Resources Thread

[Raholeun]

Waking this thread, because I am looking for a comprehensive grammar of the Arabic language, preferably with references to its different variants. Those that I found, expect me to master the writing system first, but I just want to check some paradigms. Do you have tips?

[WeepingElf]

Waking this thread, because I am looking for a comprehensive grammar of the Arabic language, preferably with references to its different variants. Those that I found, expect me to master the writing system first, but I just want to check some paradigms. Do you have tips?

Wikipedia has this, though I don't know how good it is. At least, it gives all the forms and paradigms both in Arabic script and in romanization.

[Glass Half Baked]

This pdf is pretty good, because it's succinct and hits all the points you want for comparative grammar. You don't really need Arabic script knowledge, because they give you all the vowel marks.
This one is a little longer and more rambling, but it's better for the details. Again, vowel marks are included so no real script knowledge required beyond the obvious.

[Raholeun]

Wikipedia has this, though I don't know how good it is. At least, it gives all the forms and paradigms both in Arabic script and in romanization.

That is indeed what I am looking for, and then some. The linked article isn't half bad, and I am assuming it is pretty much correct, but it is limited in scope (as a Wiki entry should be).

This pdf is pretty good, because it's succinct and hits all the points you want for comparative grammar. You don't really need Arabic script knowledge, because they give you all the vowel marks.
This one is a little longer and more rambling, but it's better for the details. Again, vowel marks are included so no real script knowledge required beyond the obvious.

Unfortunately, both of these do in fact presuppose that one learns the writing system. Which I think is odd. Why is it perfectly natural to write, let's say a grammar of Chinese, Acehnese or Mongolian, without demanding knowledge of Hanzi, Jawi or the Mongolian script, but not so for Arabic? Thusfar, I have found The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic by Watson which comes close, but is proverbially not a cigar.

[Glass Half Baked]

It's 28 letters.
I believe in you.

[bradrn]

It's 28 letters.

It’s still an annoyance if one just wants to look up some forms.

[Travis B.]

The big problems with Arabic script are A) it's cursive so you have to learn how all the letters link together and B) when written in-line with Latin script it is typically squished to the point of being completely illegible. E.g. I have a much harder time with Arabic script than with Hebrew script myself for these reasons.

[fusijui]

It's an idiosyncrasy of some academic subfields. Refusal to use interlinear text is a similar one, and probably related to some degree.

I don't have any suggestions for the OP though, sorry.

[Raholeun]

Turns out A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic by Ryding fits the bill.

[fusijui]

A happy ending!

And it's nice to see this thread revived again, even briefly.

[WeepingElf]

This month's Fiat Lingua post looks very useful for those who wish to create African-style tone systems, or systems in which something else behaves in a similar way. I'll use it for the vowel system of Old Albic.

[bradrn]

This month's Fiat Lingua post looks very useful for those who wish to create African-style tone systems, or systems in which something else behaves in a similar way. I'll use it for the vowel system of Old Albic.

What a pleasant surprise to see this! I actually helped Gabriel edit an earlier version of this article (in my capacity as editor of The Descriptivist), and I’m glad to see how well it’s turned out.

[WeepingElf]

A very valuable resource for those exploring the linguistic prehistory of Europe: Sub-Indo-European Europe - downloadable for free!

[Raphael]

A very valuable resource for those exploring the linguistic prehistory of Europe: Sub-Indo-European Europe - downloadable for free!

Thank you, sounds really interesting! And it's great that they have it as both pdf and epub. (On pcs I probably prefer pdfs, but they're a pain to read on smaller devices.)

[gabrielswai]

This month's Fiat Lingua post looks very useful for those who wish to create African-style tone systems, or systems in which something else behaves in a similar way. I'll use it for the vowel system of Old Albic.

I'm glad it's been useful! I have a ton of resources I've collected in the past couple years regarding grammatical tone; let me know if there's anything you're searching for and I probably can find something on it.

[bradrn]

This month's Fiat Lingua post looks very useful for those who wish to create African-style tone systems, or systems in which something else behaves in a similar way. I'll use it for the vowel system of Old Albic.

