The Luwian language belongs to the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family and was spoken around 3000 years ago (approx. 1500 – 700 BCE; Turkey northern Syria). Even though this... Show moreThe Luwian language belongs to the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family and was spoken around 3000 years ago (approx. 1500 – 700 BCE; Turkey northern Syria). Even though this language hasno living descendants and left no significant traces in any language currently spoken in the area, we do have a steadily growing corpus of texts, written on clay, stone and metal, in two different writing systems: cuneiform and hieroglyphic writing. This dissertation is concerned with the question of how Luwian must have sounded (phonetics) and how its sounds were systematically organised (phonology). It also treats the language’s history, tracing the origins of its sounds back to Proto-Anatolian and Proto-Indo-European. Five chapters, each of which has been published in a peer-reviewed journal or offered for publication, cover the most important domains of Luwian phonology: vowels, consonants and syllable structure. At the same time, this thesis illustrates various methods used to retrieve phonetic and phonological details from a dead language. These involve etymology, diachronic and synchronic typology and rigorous orthographical study. Along the way, various proposals are made to refine our phonetic interpretation of the writing systems in which the language was documented. Show less
This dissertation presents a description of Mankanya, an Atlantic language spoken by about 65 000 speakers in Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and the Gambia. It includes a sketch of the phonology and a... Show moreThis dissertation presents a description of Mankanya, an Atlantic language spoken by about 65 000 speakers in Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and the Gambia. It includes a sketch of the phonology and a detailed description of the morphology and syntax of the language. Some aspects of discourse level structure are also discussed and two interlinearised sample texts are included.Mankanya has a rich morphology with both nominal and verbal inflection, and a range of derivative morphemes. Like many other Atlantic languages, nouns can be grouped into classes based on the agreement of the inflections between nouns and their modifiers. Verbs have prefixes that agree with the subject. Though some verbal affixes indicate different aspects, most distinctions of tense, aspect and mode are made by using verbal auxiliaries. Clause chaining is possible with reduced subject agreement if the subject is unchanged. Where the subject does change a different subject marker is often used.A Grammar of Mankanya will be of interest for those studying of Atlantic languages, as well a resource for wider typological comparison. Show less
This dissertation investigates how sound change is adopted by speakers and listeners, based on a currently-ongoing cluster of changes in Dutch termed the ‘Polder shift’. The main aim of the... Show moreThis dissertation investigates how sound change is adopted by speakers and listeners, based on a currently-ongoing cluster of changes in Dutch termed the ‘Polder shift’. The main aim of the dissertation is to form a bridge between five key areas of linguistics: historical phonology, sociophonetics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and quantitative linguistics. A unified account of these different angles to the study of sound change is not trivial. This dissertation uses psycholinguistic experiments combined with detailed quantitative analysis to study the contributions of the different components to the adoption of sound change in the medium and long term. The population studied in this dissertation is sociolinguistic migrants: in this case, Flemish speakers of Dutch who have migrated to the Netherlands, and thereby migrated from a non-Polder-shift area to a Polder-shift area. The methods adopted in this dissertation include a corpus study of regional variation, longitudinal psycholinguistic experiments over nine months’ time, cross-sectional psycholinguistic experiments spanning multiple decades of apparent time, and two neurolinguistic studies using EEG. Results show that the sociolinguistic migrants rapidly acquire allophonic variation at the phonological level (albeit not necessarily the associated sociolinguistic knowledge), but that it takes a long time (more than nine months, up to multiple decades) for this to carry forward to their behavioral production and perception, and moreover is subject to significant individual differences. The contributions by this dissertation show how the fundamentally sociolinguistic phenomenon of sound change can be studied empirically using psycho- and neurolinguistics, and profit from recent innovations in statistics. Show less
This book presents a grammar description of Dhao, an endangered Austronesian language spoken by about 3000 people on Ndao Island in Eastern Indonesia. It is a member of the Sumba-Hawu subgroup in... Show moreThis book presents a grammar description of Dhao, an endangered Austronesian language spoken by about 3000 people on Ndao Island in Eastern Indonesia. It is a member of the Sumba-Hawu subgroup in the Austronesian family and displays an intensive contact with nearby Kupang Malay and the Rote dialects, which also influences the grammar of the language. This grammar has six chapters which mainly describe the phonology, morphology, and syntax of Dhao. Dhao has an open syllabic system. Word classes are defined only through constructions. The only derivational prefix pa- bears a variety of meanings and interacts with other morphological processes. (C)a- partial reduplication applies to both nominal and verbal categories. Furthermore, verbs and adjectives are only distinguishable through serial verb constructions (SVCs).In order to indicate grammatical relations, only co-indexing system applies. Due to mismatch between verb valencies and constructions, valency is treated as semantic and transitivity is syntactic term. SVCs include at most three verbs whose types are based on the semantics of the verbs. This grammar provides an innovative contribution to the tradition of language research and description in Eastern Indonesia and specifically in the Timor Region. Show less
