Na-Dene languages

In mid-2005, just a few months before his untimely demise, the Russian historical linguist Sergei Starostin completed the first draft of a lengthy paper simply titled «Sino-Caucasian» (Starostin 2005a, b). In this paper he for the first time, systematically and in great detail laid out what he saw as a system of regular phonetic correspondences between Proto-North Caucasian, Proto-Sino-Tibetan, Proto-Yeniseian, and Burushaskifour major constituents of a linguistic ʽmacro-family', the existence of which had first been stated and argued for by him in a much shorter paper more than two decades earlier . The same macrofamily, with the tentative inclusion of at least two more componentsthe Na-Dene languages of North America and the linguistic isolate Basque in Spain and Franceis, arguably, better known to Western readers under the name ʽDene-Caucasian'. The paper was to be turned into a small monograph with the addition of an equally detailed lexicostatistical confirmation of Sino-Caucasian; this, unfortunately, never came to pass, and the official publication of the unfinished manuscript has been shelved for an indefinite period.

Recent arguments connecting Na-Dene languages of North America with Yeniseian languages of Siberia have been used to assert proof for the origin of Native Americans in central or western Asia. We apply phylogenetic methods to test support for this hypothesis against an alternative hypothesis that Yeniseian represents a back-migration to Asia from a Beringian ancestral population. We coded a linguistic dataset of typological features and used neighbor-joining network algorithms and Bayesian model comparison based on Bayes factors to test the fit between the data and the linguistic phylogenies modeling two dispersal hypotheses. Our results support that a Dene-Yeniseian connection more likely represents radiation out of Beringia with back-migration into central Asia than a migration from central or western Asia to North America.

Recent arguments connecting Na-Dene languages of North America with Yeniseian languages of Siberia have been used to assert proof for the origin of Native Americans in central or western Asia. We apply phylogenetic methods to test support for this hypothesis against an alternative hypothesis that Yeniseian represents a back-migration to Asia from a Beringian ancestral population. We coded a linguistic dataset of typological features and used neighbor-joining network algorithms and Bayesian model comparison based on Bayes factors to test the fit between the data and the linguistic phylogenies modeling two dispersal hypotheses. Our results support that a Dene-Yeniseian connection more likely represents radiation out of Beringia with back-migration into central Asia than a migration from central or western Asia to North America.

Automatic phonemic transcription tools now reach high levels of accuracy on a single speaker with relatively small amounts of training data: on the order of 100 to 250 minutes of transcribed speech. Beyond its practical usefulness for language documentation, use of automatic transcription also yields some insights for phoneticians. The present report illustrates this by going into qualitative error analysis on two test cases, Yongning Na (Sino-Tibetan) and Tsuut'ina (Dene). Among other benefits, error analysis allows for a renewed exploration of phonetic detail: examining the output of phonemic transcription software compared with spectrographic and aural evidence. From a methodological point of view, the present report is intended as a case study in Computational Language Documentation: an interdisciplinary approach that associates fieldworkers ("diversity linguists") and computer scientists with pho-neticians/phonologists.

Adam J.R. Tallman (DDL)


with Dennis Wylie, Anthony C. Woodbury, Gladys Camacho Rios, Hiroto Uchihara, Kelsey Neely, Natalia Bermudez, Ambrocio Gutierrez, Cristian Juarez, Willem de Reuse, Patience Epps, Andrés Salanova, Eric Adell, Michael Everdell, Eric Campbell, Javier Carol


In this talk we discuss some foundational problems in the cross-linguistic comparison of wordhood and constituency. We present a solution to these problems and apply them to the study of 14 languages of the America (Chácobo (Pano), Yaminawa (Pano), Hup (Naduhup), Mebengokre (Ge), Chatino (Oto-Manguean), Quechua (Quechua), Mocoví (Guaicuruan), Zapotec (Oto-Manguean), Central Alaskan Yupik (Yupik-Inuit-Unangan), Apache (Na-Dene Athabaskan), Cherokee (Iroquioan), Naso (Chibchan), Chajul Ixil (Mayan), Southeastern Tepehuan (Uto-Aztecan), Chorote (Matacoan)). We argue for a new methodology that rests on rejection of a number of assumptions (often implicit) in descriptive and typological work: (i) the distinction between morphological and syntactic positions (ii) the distinction between morphosyntactic and phonological words; (iii) the distinction between wordhood and phrasehood diagnostics. Instead, we propose that an approach to cross-linguistic comparison of constituency that involves the systematic application of constituency diagnostics coded in a typological database that does not presuppose these distinctions. Languages are compared in terms of how many levels emerge out of the application of the diagnostics, the convergences between diagnostics, and the robustness of these convergences given the parameters of their application. We present a new set of terminology for describing sentence structure and comparing the results of constituency tests that we refer to as "flat structures" (based on a critical engagement and synthesis of the morphological and syntactic representations found in and Bickel and Zúñiga (2017) and Culicover and Jackendoff (2005)).


One of the most serious critiques of the investigation of constituency is methodological opportunism (e.g. Croft 2001; Croft 2010; Haspelmath 2011). Rather than lapsing into one of the two extremes of categorial universalism or categorial particularism (e.g. Haspelmath 2010), we deal with this problem by positing a novel concept referred to as the probability of chance convergence. This refers to the likelihood that two or more constituency diagnostics could have converged around the same result by chance given the number of tests applied and the morphosyntactic positions in the language. We also show how a metric of the probability of chance convergence can be computed. We argue that this methodology takes important steps towards overcoming language-internal and cross-linguistic methodological opportunism.

Our study has the following results:

. Languages vary in terms of whether and the extent to which a word constituent is motivated. This finding calls into question the whole framing of the debate on lexicalism (Marantz 1997; Wechsler 2005; Bruening 2018; Müller 2018) and wordhood generally (Blevins 2016; Geertzen et al. 2016).

. The distinction between grammatical and phonological word is not motivated in any language. This finding undermines some basic premises of certain formulations of Basic Linguistic Theory (e.g. Dixon 2010 and generative theories of phonological constituency such as prosodic phonology (Nespor & Vogel 1986).

We discuss other findings from this study and the future research that they could inspire. We also discuss the relevance of these findings for linguistic description.
References
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