Thesis by Alexander Elias
Leiden Research MA Thesis (2018): The first part of this thesis consists of a synchronic phonolog... more Leiden Research MA Thesis (2018): The first part of this thesis consists of a synchronic phonological description of the Lio language (Austronesian: Flores, Eastern Indonesia) and the second part consists of a comparative reconstruction of the Central Flores Linkage to which it belongs.
Papers by Alexander Elias
The isolating languages of Central Flores (Austronesian) are typologically distinct from their ne... more The isolating languages of Central Flores (Austronesian) are typologically distinct from their nearby relatives. They have no bound morphology, as well as elaborate numeral classifier systems, and quinary-decimal numeral systems. McWhorter (2019) proposes that their isolating typology is due to imperfect adult language acquisition of a language of Sulawesi, brought to Flores by settlers from Sulawesi in the relatively recent past. I propose an alternative interpretation, which better accounts for the other typological features found in Central Flores: the Central Flores languages are isolating because they have a strong substrate influence from a now-extinct isolating language belonging to the Mekong-Mamberamo linguistic area (Gil 2015). This explanation better accounts for the typological profile of Central Flores and is a more plausible contact scenario.
This paper, written as a term paper for the course History of Linguistics at Leiden, reviews the ... more This paper, written as a term paper for the course History of Linguistics at Leiden, reviews the historical origins and theoretical underpinnings of two competing models for representing linguistic genealogy: the tree model and the wave model. I make the argument that the wave model is a more powerful tool than the tree model for understanding linguistic genealogy.
This paper describes the results of an acoustic experiment designed to test the properties of Kab... more This paper describes the results of an acoustic experiment designed to test the properties of Kabyle Berber's "double" consonants. There is a debate in the literature as to whether these "double" consonants should be analyzed as geminate, long or fortis consonants. I outline the acoustic predictions which each of these labels entail, then measure the acoustic properties of a series of Kabyle words containing both singleton and "double" consonants. Based on the results of the experiment, I conclude that the label "fortis" is the most appropriate for Kabyle "double" consonants.
Journal of Historical Linguistics, 2019
This paper deals with the historical relations between dialects of Boni, a Cushitic language of K... more This paper deals with the historical relations between dialects of Boni, a Cushitic language of Kenya and Somalia. Boni forms the subject of Volume 10 of the Language and Dialect Atlas of Kenya (Heine & Möhlig 1982). Heine presents evidence for three subgroups within Boni, as well as several areas of convergence between dialects belonging to different proposed subgroups. In reviewing his evidence, I find that two of the three splits are not supported by the data, and therefore his conclusions on convergence must also be reinterpreted. Given the presence of numerous intersecting isoglosses, the tree diagram is an inappropriate model for describing the relations between Boni dialects, and I turn to Historical Glottometry (Kalyan & François 2018) to provide a visualization of the data.
Conference Presentations by Alexander Elias
Presented at APLL11 (Austronesian and Papuan Languages and Linguistics): June 15th, 2019, Leiden,... more Presented at APLL11 (Austronesian and Papuan Languages and Linguistics): June 15th, 2019, Leiden, Netherlands.
This talk covers the second half of my MA thesis: the diachronic relations between the languages of the Central Flores linkage. My results are cast in the framework of Historical Glottometry, a framework designed to handle linkages and dialect chains better than the traditional tree model in linguistics.
Presented at APLL9 (Austronesian and Papuan Languages and Linguistics): June 23rd, 2017, Paris, F... more Presented at APLL9 (Austronesian and Papuan Languages and Linguistics): June 23rd, 2017, Paris, France.
I presented the results of a comparative investigation into the Flores-Lembata languages, a group of Austronesian (Central Malayo-Polynesian) languages spoken in Eastern Indonesia. I carried out a bottom-up reconstruction and classification, and cast my results in the framework of Historical Glottometry (François & Kalyan 2013). This is a more appropriate methodology for subgrouping than the tree model, since the Flores-Lembata languages have differentiated in a non-tree-like manner.
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Thesis by Alexander Elias
Papers by Alexander Elias
Conference Presentations by Alexander Elias
This talk covers the second half of my MA thesis: the diachronic relations between the languages of the Central Flores linkage. My results are cast in the framework of Historical Glottometry, a framework designed to handle linkages and dialect chains better than the traditional tree model in linguistics.
I presented the results of a comparative investigation into the Flores-Lembata languages, a group of Austronesian (Central Malayo-Polynesian) languages spoken in Eastern Indonesia. I carried out a bottom-up reconstruction and classification, and cast my results in the framework of Historical Glottometry (François & Kalyan 2013). This is a more appropriate methodology for subgrouping than the tree model, since the Flores-Lembata languages have differentiated in a non-tree-like manner.
This talk covers the second half of my MA thesis: the diachronic relations between the languages of the Central Flores linkage. My results are cast in the framework of Historical Glottometry, a framework designed to handle linkages and dialect chains better than the traditional tree model in linguistics.
I presented the results of a comparative investigation into the Flores-Lembata languages, a group of Austronesian (Central Malayo-Polynesian) languages spoken in Eastern Indonesia. I carried out a bottom-up reconstruction and classification, and cast my results in the framework of Historical Glottometry (François & Kalyan 2013). This is a more appropriate methodology for subgrouping than the tree model, since the Flores-Lembata languages have differentiated in a non-tree-like manner.