This descriptive grammar of Nchane, a Beboid language of Cameroon, is based largely on text data and takes a functional approach. Chapters include accounts of the phonology, nouns, noun phrases,... Show moreThis descriptive grammar of Nchane, a Beboid language of Cameroon, is based largely on text data and takes a functional approach. Chapters include accounts of the phonology, nouns, noun phrases, verbs, clause structure, and information structure. An interlinearized text is provided as well. Features of particular interest are the presence of a fricative vowel, two locative noun classes, compound pronouns, and a set of anaphoric demonstratives which encode speaker attitude. Show less
Shiwiar is a language spoken by around 1,200 people in the Amazonian lowlands of eastern Ecuador and northern Peru. It belongs to the Chicham (Jivaroan) language family. This work is the first... Show moreShiwiar is a language spoken by around 1,200 people in the Amazonian lowlands of eastern Ecuador and northern Peru. It belongs to the Chicham (Jivaroan) language family. This work is the first grammatical description of the language, and it is based on a 30-hour audio-visual corpus of natural speech, collected over 12 months of fieldwork between 2011 and 2016 in the Pastaza province of Ecuador.This dissertation is an analysis of Shiwiar phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and information structure. Some of the most salient and typologically interesting phenomena described include the high degree of phonetic and phonological variability in the speech community, a rare type of differential object marking, a rich paradigm of pronominal indexing on the verb, and the extensive use of clause chains as a discursive and clause combining device. This work also engages with the areal and typological literature to shed light on their diachronic development. From a methodological perspective, special emphasis is given throughout this dissertation to the value of using natural language data for linguistic analysis, and the importance of committing to a high standard of transparency and resolvability with regards to the data. Show less
Estimates differ, but in general it is assumed that about half of our spoken and written language consists of stock phrases, formulaic sequences, and common, semantically transparent combinations... Show moreEstimates differ, but in general it is assumed that about half of our spoken and written language consists of stock phrases, formulaic sequences, and common, semantically transparent combinations of words, also known as lexical bundles. There is a growing body of experimental work showing that lexical bundles are read, understood, and pronounced faster than their infrequent matched controls, which seems to suggest that these bundles function as units in processing, much like single words.This thesis focuses on the processing of Dutch lexical bundles, and does so by considering them from different angles: How do we read lexical bundles? Are there differences in processing between age groups? How do we process spoken lexical bundles? And how do we produce them? In answering these questions, a wide range of experimental methods, and both statistical and computational modeling are employed. Show less
This dissertation provides a comprehensive look at the consonant-tone interaction embedded in a description of the sound system of two under-documented Chinese dialects, namely Lili Wu Chinese and... Show moreThis dissertation provides a comprehensive look at the consonant-tone interaction embedded in a description of the sound system of two under-documented Chinese dialects, namely Lili Wu Chinese and Shuangfeng Xiang Chinese. In the existing literature, consonant-tone interaction generally concerns a [voiceless/H]-[voiced/L] co-occurrence pattern. A high tone usually co-occurs with a voiceless consonant, while a low tone usually co-occurs with a voiced consonant. However, largely because of the high level of homogeneity in the languages sampled, and the lack of access to up-to-date statistical techniques, this [voiceless/H]-[voiced/L] pattern has veiled the full picture of consonant-tone interaction across the world’s languages. Based on a series of phonetic studies of phonological contrasts, there are two key findings that contribute to our understanding of the diversity in consonant-tone interaction. First, voiceless aspirated onsets can also co-occur with low tones. This finding is antagonistic to the [voiceless/H]-[voiced/L] pattern which posits that only contrastively voiced onsets can be in favor of low tones. Second, the realization of consonant-tone interaction is not only specific between languages but also within languages. Speakers of different generations of a given language can utilize phonetic cues differently to signal the same phonological contrasts. Show less
This thesis is about the Mochica language, an extinct linguistic isolate that was spoken until the mid- to late-nineteenth century in the northern coastal area of Peru. The aim of this study is... Show moreThis thesis is about the Mochica language, an extinct linguistic isolate that was spoken until the mid- to late-nineteenth century in the northern coastal area of Peru. The aim of this study is twofold. The first goal is to reconstruct and better understand the Mochica language, in order to achieve the second goal of this research: a comparison of the Mochica language with other languages, which could potentially allow the establishment of contact or genealogical relations.This thesis includes a brief grammatical sketch of the Mochica language, as well as the reconstruction of some of its grammatical aspects (nominal possession, numeral classification, and nominalization) and its phonology. The thesis also offers the results of the grammatical and lexical comparison carried out between the Mochica language and other surrounding languages, and with other typologically similar languages.This thesis will be of interest to linguists who study indigenous languages of the Americas, Andean Linguistics and Linguistic Typology. Show less
