notes on the subject languages.
E.J. Furnée,
Proto-Tyrrheens -- Voorloper van Etruskisch en Lemnisch,
(in Dutch: Proto-Tyrrhenian -- Precursor to Etruscan and Lemnian),
E.J. Furnée,
Den Haag,
1992,
pp. 35.
Part I: As a rebuttal to Gordeziani's argument that it is unlikely that
Etruscan is related to Kartvelian because K. works with prefixes and E. does
not (a dubious argument, it seems to me), the author suggests 10 Etruscan
prefixes, used in 20 etyma, and relates them to Proto-Tyrrhenian (closely
related to Proto-Kartvelian) forms.
Part II: A few more Proto-Tyrrhenian to Etruscan sound laws, of which initial
z1 → Etr. š seems the most promising.
E.J. Furnée,
Prefigering in het Proto-Burušaski,
(in Dutch: Prefixing in Proto-Burushaski),
E.J. Furnée,
Den Haag,
1992,
pp. 37.
The hypothesis is that the Proto-Kartvelian prefix s1a- is represented by
s- or l- in Burushaski (as it is represented by sa- or la- in
the Kartv. language Svan); (the nature of the Proto-Kartv. s1 series is
controversial, but lateral sibilants is not an unreasonable suggestion).
On the basis of this, initial s- or l- is removed from Burushaski
words or stems, and Proto-Kartv. cognates are sought for the remainder.
This yields between 45 and 50 etyma.
Bríd Bean Oireachtaigh,
Foclóir -- English-Irish-English Dictionary,
C.S. Ó Fallúin,
Baile Átha Cliath,
1992,
pp. 80.
Entirely in Irish; includes some Irish verb paradigms, for speakers of Irish.
John J. Torikashvili,
Georgian-English English-Georgian Dictionary,
(Pocket Dictionary),
Hippocrene Books,
New York,
1992,
pp. 347.
Rather a vocabulary than a dictionary.
Georgian-English in Georgian script + transcription, English-Georgian in
Georgian script only.
No grammar.
Fred C. Woudhuizen,
Linguistica Tyrrhenica: A Compendium of Recent Results in Etruscan Linguistics,
Gieben,
Amsterdam,
1992,
pp. 117.
Actually, an interpretation of existing Etruscan texts based on the
hypothesis that it is almost Indo-European (but more removed than
Hittite).
This yields reasonable translations which, however, deviate from the
traditional ones.
For one thing, it yields a different mapping for the numbers:
zal = 1 (cf. semel), whereas main stream has zal = 2.
The evolution of human languages: proceedings of the Workshop on the Evolution of Human Languages, held August, 1989 in Santa Fe, New Mexico,
ed. by John A. Hawkins et al.,
Addison-Wesley,
Redwood City, Calif.,
1992,
pp. 361.
Contents:
On complex adaptive systems. Complexity and complex adaptive systems /
Murray Gell-Mann.
Brain and speech physiology in language evolution.
On the evolution of human language / Philip Lieberman
Brain-language coevolution / Terrence W. Deacon
Innateness and function in language universals. / John A. Hawkins
A brief presentation of the generative enterprise / Joseph Aoun
The evolution of linguistic diversity and language families.
Preliminaries to a systematic comparison between biological and
linguistic evolution / Joseph H. Greenberg
An overview of genetic classification / Merritt Ruhlen
The evolution of complexity in language change.
Before complexity / Bernard Comrie
The evolution of linguistic complexity in Pidgin and Creole languages /
Suzanne Romaine
Ontogeny and phylogeny. Complexity and language acquisition: influences on
the development of morphological systems in children / Elaine S. Andersen.
An approach to the phylogeny of the language faculty / James R. Hurford
Ontogeny and phylogeny: what child language and archaeology have to say to
each other / E.J.W. Barber and A.M.W. Peters.
R.S.P Beekes,
L.B. van der Meer,
De Etrusken spreken,
(in Dutch: The Etruscans speak),
Coutinho,
Muiderberg, Neth.,
1991,
pp. 111.
All authors of books on Etruscan have their own limits to the amount of
guessing they are willing to do: Kruse (2008) is very conservative, giving
very few translations; Facchetti (2000) is quite liberal, with many almost
complete translations; the present authors strike a sober middle, with several
translations with many dot-dot-dots in them.
Like Kruse (2008) this book covers the languages of ancient Italy, Etruscan,
inscriptions, origins, and a short grammar.
E.J. Furnée,
Burushaski -- Member of a Family?,
E.J. Furnée,
The Hague,
1991,
pp. 16.
With minimal introduction, the author's technique of finding cognates between
Basque and Kartvelian (F. 1989) and between Etruscan and K. (F. 1990) is now
applied to Burushaski, resulting in 100 etyma.
Example: Bu. tham (= king) cmp. Kartv. txem- = head.
The list ends with a few etyma between Burushaski and Etruscan, without
Kartv. relations.
Furnée would have loved the recently determined
Etr. un = you, cmp. Bur. un = you.
E.J. Furnée,
Vier begrijpelijke regels Etruskisch?,
(in Dutch: Four understandable lines of Etruscan?),
E.J. Furnée,
Den Haag,
1991,
pp. 12.
Attempt to shed light on two Etr. words of unknown meaning by exploiting the
Kartvelian hypothesis put forward in Furnée (1990):
mur-ce and tlech-e.
It is suggested the latter is related to a Kv. stem t.lik. = to run away;
mur-ce from Kartv. mo-rc.-a = to become rich.
These meanings lead to a reasonable translation of a 4-line Etr. epitaph.
In a very terse appendix the author suggests Kv. relatives for dozens of
Etr. words; example: Etr. cleva (= sacrificial animal) with
Geo. sa-k.lav-i (id.) from stem k.lav (= to slaugher) from root k.l
(= to kill).
Natela Sturua,
On the Basque-Caucasian hypothesis,
Studia Linguistica,
vol. 45,
#1/2,
1991,
pp. 164-175.
Non-committal inventory of the existing hypotheses.
Karina Valming,
Introduction to Georgian morphology and simple sentence structures,
Studia Linguistica,
vol. 45,
#1/2,
1991,
pp. 2-17.
Name: Georgian (Sakartveli).
Affiliation: South-Caucasian.
Location: Georgia, Caucasus.
Phonetics: plosives and affricates have a voiced / glottalized /
aspirated opposition.
The usual five vowels.
Nouns: have no gender nor class.
Plural formed by suffixing -eb.
Seven cases: nominative (stative subject), ergative (active subject),
oblique ((in-)direct object), genitive, instrumental, adverbial,
vocative; all through suffixes.
The case system is bizarre: each of the skreeves (see below) has its own
case usage; the above indications are a kind of majority vote.
Pre/postpositions: post.
Pronouns: 3 singular + 3 plural. Some verbs distinguish animate and
inanimate subjects and/or objects.
Adjectives: follow nouns, and have their own declination.
Verbs: The full verb form consists of:
<preverb> <subject/object> <version> <root> <auxiliary> <tense>
<subject/object plurality>.
<preverb>+<root> determine the meaning,
<version> determines the beneficiary (subject, indirect object or
otherwise),
<auxiliary> is determined lexically by the <root> and the <tense>.
As usual, actual usage varies and these are again majority votes.
All forms that share the same <preverb>* <version> <root> <auxiliary> <tense>*
are together called a skreeve.
Word order: mainly SOV and SVO
Joseph Biddulph,
Lithuanian -- A Beginning,
Languages Information Centre,
Pontypridd, Wales,
1991,
pp. 24.
As is the case with much of Biddulph's writings, this booklet has several
aims.
One is to explain the nature of a highly inflecting language to an
English-speaking audience; the author states with some amazement / admiration
that words like "bigger" and "biggest" have separate form for two genders,
three numbers, and seven cases, in spite of already having a suffix.
Another is to show the beauty of the Gothic or German blackletter script, in
which older Lithuanian texts are printed, and which features amply in
calligraphed form in this booklet.
And last but not least some aspects of Lithuanian are presented.
Name: Lithuanian.
Affiliation: Baltic.
Phonetics:
consonants: with palatalized versions of most;
vowels: five, long and short.
Nouns: 2 genders (masc. fem.),
3 numbers (sing. dual. plur.),
7 cases (nom. gen. dat. acc. voc. instr. loc.).
Pre/postpositions: pre-, but mostly cases.
Pronouns: most with 7 cases:
asz = I,
tu = you,
jis = he,
ji = she,
mudu = we two (m),
mudwi = we two (f),
judu = you two (m),
judwi = you two (f),
més = we,
jús = you all,
jie = they (m),
jos = they (f).
Adjectives: with forms for all genders, numbers and cases.
Verbs: similar in structure to and about as complex as the French verb.
Word order: SVO
George L. Campbell,
Compendium of the World's Languages -- Vol. 1. Abaza to Lusatian, Vol 2. Maasai to Zuni,
Routledge,
London,
1991,
pp. 1574.
Covering about 300 languages.
H.A. Maniku,
J.B. Disanayaka,
Say It in Maldivian,
Lake House Investments,
Male,
1990,
pp. 357.
Delightful little book, mainly about the language, but with lots of cultural
and historical information.
Name: Dhivehi (Maldivian).
Affiliation: Indic, closely related to Sinhala.
Location: Maldives.
Phonetics:
consonants: retroflex s and l, nasalized b, d, dh, g;
vowels: 5.
Nouns: gender/classes: animate/inanimate;
number: 2;
cases: a few postpositions;
possessor indication: magey = me-of = my.
Pronouns: ma = I, tha = you, but also aharen = I, kaley = you,
plus a three-level politeness system.
Verbs: no conjugation for person, but tens of modi:
"because it is said he may not ...", etc.
Verb forms are both finite and participle.
Word order: SOV
Relative clauses: using participles.
J. M. Sadock,
Autolexical Syntax: A Theory of Parallel Grammatical Representations,
University of Chicago Press,
1990,
pp. 254.
I find it difficult to give a fair summary of this book since I don't
particularly like GPSG.
My main gripe is that GPSG is so awfully complicated.
Since the book regularly explains something and then continues with a phase
like "the elucidation of which will also occupy much of what is to follow"
(p. 42, bottom), I will only summarize what I understand.
A traditional CF grammar which is capable of describing a large part of a
natural language almost inevitably also generates a lot of garbage.
F.e., a grammar which generates 'Fido seems to bark' and 'It seems that Fido
barks' almost certainly also generates 'Fido seems that he barks'.
To prevent such horrors, Autolexical Syntax proposes three grammars for the
production of a sentence: a morphological one, a syntactic one, and a semantic
one.
For a sentence to be acceptable (= well-formed), the three productions must
match somehow.
The 'somehow' is the problem, and is the subject of the rest of the book.
Why this approach is called 'Autolexical' is not explained; and I have no
idea.
The following shows how two regular expressions and a matching procedure can
produce a context-free (i.e. stronger than regular) result.
One regular expression is R1 = a^m b^n, the other R2 = (cd)^k; and the
matching procedure is that every a should match a c and v.v.; and
likewise for b and d.
The first requirement forces m=k and the second n=k.
So m=n and the system produces a^n b^n, a context-free set.
Through a similar process the notorious (awkward) Dutch subordinate clause
'... dat Jan Piet Marie laat helpen zien' is derived, where R1 is the
syntactic component (aaabbb) and R2 the semantic component
(ababab).
The matching criteria are specified in an arcane formalism that is not
(sufficiently) explained.
The bulk of the book examines many language phenomena, often curious ones, and,
after shooting down other proposals, shows how they can be interpreted in
Autolexical Syntax.
Especially clitics are the author's favorites; why doesn't "Haven't you left"
expand to "Have not you left" but to "Have you not left"?
Often the problems solved by Autolexical Grammar seem to me to originate from
an upside-down view of the phenomenon.
For example, if you take the Russian sentence Fido sabaka (= Fido is a dog)
as the basic form, and then claim that the past tense is expressed by a suffix
-l, you have no place to put the suffix and you have to bring in "some
semantically neutral verb like byt'" (page 36, top) to carry the -l.
I prefer the traditional explanation that the present of the copula byt'
is ε.
(Also, when speaking Hebrew I hear a gap at the place of the ε in my head
when I say Bubi kelev = Bubi is a dog.)
And calling the English auxiliary verb had in I had not seen him an
'anticipatory clitic' (pg. 67) borders on obfuscation.
Another example is the Japanese word sugiru, which is described as a
"derivational suffix" meaning "excessively" (pg. 125).
But it is actually just a verb, meaning 'to overdo', with all the properties
of a verb, including a past tense sugita (sample text 80).
There is a problem/discrepancy only because English usually translates it
using an adverb, 'too', or 'excessively'.
Probably the point is that if you view these phenomena in this way, they can
be given a place in Autolexical Syntax.
The formalism shows its full strength (morphology, syntax, semantics) in the
description of the French particle du, which contracts de and le,
even through quotation: Le roi s'amuse => l'auteur du "Roi s'amuse".
It seems to me that much and perhaps all of this is an application of the
theorem from Formal Languages which says that any Type 0 language can be
generated as the intersection of two CF languages followed by the application
of an erasing homomorphism (Salomaa, Formal Languages, 1973, p. 103).
In the weird-construction department I missed the illogical English
I can't seem to get it right, where it's not the seeming that you can't do
but the getting it right;
and the similar Finnish talo-ssa-ni = house-in-my = in my house
(cf. Hungarian a ház-am-ban = the house-my-in).
(And the plural of Dutch vlag (= Eng.flag) is vlaggen, not vlagen
(p. 187).)
E.J. Furnée,
Nogmaals: Het Etruskisch,
(in Dutch: Etruscan -- Once More),
E.J. Furnée,
Den Haag,
1990,
pp. 42.
In a 4-page introduction the author puts forward the hypothesis that the
Kartvelian languages, Etruscan, and Basque are related, roughly in the same
way as the Keltic languages, Lydian, and Armenian, and suggests that if the
latter three were the only remainders of the IE languages, we would experience
the same situation as we now have with Kartvelian, Etruscan, and Basque.
This hypothesis is then supported by 40 lemmata for Etr. words, with their
possible Proto-Kv., Georgian/Svan and occasionally Basque relatives.
Examples that require little explanation are
(1) Etr. sval (= to live), with Geor. sul-i (= soul, ghost), from
Proto-Kv. root s1w- = to blow, to breathe, with suffix -al.
