Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Emily]

does anyone have any recommendations for grammars (ideally in english, but possibly also in german) for sign languages that are not part of the french sign language family? i'm hoping to find pdfs but i can also figure out interlibrary loans if need be

[keenir]

does anyone have any recommendations for grammars (ideally in english, but possibly also in german) for sign languages that are not part of the french sign language family? i'm hoping to find pdfs but i can also figure out interlibrary loans if need be

I can only get ahold of books in English on American Sign Language...and I used to read that ASL is descended (or at least based on/from) French Sign Language

...so i'm not sure if they'd be any help; sorry

[Emily]

does anyone have any recommendations for grammars (ideally in english, but possibly also in german) for sign languages that are not part of the french sign language family? i'm hoping to find pdfs but i can also figure out interlibrary loans if need be

I can only get ahold of books in English on American Sign Language...and I used to read that ASL is descended (or at least based on/from) French Sign Language

...so i'm not sure if they'd be any help; sorry

they would not, but thank you for checking! (i'm in the preliminary research stage of a sign language conlang, and i have a book already on the linguistics of asl, so i'm trying to get a broader cross-section of what seems to be more or less inherent to sign language in general and what is basically specific to asl or its relatives)

[keenir]

does anyone have any recommendations for grammars (ideally in english, but possibly also in german) for sign languages that are not part of the french sign language family? i'm hoping to find pdfs but i can also figure out interlibrary loans if need be

I can only get ahold of books in English on American Sign Language...and I used to read that ASL is descended (or at least based on/from) French Sign Language
...so i'm not sure if they'd be any help; sorry

they would not, but thank you for checking! (i'm in the preliminary research stage of a sign language conlang, and i have a book already on the linguistics of asl, so i'm trying to get a broader cross-section of what seems to be more or less inherent to sign language in general

My local library has some books on "hand signs" so I'll take a look at if they're just using that as a supposed synonym for ASL or if its more general.

and what is basically specific to asl or its relatives)

I'd have mentioned this before if i'd've remembered it then (sorry) -- in two weeks, I'll have access to a big book of Braille.

[Zju]

This paper makes the case for Proto-Uralic-Eskimo look pretty reasonable. 95 alleged cognates and multiple sound correspondances, including some other than between initial consonants. Genealogic relationships have been established with much less. Even Ante Aikio doesn't shy away from the idea of PUE in his 2022 treatment of Proto-Uralic. So what's the catch?

[WeepingElf]

I am not an expert on either language family, but the idea that Uralic was related to Eskimo-Aleut has some tradition; Knut Bergsland wrote about it in 1959 (if I remember the date correctly), and he wasn't the first - Rasmus Rask already noticed some morphological resemblances back in 1814. In my personal opinion, both Uralic and Eskimo-Aleut are especially conservative members of a macrofamily I call "Mitian" (using a term coined by John Bengtsson), which, besides Uralic and Eskimo-Aleut, also encompasses IE, Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Yukaghir and Chukotko-Kamchatkan. These languages show resemblances in morphology, especially pronouns, which are IMHO best explained by descent from a common ancestor which may have been spoken somewhere near Lake Baykal at the end of the last ice age, rather than by chance or borrowing; alas, there are too few good cognate candidates to prove it and reconstruct Proto-Mitian at the present state of knowledge.

[Zju]

I am aware of the Mitian hypothesis, though I was left with the impression that it's just pastime speculation without any substantive research to back it up, other than the pronouns and the odd suffix here and there (and a dozen or so alleged PIU roots (and some research into Altaic, if you count that)).

[WeepingElf]

Yes, it is all pastime speculation. There are no academic chairs for macrocomparative studies; even people like Bomhard never were professional Nostraticists (he is a - now retired - Indo-Europeanist). Bomhard himself said so on the late, lamented Nostratic-L mailing list. There are some resemblances between those languages that tease us of a distant relationship, but not enough to get a handle on. And anyone who thinks he can try it at home should read this.

[bradrn]

Apparently the Qiang languages — yes, those of the crazy ⟨v⟩ for /χ/ romanisation — have a new, indigenous writing system! The Wikipedia article has images, and links to a UCS proposal with slightly more detail. There’s also a YouTube video from Qiang native speakers, who seem really enthusiastic about it. From what I’ve seen so far, I like it a lot: native-speaker–developed writing systems are always nice to see, and this one looks very well-designed.

