Re: Some Boreanesian Phonological History

Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> Kristian Jensen <kljensen@...> writes:
>
> > Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> > > Kristian Jensen <kljensen@...> writes:
-----<snip>-----
> > Naturalness is not at all necessary for reconstructive purposes. The
> > reconstructed system is extremely theoretical and only helps to explain
> > the relationships found between vastly divergent languages.
>
> Well, some historical linguists at least try to get a glimpse of the
> proto-language actually spoken some time ago, and those tend to reject
> a proposal that doesn't look like a plausible natlang, or shows
> patterns that would puzzle linguistic typologists if they were found
> in a language actually spoken in the world.  Others are less stringent
> on "naturalness" of protolanguages, seeing them rather as a "formula"
> expressing relationships between languages without claiming to be a
> more-or-less exact image of the actual ancestral language.  *Every*
> linguist, however, with the possible exception of two or three
> hard-line American structuralists, would rightly reject a proposal that
> includes an outright impossibility such as a glottal nasal, but that is
> not what you did.
I went for the formula approach.

> >       There isn't a
> > lot of material that linguists in the Boreanesian universe could use to
> > reconstruct the proto-language. Boreanesian is effectively a language
> > isolate, all other related languages became extinct years ago. The last
> > speaker of a non-standard Boreanesian language died some time in the
> > 1950s.
>
> Which means that they have to rely on internal reconstruction,
> a method which always tends to come up with systems that are more
> regular than what really happened.  Internal reconstruction may turn
> up a number of lost regularities behind an irregular pattern, but it
> doesn't tell *when* those regularities got lost.  The result is a
> protolanguage which looks as if it was designed on a conlanger's
> drawing-board, while in the actual history there always were
> irregularities because all those regular patterns never co-existed at
> the same time.
That's the basically the way I pictured how linguists reconstructed
Proto-B. The formula-like regularity of the reconstructed inventory
is a direct result of the complete lack of material.

> > One unusual characterisic you perhaps noticed in the above inventory
> > is the complete lack of nasals.
>
> Oh yes, I noticed it!
>
> >       But this in itself is not unusual nor unnatural in
> > languages with nasal harmony. All languages in the Boreanesian
> > family had nasal harmony. Although I should have of course added a
> > series of nasal vowels in the Proto-B's vowel inventory:
> >
> >    *u~ *r~ *i~ *@~ *a~
> >
> > Sorry... kinda forgot that. ;)
>
> Ah, now a number of things become clearer.  So there were rules such
> as /bu~/ -> [mu], right?
That's right!

-----<snip>-----
> > Sorry, I guess I phrased that in the wrong way. I meant to say that
> > nasality was _already_ an autosegmentalized feature in Proto-B. Like
> > I said, nasal harmony was certainly a part of Proto-B. In most
> > languages, nasality is an integral part of phonemes. However, in a
> > few languages like Boreanesian,
>
> ...or some languages of the North American Pacific coast...
...or a whole bunch of languages in and around the Amazon basin. In
fact, the source that inspired my use of nasal-harmony comes from South
American languages like Yagua and Guaraní.

> >       this feature is extracted from the
> > segmental tier and placed on the suprasegmental tier so that it
> > characterizes entire syllables, entire morphemes, or even entire
> > words. Nasal-harmony in Boreanesian is characterized by foot-level
> > (or stress-group-level) specifications for [- nasal] or [+ nasal],
> > and certain segments (lenis stops, approximants, and vowels) surface
> > differently in oral and nasal feet.
>
> I.e. /bu/ -> [bu] but /bu~/ -> [mu] (or something like that), as I
> already guessed above.  Do voiceless stops yield voiceless nasals?
> And what about continuants?
All voiceless sounds are transparent to nasality. That is, they don't
host nasality by turning into nasals themselves, but they don't block
the spread of nasality either. So voiceless stops and fricatives remain
stops and fricatives, even when the surrounding sounds are nasals.