(36) Etr. tiu (= moon), with Geor. tve (= month).
But most have longer explanations.
Lother Lutze,
Bahadur Singh,
Teach Yourself Hindi -- Patterns and Grammatical Notes,
Radhakrishna Prakashan,
New Delhi,
1990,
pp. 92.
Note: This is NOT the TYH from the Teach Yourself series!
This is another example of the idea that a study book need not be a text
book.
This is a series of teacher's notes, including an 8 page introduction on
how to use this book as a teacher.
It contains several hundred sets of sentence patterns in Devanagari,
with words to substitute; no translation, no transliteration, very
little explanation (wide margins, though).
Table of contents, no dictionary, no index.
Larissa Bonfante,
Etruscan,
Reading the Past,
British Museum Publications,
London,
1990,
pp. 64.
Conservative introduction to Etruscan, with a 4-page word list.
E.J. Furnée,
Urbaskisch und Urkartvelisch -- Indizien für eine Verwandtschaft,
(in german: Proto-Basque and Proto-Kartvelian -- Indications of a Relationship),
The Hakuchi Press,
Leiden,
1989,
pp. 201.
Unlike the previous publications of the author, which were concerned with
loans and did not imply a relationship, this one is intended to prove a
relationship between Basque and the Kv. languages.
More in particular, both are claimed to derive from a common language, called
Proto-Basque (Urbaskisch) in the book, and apparently supposed to be the
same as Proto-Kartvelian; at least it seems to say so on page 21.
The split is supposed to have occurred about 5000 to 6000 years ago.
Since the phonemes of this common language PB-PK (abbrev. mine) are much like
those of the Kv. languages (pg. 19, middle), the step from PB-PK to Basque is
much larger than that from PB-PK to Kv., and this is reflected in the form of
the lemmata, of which there are about 300.
Each lemma starts with a Basque word, of which the PB-PK form is then given;
most of these forms come from Michalena and/or Löpelman.
Next the derivation of the present-day Basque form is shown, followed by
derivations of the same PB-PK form in the Kv. languages.
Some rules are surprising/bizarre, for example PB-PK x → Basque rr,
but the author gives no less than 15 occurrences.
Some lemmata seem to support each other:
(62) B. hortz (= tooth) < PB-PK γrdž > Georg. γodži (=
canine tooth), and
(64) B. hur (= water) < PB-PK γur > Georg. γvar (= to pour).
And there is of course
(255) B. herri (= land, region) < PB-PK e-r-i > Georg. e-ri (=
people).
(The actual lemmata are much more extensive.)
The list contains many basic words, and there are quite a number from
agriculture.
Only after the research was finished the lemmata were compared to Swadesh's
list of the 100 most stable words, and 33 were found to be explained in the
book; this suggests the split took place between 7000 and 8000 years ago,
which seems much more acceptable than the original author's estimate given
above (appendix, pg. 186).
K. Srinivasachari,
Learn Sanskrit in 30 Days,
(on the spine it says Learn Sanskrit through English),
National Integration Language Series,
Balaji Publ.,
103 Pycrofts Road, Madras,
1989,
pp. 212.
Quickly instills some sense of what Sanskrit is, by using a minimal
vocabulary and trivial sentences; all text is in Devanagari and
transcribed.
Spending 30 full days with this book will give you an excellent start
for studying Sanskrit for real.
Definitely worth its money (1 pound).
English-Sanskrit glossary (15 pages), table of contents, no index.
Étienne Tiffou,
Jurgen Pesot,
Contes du Yasin -- Introduction au bourouchaski du Yasin avec grammaire et dictionaire analytique,
(in French: Tales from Yasin -- Introduction to Yasin Burushaski with Grammar and Analytical Dictionary),
AMI 16,
Peeters,
Paris,
1989,
pp. 159.
Assumes that the reader has read Berger's book, and extends it with more
and new material.
Paradigms given in full, more about vowel lengths, more stories.
The dictionary is a word list to the stories only.
Yves Charles Morin,
Etienne Tiffou,
Dictionnaire complementaire du Bourouchaski du Yasin,
(in French: Supplemenary Dictionary of Yasin Burushaski),
Asie et monde insulindien; 17. Etudes bourouchaski; 2.,
Peeters/SELAF,
Paris,
1989,
pp. 58.
Notes:
"Ce dictionnaire veut etre un complement a l'excellent travail
lexicologique accompli par Berger (1974) dans sa description du
bourouchaski du Yasin"--P. 1.
Summaries in French, English, German, and Russian.
Includes bibliographical references (p.9)
Subjects: Burushaski language -- Dictionaries -- French.
Yasin (Pakistan) -- Languages.
Additions and corrections to the dictionaries of Lorimer and Berger.
The main difference with Berger is that the authors take vowel length as
significant.
Pieter van Reenen,
Karin van Reenen-Stein,
Spatial and Temporal Distributions -- Manuscript Constellations,
John Benjamins,
Amsterdam,
1988,
pp. 277.
Contains 15 papers on language variation and 5 about stemmatology,
computer-assisted; partly in French.
Richard Caplice,
Introduction to Akkadian,
Biblical Institute Press,
Rome,
1988,
pp. 106.
With fold-out paradigm table.
Joseph Biddulph,
Sango -- An Esperanto of Africa.,
Languages Information Centre,
Pontypridd, Wales,
~1988,
pp. 24.
Sango is an isolating language. It is unusually easy to learn, which has given
it its position as the common language of the Central African Republic,
although it is the native language of only a small group.
The booklet gives a short introduction + a short annotated bible text.
The tones are not explained.
Name: Sängö.
Affiliation: Niger-Congo/Adamawa.
Location: CAR.
Phonetics:
consonants: many combinations like kp, mv, ngb;
vowels: 7 + 5 nasalized;
tones: 3 (H, M, L), Sängö is MM.
Nouns: gender/classes: none;
number: none - plural can be indicated by prefixing a-;
cases: none - uses prepositions;
possessor indication: with preposition ti = "of".
Prepositions: used heavily.
Pronouns:
mbi = I,
mo = you,
lo = he, she, it,
ani = we,
i = you all,
al = they.
Adjectives: indeclinable - common ones precede the noun, other follow it.
Verbs: largely immutable, but get a prefix a- when uses without a
pronoun. Tenses and aspects expressed by particles of auxiliary yèké
= "to be".
Word order: SVO.
Florence Abena Dolphyne,
The Akan (Twi-fante) language -- its sound systems and tonal structure,
Ghana Universities Press,
Accra,
1988,
pp. 199.
Akan is a South-Central Niger-Congo language spoken in Ghana; it is also
known as Twi or Chwee and it is related to Ewe and Yoruba.
It consists of three dialects, Akuapem, Asante and Fante.
The book analyses and compares the phonetics and grammar of the three
dialects extensively, with the aim of explaining the rationale behind
the spelling unification of 1978.
This spelling adheres almost to the Latin alphabet, except that IPA
symbols for open e (ε) and open o (ɔ) are used;
tones, of which Akan has two, are not indicated.
The unification capitalizes heavily on the fact that many phonetic
changes in the three dialects are automatic (but different).
The unified spelling is to be augmented by a set of reading rules that
is different for each of the dialect, and which allows speakers to
read the text in their own dialects.
As is usual in such projects, tones are badly short-sold.
It is argued that the tones (which differ more than the rest of the
phonetics between the dialects) can be supplied easily by the reader.
This leaves us with homographs like ɔnda[LLH] `he does not sleep',
and ɔnda[HHH] `he should sleep' (the n is syllabic).
The negative optative is however distiguished by a double n:
ɔnnda[LLLH] `he should not sleep'.
Yves-Charles Morin,
Etienne Tiffou,
Passives in Burushaski,
in Passive and Voice,
ed. by Masayoshi Shibatani,
John Benjamins,
Amsterdam/Philadelphia,
1988,
pp. 493-524.
Affirmation and description of passive voice in Burushaski.
Most ergative verbs have a passive counterpart.
Identification of a pathetive construction.
LFG analysis for both phenomena.
The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology -- The Core Vocabulary of Standard English Produced by American Scholarship,
ed. by Robert K. Barnhart and Sol Steinmetz,
H.W. Wilson Comp.,
Bronx, N.Y.,
1988,
pp. 1284.
More or less narrative entries, which usually stop at Old German or
Latin.
Very few Indo-European roots.
Bertil Tikkanen,
On Burushaski and other ancient substrata in northwestern South Asia,
Studia Orientalia,
vol. 64,
1988,
pp. 303-325.
The influence of Burushaski, the Indo-Iranian, Tibeto-Burman, Dravidian
and Austroasiatic languages on each other is examined in moderate
detail.
The conclusion is that they together cannot account for more than two
thirds of the observed phenomena.
Although very carefully worded, the author suggests the existence of an
entirely lost substratum surce in this area.
Masayoshi Shibatani,
Passive and voice,
Benjamins,
Amsterdam,
1988,
Introductions to and a collection of articles on passive, antipassive,
etc., from some twenty languages, including Austrailian languages,
Hungarian, etc.
Joseph Biddulph,
Fernandian -- The Bubi Bantu Language of Bioco/Fernando Po,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
1988,
pp. 24.
The author shows how far Bubi is removed from the mainstream Bantu
languages by examining a number of words in a string of languages from
Bubi to Zulu;
only the personal pronouns are clearly and unequivocally Bantu:
na, nne = I,
oe = you,
boe = he/she (personal class),
tue = we,
lue = you all (of unclear provenance),
ba = they (personal class, plural).
The Bantu class system is absent or frozen (i.e. the prefixes, predominantly
b- and l-, are just part of the words) in Bubi.
Bubi itself consists of several dialects, which seem to differ from each other
at least as much as the Scandinavian languages.
See also: National Geographic, Aug. 2008, pp. 68-91.
Vasudeo Govind Apte,
The concise English-Sanskrit dictionary,
Sri Satguru Publ. / Indian Books Centre,
Delhi,
1988,
pp. 360.
No transcription of the Devanagari.
Up to date; shows the word for telephone; has a separate section for
international terms (bona fide, tète-a-tète, etc.)
Ekkehart Malotki,
Michael Lomatuway'ma,
Stories of Maasaw, a Hopi God,
Univ. of Nebraska Press,
Lincoln, Ne.,
1987,
pp. 347.
Sixteen stories plus 80 pages of glossary, all fully bilingual.
Joseph H. Greenberg,
Language in the Americas,
Stanford University Press,
Stanford, Calif.,
1987,
pp. 438.
This work is a collection of four papers of very different sizes and
structures rather than a book.
The first part is concerned with the existence of Amerind as a group.
The author points out that if it is our purpose to show the existence of
the Indo-European group rather than to set up a genealogy tree or to
reconstruct Proto-Indo-European, a small number (say 10) of clearly
related words in a large number (say 20) of languages suffice.
The forms of the words for one, two, three and tooth
in various Indo-European languages show unmistakably that these
languages form a group.
This method is called the horizontal method as opposed to the vertical
method, which compares a small number of languages in depth.
Using this much less stringent but still sufficient criterion, the
author first shows the existence of 11 major stocks in the Americas by
listing words common to the members of the stocks.
The relationship between these 11 stocks is then proved by showing 281
words that occur in two or more stocks in similar forms;
a few words occur in all 11 stocks.
A separate section shows 48 morphological features that are common to
more than one stock.
Two such features are common to all 11 of them: the occurrence of forms
with n- for the first person, and that of forms with m- for the second
person.
The second part addresses the so-called "Na-Dené" problem,
the question whether Haida is a "Na-Dené" language.
The author investigates the imaginary situation in which modern
Irish, Albanian and Armenian were the only known Indo-European
languages, to find what kind of evidence could still be detected.
He then shows that a similar situation obtains between Haida, Tlingit
and Athabaskan.
The third part tries to determine the dates of arrival of the various
phylums in the Americas.
It suggests that Amerind is related to Eurasiatic and shows a possible
structure for Proto-Sapiens.
The fourth part extends the glottochronological method to more than two
languages (actually to four), in spite of the fact that the author claims
the glottochronological method is actually too weak to be used.
The book closes with a full classification of about 1300 Amerind
languages and groups.
Oda Buchholz,
Wilfried Fiedler,
Gerda Uhlisch,
Wörterbuch Albanisch-Deutsch,
(in German: Dictionary Albanian-German),
VEB Verlag Enzyklop,
Leipzig,
1987,
pp.
Also contains chapter "Grammatik".
Francoise Grillot-Susini,
Claude Roche,
Eléments de grammaire élamite,
(in French: Elements of Elamite Grammar),
Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations,
Paris,
1987,
pp. 79.
Nouns:
A striking property of the language is the classification of nouns into
classes that include the first and second persons:
sunki-k = I who am king, sunki-t = you who are king, sunki-r = he who is
king = the king, sunki-p = they who are kings = the kings, sunki-me =
that which is of the king = kingdom.
Such forms are called appellatives.
Much of Elamite text consists of this kind of appellatives; adjectives
and relative clauses are also appelative constructions.
Verbs:
There is one simple conjugation for the verb, consisting of 3 persons
singular and plural, plus 3 compound attributive constructions based on
an active participle, a passive participle and an infinitive, loosely
speaking.
Only one numeral is known: ki- = one, of course with the usual ki-k = I
alone, ki-r = the one person, etc.
The others are known as graphic numerals only.
Joseph Biddulph,
Guide to Visigothic -- An Introduction to the Script and Basic Grammar,
Languages Information Centre,
Pontypridd, Wales,
1987,
pp. 24.
The first 13 pages are dedicated to a calligraphed exposition of the Gothic
alphabet.
Next the declinations of a few nouns are given.
A much too short 2½ page segment covers the verb, and the booklet concludes
with two pages of annotated sentences and one page of the Gospel of St. Mark.
Name: Gothic.
Affiliation: East-Germanic.
Phonetics:
consonants: the usual + kw, hw, th
vowels: 5, both short and long.
Nouns: gender/classes: masc., fem., neuter;
number: 2;
cases: 4, nominative, accusative, genitive and dative;
possessor indication: genitive.
Pre/postpositions: pre-.
Pronouns: feature a dualis for 1st and 2nd person:
ik = I,
thu = you,
is = he,
si = she,
ita = it,
wit = we two,
yut = you two,
weis = we,
yus = you all,
eis = they (m).
iyoos = they (f).
iya = they (n).
Adjectives: like nouns, but with weak and strong declensions.