This dissertation investigates on-going language variation and change in Abui, a Timor-Alor-Pantar (Papuan) language spoken on the island of Alor, eastern Indonesia. Like many indigenous languages... Show moreThis dissertation investigates on-going language variation and change in Abui, a Timor-Alor-Pantar (Papuan) language spoken on the island of Alor, eastern Indonesia. Like many indigenous languages spoken on Alor, Abui has been in intensive contact with Alor Malay, the regional lingua franca, for around 50-60 years. This has had the greatest impact on younger speakers, who are now being raised in Alor Malay and only learn Abui during or after adolescence. Drawing on methods from descriptive linguistics, bilingualism research, and variationist sociolinguistics, the Abui of four different age-groups was found to vary significantly, suggesting that this shift to Alor Malay is having an impact on Abui.This was illustrated using three case-studies of language variation and change, examining reflexive possessive marking, verb usage, and reduplication. Broadly speaking, it was found that the 50-60 years of intense contact between Alor Malay and Abui has led to the simplification of Abui grammar. In particular, the reflexivity distinction in possession is becoming neutralized, certain verbs are taking over others and becoming more generic, while reduplication is becoming more productive and more Malay-like in function and form. These outcomes are argued to be a case of both incomplete acquisition and transfer.This dissertation may prove of relevance to anyone interested in the study of language contact and change, bilingualism, sociolinguistics, descriptive linguistics, endangered languages, Papuan and Austronesian languages, and language variation in minority languages. Show less
Computer-assisted corpus linguistics is one of the main points of convergence between linguistic and computational methods. In particular, the use of diachronic linguistic corpora provides... Show moreComputer-assisted corpus linguistics is one of the main points of convergence between linguistic and computational methods. In particular, the use of diachronic linguistic corpora provides opportunities for the quantitative analysis of phenomena concerning language change through time. This dissertation offers contributions to three of the stages of the research involving diachronic corpora: (a) corpus building and compilation; (b) designing of tools and algorithms for data exploration; and (c) data analysis for linguistic, cultural and historical research. Two resources are first presented: a Web scraper of comments from news portals; and a diachronic corpus composed of comments published in a news website. Then, I propose a generalizable method to assist in the identification of periods of establishment and obsolescence of linguistic items in a diachronic corpus based on the frequency of these items in the corpus. This method may be employed for the analysis of any collection of linguistic items, regardless of language or historical period. Finally, I describe how diachronic corpora might be used for quantitative linguistic investigation by proposing a framework centered on the investigation of vocabulary through a diachronic approach, and demonstrate its applicability by analyzing the use of the term 'fake news' in the media. Show less
Dit promotieonderzoek heeft tot hoofddoel de mogelijke cognaten te analyseren voor bepaalde antiloopsoorten in de Bantoe gemeenschappen. Door enerzijds de fundamentele principes van de Historisch... Show moreDit promotieonderzoek heeft tot hoofddoel de mogelijke cognaten te analyseren voor bepaalde antiloopsoorten in de Bantoe gemeenschappen. Door enerzijds de fundamentele principes van de Historisch-Vergelijkende Taalkunde (vergelijkende methodologie) en anderzijds een maximum aantal bibliografische bronnen te gebruiken, zijn een groot aantal woorden uit een aanzienlijk aantal Bantoetalen verzameld. 174 protovormen betreffende de woordenschat specifiek voor de antilopen in Bantoe zijn uitgelicht. Van deze vormen waren 62 stammen al voorgesteld in de database Bantu Lexical Reconstructions (BLR) (2003) en 14 via andere bronnen. Sommige veelvoorkomende lexicale creatieprocessen in de Bantoetalen zijn semantische uitbreiding, reduplicatie, metathese en de metafoor. Bovendien heeft dit onderzoek het mogelijk gemaakt de betekenis te verfijnen van meerdere reeds voorgestelde reconstructies in de BLR. De semantische velden van de nomenclatuur van dieren zijn onderhevig aan heel wat verschuivingen, wat voornamelijk wordt verklaard door de veranderingen van de nominale klassen, maar ook door problemen met de betrouwbaarheid van bepaalde bronnen. In sommige gevallen is men erin geslaagd de oorsprong van de betekenis van gereconstrueerde stammen te achterhalen en hun semantische motivaties te begrijpen. Show less
The dissertation investigates the interaction of various kinds of phonologically weak items (clitics) with different types of elliptical operations (mainly VP-ellipsis and sluicing). The main focus... Show moreThe dissertation investigates the interaction of various kinds of phonologically weak items (clitics) with different types of elliptical operations (mainly VP-ellipsis and sluicing). The main focus of the work is on what this interaction can reveal about the timing of ellipsis and cliticization.The first part of the dissertation investigates the interaction of VP-ellipsis and second position cliticization in Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian and reveals crucial differences between the two languages in this respect: it is argued that second position cliticization is phonological in nature in the former and syntactic in the latter. The second part focuses on preposition omission under sluicing in Russian. It is argued that the operation of preposition omission is sensitive to the prosodic organization of the prepositional phrase. This dissertation is of relevance to those interested in the nature of cliticization, the timing of ellipsis and prosodic restrictions on elliptical operations. Show less
