Fieldwork and Language Documentation

A Bayesian Phylogenetic Classification of Tupí-Guaraní

Lev Michael
Natalia Chousou-Polydouri
Keith Bartolomei
Erin Donnelly
Vivian Wauters
Sérgio Meira
Zachary O'Hagan
2015

This paper presents an internal classification of Tupí-Guaraní based on lexical data from 30 Tupí-Guaraní languages and 2 non-Tupí-Guaraní Tupian languages, Awetí and Mawé. A Bayesian phylogenetic analysis using a generalized binary cognate gain and loss model was carried out on a character table based on the binary coding of cognate sets, which were formed with attention to semantic shift. The classification shows greater internal structure than previous ones, but is congruent with them in several ways.

Contrastive and non-contrastive pre-stopping in Kaytetye

Mark Harvey
Susan Lin
Ben Davies
Katherine Demuth
2015

Kaytetye is one of the few Australian languages for which pre-stopping is contrastive for nasals. This paper provides the first quantitative data on the phonetic realization of contrastive pre-stopping for any Australian language. It also provides data on the hitherto unreported non-contrastive pre-stopping of laterals in Kaytetye. The findings demonstrate that contrastive nasal pre-stopping and non-contrastive lateral pre-stopping differ on three parameters: (a) the conditioning on the distribution of plain vs. pre-stopped realizations; (b) the comparative overall durations of pre-...