- King's College
Cambridge CB2 1ST
United Kingdom
Bert Vaux
University of Cambridge, Department of Linguistics, Faculty Member
- Morphology, Languages and Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, Borrowing, Phonology, Language Acquisition, and 48 moreNormal Human Variation, Forensic Linguistics, Phonetics, Dialectology, Dialects of English, Sociolinguistics, Language Variation and Change, Writing Systems & Decipherment, Typology, Synaesthesia, Ancient Indo-European Languages, Audiovisual Speech Perception, Fieldwork in Anthropology, Psycholinguistics, Sanskrit language and literature, Pattern Recognition, Indo-European Studies, Language Documentation, Endangered Languages, Israel/Palestine, English, Altaic Linguistics, Historical Dialectology, Language Evolution, Armenian Studies, Human Universals, Lab Phonology, Vedic Sanskrit, Languages of the Caucasus, Hybridization, Caucasus, Pontic Language, Pidgins & Creoles, Bayesian Evidence Synthesis, Philosophy Of Language, Cognitive Psychology, Stereotypes, Second Language Acquisition, U.S. Intellectual History, Multi- & Bilingualism & Biliteracy, Cognitive Neuroscience, Degenerate Art, Ancient Grammar, Manuscript Studies, Contact Linguistics, First Language Acquisition, Experimental Linguistics, and Linguisticsedit
Research Interests: Languages and Linguistics, Data Collecting and Analyzing, Field Methods & Techniques (Human & Physical), Linguistics, Lexicography, and 7 moreGujarati, Data Collection, Linguistics. Word-formation. Morphology. Lexicology. Semantics., Gujarati language, Field Methods, Field work methods, and Theory In Field Methods
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Research Interests: Languages and Linguistics, Phonology, Armenian Studies, Dialectology, Historical Dialectology, and 19 moreStress, Morphology, Linguistics, Linguistic Theory, Theoretical Linguistics, Vowel harmony, Armenian Language, Theoretical phonology, Vowel harmony, vowel height harmony, ATR harmony, Phonetics and Phonology, Theoretical Linguistics, Phonology, Morphology, Syllabification, Diachronic Phonology, Armenian Linguistics, Syllable Structure, Epenthetic Vowels, Syllabic Structure, Epenthesis, and Historical Phonology
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Uyghur is generally believed to possess a vowel harmony system very similar to the one found in its relative Turkish, save for the fact that in Uyghur i is neutral and transparent (Lindblad 1990, Hahn 1991, Alling 1999). In this paper I... more
Uyghur is generally believed to possess a vowel harmony system very similar to the one found in its relative Turkish, save for the fact that in Uyghur i is neutral and transparent (Lindblad 1990, Hahn 1991, Alling 1999). In this paper I argue on the basis of the phonological behavior of disharmonic vowels that Uyghur vowel harmony is actually quite different from the Turkish system in that harmony propagates only [-back] and harmony applies both cyclically and postcyclically. I demonstrate furthermore that the Uyghur facts ...
We argue that the cross-linguistic distribution of vowel systems is best accounted for by grammar-external forces of learnability operating in tandem with cognitive constraints on phonological computation, as argued for other phonological... more
We argue that the cross-linguistic distribution of vowel systems is best accounted for by grammar-external forces of learnability operating in tandem with cognitive constraints on phonological computation, as argued for other phonological phenomena by
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Classical Armenian displays a curious type of subordinate clause formation characterized by the addition of a cliticized anaphoric pronoun to the end of the first constituent within the subordinate clause. Meillet (1897-1898) first... more
Classical Armenian displays a curious type of subordinate clause formation characterized by the addition of a cliticized anaphoric pronoun to the end of the first constituent within the subordinate clause. Meillet (1897-1898) first proposed that this process was an instance of Wackernagel's Law, which encompasses a range of syntactic secondposition phenomena in the world's languages. In this paper I survey the distribution of Wackernagel clauses in Armenian, and provide an account for their behavior within the framework of current syntactic theory. More specifically, I show that the constraints on what elements may serve as host for the clitic and where the finite verb and adverbs in the subordinate clause may surface follow naturally from independently motivated principles of recent generative syntactic theory.