[WeepingElf]

That one looks nice and interesting; there even is some vague featurality in it. But why are some vowels written with full letters and others with diacritics?

[bradrn]

That one looks nice and interesting; there even is some vague featurality in it. But why are some vowels written with full letters and others with diacritics?

I really have no idea, though I suppose you could think of them as diacritics to the right, like e.g. Thai ◌า.

[Richard W]

That one looks nice and interesting; there even is some vague featurality in it. But why are some vowels written with full letters and others with diacritics?

Maybe they're inspired by Thai ฤ CHARACTER RU and ฦ CHARACTER LU, which in Brahmic terms are both dependent and independent vowels. I note that it's undecided whether they need a preceding glottal stop character at the start of a word. Is there something funny or incomplete about the requirement for a Qiang word to start with a consonant?

[bradrn]

I note that it's undecided whether they need a preceding glottal stop character at the start of a word. Is there something funny or incomplete about the requirement for a Qiang word to start with a consonant?

Or perhaps they have contrastive word-initial glottal stop? (Not that I’d know anything about it. Nort might, though.)

[Richard W]

I note that it's undecided whether they need a preceding glottal stop character at the start of a word. Is there something funny or incomplete about the requirement for a Qiang word to start with a consonant?

Or perhaps they have contrastive word-initial glottal stop? (Not that I’d know anything about it. Nort might, though.)

Not according to Portuguese Wikipedia. However, there might yet be a contrast only with certain vowels, which would make it 'funny or incomplete'. I'm thinking of the likes of Arabic and Biblical Hebrew vowel-initial words and phrases. Writing has a strong tendency to be morphophonemic.

[bradrn]

I'm thinking of the likes of Arabic and Biblical Hebrew vowel-initial words and phrases.

Hmm, I actually haven’t heard about this… could you elaborate please?

[Nortaneous]

I note that it's undecided whether they need a preceding glottal stop character at the start of a word. Is there something funny or incomplete about the requirement for a Qiang word to start with a consonant?

Or perhaps they have contrastive word-initial glottal stop? (Not that I’d know anything about it. Nort might, though.)

I assumed the preceding glottal stop character was there because Qiang has dependent vowels and Tibetan doesn't have independent ones. The website says: "Used when no consonant letter is available for diacritics."

Glottal stop isn't contrastive in Northern Qiang.

[Richard W]

I'm thinking of the likes of Arabic and Biblical Hebrew vowel-initial words and phrases.

Hmm, I actually haven’t heard about this… could you elaborate please?

Before consonant plus sheva, Hebrew vᵉ 'and' becomes û - the only word that starts with a vowel. If it behaved like the phonetically similar prepositions, it would become vi. Note that this vowel is a relatively rare one.

There are a few Arabic words that underlyingly start with a vowel, such as ism 'name' and ibn son.

[bradrn]

I'm thinking of the likes of Arabic and Biblical Hebrew vowel-initial words and phrases.

Hmm, I actually haven’t heard about this… could you elaborate please?

Before consonant plus sheva, Hebrew vᵉ 'and' becomes û - the only word that starts with a vowel. If it behaved like the phonetically similar prepositions, it would become vi. Note that this vowel is a relatively rare one.

Oh, so that’s the conditioning factor for that realisation! I didn’t realise.

Incidentally, I also didn’t realise those were the only vowel-initial words in Biblical Hebrew… it’s gotten obscured in Modern Hebrew since aleph and ayin are now silent.

[Starbeam]

There are a few Arabic words that underlyingly start with a vowel, such as ism 'name' and ibn 'son'.

I always wondered if that was an orthographic convention, given the constraint is lost in descendant Arabic languages and both of those words have plurals beginning with a consonant. I could be so wrong, so i'm curious to the other details, tho. I know "wë-" never becomes "wa-" preceding definite article "ha-", unlike its rhymes "bë", "kë-", and "lë-".

[Raphael]

Today I learned, by reading the German Wikipedia entry on the glottal stop (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottaler_Plosiv), that there's a glottal stop in the northern varieties of German that I've been speaking and listening to for my whole life. I never noticed that.

Let's just say that this is a really weird thing to hear or read about. "Did you hear about the comumoungulous retrolaxive? That's the sound that speakers of your dialect put after every word-final 'o'! What do you mean, you've never noticed making a sound after a word-final 'o'?"