Verbs: many conjugations.
Hans Joachim Störig,
Aberteuer Sprache,
(in German: Adventure Language),
Langenscheid,
Berlin,
1987,
pp. 400.
Survey of the languages of Europe (chapters 1-9), of the rest of the world
(10-13), and artificial languages (ch. 14).
Tells more about the languages than that it shows of them; often lacks detail.
Cf. Fischer Lexikon Sprachen (1961).
Judith Goedbloed,
Kompakt-Grammatik Niederländisch,
(in German),
Ernst Klett Verlag,
Stuttgart,
1986,
pp. 137.
Effective, terse summary of the grammar of Dutch, brightened by the sample
sentences, which are always on target, and stylistically correct Dutch, which
is more than one can say for many other text books on Dutch.
Kirsten Refsing,
The Ainu Language -- The Morphology and Syntax of the Shizunai dialect,
Thesis: University of Copenhagen, 1985,
Aarhus University Press,
Aarhus,
1986,
pp. 301.
sci.lang:
Kirsten Refsing has written a very good grammar of a now extinct dialect
of Hokkaidoo.
Kirsten refsing was formerly professor at the University of Copenhagen
and last year I heard she is lecturing in Hong Kong.
The Japan Foundation,
Basic Japanese-English Dictionary,
Oxford University Press,
Oxford,
1986,
pp. 958.
Relatively few (2873) entries, each with elaborate explanation and
examples of use.
The dictionary is in two columns, the left one giving the Japanese, in
characters and in transcription, the right one giving the parallel
English translation.
As it says on the cover, "easy to use".
E.J. Furnée,
Paläokartvelisch-pelasgische Einflüsse in den indogermanischen Sprachen -- nachgewiesen anhand der spätindogermanisch-griechischen Reflexe urkartvelischer Sibilanten und Affrikaten,
(Paleo-kartvelian/Pelasgian Influences in the IE Languages),
The Hakuchi Press,
Leiden,
1986,
pp. 238.
Two-hundred Kartvelian (Georgian + family) roots with their derived stems,
leading to etymologies of words in IE languages that lack an IE derivation.
Most of these words are found in Greek and the Germanic languages, but some
are from Latin, Armenian, Russian, etc.
The etymologies are based on the sound shifts described by the author in his
doctoral thesis (1972).
Examples are (just from the beginning of the list):
(9) Kv zaγwa (= sea) → ProtoGerm. saiγwa = Eng. sea, a
well-known non-IE word;
(10) Kv z1e-s- (= heavenly, the highest) from Kv z1e (= up) →
ProtoGr. dheso- → Gr. theos = god, which is known not to be related
to Latin deus (z1 is the z from the ProtoKv. middle series of
sibilants);
(16) Kv sw-ar- (= dirty, black) from Kv sw- (= to spread grease etc.)
→ Goth. swarts, Germ. schwarz = Eng. black, another famous word
without IE background.
[DG: Did the author miss
Kv zi-k- (= feeling sick) from Kv zi- (= to vomit etc.)
→ Eng. sick, Dutch ziek = ill, yet another word without IE background?]
Note that this says nothing about a relatedness between Kartvelian and
Indo-European: all these words are solid Kv. words and are considered loans in
IE.
The author points out that there are no IE loans in Kv.; also his sound shifts
are one-way only.
T.F. Hoad,
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology,
Oxford University Press,
Oxford,
1986,
pp. 552.
Meager, but admittedly better than nothing.
Gives relationships inside Germanic, but hardly ever outside of it.
No Proto-Indo-European references.
Henri Rinnen,
Will Reuland,
Kleines Deutsch-Luxemburgisches Wörterbuch,
(in German: Small German-Luxemburgish Dictionary),
Sankt-Paulus Druckerei,
Luxemburg,
1986,
pp. 178.
Includes orthography guidelines.
Sakae Saito (??),
Dictionary of foreign words to facilitate the Japanese,
Saburo,
1986,
pp. 469.
All-Japanese dictionary of foreign, mostly English, words, in katakana,
explained in Japanese.
Van Dale Groot Woordenboek Nederlands-Engels,
(in Dutch: Van Dale's Major Dictionary Dutch-English),
Van Dale Lexicografie,
Utrecht,
1986,
pp. 1560.
The first serious Dutch-English dictionary (after Jansonius).
With grammar.
Elena Bashir,
Toward a semantics of the Burushaski verb,
in Conference on Participant Roles: South Asia and Adjacent Areas,
ed. by Arlene K. Zide, David Magier, Eric Schiller,
IULC,
Bloomington, Indiana,
1985,
pp. 1-32.
??? writes:
Bashir ascribes some predictable features of Burushaski nominal and
verbal morphology to semantic parameters such as degree of activity
(of verbs and of actors), relative affectedness (of actors), and
state/process- vs. actor-oriented verbal conceptions.
Michel Paoletti,
Ross Steele,
Civilisation Française Quotidienne,
Hatier - Klett,
1985,
pp. 256.
Directions for how to live like a French national in France. Largely intended
for foreign immigrants, though not explicit so.
New Concise English-Japanese Dictionary,
Sanseido,
1985,
pp. 1362.
For Japanese speakers.
Joseph Biddulph,
Bornuese for Beginners,
Languages Information Centre,
Pontypridd, Wales,
~1985,
pp. 24.
This completely handwritten booklet describes 19th-century Kanuri.
Kanuri is a West-Saharan language, very remotely related to Luo; it is called
Bornuese in the title because it was the language of the Bornu kingdom
(±1400-1893).
Nouns have no gender, and have a Hungarian-like conjugation: the function of a
noun is indicated by a "case" suffix, -bee for the possessor, -gaa for
the object, -roo for the indirect object, etc.
Like in Latin and German, verbs can govern such cases:
sobaantsu-roo digɨrtsɨgin = [to] his friend he praises.
The is an -optional- suffix, -yee, for the subject too, which is unusual.
Possessive pronouns are suffixes, as in Hungarian, and can be followed by case
endings.
Pronouns:
wu = I,
ni = you,
shi = he/she/it,
andi = we,
nandi = you all,
sandi = they.
The verb is marked for
mode (active, causative, reflexive, and relative(?)),
tense (stative, present-continuous, past-punctual, past-continuous, future),
subject, object, and negation, all expressed by particles around the stem, in
very irregular patterns.
Often particles are modified by phonetic changes.
The text gives many verb forms, but without analysis, and the analysis is by
no means always obvious.
Four and a half pages of annotated Bornuese text and a short vocabulary
conclude the booklet.
Unlike Luo Kanuri shows little or no traces of Semitic influence.
Joseph Biddulph,
An Introduction to Luo, with Brief Remarks on Acoli,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
1985,
pp. 20.
Luo is a West-Nilotic language.
It can structurally best be described as Hebrew-like without triliteral
roots.
Of course the language, being Nilo-Saharan, is not noticeably related to
the Afro-Asiatic Hebrew, but the structural similarity is striking; every
turn one takes one finds things to recognize.
The vocabulary is totally un-Semitic; the Semitic words in Luo are
obvious loans ("malaika" - angel, "dhahabu" - gold, "roho" - spirit).
The noun has an absolute and a construct state, singular and plural, and
is declined for possession by suffixing the personal object endings; the
absolute often has a somewhat different stem than the declined forms.
There is no gender in Luo.
The conjugated verb form consists of a subject prefix, a tense infix, the
stem, a mode suffix and optionally an object suffix.
Relative clauses are marked by a prefix "ma-/mo-" on the verb, forming
very Hebrew-like words,
e.g., "motho" - dead = who died, from "tho" - to die.
Many adjectives are of this type.
For a complete description see "A grammar of Kenya Luo (Dholuo)",
by A.N. Tucker (1994).
Joseph Biddulph,
Introduction to Bushman,
Joseph Biddulph Publisher,
Pontypridd, Wales,
1985,
pp. 20.
Starts with four pages on the structure and phonetics of the Khoisan language
family.
Next comes a 13-pages introduction to the Northern Khoisan language Tshumkwe
!Kung, based on a translation of the Gospel according to Mark in that language.
Tshumkwe !Kung is, like most Northern Khoisan languages, an isolating
monosyllabic language, almost like Chinese.
It has a general connective particle -a- used to connect a possessor to
the possessed, thus producing a pseudo-genitive;
to connect a noun to the verb of a relative clause (±"which");
to connect a verb to its indirect object, which immediately follows
the verb;
and often to connect an adjective to a noun.
Tshumkwe !Kung has tones, but these are not indicated in the text, since
regrettably none were given in the gospel translation.
A three-pages comparison of the closely related Ekoko language concludes the
booklet.
P. David Seaman,
Hopi dictionary -- Hopi-English, English-Hopi, grammatical appendix,
Northern Arizona University anthropological paper; no. 2.,
Dept. of Anthropology, Northern Arizona University,
Flagstaff, Ariz.,
1985,
pp. 603.
See Revised Edition, 1996.
Alice C. Harris,
Diachronic syntax: the Kartvelian case,
Syntax and semantics; vol. 18,
Academic Press,
Orlando,
1985,
pp. 463.
Thesis-like historical reconstruction of the Series I and and Series II
screeves and the cases they govern, based on data from Old Georgian, Laz
and Svan, partly from field research by the author; no Modern Georgian.
The reconstruction is based on a set of Demotion Rules for the various
operands.
Ann Kathleen Farmer,
Modularity in Syntax -- A Study of Japanese and English,
MIT Press,
Cambridge, Mass.,
1984,
pp. 238.
Standard Theory considers the syntax of a language as a monolithic
block.
The author discerns more or less independently operating modules in the
syntax of Japanese and possibly of English.
As usual with modularity, she achieves simplification in doing so, it
seems.
Most ideas are expressed in examples only.
I don't understand it well enough to comment; not for the faint of heart.
Van Dale Groot Woordenboek Frans-Nederlands,
(in Dutch: Van Dale's Major Dictionary French-Dutch),
Van Dale Lexicografie,
Utrecht,
1984,
pp. 1579.
The first serious French-Dutch dictionary.
With grammar.
Boutros Hallaq,
Arabe -- 40 Leçons,
Les langues pour tous,
Presses Pocket,
Paris,
1984,
pp. 290.
All new words in transcription; writing exercises.
Henry R. Stern,
Essential Dutch Grammar,
Dover,
New York,
1984,
pp. 107.
Excellent booklet on the Dutch language, with very few mistakes.
Highlights the main points and goes beyond that.
With one or two exceptions all examples are normal, colloquial Dutch,
stylistically correct.
Whoever thought it was a good idea to put the word "Dutch" on the cover in
*Gothic* letters should have their head examined.
K.D. Schönfeld Wichers,
Woordenboek Twents Nederlands,
Stichting voor Oud-Twentse Volkstaal,
Rijssen,
1983,
pp. 343.
Describes the Rijssen dialect.
Joseph Biddulph,
Guide to Ge`ez,
Languages Information Centre,
Pontypridd, Wales,
1983,
pp. 20.
A two-page sketch of the Ge`ez (Amharic) alphabet, unvocalized, followed by 26
transliterated and translated sentences + the Lord's Prayer.
The other 14 pages contain the extracted Ethiopic contents of Genesius'
Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon.
Irish-English English-Irish Dictionary and Phrase Book,
Hippocrene Books,
New York,
1983,
pp. 72.
Minimal. Pronunciation in English approximation.
Ägyptisch-Arabisch,
Langenscheidts Sprachführer,
Langenscheidt,
Berlin,
1983,
pp. 208.
With full Arabic script and full transcription.
Ekkehart Malotki,
Hopitutuwutsi = Hopi Tales: a Bilingual Collection of Hopi Indian Stories,
University of Arizona Press,
1983,
pp. 213.
English and Hopi.
Narrated by Herschel Talashoma;
recorded and translated by Ekkehart Malotki;
illustrated by Anne-Marie Malotki.
Kenkyusha's New Little Japanese-English Dictionary,
(4th Edn.),
(Pocket Dictionary),
Kenkyusha,
Tokyo,
1983,
pp. 599.
Intended for a Japanese-speaking audience; preface and instructions in
Japanese.
Each lemma contains the Japanese word in hiragana or katakana with
accent, the kanji version, the English translation, and constructions
with the word in kanji only.
E.J. Furnée,
Georgisch-vorgriechische, georgisch-vorromanische und georgisch-vorindogermanische Materialien,
Beiträge zur georgischen Etymologie,
vol. 1,
Peeters,
Leuven,
1982,
pp. 1-87.
In a sense somewhat of the reverse of Furnée 1979.
Etymologies of:
1. non-Kv Georgian words with relations in
1a. Greek (58 words; e.g. abzinda (Eng. absinth));
1b. Roman (8 words; e.g. k.ap.ano = big boat (Fr. cabane = hut));
1c. other IE languages
(12 words; e.g. lat.ani = long thin rod (Germ. Latte = slat));
2. genuine Kv words with relations in IE
(11 words; e.g. mat.li = worm (Germ. Made = maggot)).
Howard I. Aronson,
Georgian -- A Reader,
Slavica,
Columbus, Ohio,
1982,
pp. 526.
Extensive description of the language, with much reading material and
exercises.
Seems an excellent course book.
Georgian text is always (and after the fifth chapter exclusively) in
Georgian script, which makes it less useful as a reference grammar.
In 15 decidedly non-trivial lessons, with 37 pages of vocabulary.
Etienne Tiffou,
Yves-Charles Morin,
A Note on split ergativity in Burushaski,
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies,
vol. 45,
1982,
pp. 88-94.
Data regarding stress and vowel length, phonological aspects often missed
by Lorimer in his transcriptions, reveal that the ergative split in
Burushaski is much narrower (at least for the Hunza dialect) than Lorimer
believed it to be.
Ergative case is the norm for transitive subjects, but first and second
person pronouns show a split in the future tense.
Kenkyusha's New Little English-Japanese Dictionary,
(4th Edn.),
(Pocket Dictionary),
Kenkyusha,
Tokyo,
1982,
pp. 566.
Intended for a Japanese-speaking audience; preface and instructions in
Japanese.
Each lemma contains the English word with pronunciation, with
translation or explanation in Japanese (kanji).
Vic Abens,
Rieden op lëtzebuergesch -- eng nei Kollektioun mat Texter op lëtzebuergesch,
(in Luxemburgish: Speeches in Luxemburgish -- A New Collection with Texts in Luxemburgish),
Haffdréckerei Victor Buck,
Lëtzebuerg,
1982,
pp. 119.
