Interesting statement. I'd heard tell that inter-war dialectologists working in Poland had no trouble telling West and East Slavic apart, despite the diffusion of sound changes. I've also seen a claim that the West-East division continues on into 'South Slavic'.Otto Kretschmer wrote: ↑Sat Aug 21, 2021 6:54 pm The West Slavic-East Slavic split is largely artificial. In the past there used to be a dialect continuum with various village dialects changing gradually from Polish to Russian.
Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Artificial is a wrong word. The division itself is not artificial but current sharp borders are - in the past there used to be a dialect continuum with local dialects changing gradually, this was the case as late as before ww2. When Poland and Rus adopted Christianity in 10th century, people did not suddenly start speaking different languagesRichard W wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 5:43 pmInteresting statement. I'd heard tell that inter-war dialectologists working in Poland had no trouble telling West and East Slavic apart, despite the diffusion of sound changes. I've also seen a claim that the West-East division continues on into 'South Slavic'.Otto Kretschmer wrote: ↑Sat Aug 21, 2021 6:54 pm The West Slavic-East Slavic split is largely artificial. In the past there used to be a dialect continuum with various village dialects changing gradually from Polish to Russian.
BTW Standard Russian is based on the dialect of Moscow with heavy Church Slavonic influence. Traditional western dialects (spoken until mass education and urbanization in 1920s-1960s) used to be more similar to Belarussian/Ukrainian.
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Fine, look at Manchu then, which has been spoken next to or in China for a thousand years, and is not monosyllabic or tonal.Otto Kretschmer wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 3:57 pmBy "influenced by Chinese" I mean language spoken by between a few 1,000s and a few 100,000s people in China and surrounded by Chinese. So something like Southern Mongolic languages - which started diverging from Mongolian approx 800 years ago and are mostly completely unintelligible with it (I asked Mongolian speakers on reddit and they said so)
A language that is surrounded by Chinese, but is still preserved, would have to have reasons for doing so. If they're simply peasants, they'd probably simply switch to Chinese. If they keep to themselves enough to preserve their language, they are not interacting continuously with Chinese speakers.
Non-Chinese languages in China (outside Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia) are mostly found in the southwest, protected by mountains and difficult terrain, and often not really subject to imperial rule.
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Mostly yes, but I would expect a wider range of final consonants, initial clusters, and limited tonality. My main model for this is monosyllabic Eastern Cham; a similar move to monosyllabicity is seen in Northern Khmer, which has been subject to Tai influence. The tonality would be principally caused by the East Asian tone splitting, which in atonal languages has commonly manifested itself as register, but can also manifest itself as a two-tone system. For the latter, compare Pali, which has a tonal contrast in Tai and Lao mouths. (Shan pronunciation might be exceptional).Otto Kretschmer wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 10:12 am If a highly synthetic IE lang showed up in China around the time of early Tang Dynasty (ca. 650 AD)and survived as a minority language until the present day, do you think it could pick up Chinese features like monosyllabic words, tonality and limited number of syllabes?
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Tocharian converged on the Ural-Altaic sprachbund* (if / to the extent that such a thing exists) rather than the Southeast Asian one, so I don't think this would happen. The split is pretty even. If you want to introduce a language from outside the usual Southeast Asian sprachbund families to the traits of that sprachbund, it's pretty surprising that Korean didn't develop along Sino-Tibetan lines - it was at one point tonal and had complex initial clusters suggesting a possible earlier sesquisyllabic stage.WeepingElf wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 3:36 pmMy idea was that it was related to Tocharian.Otto Kretschmer wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 11:45 amWhat IE branch should it belong to?WeepingElf wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 11:33 am
I don't know, but I have had the idea for just such a conlang!
Tocharian also didn't have a phonemic voicing contrast, but it probably did have allophonic voicing.
* at the same time, though, it wouldn't be out of place in New Guinea, which I don't think can be said of Samoyedic
Probably not. Southeast Asian sprachbund languages tend to develop along a certain path. If an IE language showed up, it'd lack the prerequisites for further development along that path - unless it developed them first like Hainan Cham did.Otto Kretschmer wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 10:12 am If a highly synthetic IE lang showed up in China around the time of early Tang Dynasty (ca. 650 AD)and survived as a minority language until the present day, do you think it could pick up Chinese features like monosyllabic words, tonality and limited number of syllabes?
Duaj teibohnggoe kyoe' quaqtoeq lucj lhaj k'yoejdej noeyn tucj.
K'yoejdaq fohm q'ujdoe duaj teibohnggoen dlehq lucj.
Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq.
K'yoejdaq fohm q'ujdoe duaj teibohnggoen dlehq lucj.
Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq.