I'm glad it's been useful! I have a ton of resources I've collected in the past couple years regarding grammatical tone; let me know if there's anything you're searching for and I probably can find something on it.

Welcome Gabriel! Glad to see you here.

[Zju]

This month's Fiat Lingua post looks very useful for those who wish to create African-style tone systems, or systems in which something else behaves in a similar way. I'll use it for the vowel system of Old Albic.

I'm glad it's been useful! I have a ton of resources I've collected in the past couple years regarding grammatical tone; let me know if there's anything you're searching for and I probably can find something on it.

What resources do you have regarding tonogenesis on the basis of vowel height and quality, or on the basis of something else than surrounding consonantal phonation? Bonus points if it's tonogenesis in a non tonal language.

[Darren]

What resources do you have regarding tonogenesis on the basis of vowel height and quality

From what I can find:

Tone splits along other phonological parameters have been reported in the literature: breathy voice, prenasalization, fortis vs. lenis consonants, vowel height, length and tensity, etc. (Hombert 1987, Endô 1994). Surprisingly, despite the well-known intrinsic pitch variations associated with vowel height, tone split along the high/low vowel distinction is so rare that Hombert et al. (1979:52) state flatly: “It would seem that the interaction between tones and vowel height works in only one direction: tone can affect vowel height, but not vice-versa.”

This is from "Tone sandhi: patterns across Chinese dialects" by Matthew Y. Chen.


This paper gives a few examples:

• Hausa verb tone has been analysed as largely predictable from height of the final vowel, with F1 inversely correlated to tone
• Completely the opposite way round, Ngizim and Bade have predictable verb tone correlated with F1 based on the first vowel
• Middle Chinese checked tones in syllables with voiceless initial consonants had lower tones with nucleus /a/ than /ə/
• Omei Mandarin does something funny with tones
• In Lahu, rising tone can cause a vowel to rise.
• Fuzhou has occasional vowel raising in conjunction with tone raising

The first paper clarifies the Fuzhou example:

Code: Select all

 Low   High (tone)
 ei    i
 ou    u
 øy    y
 ɔi    øy
 ai    ei
 au    ou

[gabrielswai]

This month's Fiat Lingua post looks very useful for those who wish to create African-style tone systems, or systems in which something else behaves in a similar way. I'll use it for the vowel system of Old Albic.

I'm glad it's been useful! I have a ton of resources I've collected in the past couple years regarding grammatical tone; let me know if there's anything you're searching for and I probably can find something on it.

What resources do you have regarding tonogenesis on the basis of vowel height and quality, or on the basis of something else than surrounding consonantal phonation? Bonus points if it's tonogenesis in a non tonal language.

Based specifically on vowel height and quality, no example immediately comes to mind. However, I do know off the top of my head that Cheyenne developed tones based on the length of its vowels while being previously toneless. I briefly discuss this on page 13 of my Fiat Lingua article, where I cite this article detailing Cheyenne tonogenesis: https://doi.org/10.1086/465218. Essentially, high tones were gained on long vowels.

[Glenn]

Based specifically on vowel height and quality, no example immediately comes to mind. However, I do know off the top of my head that Cheyenne developed tones based on the length of its vowels while being previously toneless. I briefly discuss this on page 13 of my Fiat Lingua article, where I cite this article detailing Cheyenne tonogenesis: https://doi.org/10.1086/465218. Essentially, high tones were gained on long vowels.

I learned about the Cheyenne tonogenesis of long vowels -> high tone on this board many years ago from Jeff Burke (a former member), and tried to apply it to my own (forever embryonic) conlang Chusole. The eventual concept was that the ancestral language was toneless, but had a vowel length contrast and initial stress (characteristics still reflected in another branch of the language family). In Chusole, the vowel length contrast was lost, but formerly long vowels acquired high tone; in words with no long vowels, the first syllable of the word had high tone and the remaining syllables low tone, with pitch tending to drop over the course of the word. I'm not sure how realistic this is, and in the end, I felt as though I had ended up with something not that different from a stress system.

I found your article about tone quite interesting, and I reviewed the earlier Fiat Lingua article by Aidan Aannestad as well. I have not studied any tonal languages myself, and my knowledge of them is fragmentary at best, so any information about them is enlightening.