Twentysix speeches in Luxemburgish, mostly concerned with local politics.
R.E. Asher,
Tamil,
Lingua Descriptive Series,
North-Holland Publ.,
Amsterdam,
1982,
pp. 265.
Detailed description of colloquial Tamil, in Latin transcription.
M.S. Beeler,
Venetic Revisited,
in Bono Homini Donum,
ed. by Y.L. Arbeitman,
1981,
pp. 65-72.
After summarizing all arguments on the question whether Venetic is closely
related to Latin or is a separate branch of PIE, the author concludes that the
evidence is contradictory: the identical and specific treatment of the
aspirates in Latin and Venetic prove that they are closely related, but the
lexicon shows that Oscan and Umbrian are much closer to Latin than Venetic is,
but they don't share the specific treatment of the aspirates.
It is clear that the tree model does not work here, but the problem is worse:
what was the mechanism that led to this situation?
Once we know the mechanism, the model will follow.
George Dunkel,
Typology versus Reconstruction,
in Bono Homini Donum,
ed. by Y.L. Arbeitman,
1981,
pp. 559-569.
Strongly opposes the view that the reconstruction of PIE should coute que
coute conform to typological standards, on the grounds that typology only
summarizes what has been observed, and cannot deal with what could be.
So, if reconstruction says that PIE had a series p, b, bh, then
that reconstruction cannot be overthrown by typological considerations.
Cyrus H. Gordon,
The Semitic Language of Minoan Crete,
in Bono Homini Donum,
ed. by Y.L. Arbeitman,
1981,
pp. 761-782.
Shows many examples of Eteocretan fragments that can be interpreted as some
form of North-West Semitic.
An example from a bilingual is: ihia = 'it will be' (Hebr. yhiye),
corresponding to Greek genoito = 'let there be'; another, from Linear A:
su-pa-la next to a picture of a cup (Hebr. sefel).
But ΣΦA is equated to Hebr. sheva' = seven, which seems to be
stretching it a bit.
One could also point out that the Minoan (= Linear A) a, i, and u
look believably like an ox (aleph), a hand (yad), and a hook
(waw), resp.
Full transcriptions of the Minoan (Linear A) and Greek (± 500 B.C.) texts
would be needed to be convincing (or is the reader expected to just be able to
read both?)
Benjamin Schwartz,
The Phaistos Disk Again?,
in Bono Homini Donum,
ed. by Y.L. Arbeitman,
1981,
pp. 783-799.
Resumé of the author's papers of 1959 concerning the Phaistos disk.
We compare the decipherment to that of S.R. Fischer (Glyphbreaker).
1. They both read the disk in the same direction: outside-in, from right to
left.
2. S. assumes it to be a stamp, so the actual pictures are mirrored; F. takes
them on face value.
3. Both agree that is a syllabary.
4. Both agree that the language is Proto-Greek.
5. Both assume the script is related to Linear A/B.
6. S. bases the character values mainly on first-middle-last frequency
distribution; F. uses several techniques(see Glyphbreaker), among which using
the first syllable of the (Proto-)Greek word for the depicted object.
7. In the end they agree on only two characters, PD 12 = qe and PD 35 =
te, and a half, PD 01, where S. has ro and F. has ri.
8. According to S. the disk is a "a Baedecker's Guide to some of the holy
places in Greece"; F. arrives at the conclusion it is a call to arms against
the Carians.
9. They somehow seem to agree that it is a "shopping list".
Yoël Arbeitman,
The Hittite is thy Mother,
in Bono Homini Donum,
ed. by Y.L. Arbeitman,
1981,
pp. 761-1016.
Book-size article, arguing/proving that the Hittites from the bible are the
same as the Hittites from linguistics.
Battus,
Opperlandse taal- & letterkunde,
(in Dutch: Upperlands linguistics and literature),
E.M. Querido,
Amsterdam,
1981,
pp. 203.
Word games, nonsense verse, etc. of the Dutch and un-Dutch language.
David W. McAlpin,
Proto-Elamo-Dravidian: The Evidence and Its Implications,
American Philosophical Soc.,
Philadelphia,
1981,
pp. 155.
Starts with a 40 page introduction to Dravidian, followed by a 27 page
introduction to Elamite.
Part of the evidence is based on 81 lexical entries of
Proto-Elamo-Dravidian, from which the Dravidian and Elamite
representatives are derived by more or less solid phonetical
correspondences.
Given the shortness of both Dravidian and Elamite roots, some are not
too convincing (PED it.- = to put → E. ta-, Dr. it.-, both to put), but
many are stronger.
The other part of the evidence, the endings ("morphological etyma"),
however, is fully convincing: the appellative endings are
(Proto-Elamite / Proto-Dravidian):
sing.: -k0/-k0, -t0/-ti, -r0/-anr0;
plur. -un(k0)/-kum, ?/-tir, -p(0)/-pa;
and the isolated pronouns are only slightly less good.
This alone seems evidence enough to me.
Futhermore, an attempt is made to determine the position of Brahui in
the Proto-Elamo-Dravidian tree: is it
(Elamite Brahui) Dravidian,
Elamite (Brahui Dravidian), or
(Elamite) (Brahui) (Dravidian)?
The author's conclusion is that not enough Elamite is known to decide
the question; for the moment three independent branches seems to be the
best working hypothesis.
Some implications of the common vocabulary for the prehistory of
South-Asia are pointed out, mainly that PED has words for goat herding.
Alice C. Harris,
Georgian Syntax: A Study in Relational Grammar,
Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge,
1981,
Uses the weird properties of Georgian grammar to test the hypothesis,
provided by relational grammar theory, that subject, object and indirect
object are basic terms in any language, regardless of appearances.
Although the book provides much insight, the style is quite
argumentative, which makes one suspicious.
The usual technique is to examine a number of language phenomena (of
which there are enough in Georgian!), to generalize a rule from them,
then to move to another language feature and to apply the rule to it.
Perhaps this is good methodology but it makes the layman worry what
would have happened if the features were considered in a different
order.
H. Schuurkes,
G. Germeyan,
Turks voor beginners,
(in Dutch: Turks for Beginners),
Educaboek, Tjeenk Willink/Noorduijn,
Culemborg,
1981,
pp. 100.
Turkish for Dutch beginners; simple but good.
Wolfgang Hadamitzky,
Lehrbuch und Lexikon der Japanischen Schrift -- Kanji und Kana,
(in German: Text Book and Lexicon of the Japanese Script -- Kanji and Kana),
Langenscheidt,
Berlin,
c1980, 1986,
pp. 385.
Large versions of the 1945 tooyoo kanji, with stroke order and
direction, ON, KUN, meaning and 5 compounds which use earlier kanji
only, seven to a page.
The layout of the entries is such that parts can be covered for various
self-tests.
Use and construction of the kana and kanji is discussed.
With (limited) lists of radicals, and kanji indexes according to
radicals, stroke count and reading.
Franz Delitch,
HaBrit HaChadasha,
(in Hebrew: The New Testament),
The Bible Society in Israel,
~1980,
pp. 486.
It says on the title page:
"The books of the New Testamnet copied from the Greek langugae to the Hebrew
language by Prof. Franz Delitch".
Rudi Kousbroek,
Sarah Hart,
Wat moet ik zeggen en Hoe zeg ik het in het Kats,
(in Dutch: What to say in Cat and How to say it),
De Harmonie,
Amsterdam,
1980,
pp. 85.
Hilarious Dutch-Cat Phrase Book.
Example: "Have you got any brothers or sisters?" =>
"Dount tellme therare morevyou".
Peter M. Bergman,
The Basic English-Chinese Chinese-English Dictionary,
New American Library,
New York,
1980,
A list of "1000 most useful words", in various listings; not a dictionary.
Adolf Friedrich Stenzler,
Elementarbuch der Sanskrit-Sprache -- Grammatik, Texte, Wörterbuch,
(in German: Elementary Text Buch of the Sanskrit Language -- Grammar, Texts, Dictionary),
De Gruyter,
Berlin,
1980,
pp. 122.
A compendium of paradigms, rules and ligatures using the traditional
Panini approach, rather than a text book.
No transcription, no exercises.
Not for the faint of heart; this is excellent support material for the
very serious student, though.
Sanskrit-English dictionary (30 pages), minimal table of contents, no
index.
Victor Golla,
Some Yokuts-Maidun comparisons,
in American Indian and Indoeuropean studies,
Trends in Linguistics, #16,
ed. by Kathryn Klar et al.,
Mouton,
The Hague,
1980,
pp. 57-65.
108 proto-Yokuts-Maidun roots are given, with their forms in various
languages, to support the claim that Yokuts and Maidun are more closely
related to each other than to the other Penutian languages.
Mary R. Haas,
Notes on Karok internal reconstruction,
in American Indian and Indoeuropean studies,
Trends in Linguistics, #16,
ed. by Kathryn Klar et al.,
Mouton,
The Hague,
1980,
pp. 67-76.
Hundreds of seemingly monolithic Karok verb stems are decomposed in an
instrumental prefix and a root, e.g.
'aktif
`to shove aside', from
'ak-
`with the hands', and
=tif
`to move aside'.
This has two purposes: to facilitate comparison of Karok to other Hokan
languages, and to construct new verb stems based on these components and
ask Karok speakers if they exist.
Marc Okrand,
Rumsen II: An evaluation of reconstruction,
in American Indian and Indoeuropean studies,
Trends in Linguistics, #16,
ed. by Kathryn Klar et al.,
Mouton,
The Hague,
1980,
pp. 170-182.
In 1957, Broadbent designed methods to compare and cross-relate
historical material on extinct languages to squeeze out the last drop of
information; she applied these methods to Rumsen, a southern Costanoan
language.
Later, a large amount of data recorded earlier by Harrighton became
available.
The present article compares the results of Broadbent with the newly
discovered material and find Broadbent's reconstruction largely
confirmed.
Jesse O. Sawyer,
The non-genetic relationship of Wappo and Yuki,
in American Indian and Indoeuropean studies,
Trends in Linguistics, #16,
ed. by Kathryn Klar et al.,
Mouton,
The Hague,
1980,
pp. 209-219.
The author shows that the fairly evident relationship between Wappo and
Yuki is an optical illusion: Wappo and Yuki are not closely related but
have exchanged a large number of words in the past.
1. Correlation between long words is much higher than between short
words;
2. Often such longer words are analysable in one language and seem
primitive in the other.
A relationship with a much greater time depth is of course still
possible.
William Shipley,
Rumsen derivation,
in American Indian and Indoeuropean studies,
Trends in Linguistics, #16,
ed. by Kathryn Klar et al.,
Mouton,
The Hague,
1980,
pp. 237-244.
Rumsen has a di- and triliteral root system strongly reminiscent of the
Semitic languages, in which the meaning of the stem derives from
insertion in the root and/or doubling of its consonants.
Some twenty `themes' are identified.
Robert W. Young,
William Morgan,
The Navajo Language: a Grammar and Colloquial Dictionary,
University of New Mexico Press,
Albuquerque,
1980,
pp. 471+1069.
A revision and expansion of the authors'
`The Navaho language and A vocabulary of colloquial Navaho'.
Qudratullah Beg,
Burushaski qa'idah aur huruf-i tahajji = Burushaski base harputs fas mamimiyen,
Karina Printers,
Rawalpindi,
1980,
pp. 22.
A primer of the Burushaski language for Urdu speakers.
In Burushaski (romanized) and Urdu.
J. Buitkamp,
Zo leer je Hebreeuws,
(in Dutch: This is the way to learn Hebrew),
Prisma 1903,
Spectrum,
1980,
pp. 198.
Unlike its companion "Hebreeuws op reis" (1975) this is a solid text book(let)
on Modern Hebrew.
The Hebrew text is stiff but not clumsy, and was already old-fashioned when
the book was printed, but the explanations are clear and the examples good.
E.J. Furnée,
Vorgriechisch-Kartvelisches -- Studien zum ostmediterranen Substrat nebst einem Versuch zu einer neuen pelasgischen Theorie,
Peeters,
Louvain,
1979,
pp. 65.
Etymologies of a hundred non-IE Greek words found in the Kartvelian languages,
50 of which have solid Kv. etymologies and 50 of which have not, with an
introduction that ties them together.
Ronald W. Langacker,
Studies in Uto-Aztecan Grammar -- Vol 2: Modern Aztec Grammatical Sketches,
Summer Institute of Linguistics / University of Texas,
Dallas,
1979,
pp. 380.
Concerns four Nahuatl dialects: Tetelcingo, North Puebla, Huasteca and
Michoacán.
Desmond C. Derbyshire,
Hixkaryana,
Lingua Descriptive Series,
North-Holland Publ.,
Amsterdam,
1979,
pp. 199.
Hixkaryana is a Carib language spoken in northern Brasil.
Nouns: no cases; no gender; possessor prefixed on possessed, which is
also marked with a constant suffix; postpositions.
Pronouns: various combinations, e.g. we, we+you-them, we-you+them.
Number: group indication.
Adjectives: don't exist, but adverbs do, in plenty; additional properties
of a noun are expressed by choosing an appropriate verb and modifying it
with an adverb.
Verb: subject and object prefixed; tense and aspect suffixed; one
irregular verb: `to be'.
Basic word order: OVS (although the sample sentences give the inpression
that subjects are often only mentioned as an afterthought).
Relative clauses: don't exist, gerunds are used instead.
B.G. Hewitt,
Abkhaz,
Lingua Descriptive Series,
North-Holland Publ.,
Amsterdam,
1979,
pp. 283.
Abkhaz is a North-west Caucasian language, spoken near the eastermost
coast of the Black Sea.
It has 53 consonants (normal, glottalized, voiced, labialized or
palatalized, on seven positions in the mouth) and two vowels.
Nouns: no cases; no gender; possessor prefixed on possessed;
postpositions.
Pronouns:
1 sing., pl.incl, pl.excl.;
2 sing.masc, sing.fem, pl.incl, pl.excl;
3 sing.masc+non-human, sing.fem, pl.
Number: sing./pl.human/pl.non-human.
Adjectives: they are verbs.
Verbs: consist of a preverb and a root; object, indirect object, preverb
and subject are prefixed to the root, in that order; various tense and
aspect particles are inserted between the indirect object and the end of
the verbal complex;
no irregular verbs, but a few phonetic transformations apply.
