A low glide in Marphali

Studies in African Linguistics, 1987

The vowel system of Margi, described by Hoffman [1963] as containing three high vowels and one low vowel, is reinterpreted as a two-vowel system with underlying contrast only of high versus low. A pervasive contrast of secondary articulations on consonants spreads features of rounding and backness to contiguous vowels, giving rise to the different high vowel qualities recognized by Hoffman. A morphological role for the secondary articulations can be identified. Given this new understanding of the vowel system, the claim that "labio-coronal" elements in Margi are single complex segments requires reevaluation. Arguments advanced by Sagey [1986] are shown to proceed from a wrong interpretation of a syncope process and an assumed underlying contrast between high vowels. Phonetic data and the absence of phonological arguments to the contrary suggest that the labiocoronal elements are consonant sequences. 1.

2009

All praise is due to Allah almighty to whom I express my first and uppermost gratitude for the completion of this dissertation. This thesis could not have been completed without the assistance, constant support and guidance of my supervisor, Wyn Johnson, whose feedback and encouragement are invaluable. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to you, Wyn. Special thanks go to the members of my research committee, David Britain and Rebecca Clift. This work has been improved greatly by your questions and comments. I am also indebted to Enam Al-Wer for all the great discussion we had and for all the useful references she provided me. I am also indebted to the members of the weekly Phonology Workshop, Wyn Johnson, Nancy Kula, Hana Daana, Moris Al-Omar, Jennifer Amos, Catharine Carfoot and Verónica Villafaña, with whom I have interacted during the course of my

The 18th Sergei Starostin Memorial Conference on Comparative-Historical Linguistics, 2023

The talk revisits the development of Proto-Uralic medial consonants in Proto-Mari. The need for an updated historical account of the Mari medial consonantism arises from the author’s previous work on re-interpreting the Proto-Mari first-syllable vowel system. A major key to solving numerous problems in Mari historical phonology is reconstructing PMari *w, *j where the current reconstruction suggests PMari *Ø as the reflex of several Proto-Uralic medial consonants. A consequence is that two bilabial consonants should be distinguished at the Proto-Mari stage, the fricative *β and the glide *w. Another point of discussion is the specific development of Proto-Uralic consonant clusters, such as *mp, *Cw and *lk, in the Mari branch. The author further suggests a new formulation of the sound law concerning the split development of Proto-Uralic medial *-n-, *-ŋ- in Proto-Mari. The talk concludes with an attempt to trace the fate of PU medial *-δ-, *-δ’-, which are reflected, according to the current reconstruction, as PMari *-δ- or *-Ø- with no clear rules of complementary distribution. [The slides were slightly amended after the conference.]