Research Interests: Languages and Linguistics, Armenian Studies, Historical Syntax, Ancient Indo-European Languages, Indo-European Studies, and 10 moreSyntax, Formal syntax, Linguistics, Theoretical Linguistics, Indo-European Linguistics, Armenian Language, Diachronic Syntax, Indo-European, Generative Syntax, and Wackernagel's law
This paper explores English shm-reduplication and aims to answer questions that have previously been left open on the subject. Results from an online survey show emerging patterns that have not been adequately addressed in the literature.... more
This paper explores English shm-reduplication and aims to answer questions that have previously been left open on the subject. Results from an online survey show emerging patterns that have not been adequately addressed in the literature. It will be shown that shm-reduplication targets prosodic landmarks, syllabic landmarks and the phrasal site of the target of reduplication. Instances of avoidance phenomena will also be discussed and analyzed. The results suggest that shm-reduplication is computed by a grammar that is ...
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Since Clements (1985) introduced feature geometry, four major innovations have been proposed: Unified Feature Theory, Vowel-Place Theory, Strict Locality, and Partial Spreading. We set out the problems that each innovation encounters and... more
Since Clements (1985) introduced feature geometry, four major innovations have been proposed: Unified Feature Theory, Vowel-Place Theory, Strict Locality, and Partial Spreading. We set out the problems that each innovation encounters and propose a new model of feature geometry and feature spreading that is not subject to these problems. Of the four innovations, the new model-Revised Articulator Theory (RAT)-keeps Partial Spreading, but rejects the rest. RAT also introduces a new type of unary feature-one for each articulator-to indicate that the articulator is the designated articulator of the segment.
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Abstract: Patterns of plural selection in Armenian suggest that lexical representations of morphemes must include predictable syllabic structure, contrary to most theories of phonology, and that some phonological rules such as... more
Abstract: Patterns of plural selection in Armenian suggest that lexical representations of morphemes must include predictable syllabic structure, contrary to most theories of phonology, and that some phonological rules such as syllabification may precede morphological rules, contrary to the theory of distributed morphology. Furthermore, certain segments at the edges of morphological domains are not syllabified in lexical representations, and are syllabified at a later stage in the derivation. The findings are ...
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Abstract The Western Armenian possessive plural data originally reported in Vaux (1998, 2003) have been asserted by Wolf 2011 to involve outwardly-sensitive phonologically conditioned allomorphy, a phenomenon widely argued to be... more
Abstract The Western Armenian possessive plural data originally reported in Vaux (1998, 2003) have been asserted by Wolf 2011 to involve outwardly-sensitive phonologically conditioned allomorphy, a phenomenon widely argued to be unattested (Carstairs-McCarthy 1987; Paster 2006) and predicted to be impossible by the tenets of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993; Bobaljik 2000). We show that the full complexity of the Western Armenian system is better captured in an account that makes no reference to outwardly- ...
Research Interests: Geography and Morphology
Research Interests: History, Psychology, Philosophy, Phonology, Phonetics, and 15 moreEnglish language, English, Morphology, English Phonetics and Phonology, Phonological Theory, English language and linguistics, Distributed Morphology, Phonetics and Phonology, English linguistics, Microvariation, English Morphology, African American Vernacular English, English phonology, Division of Labour, and English Language
IntroductionBenveniste 1952:" transitive perfect" nora e: gorUeal3Sg. GEN be. 3sg do-ppl.'(s) he has done/accomplished'possessionnora e: handerdz3Sg. GEN be. 3sg garment'(s) he has a garment'TODAY'S... more
IntroductionBenveniste 1952:" transitive perfect" nora e: gorUeal3Sg. GEN be. 3sg do-ppl.'(s) he has done/accomplished'possessionnora e: handerdz3Sg. GEN be. 3sg garment'(s) he has a garment'TODAY'S POINTS: 1. The possession analysis of the transitive perfect was already known by the Armenianmonks in Vienna by 1866.2. More concrete evidence for the possession analysis occurs inKoriwn, Middle Armenian, and at least two modern dialects, which use lexical'have'to form the perfect with" transitive" verbs. 3. These ...