Word order: basically SOV, although any order is allowed.
Relative clauses: marked by a special pronoun in the verb:
he-sits/who-sits.
Abkhaz personal pronouns: 1sg: sara; 2masc: wara; 2fem: bara.
Ekkehart Malotki,
Hopi-Raum -- Eine sprachwissenschaftliche Analyse der Raumvorstellungen in der Hopi-Sprache,
(in German: `A linguistic analysis of space representations in the Hopi language'),
Gunter Narr Verlag,
Tübingen,
1979,
pp. 406.
Whereas English has only two built-in location words, `here' for things
near the speaker and `there' for things elsewhere, Hopi has some 42
words, including words for `in the north' and `at the foot of the mesa'.
Each of them can occur in three motion forms, indicating `at', `towards'
and `away from', orthogonally combined with three field forms (`in a
point', `diffusely over a field' and `in the middle of') and again
distinguished for `normal distance' and `extreme distance'.
This book analyses the concepts and gives some 1800 (numbered) examples.
Includes an exhaustive list of Hopi endings.
Jul Christophory,
Who's Afraid of Luxembourgish? / Qui a peur du luxembourgeois? -- Bilingual Guide to Luxembourgish Conversation,
Bourg-Bourger,
Luxembourg, Lux.,
1979,
pp. 130.
In spite of its corny title, a thorough booklet, including grammar, word
lists, sentence lists, exercises, etc.
Most of the format is trilingual columns of the type
"Deeg vun der Woch" / "Jours de la semaine" / "Days of the week",
with grammatical annotations.
Literature lists and references to more advanced books.
Lyle Campbell,
Marianne Mithun (Eds.),
The Languages of Native America: Historical and Comparative Assessment,
University of Texas Press,
Austin,
1979,
pp. 1034.
Seventeen papers about the state of the art in research in native
American language families.
Little information about the languages themselves.
Ellen Schauber,
The Syntax and Semantics of Questions in Navajo,
Thesis MIT Cambridge, Mass.,
Garland Publ.,
New York, N.Y.,
1979,
pp. 313.
Proves the existence of unbounded forward movement in WH-questions.
Makes use of extremely complicated examples.
Beijing Foreign Languages Institute,
The Pinyin Chinese-English Dictionary,
Commercial Press,
Hong Kong,
c1978, 1984,
pp. 976.
The translation of Chinese characters is mostly in complete sentences
(of a decidedly Peoples Republic flavour!).
Donegan, P.J.,
On the Natural Phonology of Vowels,
(thesis),
1978,
pp. 170.
Original and interesting approach to vowels, in which the vowels are
characterized by the processes they are involved in (fortition/lenition,
raising/lowering, lengthening/shortening, bleaching/coloring), rather than by
features.
It is argued that these processes are natural in that they follow from the
form and movements of the vocal organs, and that such natural processes form a
better way to think about vowels.
Examples from all over the world: Irish, Fe'fe', Texan American (often from
personal observation), children's British English, etc.
Extensive discussion of chromaticity.
H.F.A van der Lubbe O.F.M.,
Woordvolgorde in het Nederlands,
(in Dutch: Word Order in Dutch),
Van Gorkum,
Assen,
1978,
pp. 377.
A famous work, but more limited than the title suggests: the subject is the
order of words within a word group, rather than the order of word groups in a
Dutch sentence, which is so confusing to foreigners.
So it analyses and and answers questions like why one says "beautiful red
flowers" rather than "red beautiful flowers" (the adjectives are ordered from
most subjective to most objective).
Many examples are analysed in minute detail and ordered in a taxonomic
structure.
A striking example is that one can say
"met een garage opzij",
"met opzij een garage",
"zonder een garage opzij",
but not
"zonder opzij een garage" (= with/without a lean-to garage)
(no explanation given, as far as I can see).
The subtitle, "A Synchronous Structural Dissertation", is taken literally: no
attempt is shown to explain anything from a historic viewpoint.
The book is written in a meticulous but sometimes heavy Dutch.
W. Sidney Allen,
Vox Latina -- A Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin,
(2d ed.),
Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge,
1978,
pp. 132.
Motivated account of our knowledge of the pronunciation of classical
Latin, especially geared to the speaker of English.
There is a lot of information about the pronunciation of Latin: the
Romans themselves wrote about it, they made puns and mocked "funny"
accents, they copied Greek words phonetically, they made spelling
errors, etc.
All this information is collated and analyzed.
Salient points:
-- Most sounds are like in Italian, except that vowel length must be
distinguished; a chapter is dedicated to explain the methods by which
vowel lengths (not indicated in Latin writing) were reconstructed.
-- c is always pronounced k, far into the 4th century A.D.
-- Double consonants are pronounced long, as in Italian.
-- p, t, and c were unaspirated or lightly aspirated;
ph, th and ch (Etruscan influence) were aspirated, not
fricatives (not like in Eng. "photo", "think" and "loch").
-- The h was on its way out; it was even spelled ch for emphasis
by the 3rd century A.D.: michi for mihi.
-- qu and gu are single sounds, labio-velars, not composites as
in Eng. or It.
-- ae is as in Eng. "high", au is as in Eng. "how"; the
pronunciation of ae as long e and of au as long o is
rural, not a development of Roman Latin.
-- There was an "intermediate vowel", shwa-like, sometimes written i
and sometimes u: consul / consilium.
-- Many contractions happened at vowel junction; a complete chapter is
dedicated to them.
-- Accent is a stress accent (Italian-style, not the heavily centralized
Eng. stress accent); the Romans themselves described it as pitch, but
the author shows that they copied a description of Greek and forced it
on their own language.
The author points out that not until the beginning of the 19th century
did grammarians correctly establish the mechanism of voicing.
The difference between voiced and voiceless was a mystery until then;
people could of course hear the difference but could not find out what
caused it.
Appendix A contain selected quotes from classical grammarians.
Appendix C gives the alphabet and the names of the letters as used in
ancient Rome.
Milo Kalectaca,
Lessons in Hopi,
The University of Arizona Press,
Tucson, Ariz.,
1978,
pp. 234.
Evenly paced set of 30 lessens, by a native speaker.
Contains a modest dictionary.
Kenneth Katzner,
Languages of the World,
Routledge,
London,
c1977, 1989,
pp. 376.
37 pages of language family tree, followed by about 190 language samples.
List of literature references to books about specific languages.
Xabier Gereño,
A New Method for Learning Basque -- Euskara ikasteko metodoa,
CINSA,
Bilbao,
1977,
pp. 176.
Elementary but thorough book using Euskara Batua, Unified Basque.
The first 83 pages consist of 40 two-page lessons, with equal amounts of
vocabulary, grammar and phrases; these include 12 synthetic verbs.
The other pages contain 41 tables of nor-nori, zer-nork and
zer-nori-nork conjugations, with roughly 40 forms in each.
Ronald W. Langacker,
Studies in Uto-Aztecan Grammar -- Vol 1: An Overview of Uto-Aztec Grammar,
Summer Institute of Linguistics / University of Texas,
Dallas,
1977,
pp. 199.
Actually a grammar of Proto-Uto-Aztecan, with reflexes in the various
Uto-Aztecan languages.
Marc Okrand,
Mutsun Grammar,
Thesis (Ph.D. in Linguistics),
University of California,
Berkeley,
1977,
pp. 349.
From the author of Klingon.
Mutsun is (was) a Costanoan (Ohlonean) language, spoken in San Juan
Bautista near San Francisco.
It has several sibilants and the usual 5 vowels.
Nouns: 2 cases: absolute/oblique; no gender; possessor pre-fixed on the
possessed; postpositions.
Pronouns: 1,2,3, sing./plural.
Number: sing./pl, almost all regular.
Adjectives: they are verbs.
Verbs: verb stem + a few suffixes; subject and object as separate words;
final suffix indicates both non-past/recent past/remote past, and
active/passive; no irregular verbs.
Word order: basically SOV, although variants occur.
Robert Detrick van Valin Jr.,
Aspects of Lakhota Grammar,
Ph.D. Thesis,
University of Calfornia,
Berkeley,
1977,
pp. 254.
The book starts with a 50 page introduction to Lakhota.
The bulk of the book consists of an argued interpretation of the
identification of Actors, Goals, etc., in Lakhota, from a role and
reference grammar point of view.
Comparisons to Tunica, Tagalog, Dyirbal, Basque, and many others are
made.
Michael Coulson,
Sanskrit -- An Introduction to the Classical Language,
Teach Yourself Books,
Hodder & Stoughton,
Sevenoaks, Kent,
c1976 1992,
pp. 513.
Does not make any effort to make the language any easier:
1. Hardly explains the underlying structure, e.g., does not tell that
visarga (h-dot) derives from earlier s, but further on assumes you
know.
2. Does not show the paradigms in the text but has them collected in
an appendix and talks about them without referring to them (also shows
other signs of gross editing).
Almost (????) all text is also transcribed.
Not suitable for first contact.
Labat,
Manuel d'épigraphie akkadienne,
P. Geuthner,
Paris,
1976,
pp. 332+.
Contains the sign shapes for all the periods, from Old Akkadian to
Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian. The signlists by Wolfram von Soden
("Akkadisches Syllabar", Rome, 1961) and Riekle Borger
("Assyrisch-babylonische Zeichenliste", [don't know the details]) show
the standard Neo-Assyrian shapes.
David S. Rood,
Wichita Grammar,
Garland studies in American Indian Linguistics,
Garland,
New York,
1976,
pp. 310.
An almost complete grammar of the Caddoan language Wichita, still spoken
by some hundred people.
The author takes great pains to present a very difficult language as
simply as possible.
Wichita is a heavily incorporating language and the verb is analysed to
have 34 positions, to be filled with morphemes for subject, object,
number of both, mood, tense, place, degree, pieces of the verb root, and
what not.
This defines the morphemic shape; then a number of phonological rules
come along which turn this construct into a surface structure, which can
then be pronounced.
Hundreds of examples of this process are given, followed by annotated
texts.
The book ends with a Wichita-English morpheme index and an
English-Wichita gloss list.
Paula Ferris Einaudi,
A Grammar of Biloxi,
Garland studies in American Indian Linguistics,
Garland,
New York,
1976,
pp. 184.
The author has collected all known material about the Siouan language
Biloxi (extinct since around 1940), and assembled it into a
well-arranged grammar and syntax.
Ample literature references and a number of annotated sentences are
given.
Wallace L. Chafe,
The Caddoan, Iroquoian, and Siouan languages,
Trends in linguistics #3,
Mouton,
The Hague,
1976,
pp. 98.
In spite of its title, this monograph describes only those parts of the
subject matter that have not been described satisfactorily elsewhere.
These include a history of the research on the three groups (chapter 1),
the remote relationships between the groups (chapter 2) and a summary
grammar of Caddo (chapter 3).
The author considers the Siouan-Iroquian relationship beyond doubt on
lexical grounds and spends no text on it.
In 9 pages the author presents some material to support the Siouan-Caddoan and
Iroquian-Caddoan relationships; the material for the first is meagre
(mainly structural) but the second is more or less convincing
(similarities in pronouns).
Daniel M. Berry,
Moshe Yavne,
The Conway Stones -- What the original Hebrew may have been,
Mathematics Magazine,
vol. 49,
#4,
1976,
pp. 207-210.
In the book "Surreal Numbers" (Addison-Wesley, 1974), D.E. Knuth
describes two drop-out students who discover an old Hebrew stone tablet,
which they decipher explains Conway's number arithmetics axioms.
The book produces the translation of the "Conway Stones" in
biblical-style English.
From that, the authors hypothetically reconstruct the original Hebrew
text, puns and all (unvocalized).
For example, J.H. Conway, already transformed into J.H.W.H. Conway,
appears in the "original Hebrew" as KNWY YHWH, and is then read as
'kanuy yhwh', which means "named Yahweh".
Great fun.
Maurice Pope,
The Story of Decipherment,
Thames and Hudson,
London,
1975,
pp. 216.
Densely packed and detail-rich history of the decipherment of
Egyptian Hieroglyphs, the Palmyra Script, Persian Cuneiform, Babylonian/Hittite
Cuneiform, the Ugaritic Alphabet, the Cypriot Syllabary, Hittite Hieroglyphs,
and Linear B.
Two notes:
1. The author is much more interested in the process of decipherment than in
its result, with the perhaps logical consequence that sometimes the final
tables are missing.
2. The author often tells us that some early conclusion is wrong, without
telling what the conclusion should have been. In combination with 1 above this
can make for serious puzzling.
And then there is the mystery that Tacitus could write utter nonsense about
the hieroglyphs, when at that time (about AD 100) there were lots of people
who knew better in the Serapea all over Italy.
Vladimiro Macchi,
Collins-Sansoni Italian Dictionary: English-Italian-English,
Sansoni Editore,
Firenze,
c1975, 1995,
pp. 2277.
Very extensive dictionary, both ways.
The author has clearly made a considerable effort to create a dictionary
that can be used equally well by English and Italian users.
Some features are:
extensive examples of word usage, stress indicated in all words;
fully bilingual instructions;
irregular English and Italian verb lists;
full pronunciation of the English and indication of open and closed e and
o in the Italian part.
It seems to me that the English is predominantly British English.
J. Buitkamp,
Hebreeuws op reis,
van Goor,
Den Haag,
1975,
pp. 70.
Bad.
Redhouse Elsözlüğü İngılızce-Türkçe Türkçe-İngılızce,
(In Turkish: Redhouse' Hand Dictionary English-Turkish Turkish-English),
Redhouse,
İstanbul,
1975,
pp. 503.
[ For Turkish speakers ]
Zoltán Bánhidi,
Zoltán Jókay,
Dénes Szabó,
Lehrbuch der Ungarischen Sprache,
(in German: Text Book of the Hunagrian Language),
Max Hueber,
München,
1975,
pp. 495.
Excellent text book for self-study, extensive explanations and many
exercises, fully annotated.
A pleasure to use.
Maria Zagorska Brooks,
Polish Reference Grammar,
Mouton,
The Hague,
1975,
pp. 580.
As the title says, a full account of Polish in all its hairy detail.
Name: Polish.
Affiliation: Slavic.
Location: Poland.
