Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Travis B.]

I tend to avoid the term "proto-language" in this sense because it means something completely different in language origin studies (which many non-specialists don't realize that it is a different discipline from historical linguistics, which results in various misunderstandings).

To anyone here though I would highly presume that the mainstream linguistic meaning of the term would be the understood meaning, not the language origin studies meaning (I even googled "language origin studies", with quotes, and got few results).

[WeepingElf]

I tend to avoid the term "proto-language" in this sense because it means something completely different in language origin studies (which many non-specialists don't realize that it is a different discipline from historical linguistics, which results in various misunderstandings).

To anyone here though I would highly presume that the mainstream linguistic meaning of the term would be the understood meaning, not the language origin studies meaning (I even googled "language origin studies", with quotes, and got few results).

Yes. There are plenty of diachronic conlangers here, who are familiar with the usages of historical linguistics; while language origins studies is a discipline which is not particularly relevant to diachronic conlanging and accordingly most conlangers, even diachronic conlangers, don't really care of it.

[Raphael]

(I even googled "language origin studies", with quotes, and got few results).

Yes. There are plenty of diachronic conlangers here, who are familiar with the usages of historical linguistics; while language origins studies is a discipline [...]

Arguably, the question raised by Travis's Google results is, does that discipline even exist?

[WeepingElf]

(I even googled "language origin studies", with quotes, and got few results).

Yes. There are plenty of diachronic conlangers here, who are familiar with the usages of historical linguistics; while language origins studies is a discipline [...]

Arguably, the question raised by Travis's Google results is, does that discipline even exist?

It may be known under a different name. At any rate, it is a small discipline, and more speculation than anything, and of little interest to conlangers.

[Travis B.]

Yes. There are plenty of diachronic conlangers here, who are familiar with the usages of historical linguistics; while language origins studies is a discipline [...]

Arguably, the question raised by Travis's Google results is, does that discipline even exist?

It may be known under a different name. At any rate, it is a small discipline, and more speculation than anything, and of little interest to conlangers.

When I googled for "language origin studies", without quotes, the second thing I got was from "The Institute for Creation Research" - lol.

Also, when I googled from my computer rather than from my phone I got more results for "language origin studies", with quotes, but then even then google said it only got 1,130 results, which is a tiny number for Google hits.

[Richard W]

A proposed abandonment of Mon-Khmer in opposition to the Munda languages got me thinking about the eponymous languages. Is there any evidence that they close to one another within the context of SE Asian Austroasiatic languages? I thought I'd seen claims, but when I googled for such an idea, I couldn't find anything.

[Nortaneous]

A proposed abandonment of Mon-Khmer in opposition to the Munda languages got me thinking about the eponymous languages. Is there any evidence that they close to one another within the context of SE Asian Austroasiatic languages? I thought I'd seen claims, but when I googled for such an idea, I couldn't find anything.

I could be wrong about this, but my impression is that "Mon-Khmer" is used either as a synonym for "Austroasiatic" or as Austroasiatic minus Munda, either in a typological sense (it is true that Munda is sort of a typological opposite of Mon-Khmer[1]) or in the sense of a basal split between Munda and Mon-Khmer within Austroasiatic. A lot like "Tibeto-Burman", which can either mean "Sino-Tibetan" or "Sino-Tibetan minus Sinitic under the outdated assumption of a basal split between Sinitic and everything else".[3]

[1] Patricia Donegan has some theoretical papers on this which look basically reasonable to me[2] and which I'll probably make a conlang family out of at some point.

[2] Which have apparently been extended to posit a disyllabic, agglutinative, primarily suffixing structure in Basque? I haven't looked into this very much, but "Proto-Basque was typologically similar to Mon-Khmer" is a claim I have seen, e.g. here. I'm not at all competent to evaluate that. It does seem like the much-remarked-upon V₁C₁V₁C₂ structure could arise from reduction of presyllabic consonants to a glottal stop followed by root restructuring with schwa replaced by a copy of the main vowel, but I don't know if Lakarra gets into that (I skimmed this paper a month ago and have been meaning to read it properly) or even whether or not that's contradicted by internal reconstruction, accentology, basic knowledge that every scholar of Basque has had since forever, etc.

[3] But I don't think it's safe to assume that the Sino-Tibetan Urheimat was anywhere near the region of highest linguistic diversity within the family today! That region is mountains, the opposite of that region is China, and James C. Scott has made some pretty convincing arguments...

