Wordhood and the interplay of linguistic levels in synthetic languages. An empirical study on Wichi (Mataguayan, Gran Chaco)

Nercesian, Verónica

doi:10.1007/s11525-014-9239-7

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…The second digital database, containing data from written sources dating back to the late 18th century, 19th century, and early 20th century, was built specially for this and other historical studies as part of the national research project on dialectal variations and diachronic changes by the authors of this paper in collaboration with Mónica Amarilla 2 and Florencia Palazuelos. 3 Additionally, we consulted the Wichi-Spanish dictionary containing Upstream Pilcomayeño forms in Bolivia (Claesson 2008), published grammatical and phonological studies on Wichi language (Viñas Urquiza 1970Urquiza , 1974Tovar 1981;Claesson 1994Claesson , 2016Claesson -2017Avram 2008;Terraza 2009;Fernández Garay & Spinelli 2009;Nercesian 2011aNercesian , 2011bNercesian , 2014aNercesian , 2014bCayré Baito 2015), and Proto-Mataguayan phonological reconstructions (Najlis 1984;Viegas Barros 1993, 2002, 2013. We will now describe the sources, the historical database we have worked with, and the methodology followed.…”

Section: Sources Lexical Databases and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…'lá:), 'ant' (si.wà:)(n̥ á:s), 'that bird' (ʔa.fʷè:n)(če. 'lé:), 'you make me jump' (la.qà:)(tiʰ.jè:n)('nú:), and 'I will make you pay something' (n̩ .tà:ʰ)(jen.là:)(ʔá)<ma> (Nercesian 2011b). According to the author, the lengthening occurs to enforce optimal iambic foot structure, and those vowels are lengthened by rhythmic patterns.…”

Section: Present-day Wichi: Contemporary Vowel Inventoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to the author, the lengthening occurs to enforce optimal iambic foot structure, and those vowels are lengthened by rhythmic patterns. In addition, Nercesian (2011b) noted that the vowel length of some pronominal prefixes could have resulted from a compensatory lengthening after the reduction of these morphemes: the first person possessor and subject was n'o-~n'u-(attested in the 19th century materials), which have reduced to o- (and [o:-] in some areas) in Pilcomayeño, and to n'-(syllabic nasal) in Bermejeño.…”

Section: Present-day Wichi: Contemporary Vowel Inventoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Vowel shifts in Middle Wichi (Mataguayan family, South America)

Nercesian

Arellano

2023

JHL

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This paper analyzes vowel shifts in Wichi (Mataguayan, South America) between the 18th and early 20th centuries, some of which contributed to the emergence of the Pilcomayeño and Bermejeño dialects. Based on a historical database and using the comparative method, we date the vowel shift over the period we have named as Middle Wichi. At the early stage of this period, the /e/ > /a/ lowering is analyzed as a sporadic change, spread across the dialects in part of the vocabulary. At a later stage, the chain shift /ɑ/ > /o/ > /u/ > /e, i/, the merger of /u/ with /e/ and /i/, and the sporadic change of /i/>/e/ lowering in some words took place in Bermejeño. The paper explores implications in the implementation of sound change, the regular changes and the lexical diffusion, in particular, in chain shifting. It also explores some connections with other Mataguayan languages in both the lowering e>a and the possible causes of the changes. Thus, the paper contributes to the historical study of the Wichi language and the Mataguayan family in the Gran Chaco area in South America.

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Section: Sources Lexical Databases and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Present-day Wichi: Contemporary Vowel Inventoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Present-day Wichi: Contemporary Vowel Inventoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Vowel shifts in Middle Wichi (Mataguayan family, South America)

Nercesian

Arellano

2023

JHL

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Towards robust complexity indices in linguistic typology

Pellegrino

2022

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There is high hope that corpus-based approaches to language complexity will contribute to explaining linguistic diversity. Several complexity indices have consequently been proposed to compare different aspects among languages, especially in phonology and morphology. However, their robustness against changes in corpus size and content hasn’t been systematically assessed, thus impeding comparability between studies. Here, we systematically test the robustness of four complexity indices estimated from raw texts and either routinely utilized in crosslinguistic studies (Type-Token Ratio and word-level Entropy) or more recently proposed (Word Information Density and Lexical Diversity). Our results on 47 languages strongly suggest that traditional indices are more prone to fluctuation than the newer ones. Additionally, we confirm with Word Information Density the existence of a cross-linguistic trade-off between word-internal and across-word distributions of information. Finally, we implement a proof of concept suggesting that modern deep-learning language models can improve the comparability across languages with non-parallel datasets.

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Category clustering: A probabilistic bias in the morphology of verbal agreement marking

Mansfield¹,

Stoll²,

Bickel³

2020

Language

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Recent research has revealed several languages (e.g. Chintang, Rarámuri, Tagalog, Murrinhpatha) that challenge the general expectation of strict sequential ordering in morphological structure. However, it has remained unclear whether these languages exhibit random placement of affixes or whether there are some underlying probabilistic principles that predict their placement. Here we address this question for verbal agreement markers and hypothesize a probabilistic universal of category clustering, with two effects: (i) markers in paradigmatic opposition tend to be placed in the same morphological position ('paradigmatic alignment'; Crysmann & Bonami 2016); (ii) morphological positions tend to be categorically uniform ('featural coherence'; Stump 2001). We first show in a corpus study that category clustering drives the distribution of agreement prefixes in speakers' production of Chintang, a language where prefix placement is not constrained by any categorical rules of sequential ordering. We then show in a typological study that the same principle also shapes the evolution of morphological structure: although exceptions are attested, paradigms are much more likely to obey rather than to violate the principle. Category clustering is therefore a good candidate for a universal force shaping the structure and use of language, potentially due to benefits in processing and learning.*

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Wordhood and the interplay of linguistic levels in synthetic languages. An empirical study on Wichi (Mataguayan, Gran Chaco)

Cited by 3 publications

References 13 publications

Vowel shifts in Middle Wichi (Mataguayan family, South America)

Vowel shifts in Middle Wichi (Mataguayan family, South America)

Towards robust complexity indices in linguistic typology

Category clustering: A probabilistic bias in the morphology of verbal agreement marking

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