Phonetics:
consonants: the usual set, all unpalatalized and palatalized,
plus sh; some palatalized consosnants are written with subsequent i (for
example pi, mi), others with diacritical marks: c' for /tsy/ (as opposed
to /tsh/, written cz).
vowels: a, e, i, o, u, I (spelled y), o'(pronounced u), all short.
Nouns: gender/classes: sing.: m/f/n; plural: human masc. / others
number: singular, plural
cases: nom., gen., dat., acc., loc., instr., voc.
possessor indication: adjective
declinations: 4 classes with in total 28 declinations + many irregularities.
Pre/postpositions: pre.
Pronouns:
Adjectives: with their own declinations.
Verbs: 4 conjugations with many subconjugations + irregularities; verbs
have different forms for imperfect and perfect aspect.
I cannot find "the regular verb".
Word order: SVO
Relative clauses: with the relative pronoun kto'ry (30 forms).
Conjugation of the word 'ten' - 'this':
| masc. | fem. | neut. / others
| sg. hum.pl.| sg. | sg. pl.
nom | ten ci | ta | to te
gen | tego tych | tej | tego tych
dat | temu tym | tej | temu tym
acc | ten tych | te, | to te
loc | tym tych | tej | tym tych
ins | tym tymi | ta, | tym tymi
Winfred P. Lehmann,
Proto-Indo-European Syntax,
University of Texas Press,
1974,
alderson@elaine46.Stanford.EDU (Rich Alderson) writes:
The data are well presented; the question is in the syntactic theory
adopted as the basis for explaining them.
It is very much a generative treatise in a historical mode, using an
interpretative semantics model; it further relies on typological
universals that aren't viewed as quite so universal any more.
The phonology of Proto-Indo-European assumed in the book is that of
Lehmann's 1952 book.
Hermann Berger,
Das Yasin-Burushaski (Werkchikwar): Grammatik, Texte, Wörterbuch,
(in German: Yasin Burushaski (Werkchikwar): Grammar, Texts, Dictionary),
Otto Harrassowitz,
Wiesbaden,
1974,
pp. 228.
Although the book has the same structure as the three-volume work by
Lorimer on Hunza Burushaski, the grammar is a real grammar, with rules
and text in phonemic writing.
The book is far from a text book, though; the material is presented in a
linguistic rather than a pedagogical order, and requires several
readings.
The Burushaski texts contain some amusing and some X-rated stories.
The dictionary is Burushaski-German, with a German-Burushaski index.
Sprachführer Rätoromanisch für Graubünden,
(in German: Language Guide to Raeto-Romance for the Graubünden Area),
Polyglott,
München,
1972,
pp. 32.
Short travel guide to Sursilvan and Ladin, with some grammar.
Edzard Johan Furnée,
Die wichtigsten konsonatischen Erscheinungen des Vorgriechischen: mit einem Appendix über den Vokalismus,
(in German: The Main Consonantal Phenomena in Pre-Greek.),
Thesis Leiden Univ.,
Janua linguarum. Series practica #150,
Mouton,
The Hague,
1972,
pp. 461.
This doctoral thesis is written in the best/worst tradition of the North-West
European pre-WWII universities: it's in German; it features an introduction of
70 pages, with a 1-page introduction to the introduction; the object of
the thesis is not revealed until page 50 of the introduction; and the main
body consists of 280 pages with ±500 densely written lemmata.
Quotes from papers in French, Italian, and Spanish, and words in Latin and
Greek are not translated (but words from Tocharian, Armenian, and Georgian
mercifully are).
It has long been noticed (middle of the 19th century) that there are a
considerable number of Classical Greek words for which no Proto-Indo-European
derivation can be found using the traditional PIE-to-Greek rules, and it is on
this part of the vocabulary that the author concentrates, calling it Pre-Greek.
There are two theories about these words:
1. They are from an unknown extinct IE language, by unknown rules; for
example, in this theory Gr. kithara (Eng. zither) is from PIE kwetwora
(Eng. four) (p. 42, n. 76).
The idea was strengthened by the discovery that "mysterious" languages like
Hittite and Minoan (Linear B) turned out to be IE.
Several proposals have tried to identify the unknown language in this theory.
1a. Minoic. 1b. An unknown Hittite-related language; this might make, for
example, Gr. aphenos (Eng. rich) related to Hitt. happinant- (p. 62).
1c. Psi-Greek, a hypothetical Greek-like language in which p, t, and k are
often followed by an s; in this proposal Gr. ksanthos (Eng. blonde) is
related to Lat. candidus (Eng. white) (p. 66).
The author criticizes all these proposals.
2. They are from an unknown non-IE language.
This idea has led to an avalanche of doubtful and unverifiable theories in the
first half of the 20th century (e.g. Alarodic???).
In view of the prevailing chaos, the author shelves the identification of
pre-Greek, and instead tries to determine its properties.
The most striking, and well-known, property of the pre-Greek words is that
consonants in them show alternations.
For example, Gr. polemos (Eng. war), no PIE derivation known, also occurs
as ptolemos (hence the name Ptolemaios) (p.317).
Going through Hesychius' 50000-entry Greek vocabulary, which gives all
known variants, the author identifies 27 such systematic alternations.
This analysis forms the main body of the book.
The most popular explanation for these alternations is that pre-Greek had
phonemes that differed so much from those of Greek that the Greeks heard them
differently on different occasions.
This leads to postulating sounds like [pt] and [mb].
The author rejects this theory on the grounds that no language in the region,
not even the North-Caucasian languages with their 50 to 80 consonants, has
such sounds, but instead suggests (without being very direct) that different
variants may derive from different stems of the same root.
A diagram on p. 91 shows, for example, how the word for "bison" (root
bona-) may have come to appear as
bonassos (from a stem bonass-),
bolinthos (from a stem boninth-),
monapos, monaipos, monōtos (from a stem bonap-), and
monoops (from a stem bonōp-).
Each of these forms is derived by using rules from the above set of systematic
alternations.
An appendix discusses Linear A, in which the author discerns evidence of the
same alternations.
V. Tams Jorgensen,
Kort sprakeliir foon daat Mooringer Frasch,
[s.n.],
Braist,
1972,
An East-Frisian language.
Jan de Vries,
Nederlands Etymologisch Woordenboek,
(in Dutch: Dutch Etymological Dictionary),
E.J. Brill,
Leiden,
1971,
pp. 977.
Thorough, taking on related words from all Indo-European languages, and
supplying information about Indo-European where available.
With indexes to English, German, Middle Dutch, North Germanic
(Scandinavian) and East-Germanic (Gothic).
Wish all etymological dictionaries were this thorough.
Ramkrishna Gopal Bhandarkar,
Shridhar Ramkrishna Bhandarkar,
First/Second Book of Sanskrit,
Karnatak Publ. House,
Bombay - 69,
1971,
pp. 224/295.
These books drive home the realization that student books in other
cultures are not necessarily text books; these books are unusable
without a teacher.
For instance, in lesson 1, verb endings are given, and verbs are given,
but it is left up to the teacher to show how they are connected.
Later lessons occasionally give full paradigms.
Contains good sets of sandhi rules, though.
Sanskrit-English and English-Sanskrit glossaries (68/58 p.)
Tables of contents, no indexes.
Villiana Hyde,
An Introduction to the Luiseño Language,
Malki Museum Press,
Banning, Calif.,
1971,
pp. 236.
Consists of 45 lessons interspersed with 10 text sections, covering a large
part of the language; answers to the exercises and Luiseño-English and
English-Luiseño word lists conclude the book.
The author teaches Luiseño to students who are not expected to know any
other language besides English.
She manages the difficult task of introducing and explaining grammatical
notions while at the same time teaching Luiseño by cleverly
exploiting the regularity available in the language.
For example, the rules somewhat evident in the object forms of the pronouns
are extended to nouns, and so they come less as a surprise.
G.A. Klimov,
Die kaukasischen Sprachen,
Helmut Buske Verlag,
Hamburg,
1969,
pp. 151 + maps.
Describes the history of and the history of the research of the
Caucasian languages.
Represents the now accepted view that NE and NW Caucasian are
related but that any relation with S Caucasian is considerably more
remote.
Lists of alphabets, and maps.
Little information on the languages themselves, except for some
structural explanations about ergativity.
Comes down heavily on another Russian linguist, N.J. Marr.
Ya'aqov Bahat,
Mordechai Ron,
Wedayeq,
(in Hebrew: And be accurate),
Hakibbutz Hameuchad,
Tel Aviv,
1968,
pp. 344.
Advanced grammatical and stylistic notes on Modern Hebrew.
Edward Sapir,
Harry Hoijer,
The Phonology and Morphology of the Navaho Language,
University of California Press,
Los Angeles, Calif.,
1967,
pp. 124.
Strictly scientific description of same, for the initiated.
Read the chapter on morphophonemics last; it contains 56 pages of
assimilation rules.
Capellanus,
Spreekt u Latijn? -- Moderne latijnse conversatie,
(in Dutch: Do you speak Latin? -- Modern Latin Conversation),
J.H. de Bussy,
Amsterdam,
1966,
pp. 103.
Adaptation of L. Spohr, Sprechen Sie lateinisch?
Bidhu Bhusan Das Gupta,
Assamese -- Self-Taught,
Das Gupta Prakashan,
Calcutta,
1966,
pp. 208.
Low on transcription (but sufficient).
R. van de Velde,
Het Krimgotisch - berichtgeving en problematiek,
(in Dutch: Crimean Gothic -- Reports and Problems),
Leuvense bijdragen,
vol. LIII,
1964,
pp. 102-119.
Describes part of the travels of van Busbeek and gives a critical
analysis of the existinging copies of the Crimean Gothic word list
collected by him.
M.A.R. Barker,
Klamath Grammar,
University of California Press,
Berkeley, Calif.,
1964,
pp. 364.
Very precise and extremely formal description of the language, embedded in an
analysis of how we can understand a language without making a priori
assumptions.
The author takes great pains to avoid any (Indo-European) assumptions and
bases the entire description exclusively on observations.
For example, the Klamath verb phrase (defined by observed distributional
properties) consists of a number of morphs, in 24 slots.
For most slots there are only 1 to 15 possibilities, but for 1 slot there are
hundreds; this slot is then defined as containing the "root".
It is difficult to obtain an impression of the language from this extremely
formal description; this summary describes the method used more than the
language.
Klamath words fall into several classes, the most important ones being Verbs,
Nouns, and Locatives, a large set of composable words with meaning like `from
the other side of the river'.
A Klamath word consists of a sequence of morphs, which are manifestations of
morphemes; one morpheme may appear as several different morphs in different
phonetic contexts; these morphs are then called allomorphs.
These morphemes fill slots, 25 for Verbs, 14 for Nouns, 9 for Locatives, etc.
The root is one of the first slots, and is usually preceded only by
reduplicators which specify repetition (scattering in time) and/or
distribution (scattering in space).
Later slots contain morphemes specifying such things as intensity, locality,
completion, aspect, collective, subordination, and several others.
Example: the morphemes in the morpheme sequence (word) se-'v-odiil-dk mean
"reflexive"-"handle a long object (root)"-"underneath"-"having done", and means
"having put a long object under his arm"; the word is pronounced
soodiilatk.
This is similar to the German word Verunreinigung (Eng. contamination)
being analysed as ver-un-rein-ig-ung, with the morphemes "change of
state"-"negation"-"clean (root)"-"causative"-"abstract noun", so the meaning
is "abstract noun for removing the state of cleanness", which is about right.
I'd like to see a description of German using these techniques!
I cannot from Barker's description find out which of the morphemes are
productive and which are fossilized; for example, in German one cannot just
produce the analogous word Verunweissigung, with the meaning
"abstract noun for removing the state of whiteness" (although the word would
be understood in that sense, when used anyway).
It is hard to imagine that the author of this bone-dry grammar is also the
creator of the Tekumel world, Tsolyani, and many computer games.
The phoneme collection of Klamath is average Amerind: almost all sounds occur
in three forms: voiceless, aspirated and glottalized, even the w and the y.
In spite of its extensive morphology the verb does not specify person, subject,
or object, although it can indicate plurality of subject or object; there is a
benefactive morpheme, showing that one of the nouns or pronouns in the
sentence is the beneficiary of the action.
The pronouns of Klamath are Amerind: I - ni, me - nis, you(subj) -
'i, you(obj) -mis. They can again be combined with many morphemes:
ni-as-dan-t = "I-nonsubject-possessive-in/on" = "right up to me",
pronounced noosdat.
G.H. Wanink,
Twents-Achterhoeks Woordenboek,
(in Dutch: Twents (East Overijssel) and Achterhoeks (East Gelderland) to Dutch Dictionary),
W.J. Thieme & Cie.,
Zutphen,
1963,
pp. 220.
With 62 pages of grammar.
Grammar and vocabulary are based on the dialect of Kerspel-Goor.
Everett F. Bleiler,
Essential Japanese Grammar,
Dover,
New York,
1963,
pp. 156.
The bare minimum, but useful.
With glossary of grammatical terms.
Eleanor Harz Jorden,
Beginning Japanese, Part 1 & 2,
Yale University Press,
New Haven,
1963,
pp. 408 & 410.
Very, very thorough set of 35 lessons in spoken Japanese.
No Japanese writing done, all text being in scientific transcription (tu for
chu etc.), with meticulous indication of the intonation in each and
every utterance.
Full of drills (aka very repetitive).
Lots of social background.
Joseph H. Greenberg,
Languages of Africa,
Indiana University/Mouton & Co,
The Hague, The Netherlands,
1963,
pp. 180.
This is Greenberg's famous book-size paper on the classification of
the African languages into Nigor-Congo-Kordofanian, Nilo-Saharan,
Afroasiatic and Khoisan.
Chapter I explains the methodology.
In the rest of the book, the author brings proof of increasingly large
clusters.
Chapter II proves the existence of Niger-Congo, consisting of
five western groups, the Benue-Congo group, of which the Bantu languages
are a member, and an eastern group.
Chapter III adduces proof for the membership of the Chad languages
(Hausa, etc.) to the Afroasiatic languages, thereby consolidating that
group.
Chapter IV is concerned with the Khoisan languages.
Two points are proved: they are not closely related to Afroasiatic; and
the outlier languages Sandawe and Hatsa belong to it.
Chapter V proves the existence of the Chari-Nile group (Nubian,
Masai, etc.).
Chapter VI is the first to construct a larger group: Nilo-Saharan,
consisting of the Chari-Nile, Songhai, Saharan and other confirmed
language groups.