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Phonologists generally assume that plain voiceless consonants are less marked than voiceless aspirates, and that the unmarked two-way stop system contrasts unaspirated voiced and voiceless, as in Spanish; systems containing aspirates, as... more
Phonologists generally assume that plain voiceless consonants are less marked than voiceless aspirates, and that the unmarked two-way stop system contrasts unaspirated voiced and voiceless, as in Spanish; systems containing aspirates, as in English, are marked in comparison. I suggest that this picture is not entirely accurate. Building on a proposal by Steriade 1997, the maximally unmarked single-series stop is unspecified for laryngeal features, which is not the same as a voiceless unaspirated stop; the former may show wide significant variation, whereas the latter is specified for particular laryngeal gestures. I argue moreover, based on evidence from acquisition, articulation, perception, and L1 and L2 phonology, that the unmarked two-way stop system opposes aspirated and unaspirated stops, and that the aspirates may be the unmarked member of this set.
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This paper is a contribution to a debate which has arisen concerning the necessity of readjustment, i.e. phonological processes sensitive to morphological information, as a device for implementing allomorphic alternations, the question... more
This paper is a contribution to a debate which has arisen concerning the necessity of readjustment, i.e. phonological processes sensitive to morphological information, as a device for implementing allomorphic alternations, the question being whether readjustment is necessary as such, or whether these alternations can be accounted for by a combination of listed allomorphs and regular phonology. We show that, given a piece-based morphological framework such as Distributed Morphology, an accurate description of the phonology of accent in Vedic Sanskrit requires readjustment or a close analogue; listed allomorphs do not suffice to capture the observed facts. We also discuss ways in which these readjustment rules may be constrained, observing that they require a degree of derivational articulation, and that they may not be readily segregated from those phonological processes lacking morphological conditioning.
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This volume of new work by prominent phonologists goes to the heart of current debates in phonological and linguistic theory: should the explanation of phonological variety be constraint or rule-based and, in the light of the resolution... more
This volume of new work by prominent phonologists goes to the heart of current debates in phonological and linguistic theory: should the explanation of phonological variety be constraint or rule-based and, in the light of the resolution of this question, how in the mind does phonology interface with other components of the grammar. The book includes contributions from leading proponents of both sides of the argument and an extensive introduction setting out the history, nature, andmore general linguistic implications of ...
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An academic directory and search engine.
A comprehensive review of Armenological research relevant to Indo-European studies should begin from 1972, the year of Rüdiger Schmitt's" Die Erforschung des Klassisch-Armenischen seit Meillet (1936)". Unfortunately,... more
A comprehensive review of Armenological research relevant to Indo-European studies should begin from 1972, the year of Rüdiger Schmitt's" Die Erforschung des Klassisch-Armenischen seit Meillet (1936)". Unfortunately, constraints of time and space make this task unfeasible here. Instead, I shall limit my discussion to what I consider to be the most important works of the last ten years or so from representative subfields of Armenian studies. Given the interests of Indo-Europeanists, I will focus on traditional Indo-European ...
The Western Armenian possessive plural data originally reported in Vaux (1998, 2003) have been asserted by Wolf 2011 to involve outwardly-sensitive phonologically conditioned allomorphy, a phenomenon widely argued to be unattested... more
The Western Armenian possessive plural data originally reported in Vaux (1998, 2003) have been asserted by Wolf 2011 to involve outwardly-sensitive phonologically conditioned allomorphy, a phenomenon widely argued to be unattested (Carstairs-McCarthy 1987; Paster 2006) and predicted to be impossible by the tenets of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993; Bobaljik 2000). We show that the full complexity of the Western Armenian system is better captured in an account that makes no reference to outwardly- ...