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
To anyone suggesting an IE language can't become tonal and monosyllabic, you should hear my father-in-law and his cousin when they're out fishing.
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
How different were Ancient Greek dialects from each other? Were the differences comparable to British and American English or larger?
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Of course. My idea was that my language (working title "Quantuan") and Tocharian both descended from the language of the Afanasievo culture, which would still be close to PIE. From there, one group migrated into the Tarim Basin and their language became Tocharian; another group migrated to Gansu and their language became Quantuan; I also had the idea of an Altaic-like third descendant in the Sayan mountains, with agglutinating morphology and vowel harmony.Nortaneous wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 9:14 pmTocharian converged on the Ural-Altaic sprachbund* (if / to the extent that such a thing exists) rather than the Southeast Asian one, so I don't think this would happen.
But the project is currently mothballed, as I have more than enough more important things to wrap my mind around.
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
The answer depends on whether we are talking about Greek in the second millenium BC, or whether Koine Greek is still considered Ancient. Also, what varieties may be called dialects, for instance is Mycenaean Greek regarded as an independent language?Otto Kretschmer wrote: ↑Wed Aug 25, 2021 11:49 am How different were Ancient Greek dialects from each other? Were the differences comparable to British and American English or larger?
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Wikipedia has some nice examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_G ... #PhonologyOtto Kretschmer wrote: ↑Wed Aug 25, 2021 11:49 am How different were Ancient Greek dialects from each other? Were the differences comparable to British and American English or larger?
On the whole, noticeably more divergent than British and American English; by the time of the Pelopponesian war, they'd been diverging for 1300 years.
They always were mutual intelligible though. The Greeks got plenty of exposure to other dialects. Literary genre were tied to specific dialects, so they heard other dialects through poetry; geography probably helped too: Doric-speaking Megara is only 40 km from Athens.
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Not sure what an Ancient Greek person, if someone had explained the concept of a kilometer to them, would have made of that statement...
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
It's a two days' walk, close enough to see Megarans at Athens (and vice versa) on a regular basis. Megarans who speak funny show up quite a bit in Aristophanes, for instance.
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Can anyone recommend a book on the history of English (especially from 1066 to the early modern period)?
Ye knowe eek that, in forme of speche is chaunge
With-inne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho
That hadden pris, now wonder nyce and straunge
Us thinketh hem; and yet they spake hem so,
And spedde as wel in love as men now do.
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With-inne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho
That hadden pris, now wonder nyce and straunge
Us thinketh hem; and yet they spake hem so,
And spedde as wel in love as men now do.
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
If you're looking for a one-volume monograph, I'd say go for Haruko Momma and Michael Matto's A Companion to the History of the English Language (2008).dɮ the phoneme wrote: ↑Fri Aug 27, 2021 2:40 pm Can anyone recommend a book on the history of English (especially from 1066 to the early modern period)?
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Thanks!Kuchigakatai wrote: ↑Sun Aug 29, 2021 11:38 amIf you're looking for a one-volume monograph, I'd say go for Haruko Momma and Michael Matto's A Companion to the History of the English Language (2008).dɮ the phoneme wrote: ↑Fri Aug 27, 2021 2:40 pm Can anyone recommend a book on the history of English (especially from 1066 to the early modern period)?
Ye knowe eek that, in forme of speche is chaunge
With-inne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho
That hadden pris, now wonder nyce and straunge
Us thinketh hem; and yet they spake hem so,
And spedde as wel in love as men now do.
(formerly Max1461)
With-inne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho
That hadden pris, now wonder nyce and straunge
Us thinketh hem; and yet they spake hem so,
And spedde as wel in love as men now do.
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
When was final -s and -n lost in Proto Slavic?
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Unfotunately, this is a tricky question to answer. The cheeky answer is "somewhere between the Baltic split and 500 AD." The problem is that most Slavic borrowings into Finnic happened late in the Proto-Slavic or late dialectal period or beyond, and so already show these changes. And the sound changes involved don't always interact in a way that makes them easily datable relative to other changes. Is there a specific reason you asked this question?
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Are there natural languages that lack a voicing contrast in their stop series, and all stops are voiced? For example, there are /b, d, g/, but no /p, t, k/?
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
all over Australia, yes ..... you see it all the time ...... e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumbainggar_language but that's just one example, and you can see the K in the name .... some of them have voicing of stops not just intervocalically but everywhere
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
R.M.W. Dixon has analysed Dyirbal like this, given that the voiced stops seem to be far more common than their voiceless allophones. But it’s really just a matter of phonemic analysis; I think most mainstream phonologists would analyse Dyirbal with /p t c k/, for no reason other than a principle that voiceless stops are less marked than voiced stops.
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Other: Ergativity for Novices
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