Chapter VII first consolidates the Kordofanian group and then
shows its relationship to Niger-Congo.
All this is supported by word lists and correspondences of morphological
particles.
A small set of none too clear maps end the book.
R.C. Abraham,
Dictionary of the Hausa Language,
University of London Press,
London,
1962,
pp. 992.
Provides pronunciation and conjugation information with every word.
Includes a small grammatical compendium.
Fuishiki Okamoto,
The Simplest Universal Auxiliary Language: Babm,
Fuishiki Okamoto,
Tokyo,
1962,
pp.
Language fiction.
Blurp from sci.lang:
"Presented to any person cost free" "However if more than
two copies are desired $0.40 will cover the cost of each additional
copy, post-free."
Heinz F. Wendt,
Sprachen,
(in German: Languages),
Fischer Lexikon,
Fischer Bücherei,
Frankfurt am Main,
1961,
pp. 380.
Encyclopedia of the languages of the world, with entries like
Slavic Languages, Hausa, Japanese, etc.
Almost all foreign text comes with phonetic description.
Uneven coverage: no word on the Celtic languages; 14 lines on Basque.
Loads of information, though.
H. Kuhn,
????,
Zeitschrift für deutsche Mundarten,
vol. 28,
#4/5/7/8/10/11/12,
1961,
pp. ???.
About substrata in Dutch/German,
Herbert Pierrepont Houghton,
An introduction to the Basque Language -- Labourdin Dialect,
E.J. Brill,
Leiden,
1961,
pp. 78.
Unlike some books that are called "Introduction" and which then proceed
to explain the subject in full detail, this one really is an
introduction.
It covers case ending for nouns and adjectives, and the verbs "to be"
and "to have it", in various tenses, indicative, subjunctive and
imperative.
No treatment of conditionals, no indirect objects, no simple verbs.
The ergative nature of Basque is vaguely indicated, but is neither named
nor explained.
M.A. Smirnova,
The Hausa Language,
(translated from Russian: IAzyk khausa),
Routledge & Kegan Paul,
London,
c1960, 1982,
pp. 112.
Does not bother with tones, although the author admits that tones are
significant.
A.L. Kroeber,
George William Grace,
The Sparkman grammar of Luiseño,
University of California Publications in Linguistics, Vol. 16,
University of California Press,
Berkeley,
1960,
pp. 257.
Much more than promised in the title, it is an extensive description of the
language, based on the Sparkman grammar (±1900) and the authors' own work on
the language (1904-1907), with a comparison to and additions from Pablo Tac
(1834-1841) and Harrington (1933).
Consists of 177 pages of systematic language description, 43 pages of
(sparsely annotated) texts, and 37 pages of appendices and bibliography.
No separate vocabulary.
Emil Meier,
Kiswahili-Sprachführer,
Otto Harrassowitz,
Wiesbaden,
1960,
pp. 124.
33 pages of grammar, 70 pages German-Swahili and 17 pages
Swahili-German.
The tone of the grammar is remarkable and implies regularly that Swahili
is "the language of the Negro".
H. Kuhn,
Vor- und frühgermanische Ortsnamen in Nord-Deutschland und in den Niederlanden,
Westfälische Forschungen,
vol. 12,
#39??,
1959,
pp. 5-44.
About substrata in Dutch/German.
A. Ernout,
A. Meillet,
Dictionaire etymologique de la langue latine -- histoire des mots,
(in French: Etymological Dictionary of the Latin Language -- History of the Words),
Klincksieck,
Paris,
1959,
pp. 820 (2 columns).
Very big, very thorough. Links to Latin dialects, Greek, Sanskrit and
Indo-European, though hesitantly so.
Cross indexes to Italic, Sanskrit, Avestic, Greek,
Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Etruskan and French. (TH.05006.c: 54)
Pavel Poucha,
Bruža -- Burušaski?,
(in German),
Central Asiatic J.,
vol. 5,
1959,
pp. 295-300.
The paper concerns two fragments in a foreign language, occurring in
early Tibertan writings, that are identified as Bru-tsha and Bru-zha;
the fragments date from the 4th, 5th or 6th century A.D.
The Tibetan text says explicitly that the texts stem from Gilgit.
The paper is chaotic and the author assumes the reader knows both
Tibetan and Sanskrit.
Also, in at least one place some lines are missing in the paper.
The author seems to arrive at the conclusion that Bruzha is not
Burushaski, on what seem to be insufficient grounds.
For one thing, no allowance is made for the time gap of 1500 years
between the recorded texts and present-day Burushaski.
Leon Wall,
William Morgan,
Navajo-English Dictionary,
Hippocrene Books,
New York,
c1958, 1994,
pp. 164.
Minimal and fragmentary.
Denise Bernot,
Lucien Bernot,
Les Khyang des collines de Chittagong (Pakistan oriental),
(in French: The Chittagong Hills Khyangs (East Pakistan)),
PLON,
Paris,
1958,
pp. 148.
Concerns the Khyang (Khyen), living on the coast of the north-east
corner of the Gulf of Bengal in what is Bangladesh today.
The book is a collection of articles: The Khyang and their Neighbours (8
pp.), Life in the Village of Gongru (21 pp.), Phonetic Considerations
(18 pp.), Dictionary Khyang-French (74 pp.), French-Khyang Word List (17
pp.).
Arnulf Schroeder,
Die Laute des Wendischen (Sorbischen) Dialekts von Schleife in der Oberlausitz,
(in German: The Phonetics of the Wend (Sorb) Dialect of Schleife in the Oberlausitz),
Max Niemeyer Verlag,
Tübingen,
1958,
pp. 152.
Consists of three parts: an extensive description of the phonetics;
texts; and a glossary over the texts containing each word in all its
morphological forms, as occurring in the texts.
The texts are not translated explicitly; no grammar information given,
but much can be deduced from the glossary.
Doctoral thesis of the author, who was a native speaker.
He died in the last days of World War II, and the thesis was published
many years later.
From the looks of it, Wendish is much like Polish and Czech, and
probably to some (large) extent mutually intelligible with these.
But the differences are still considerable.
Examples are the absence of a stress accent in Wendish, the existence of
a full-fledged dual in all three genders, a plural differentiated in
three genders and the use of "ten" -- "that" and "jeden" -- "one" as the
articles "the" and "a".
Also, Wendish has preserved the old Slavic aorist.
The orthography is loosely based on that of Polish, but all
palatalization is indicated by an acute accent on the consonant: &pacute;,
&macute;, etc.
About 10 percent of the vocabulary is German loans, e.g.:
"ufpasować" -- "to watch out", G. "aufpassen".
Syntax looks often rather German-like:
"ja som tam ŝła" -- "ich bin dorthin gegangen"
Like other Slavic languages, it has adjectives to almost all nouns, e.g.:
"bursky" -- "of farmers", from "bur" -- "farmer".
There are
an open e and a closed e (not distinguished in writing),
an open i and a closed i (written y and i),
an open o and a closed o (not distinguished in writing),
an open u and a closed u (written ó and u),
and of course an a.
As in Polish, all vowels are short.
Any consonant can be palatalized, and special rules apply stating which
vowel can follow a palatalized consonant.
Also, there is no f in native words.
Collected from the glossary -- conjugation of the word 'ten' - 'the, this':
| masc. | fem. | neut.
| sg. du. pl. | sg. du. pl. | sg. du. pl.
nom | ten tej te | ta te | to tej ta
gen | togo tych | teje tych | togo tych
dat | tomu tyma tym | tej tym | tomu
acc | ten teju te | tu tej te | to tej ta
loc | tom | tej tych | tom tych
ins | tym | teju tymi | tym
Collected from the glossary -- conjugation of the noun:
| masc. | fem. | neut.
| sg. du. pl. | sg. du. pl. | sg. du. pl.
nom | - -i/-y | -a -ej -y | -o -a
gen | -a/-u -ow | -y -ow | -a -i
dat | -oju | -je -am -jom | -oju -om
acc | - -y | -u -ej -y | -o -a
loc | -u/-je -ych | -ej/-i -ach | -je -och
ins | -om -ami | -u -oma -ymi | -ami
There is also a vocative.
Stenhus,
That Thusendigste Jâr,
(in Old Saxon (purportedly): The Thousandth Year),
Mouton & Co.,
Den Haag,
1957,
pp. 292.
Purported Old Saxon cronicles of a well-to-do homestedder in the Bentheim
region, from mid-999 to mid-1000; with Introduction, Notes and
Bibliography, edited by Gerben Colmjon.
Fiction, but very intersting to read.
W. Simon,
1200 Chinese Basic Characters,
Lund Humphries,
London,
1957,
pp. 334.
Transcription in the Gwoyeu system.
R.K. Harrison,
Teach Yourself Hebrew,
Teach Yourself,
The English University Press,
London,
1955,
pp. 215.
This is about Classical (Biblical) Hebrew.
Herbert H. Paper,
The Phonology and Morphology of Royal Achaemenid Elamite,
University of Michigan Press,
Ann Arbor,
1955,
pp. 119.
Phenomenological description of the language.
Lists of forms found in texts, with some attempt at classification.
Raymond Bloch,
Les Étrusques,
(in French: The Etruscans),
Que sais-je? #645,
Presses Universitaires de France,
Paris,
c1954, 1990,
pp. 125.
The eighth edition has copyright 1990, but has not been updated well:
the Pyrgi tablets, discovered in 1964 and published in 1970, are mentioned as
a recent find without any further explanation.
Covers the origin, history, language, public and private life, religion,
and art of the Etruscans.
The book is very high-level: it tells about the story, it does not tell the
story itself.
For example, it makes the point that jewelry from Etruria and from Asia Minor
shows considerable similarities, but does not tell what these similarities are.
And the language is discussed in 24 pages, but all it shows from the language
itself is one short sentence.
There is no index.
K. Balkan,
Die Sprache der Kassiten,
(The Language of the Kassites, trans. from Turkish by R. Krauss),
American Oriental Series, vol. 37, Kassiten Studien 1,
New Haven, Conn.,
1954,
pp. 238.
Although Kassite was spoken in Babylon for at least 4 centuries, very
little material has come to us.
We have a 49-word Kassite-Assyrian word list, a list of 12 translated
names, and several hundreds of short descriptions of horses, without
translation; we have no running texts.
The material probably dates from 1200 to 1000 BC.
The people called themselves galdu or galzu.
The author squeezes this material to the last drop, arriving at the
following, very tentative, conclusions.
Phonetics:
The only vowels in the text are a, e, i, and u, but
there are indications that other vowels existed.
In words starting with a vowel, the initial vowel is unstable, and may
have indicated a marked onset of the word.
There is no vowel harmony.
The language has a "normal" set of consonants:
very moderate or no laryngeals;
s, š, and z;
z fluctuates with d in some words;
l and r do not occur word-initially;
word-initial p/b, t/d, k/g, are unstable in some words.
Morphology:
Many basic words have the form CVCCV:
galdu/galzu = Kassite,
mašhu = god.
Nouns seem to have no special form for the plural, although adjectives
have; some form their plural with the suffix -ame.
No signs of cases have been observed; possession is indicated by word
composition: meli-harbe = slave of Harbe.
Very many words are composites; often the components are just
juxtaposed, but several connecting infixes exist.
About a dozen suffixes are known, most of them probably forming nouns
from verb stems.
Nothing is known about the conjugation of the verb.
The numerals are not known either.
Carl Borgstrøm,
The Categories of Person, Number, and Class in the Verbal System of Burushaski,
Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap,
vol. 13,
1945,
pp. 130-147.
The Burushaski verb endings form an extensive system in which much
structure can be seen, but also much irregularity (the verb prefixes on
the other hand are just the possessive prefixes of nouns).
The endings are explained by three mechanisms:
1. a number of mutually non-exclusive suffixes:
-a_1: 1st person;
-a_2: human;
-u: human feminine;
-i: non-feminine;
-n: plural.
2. the participle in -m followed by the above endings (or a form of the
verb b- = to be), in different stages of assimilation.
3. analogy to more frequent forms.
The main text is about the Hunza dialect, but the Nagari (Yasin, Werchikwar)
dialect is touched upon; it seems to show less assimilation and less analogy.
Borgstrøm makes an important observation on linguistic reconstruction:
"Only one must remember that that any reconstruction of an earlier, not
directly attested linguistic system implies a simplification of this system,
because some features will always be irretrievably lost in the course of
time."
Henry P. Judd,
The Hawaiian Language and Hawaiian-English Dictionary,
Hawaiian Service, Inc.,
Honolulu, Hawaii,
1945,
pp. 117.
83 one-page lessons + 29 pages of word list.
The style is very terse, and self-study seems almost impossible.
Although the author emphasizes the importance of the glottal stop as a
consonant in Hawaiian, there are very few occurrences of it in the text;
is that correct?
Joseph Andrew Teslar,
A New Polish Grammar,
Oliver and Boyd,
Edinburgh,
1941, 1967,
pp. 469.
Conscientious and probably rather conservative grammar of Polish, with
lots of explanations and lots of exercises.
It is clearly intended as a class room text book; self-study is a remote
second option.
The first part, 220 pages, consists of 60 lessons full of Polish text.
The second part, 70 pages, contains a grammar full of explanations.
The third part, 11 pages, is a short language phrase book.
A 90 page dictionary (both ways) closes the book.
The missing 100 pages is assorted reading material, pronunciation guide,
key to exercises, etc.
Given the language, probably not at all an disagreeable book.
Manuale dei verbi regolari e irregolari della lingua italiana,
(in Italian: Handbook of Regular and Irregular Verbs of the Italian language),
Casa Editrice Sonzogno,
Milano,
1940, 1950,
pp. 62.
All the ins and outs of the Italian verb.
Branco van Dantzig,
De korte o-klanken in het Nederlands,
(in Dutch: The Short `o' Sounds in Dutch),
P. Noordhoff N.V.,
Groningen-Batavia,
1940,
pp. 169.
A number of native speakers of Dutch differentiate between two short `o'
sounds: /ɔ/ (deriving from old Frankish `a'), and /o/ (deriving from old
Frankish `o' or `u'), but most do not. The book is an in-depth study of the
difference, both diachronically, based on old rhymes and contemporary
descriptions (pages 1-36), and synchronically, based on research on 13 dialects
(pages 37-146). The difference was already decaying in the middle of the 16th
century, andin the 20th century it is only maintained in
small parts of the East and the North of the Netherlands.