The Mayan Languages, 2017

2012

1979

Thus; whereas the .American .child everttually overcomes her substi-_tut.ion of Co.:! for C'PJ, the Nupe chiid confronts no foJ in his mother tongue, and the (Q.J-substitution manifests, itself wheen, in the inf'lex:.;. ibility of ~dulthood, be enc_ounters (:,J in :a foreign vord. ') If one could collect all the_sound-subst;ituticins of children, the dfacbr_onist Grammont (1965} _said, one would hf.I.Ye a. sort of grammar of all the possible sound-changes. The synchronist Baudouin de Courtenay {1895} would have added, also all the possible phonological alt_erna.-tic>ns. And, as the panchronist Jakobson argued in his monumental Child Lan@ase, Aphasia 1 and Phonological Universals (1968}, _also all the• • possible phoneme systems. Such systems are determined, a.s Greenberg (1966) concluded in his study of phonological universals, by the collective effect of phonological processes (particularly the 'unconditioned' processes vhich, since they affect a. sound)n all its oc,currences, thereby affect the inventory as well a.s the distribution of phonemes). But, pace Greenberg, such processes are not mere historical events: they are the living expression of the phonetic capacity of the individual. This dissertation presents my explorations in the world of vowels. Although I have occasion to mention aesimilatory processes, my focus is on those processes traditionall.y labeled 'unconditioned I or 1 sponta.-' neous 1-the ones pessimistically cWed unexplainable because they apply to segments regardless of their contexts (or worse, in dissimila:.;. tion, despite their contexts), and because, as is implied by their classification as 'strengthening' processes, they seem to defy the law of least effort. These are processes which, in the earliest speech of a child, ca.n scramble all his vowels into one, and yet can, in a language like Faroese, Juggle two dozen vowels with hardly a merger. A full account of the nature, operation, and causality of these processes is not in sight, Thorough and useful descriptions are unavailable for many languages: the brief phonemic sketches of vowel systems that appear in many surveys and in some monographs often fail to provide sufficient phonetic information on vowel quality; and conversely, some descriptions vhich do provide such phonetic information lack the phonological data that is crucial to the sort of analysis that the study of processes requires. For many little-know languages, historical studies, which provide much usef'ul data, are unavailable-and indeed impossible, given linguists' current knowledge of such languages. ' (Corresponding to this difference in the nature of processes and rules is a difference in the order of application in speech proce~sing: processes apply after the applications of secret-1anguage rules, and after unintentional slips of the tongue (Stampe 1973a:45; Donegan and Stampe 1978a, Sec. 2. 5). • (1,7) For example, the process that palatalizes [kJ to [cJ before a palatal vowel applies after the secret-language 9 Another way :irt ~hich children: •sometimes limit the surface effects of a process is by constrairting its natural iterative application (Stampe 1973,: 59-68). The fUnction of each process is to Efubstitute •. a'iess difficult class of sounds or sound-sequences for a ~ore difficult cla.ss~ But once a process has applied~ sveeping away~. as it vere, a.• certain class 'or difficulties, another process may (subsequently or simultaneously), in removing some entirely different difficulty, create new me~ rs of the very class the fir~t process got rid of. /' (1.14) For example, for a child who substitutes zero for CJJ, this CJJ-deletion eliminates a difficult segment. But suppose another process-delateralization, as in (1,10)-simultaneously substitutes CJJ !or CIJ. Unless the first process is alloved to apply again, the child vill have to produce CJJ's-for ti l's. If each process is to accomplish its function on the surface forms (the forms that are actually pronounced), then the (JJ-to-¢ process should apply again, after the CIJ-to-[JJ process, and again after any other process that creates [JJ's. Such absence of ordering restrictions-unconstrained iteration-is the natural state of process application. But there is a catch to this free-handed elimination of difficulties: the processes thus applied merge, in actual pronunciation, the distinction between between /1/ and /j/ in the child's underlying representations (corresponding to adult tlJ and CjJ); both become zero, so that e.g. less and yes would both be pronounced [€SJ. One way for the child to maintain a distinction without having to suppress either process is to restrict the iteration of [JJ-to-¢,.so that it may not apply again after [IJ-to-(JJ. Thus the child says [€SJ for~ but [JESJ for less-not the underlying or adult distinction, to be sure, but a distinction nevertheless. This seems to be the situation which holds vith children who initially substitute zero for both (jJ and ti] but who later produce zero for [JJ and (JJ for.ti] (cf, Jakobson 1968:15, and Donegan and Stampe 1978a, Sec. 3.3), Such apparently paradoxical sets of substitutions, described by Jakobson as 'sound shifts', may persist into adulthood. Thus, such constraints may account for some of the peculiar situations in language in which a speaker cannot pronounce a segm~nt or sequence when he tries to produce it, but produces that very segment or sequence when he is trying to pronounce something else. (1.15) For exe.mple, many speakers of English find it difficult or impos'sible to produce the seq'l,lence ta.9J in phrases like How now, brown cow? or in bo!rowed or foreign words like He.usfrau or Laut (cf, (1.6)). Instead they substitute Cais!J quite automatically. But many or the same speakers in whom the ta.2J-to-(6!12J process is active also make a substitution which produces the phonetic sequence Ca2J: de.rk, syllable-final C:lJ optionally becomes tyJ"'[S?J so that doll, Sol, etc. a.re pronounced (dC1.2J, Isa.2J, etc.

