Historical and Areal Linguistics

On reconstructing tone in Proto-Niger-Congo

Larry M. Hyman
2020

In this paper I trace tonal correspondences between the widely accepted reconstructed tones of Proto-Bantu lexical morphemes (Meeussen 1980, Bantu Lexical Reconstructions 3) outside of Narrow Bantu proper. From the reconstructions of Proto-Grassfields Bantu (Hyman 1979, Elias et al 1984) we know that that the tones of noun stems and verb roots largely correspond (but with some differences), and we suspect that this may be true in other subgroups within Bantoid. The question which we propose to address in this paper is: How far out from Bantu and Bantoid do these tones reliably...

Niger-Congo linguistic features and typology

Larry M. Hyman
Nicholas R. Rolle
Hannah L. Sande
Emily C. Clem
Peter Jenks
Florian A. J. Lionnet
John Merrill
Nico Baier
2019

In this chapter, we will outline the major phonological, morphological, and syntactic properties of Niger-Congo, paying attention especially to areas of particular typological interest. We will start by discussing two problems: (i) disagreement over what is Niger-Congo; (ii) linguistic features are rarely limited to Niger-Congo (except perhaps noun classes). Our attention will be particularly on the following topics: (i) Consonant systems, usual and unusual systems, e.g. implosives, labiovelars; (ii) vowel systems, especially ATR and nasal contrasts on vowels; (iii) tone and accent:...

Multiple marking in Bantoid: from syntheticity to analyticity

Larry M. Hyman
2018

This paper addresses the mechanisms of change that lead from syntheticity to analyticity in the Bantoid languages of the Nigeria-Cameroon borderland area. I address the different strategies that are adopted as these languages lose applicative “verb extensions” found elsewhere in Bantu and Niger-Congo. I show that although historical recipient, benefactive, and instrumental applicative marking on verbs allowed multiple object noun phrases (send-APPL chief letter, cook-APPL child rice, cut-APPL knife meat), they have been replaced by adpositional phrases and/or serial verb...

A note on Nuba Mountain verb extensions

Larry M. Hyman
2020

Based on the available literature and personal communications with specialists, this paper surveys the rich occurrence of verb extensions in the Nuba mountain languages which mark different grammatical functions such as causative, dative and locative applicatives, comparative, passive, antipassive, reciprocal/reflexive, and associative/instrumental, as well as ventive, itive, habitual, iterative and pluractional marking. Given the diversity of forms among the different groups in the area, a set of guidelines is considered to determine whether specific extensions can be reconstructed...

McLaughlin presents at Philological Society

October 13, 2021

Mairi McLaughlin will be giving a talk at the Philological Society at 8:15am on Friday, October 22, called "The Early French Press: Examining a New Text Type in Historical Linguistics."

On the Pre-Columbian origin of Proto-Omagua-Kokama

Lev Michael
2014

Cabral (1995, 2007, 2011) and Cabral and Rodrigues (2003) established that Kokama and Omagua, closely-related indigenous languages spoken in Peruvian and Brazilian Amazonia, emerged as the result of intense language contact between speakers of a Tupí-Guaraní language and speakers of non-Tupí-Guaraní languages. Cabral (1995, 2007) further argued that the language contact which led to the development of Kokama and Omagua transpired in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, in the Jesuit mission settlements located in the provincia de Maynas (corresponding roughly to modern northern...

The evolution of subject-verb agreement in Eastern Tukanoan

Thiago Costa Chacon
Lev Michael
2018

This article describes the evolution of past/perfective subject-verb agreement morphology in the Tukanoan family, reconstructing relevant aspects of Proto-Tukanoan verbal morphology and delineating the subsequent diachronic development of verbal subject agreement morphology in the Eastern branch of the family. We argue that suffixes that cumulatively expone past/perfective and person, number, and gender (PNG) subject agreement resulted from the fusion of post-verbal demonstratives/pronouns expressing PNG information with suffixes expressing past/perfective TAM information. We propose...

Computational Phylogenetics and the Classification of South American Languages

Lev Michael
Natalia Chousou-Polydouri
2020

In recent years, South Americanist linguists have embraced computational phylogenetic methods to resolve the numerous outstanding questions about the genealogical relationships among the languages of the continent. We provide a critical review of the methods and language classification results that have accumulated thus far, emphasizing the superiority of character-based methods over distance-based ones, and the importance of developing adequate comparative datasets for producing well-resolved classifications.

A Privative Derivational Source for Standard Negation in Lokono (Arawakan)

Konrad Rybka
Lev Michael
2020

It has recently been argued that Arawakan languages of South America provide evidence for a novel historical source for standard negation, a privative derivational affix. This hypothesis posits that the prefixal standard negation found in some languages of the family developed from a privative prefix, ma-, present in Proto-Arawakan, that originally derived privative stative verbs from nouns. According to this account, the function of this prefix extended, in many languages of the family, to negating nominalized verbs in subordinate clauses, and then, via...