Approximants, being voiced, are hosts to nasality -- i.e., they become
nasalized.

-----<snip>-----
> > No, you're not misled at all. Although in standard Boreanesian, its more
> > like [a]/[Q] for *a, and [i]/[u] for *@. Proto-B *a was more than likely
> > /A/, being radical rather than palatal. Proto-B *@ merged with *i and *u
> > in front and round contexts respectively. Proto-B *r retained its neutral
> > status, even after merging with *@.
>
> I.e., it is reflected in modern B. always as [@].  Let me try to
> figure out the result of these rules:
>
> Proto-B   Front  Neutral  Round
>
>  *u        [u]     [u]     [u]
>  *r        [@]     [@]     [@]
>  *i        [i]     [i]     [i]
>  *@        [i]     [@]     [u]
>  *a        [a]     [A]     [Q]
>
> Just a wild guess, correct me if I'm wrong.  Did I miss something?
You didn't miss anything. You're correct.

-----<snip>-----
> > Not all. Some! Remember (see below) some consonants are opaque to rounding
> > but are hosts to fronting, while some are opaque to fronting but are hosts
> > to rounding. Apicals, being as you said "neutral", are opaque to both.
>
> You mean, transparent to both, as they don't affect vowels.
No, I mean opaque because they block the spread of vowel features _and_
are not affected by vowel features. If they were transparent they would
behave like voiceless sounds in nasal-harmony contexts (see above). That
is, they would not block spreading of vowel features, but on the other
hand, they would not be affected by the spread either.

Here's a summary of the three different types of segments involved in
harmony contexts:

   Target/Host segments     : Are affected by features that are
                              harmonized, and do not inhibit the spread
                              of these features.
   Opaque/Blocking segments : Are not affected, and inhibit the spread
                              of harmonizing features.
   Transparent segments     : Are not affected, but do not inhibit the
                              spread of harmonizing features either.

Boreanesian has all types. In nasal-harmony contexts, Boreanesian has
target and transparent segments. In vowel-harmony contexts, Boreanesian
has target and opaque segments, or all three depending on how one
interprets sequences like [kw] or [pw], which Boreanesian has.

-----<snip>-----
> > Vowels are phonemic. But not all are used in different types of
> > syllables. Only heavy syllables have the complete inventory.
>
> What is the complete inventory?  I seem to remember /i @ u a/ from
> previous posts, but I may be missing something.
Yes, you're right. Those four are the entire inventory -- not much more
than what minor syllables can dish up with having basically the same
minus /a/.

> >       Light
> > syllables have only /i u @/, and some light syllables are even
> > vowelless at the underlying level -- having only epenthetic [i u
> > @]. It is these epenthetic vowels that are subject to vowel
> > harmony. Now as for whether the quality of these vowels is determined
> > by adjacent consonants or not is difficult even for me to say. The
> > statement for spreading of front or rounding is quite complex and
> > requires specifying both the vowels and consonants
> > involved. Personally, I go for a more autosegmental or prosodical
> > approach.
>
> Yeah, I am also quite fond of autosegmental phonology.  Good for
> interesting effects!  I have some weird high/low vowel harmony system
> lying around which I concocted shortly after reading about
> autosegmental phonology for the first time in a textbook.  In that
> system, vowel height follows similar rules as tones do in some
> African languages.  The number of vowel height autosegments is not
> necessarily the same as the number of syllables in the word, and
> certain suffixes don't have their own autosegments.  If the word has
> more vowel heights than syllables, two heights are assigned to a
> single vowel, which thus becomes a diphthong; if a suffix is added,
> the diphthong is monophthongized because the second autosegment now
> has a syllable of its own.
You may be interested to know that there are actually languages
with vowel height harmony. I seem to recall them being in Africa and
Central America. The harmonic rules are something to the effect of
having only high and low vowels in one set, and only mid vowels in
another set.