There were never even a dozen opposition pairs.
Kaj Birket-Smith,
Frederica de Laguna,
The Eyak Indians of the Copper River Delta, Alaska,
Levin & Munksgaard,
København,
1938,
pp. 592.
Mainly about their history, culture, stories and recent remains, but
also contains 38 pages of Eyak phonetics, grammar, vocabulary and texts.
Edward Delavan Perry,
A Sanskrit Primer,
Motilal Banarsidass,
Delhi,
c1936, 1988,
pp. 230.
Complete Sanskrit grammar in 45 lessons of in total 508 (daily?)
portions, with 42 exercises, 22-page Sanskrit-English and an 11-page
English-Sanskrit glossary.
The first third is also transcribed and then it tapers off into
Devanagari only.
Carl Meinhof,
Die Entstehung flektierender Sprachen,
(in German: The Origin of Inflecting Languages),
Verlag von Dietrich Reimer,
Berlin,
1936,
pp. 108.
Using the definition that inflecting languages are those in which the
stem of a word is habitually modified in its morphology, the author
delineates a region of inflecting languages on earth comprising the
Indo-European, Semitic, Hamitic (in which the author includes Nama and
its relatives!), Berber, etc.
These are contrasted to the Bantu languages which are non-inflecting, and
the West-African languages, which are an intermediate form.
The author then shows many relationships between the Bantu prefixes and
suffixes and the inflections of the inflecting languages, thus
suggesting possible ways of development.
D.L.R. Lorimer,
Nugae Burushaskicae,
BSOS (Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies??),
vol. 8,
1936,
pp. 627-636.
??? writes:
This reference came out of Bashir's (1985) list of works cited.
I'm not exactly sure what "BSOS" stands for, but I suspect it is the "Bulletin
of the School of Oriental Studies," not to be confused with the aforementioned
"Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies."
C. Brouwer,
G. Ras,
Schwere Wörter,
(in Dutch/German: Difficult Words),
Wolters,
Groningen, Batavia,
1935,
pp. 70.
Legendary Dutch school book, listing 279 German words that are known for
confusing Dutch high-school students learning German. With example sentences.
Emile Benveniste,
Origines de la formation des noms en indo-européen,
1935,
A classic exposition of the data as known in the early 1930s.
D.L.R. Lorimer,
The Burushaski Language -- Vol. 1, 2, 3,
Instituttet for Sammenlignende Kulturforskning,
Oslo,
1935,
pp. 464.
Part 1 contains large amounts of very carefully described data, written
phonetically rather than phonemically, organised according to subject.
The book is not a grammar in that the author does not present rules but
only reports observations.
The author deliberately makes no attempt to distinguish between the
results of the inherent inaccuracy of normal speech and those of
grammatical processes and just recorded what he heard.
Often the recorded material fluctuates so much that precise rules are
difficult to find.
Part 2 contains recorded and translated stories, part 3 is a dictionary.
Leonard Bloomfield,
Language,
Allen & Unwin,
London,
1933,
pp. 566.
Every bit as good as its fame!
Especially impressive is the way the author explains the point of view of the
neo-grammarians, "sound laws have no exceptions" (although he does not endorse
this formulation).
When a sound law has been applied to all words that fulfill its conditions,
it may appear that some words do not "obey" it: the resulting word does not
match the supposedly related word which is actually found.
These words are called "residual", and they require an explanation.
The author specifies 4 explanations:
1. there are specific conditions under which the law has a different effect,
or, in other words, the law did not apply, but one with a different condition
and different result does;
2. the word is a loan from a neighboring dialect, one in which the word had a
different development;
3. the word was modified in analogy to another word;
4. the word is not actually related to the word it was thought to have derived
from.
Finding out which of the alternatives apply results in the correct etymology
of the word.
There is much, much more in this book.
Henry Cyril Dieckhoff,
A pronouncing dictionary of Scottish Gaelic,
Gairm Publications,
Glasgow,
c1932, 1992,
pp. 186.
Based on the Glengarry dialect.
Contains 32 pages of phonetic introduction.
For each word it gives the traditional spelling, the pronunciation in a
special code (explained in the 32 pages), and a translation.
T.G. Tucker,
Etymological Dictionary of Latin,
Ares Publ.,
Chicago,
1931,
pp. 307.
Lots of information.
With index to Greek and English words.
Gotthelf Bergsträsser,
Einführung in die Semitischen Sprachen,
(in German: Introduction to the Semitic Languages),
Max Hueber,
München,
1928,
pp. 240.
To avoid guessing the author restricts the languages to those for which full
vocalization is available.
The book covers the following groups:
Akkadian; Hebrew; Aramaic; South-Arabic-Ethiopian; and North-Arabic.
For each group between 3 and 5 representative languages are described in
narrative form (no paradigms) and reasonably well-annotated samples (usually
full short stories) are given, in a uniform traditional Latin transcription;
in total 22 languages are described and sampled.
No attempt is made to arrange these in a tree, although there is a chapter on
Proto-Semitic, and a list of about 180 common Semitic terms is given.
The `sin' as a lateral fricative is mentioned in a couple of places (for
example page 126, on the South-Arabic language of Mehri), but is not so
indicated in the transcription.
In spite of the title it is virtually necessary to be well acquainted with at
least one semitic language.
The book is only an introduction in that it "introduces" the various languages
to the initiated.
[DG: The section on Hebrew is of excellent quality; the author even knows that
lirkosh (to acquire) is pronounced lirkhosh (pg 58, footnote 7), a
fact which is not normally described in books.
Just as litpor (to sew) is pronounced litfor. 1. I think these are
back-formations from rkhush (possessions) and tfira (seam). 2. The
book shows that this pronunciation, which I always took to be a recent one
(post-1948), is in fact much older.]
An independent discussion of the syntax of Ugaritic by Carl Brockelmann closes
the book (no sample).
Mrs. Sinclair Stevenson,
An Outline of Gujarati,
Languages Information Centre,
Pontypridd, Wales,
~c1927, 1994,
pp. 28.
A compilation of rules and tables from Mrs. Sinclair Stevenson book,
summarizing the Gujarati grammar; rich in information.
The language is similar to Latin or Russian in complexity.
Name: Gujarati
Affiliation: IE/Indic
Location: India
Phonetics: like Hindi
Nouns: gender/classes: masc./fem./neuter;
number: 2
cases: 7: nom., acc., erg., dat., abl., loc.;
possessor indication: by a genitive which has 3 forms depending on the
gender of the object possessed.
Pre/postpositions: post-, preceded by a genitive, but since the postpositions
are actually nouns and thus have gender, the form of that genitive depends on
the gender of the postposition.
Pronouns:
hum = I,
tum = you,
te = he, she, it,
ame = we (excl.),
aapane = we (incl.),
tame = you all,
teo = they.
Adjectives: precede the noun, with which they agree in gender and number, but
not in case.
Verbs: many tenses, both indicative and subjunctive; tenses that use the past
participle use the ergative construction, as in Hindi.
Margaret Alice Murray,
Elementary Coptic (Sahidic) Grammar,
Quaritch,
London,
1911,
pp. ???.
Straightforward, minimal grammar with exercises (no answers) and a very
small dictionary.
Joseph Wright,
Wright's Grammar of the Gothic Language,
(with supplement by O.L. Sayce),
Clarendon Press,
Oxford,
c1910, 1968, 1981,
pp. 383.
Chapter 1: Pronunciation, following Grimm; the supplement updates this to the
modern view as described in the Wikipedia.
Chapters 2-9: development rules from proto-Germanic and Indo-European.
Chapters 10-14: morphology.
Chapter 15: word formation.
Chapter 16: syntax.
Pages 195-291: bilingual Greek-Gothic bible books.
Pages 292-383: notes, glossaries, supplements.
The bible texts show how strictly word-by-word the translation from the Greek
is; it makes one wonder if they really represent the natural way of
expression in Gothic.
Joh.C. Pieters,
Nos fautes de prononciation,
(in French: Our Pronunciation Errors),
Meindert Boogaerdt Jun.,
Rotterdam,
1907,
pp. 77.
Pronunciation guide to the French language, in Dutch.
Probably old-fashioned.
M. de Vries,
L.A. te Winkel,
Woordenlijst voor de spelling der Nederlandsche taal,
(in Dutch: Vocabulary for the Orthography of the Dutch Language),
Martinus Nijhoff,
's-Gravenhage,
1904,
pp. 485.
Early version of the "groene boekje", the official spelling bible of
Dutch.
Good for determining "old" spelling ("visch" vs. "vis") and the
masculine-feminine distinction in gender, both of which are out of use
now.
Raoul de la Grassiere,
Cinq langues de la Colombie Britannique,
(in French: Five Languages of Britsh Columbia),
Kraus Reprint,
Nendeln, Liechtenstein,
c1902, 1968,
pp. 531.
Supplies grammar, vocabulary and translated and analyzed texts for Haida,
Tsimshian(sp ???), Kwakiutl, Nootka and Tlingit, followed by a parallel word
list of Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Heiltsuk, Kwakiutl and Nootka.
Monier Monier-Williams,
A Sanskrit-English Dictionary,
Motilal Banarsidass Publ.,
New Delhi,
c1899, 1990,
pp. 1333.
Very thorough, with an entertaining preface.
The listing is not fully alphabetical, but follows a logical and
reasonably convenient four-level structure.
Roots and non-compound words only are in Nagari, the rest (compounds and
all other occurrences) are in transcription; this is handy.
J. Vercoullie,
Beknopt etymologisch woordenboek der Nederlandse taal,
(in Dutch: Concise etymological dictionary of the Dutch language),
J. Vuylsteke,
Gent,
1898,
pp. 464.
Short introduction to Indo-European, with a comparative table of sound
shifts to Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and the Germanic languages.
343 pages of entries, followed by an inventory of Dutch words,
catalogued by language of provenance, ranging from West-Germanic to
American Indian.
The book ends with indexes of Greek, Latin, French, English and German
words occurring in the dictionary.
Very thorough and extremely well-indexed.
Richard Loewe,
Die Reste der Germanen am Schwarzen Meere,
(in German: The Remainders of the Germanic Peoples on the Black Sea),
Niemeyer,
Halle,
1896,
pp. 270.
Gathers and carefully analyzes all that is known in 1896 about the
Germanic Peoples around the Black Sea.
Historical sources mention five Germanic peoples in the region: the Asia
Minor Germans, the Caucasus Germans, the (possible) Germans on the
Caspian Sea, the Crimean Goths and the Minor (Moesian) Goths.
Substantial knowledge is available on the Crimean Goths only.
Most of the book is on the history of the assorted peoples, but 95 pages
are spent on the Crimean Gothic language.
Busbecq's word list is presented and analyzed in full, giving Germanic
sources for many of the words that Busbecq himself set apart as
"cum nostra lingua non satis congruentia" -
"not sufficiently similar to our language".
In addition, single words from other sources are considered, resulting
in a Crimean-Gothic to German dictionary of 99 entries.
The three-line "Gothic" song supplied by Busbecq is identified as
Turkish.
The author quotes liberally from Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Flemish
and Swedish sources, in the original, without translation.
The quotes from Slavic languages are translated, though.
Shows what was expected from a gentleman-scholar in those days.
J.S. Farmer,
W.E. Henley,
A Dictionary of Slang, A-K, L-Z,
Wordsworth Editions,
c1890, 1987,
pp. ± 2688.
Chatic, locally informative and hilarious.
In two volumes, originally in 7 volumes of 384 pages each.
A.N. Pypin,
Das Serbisch-Wendische Schriftthum in der Ober- und Niederlausitz,
(in German: The Serbian(!)/Wendish Literature in the Ober- and Niederlausitz),
F.A. Brockhaus,
Leipzig,
1884,
pp. 64.
Lament about the miserable state of publishing in Sorbian / Wendish.
One of the most successfull enterprises was at the hands of a German who
did not speak a word of the language.
A sticker inside the booklet corrects the title to "Sorbisch-Wendisch".
J.G. Christaller,
A grammar of the Asante and Fante language called Tshi [Chwee, Twi]: based on the Aknapem dialect, with reference to the other (Akan and Fante) dialects,
Gregg,
Ridgewood N.J.,
c1875, 1964,
pp. 203.
Name: Twi.
Affiliation: South-Central Niger-Congo.
Location: Ghana.
Phonetics: consonants: k, g and h occur also palatalized or
labialized, t and d occur also with simultaneous palatalization and
labialization.
Example: Chwi.
There is only one nasal, which manisfests itself as n, m or ng,
depending on the context.
Vowels: there are ten vowel, the usual a, e, i, o and u,
and the same set again with a "Hindi/English" shift.
There are only seven vowel signs in the written language (the IPA
symbols for open e and o were added), but due to vowel harmony
restrictions, few ambiguities arise.
Tone: there are three tones, L, M and H, but only the sequences LL, MM,
HM, ML and LH are allowed; the usual pattern is something like LHMM.
Tones are not shown in writing but few ambiguities occur.
Syllables: CV or CV[nasal].
Nouns: have no gender, but do usually have one of three prefixes:
o-, a- and m-;
there is some distribution that suggests that a- and m- were abstracta.
Plural is by various modifications, the most usual the change of o- to
a-: ohene `king", ahene `kings'.
The nouns in o- lose the o- when directly connected to the preceeding
word in a possessive relation with a noun: Israel hene `king of Israel',
or in an accusative relation with a verb:
wabisa hene `he has asked the king'.
Pre/postpositions: postpositions, but many verbs take the place
where they happen as the object: "to go places".
Pronouns: three singular and plural.
Twi personal pronouns: 1sg me, 2sg wo.
Adjectives: are nouns, and are postpositioned. The ones in o- lose the
o-.
Verbs: Conjugated form:
<person> <mode1> <negation> <root> <mode2>, where
<person> and <root> are mandatory and <mode2> is almost always absent.
There are 10 tenses: present, continuous state, past, perfect,
progressive, remote future, immediate future, optative,
personal imperative and impersonal imperative.
Within sandhi limits, almost all forms are regular.
Word order: SVO, invariably.
The object may also be a place or an infinitive.
Relative clauses: uses the word a in the same way as asher in Hebrew.
F. Max Müller,
A Sanskrit Grammar,
Asian Publications Services,
New Delhi,
c1870, 1985,
pp. 300.
[ fully transcribed, fully accented ]
|