[Richard W]

I could be wrong about this, but my impression is that "Mon-Khmer" is used either as a synonym for "Austroasiatic" or as Austroasiatic minus Munda, either in a typological sense (it is true that Munda is sort of a typological opposite of Mon-Khmer[1]) or in the sense of a basal split between Munda and Mon-Khmer within Austroasiatic. A lot like "Tibeto-Burman", which can either mean "Sino-Tibetan" or "Sino-Tibetan minus Sinitic under the outdated assumption of a basal split between Sinitic and everything else".[3]

Or closer to home, like core Indo-European and Tocharian. Roger Blench has proposed, how seriously I'm not sure, that Tibetan, Burmese and Chinese are relatively closely related within Tibeto-Burman! (He's also suggested that some TB languages might not be TB at all!)

I thought I'd read that one objection to the name 'Mon-Khmer' was that the two were relatively closely related in SEA Austroasiatic. How closely related I don't know. They tend to show up in concepts like core-Mon Khmer, with Khasic and Palaungic as a northern subgroup, but the groupings seem to be as messy as that of Indo-European, fitting the same model of a rapid initial rapid expansion and then disintegration. There may even be some evidence of two pulses of expansion. I get the feeling that most of the evidence is weak, and wonder if Sidwell has overly high standards for the evidence. I also wonder if it's simply a case of Mon and Khmer being better documented, so the best place to look for a cognate is the other language. Or maybe I've just read an unusual selection of materials on the topic over the years, or got hold of the wrong end of the stick.

[Nortaneous]

Roger Blench has proposed, how seriously I'm not sure, that Tibetan, Burmese and Chinese are relatively closely related within Tibeto-Burman! (He's also suggested that some TB languages might not be TB at all!)

Tibetan and Burmese look relatively closely related within TB to me. Chinese not so much, but whatever Blench thinks is an earlier branch I don't know anything about. I think the existence of the belief that Sinitic is basal isn't evidence that Sinitic is basal, though - it's a natural guess to make and there's no evidence.

Isn't the Kho-Bwa thing accepted by now?

[bradrn]

Tibetan and Burmese look relatively closely related within TB to me.

Really? Why? I’ve always had the impression that Tibetic is closer to Rgyalrongic, not that that opinion is supported by anything other than the consonant clusters.

[Nortaneous]

Tibetan and Burmese look relatively closely related within TB to me.

Really? Why?

Basically vibes. It's not something I've thought about too much. But my guess is that Tibetic, Burmic, and Rgyalrongic are more closely related to each other than any is to, say, Kuki-Chin.

[bradrn]

Tibetan and Burmese look relatively closely related within TB to me.

Really? Why?

Basically vibes. It's not something I've thought about too much. But my guess is that Tibetic, Burmic, and Rgyalrongic are more closely related to each other than any is to, say, Kuki-Chin.

Yeah, I don’t really disagree with this.

[bradrn]

An interesting article on the linguistics of programming languages: https://250bpm.com/blog:95/. Unlike most articles of the type, the person writing it actually does understand linguistics well enough to write something interesting.

[Moose-tache]

Is there any way in the IPA to distinguish fricatives with more closure or less closure? E.g., imagine two different s-sounds distinguished by how much air is allowed to pass between the tongue and palate. How would this be transcribed?

[bradrn]

Is there any way in the IPA to distinguish fricatives with more closure or less closure? E.g., imagine two different s-sounds distinguished by how much air is allowed to pass between the tongue and palate. How would this be transcribed?

I’d just use the raising and lowering diacritics… which I can’t type right now, but I’m sure you know what they are! (Or, if not, you can look them up.)

[Moose-tache]

Hmm... That's kind of genius.

[bradrn]

Hmm... That's kind of genius.

Not really — that’s literally the whole point! Even Wikipedia’s IPA chart includes approximants /β̞ ð̞ ʁ̞/. (Yes, this convention is more common for approximants than for fricatives, but there shouldn’t be any ambiguity in your case. Surely you’re not going to contrast /z̞/ with /ɹ/, right… right?)

[Moose-tache]

[foxcatdog]

In english voiced and voiceless stops are actually distinguished by a variety of features such as aspiration at the start of words and preglottalisation/lengthening of previous vowels at the end of syllables. But in French they aren't. So the question here is can you distinguish them in whispered speech or do you have to tell by context?

[bradrn]

In english voiced and voiceless stops are actually distinguished by a variety of features such as aspiration at the start of words and preglottalisation/lengthening of previous vowels at the end of syllables. But in French they aren't. So the question here is can you distinguish them in whispered speech or do you have to tell by context?

I don’t know about French in particular, but in general whispered speech isn’t truly voiceless, but still slightly phonated. (Wikipedia identifies whispering with breathy voice specifically, though I find that doubtful.)