-----<snip>-----
> > Okey dokey! Here are some made-up examples just to keep things simple.
> >
> >    /su + diw/             > sudiw
> >    /su + kay/             > sukway
>
> I.e., /u/ labializes following velar.
Yes!

> >    /pkway/                > pukway
>
> /p/ is labial, hence the epenthetic vowel is [u].
Nope. First, since /k/ is peripheral, it can host the rounding of /w/.
In effect, /kw/ is a permissable consonant cluster. Second, since /k/
is peripheral and does not block the spread of rounding, the epenthetic
vowel between /p/ and /k/ is [u].

Actually, upon reflection, you could be right! If the underlying
structure is /pwkay/. It would surface the same way [pukway], since
/pw/ is a legal cluster (viz. /p/ is peripheral and compatible with
rounding). So you could argue, /pw/ is labial_ized_, hence the
epenthetic vowel is [u]. /w/ would then assimilate with this epenthetic
[u]. And with /k/ another peripheral consonant, the rounding proceeds
rightward. Like I mentioned before, it is extremely difficult to tell
whether the rounding comes from consonants or from vowels. For all
practical purposes, the underlying form could also just as well be
/pukay/.

A better representation of [pukway] is through the autosegmental approach:

   R LF
   /\||
   pkay

(where R is the autosegment for rounding, L for low, and F for fronting.

Here I don't have to worry about whether rounding comes from a vowel, as
in /pukay/, or from a consonant, as in /pwkay/ or /pkway/. All three
possibilities would surface as [pukway], making it impossible to state
where rounding is coming from.

I'll show what's going on autosegmentally in the next examples.

>
> >    /si + pkway/           > sipukway
> >    /T@ + pkway/           > T@pukway
>
> What is /T/?  A voiceless dental fricative, or something else?
> A laminal stop (or fricative)?
Sorry. Laminal denti-alveolar stop. It's just me being uncreative in
the transcription.

Autosegmentally this is:

   F   R LF        F  R LF
   |   /\||        | /|\||
   s + pkay     > sipukway

   H   R LF        H  R LF
   |   /\||        | /|\||
   T + pkay     > T@pukway

> >    /d + pkway/            > dupukway
>
> /d/ is apical and thus neutral, hence the epenthetic vowel
> duplicates the vowel of the following syllable.
Something like that. More precisely, the rounding of /w/ spreads
across two peripheral consonants: /p/ and /k/.

Autosegmentally this is:

       R LF          R  LF
       /\||        ///\\||
   d + pkay     > dupukway


> >    /d + Tway/             > d@Tuway
> >    /d + pkway + Tway/     > dupukwa:cuway
> >    /bkwi + T + pkway/     > bukwicupukway
>
> I can't see what is going on here, mainly because I don't know what
> /T/ is.
Yeah... sorry'bout that.

Anyways, in the first one, /T/ is laminal and thus is incompatible
with rounding. *[Tw] is therefore an illegal cluster and an epenthetic
[u] is inserted. /T/, being laminal, also blocks the spread of rounding.
Rounding cannot therefore spread backwards in the first one. The
epenthetic vowel is by default [@].

The second one shows that rounding spreads to the same prefixed light
syllable because the intervening consonants are peripheral. It also shows
/T/ palatalizes to [c] since laminal consonants are hosts to the fronting
of /y/ (I should have written /j/). Loss of /y/ lengthens /a/.

The third one should be clear by now. I hope.

Autosegmentally this is:

        RLF                R LF
        |||                /\||
   d + Tway           > d@Tuway

       R LF    RLF        R  L FR LF
       /\||    |||      ///\\/\|/\||
   d + pkay + Tway   > dupukwa:cuway

   R F       R LF       R F   R  LF
   /\|       /\||      /|\/\///\\||
   bki + T + pkay   > bukwicupukway


> > Hope that helps.
>
> A bit at least.  A lot of things have become clearer to me.
I'm glad that someone shows great interest.

-kristian- 8)

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