Research%20on%20Macrofamilies:%20The%20States%20of%20the%20Art

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Research on Macrofamilies The States of the Art

• Bernard Comrie
• Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
  Anthropology and University of California Santa
  Barbara
• comrie_at_eva.mpg.de

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African Macrofamilies

• Afroasiatic
• Niger-Congo
• Nilo-Saharan
• Khoisan

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Niger-Congo

• Mande - inclusion questionable
• Kordofanian - inclusion of Kadugli widely
  rejected, may be Nilo-Saharan
• Atlantic - may not be a unit, some parts may not
  be Niger-Congo
• Bulk of phylum generally accepted

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Nilo-Saharan

• Lower-level groupings generally accepted,
  higher-level groupings questionable
• Songhai - almost universally excluded

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Khoisan

• Hadza - no clear relation
• Sandawe - possibly related to Central
• South African Khoisan
• Central - no clear relation to N, S
• Northern - no clear relation to Southern
• Southern - no clear relation to Northern
• ?Hõa may be related to Northern

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Family Tree Problems

• Presupposes parthenogenesis
• Areal spread of innovations (Wave theory)
• Loans from other languages

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Wave Theory

• Rhenish Fan in Germany
• North maken dorp dat appel
• Cologne machen dorp dat appel
• Koblenz machen dorf dat appel
• Frankfurt machen dorf das appel
• South machen dorf das apfel

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• Indo-Iranian dative plural in bh shift of kj
  to s
• Balto-Slavic dative plural in m shift of kj to
  s
• Germanic dative plural in m no shift of kj to s

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Multiple Origins / Language Contact

• Possible definition of genealogical relatedness
  of languages Two languages descend from a common
  ancestor if a substantial portion of basic
  vocabulary, (inflectional) morphology (if
  present), and syntax descend from that ancestor.

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• Frequent, but usually tacit assumption, that
  there is a hierarchy
• Morphology gt Basic vocabulary gt Syntax
• Cf. Comrie on Haruai (in relation to Hagahai and
  Kobon), comparing morphology and basic vocabulary

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Basic Vocabulary Loans

• Thai càmùuk nose lt Khmer cr?moh, cf. forms like
  da?, la?, na? in other Tai languages
• English they, them, their ltScandinavian

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Morphological Loans

• English loans from Latin / Greek retaining
  original number morphology
• criterion criteria
• crisis crises
• syllabus syllabi / syllabuses
• formula formulae / formulas

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• Romani singular / plural morphology
• Inherited kher, PL kher-a house šer-o, PL
  šer-e head no plural in -i
• Early Greek loans introduce type for-os (in many
  varieties gt for-o), PL for-i town
• Other contact languages introduce other plural
  markers, e.g. -uri lt Rumanian, even with older
  words (some varieties have for-uri)

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• Copper Island (Mednyj) Aleut has Aleut basic
  vocabulary and nominal morphology, but Russian
  verb morphology, even for inherited verbs
• aba-ju I work aba-im we work
• aba-iš you work aba-iti you (PL) work
• aba-it s/he works aba-jut they work

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Syntactic Loans

• Takia has Austronesian vocabulary and morphology,
  but the same grammatical structure as its Papuan
  neighbor Waskia.
• Haitian Creole has French vocabulary and either
  West African or universal syntax.

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Regular Sound Correspondences

• Important
• Traditional historical linguists
• Starostin / Russian school
• Unimportant
• Greenberg / Ruhlen

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Opaque but Regular Correspondences

• French fils /fis/, Spanish hijo /'ixo/ son
• German fünf, Russian pjatj, Armenian hing five
  lt Proto-Indo-European penkwe
• Mbabaram dog dog lt Proto-Australian gudaga

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Exceptions to the Regularity of Sound Change

• Latin quinque five for expected pinque
• French cinq /s?k/ for expected /k?k/
• English she /ši?/ lt Old English seo for expected
  /si?/ probable developments
• si?o gt sjo? gt šo? gt šu? (dialect form)
• gt si?e gt sje? gt še? gt ši?

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Explanations for Similarities

• Common ancestry
• Borrowing
• Naturalness (e.g. onomatopoeia)
• Chance

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Eliminating Chance

• English German
• arm Arm y
• finger Finger y
• hand Hand y
• lip Lippe y
• nose Nase y

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• English German
• arm Finger n
• finger Hand n
• hand Lippe n
• lip Nase n
• nose Arm n

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Loanword Typology Project

• To study patterns of lexical borrowing across a
  number of languages from different language
  families, to ascertain in particular if certain
  lexical items (relating to particular semantic
  fields, or particularly basic items) are less
  prone to borrowing than others.

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Some Successes

• Borderline convincing cases
• Altaic (or at least some branches thereof)
• Indo-European and Uralic
• (Narrow) Trans-New Guinea

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• Yeniseic (western Siberia) and Na-Dene
  (northwestern North America)
• a few dozen possible plausible cognates
• very similar, complex, unusual verb morphology,
  though similarities could be typological
  (?contact rather than common ancestor)
• (work by Edward Vajda)