This paper reconstructs the Proto-Naish rhyme system to advance the probing of the genetic position of the Naish languages. Data from 3 Naish languages-Lijiangba, Malimasa, and Yongning-are employed in the reconstruction. Rhyme correspondences revealed by comparing the three languages are interpreted by conservative languages, such as Tibetan, Burmese and rGyalrong. Other Naic languages, such as Namuyi and Xumi, are taken as references. Five vowels, *-a, *-e, *i, *-u, *-o, and six consonant codas, *-k, *-ɣ, *-t, *-l, *-p, *-m, are reconstructed to Proto-Naish. Some general tendencies of the sound changes of the Naish languages are summarized. Keywords: Rhyme; Naish languages; Tibeto-Burman languages; historical phonology LJ MM YN Context J&M (Naxi: Na: Laze) e ɛ i (others) e: i:, i.e., < *a uɑ uɑ uɤ Kw wɑ: wɤ: wɤ < *a Jacques and Michaud ( ) also claim that the correspondence /i: i: i/ is derived from *a in the context *ŋ-. However, I prefer to treat this correspondence as a variant of *-i. The reasons will be provided in the discussion of the contrast between *-e and *-i. Three more rhyme correspondences have been detected as variants of *-a in the context of *Pw-, *R-and *mr-, as shown in Table 2. The only examples with cognates that have been found in conservative languages are listed. Those that do not have counterparts in conservative languages are presented in the Appendix. Examples of each of the following sets of correspondences are provided in the same way. Table 2 Three more correspondence rules reflect the Proto-Naish *-a Corr. Gloss LJ MM YN WT Bur. GR Others Context PN u: ɑ: o to bring pu˥ pɑ˥ po˧˥ phwāḥ NMY pa³⁵ Pw *a to spread [[phv̩ ˥]] phɑ˩ pʰo˧˥ phwa NMY npha³¹ Pw *a u: ɚ: e to look for ʂu˩ la˧ʂɚ˧ ʂe˧ rhā < *ˀrā NMY ʂu31 XM ɕɛ⁵⁵ *R *a louse ʂu˧ ʂɚ˧mɛ˧ ʂe˧mi˧ sanḥ < *ˀśanḥ NMY ʂu55 XM ɕɛ⁵⁵ *R *a ɯ: e: i scar mɯ˧ tsɯ ˥ me˧kho˧ mi˧pɤ˧ rma mra -mu *mr *a bamboo mɯ˥lɯ˧ me˥ʂi˩ "yellow bamboo" mi˩ɬi˩˧ mraṅ "kind of bamboo" NMY ma 35 *mr *a Note that "to look for" and "louse" in Naish languages have the same retroflex fricative initials as "meat", which was used in Jacques and Michaud (2011) as a representative of the correspondence /ɯ: e: ɯ/ (/ɯ: i: e/ in the present study), and they all have retroflex initials in Proto-Burmish, as illustrated in Hill (2019: 56). Therefore, "meat" in Naish languages may be an exception in the context of retroflex fricative initials but are merged with the reflex in the context of *ɡr and *tr (as illustrated by "to fall" and "earth", Jacques and Michaud 2011 Appendix: 11). The correspondences /u: ɑ: o / and /ɯ: e: i / appear after *Pw-and *mr-, respectively. The cognates in NMY suggest that these morphemes remained to have *-a at the stage of Naic. The medials -wand -r-affected the rhymes in Naish languages but were directly lost in NMY. The correspondence /ɑ: ɑ: ɑ/ does not appear in the context of velar initials only. There are also examples of this correspondence in the context of alveolar plosive/nasal/lateral initials. These examples actually represent another set of correspondences, which will be further discussed in 3.1. In all, there are 9 correspondences in the complementary distribution with one another, and they correspond to the same vowel in related languages. Therefore, they can be reconstructed back to one and the same rhyme *a in Proto-Naish, as shown in Table .