Research Interests: Geography and Morphology
Résumé/Abstract Sous l'effet de l'assimilation de la position langagière impliquée dans la production des consonnes coronales adjacentes (dentales, affriquées...), certaines voyelles postérieures sont antériorisées. Le cas se... more
Résumé/Abstract Sous l'effet de l'assimilation de la position langagière impliquée dans la production des consonnes coronales adjacentes (dentales, affriquées...), certaines voyelles postérieures sont antériorisées. Le cas se rencontre en cantonnais, tibétain, maltais arabe et dans le parler arménien d'Akn. L'article explique ce processus comme une extension du trait des consonnes coronales sur les voyelles suivantes. Cette explication est fondée essentiellement sur un nouveau système de représentation phonologique, légèrement ...
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The behavior of epenthetic consonants has received a great deal of attention in the recent phonological literature because of the significantly different ways in which it is treated by constraint-based and rule-based theories and because... more
The behavior of epenthetic consonants has received a great deal of attention in the recent phonological literature because of the significantly different ways in which it is treated by constraint-based and rule-based theories and because of the formal consequences attendant on the empirical comparison of these two treatments. Optimality Theory requires that the choice of (regular) epenthetic consonant in a given language be predictable from the interaction of independently-motivated inventory constraints and well-formedness constraints. Rule-based formalisms on the other hand allow rules of the type “Ø → [g] / V_V”, wherein the choice of epenthetic segment is synchronically arbitrary. In this paper I provide empirical evidence from a range of languages demonstrating that the prediction of rule-based phonology is correct: a language can choose any consonant for insertion by regular rule. I argue that unnatural systems of this type are accounted for most efficiently and insightfully in a rule- driven framework; existing OT implementations can be altered to account for the relevant phenomena, but only at the cost of abandoning the central theoretical tenets that have been claimed to give OT the advantage over derivational theories. The OT perspective moreover loses essential insights of rule-based phonology into the relationship between historical change and language acquisition, and between automatic and morphologically-conditioned phonology.
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UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) is an archive of life sciences journal literature.
Though Armenian dialectologists tend not to discuss the Khodorjur dialect, it possesses a number of features that should make it of interest to armenologists and general linguists alike. In this chapter I provide a bird's eye... more
Though Armenian dialectologists tend not to discuss the Khodorjur dialect, it possesses a number of features that should make it of interest to armenologists and general linguists alike. In this chapter I provide a bird's eye view of the dialect (which now sadly appears to be dead2) and some of its more noteworthy characteristics, and situate these within their larger linguistic and armenological contexts. One question that immediately arises in light of Khodorjur's location at the nexus between the historical Ottoman and Russian empires, ...
Research Interests: History and Linguistics
Vers le 16eme siecle, les Armeniens de Ayntab abandonnent la langue armenienne en faveur d'une langue turque. Mais depuis 1850 cette communaute linguistique tend a utiliser de plus en plus un dialecte armenien. L'A. montre que ce... more
Vers le 16eme siecle, les Armeniens de Ayntab abandonnent la langue armenienne en faveur d'une langue turque. Mais depuis 1850 cette communaute linguistique tend a utiliser de plus en plus un dialecte armenien. L'A. montre que ce dialecte est plus proche de l'armenien standard que d'un dialecte local (hypothese avancee par d'autres linguistes). Ainsi, l'objectif de ce travail est l'analyse phonologique de l'armenien parle par les Ayntabs depuis le debut du siecle dernier afin de le situer par rapport aux autres dialectes armeniens modernes. A cette fin, l'A. s'appuie sur une etude phonologique d'un journal tenu en 1964 par le Reverend Dikran Kherlopian (un corpus de huit pages manuscrites). Ce journal contient une liste de mots, d'expressions et de noms de personnes utilises par les Ayntabs. L'A. complete cette liste par des commentaires en anglais et effectue un parallele avec les deux autres sources principales du dialecte ayntab...
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Introduction to the History, Language, and Culture of the Homshecis If asked to identify the inheritors of the Black Sea coast region once inhabited by the Pontic Greeks, [INDICATE AREA ON MAP FROM TURKEY TO SOUTHERN RUSSIA] many would... more
Introduction to the History, Language, and Culture of the Homshecis If asked to identify the inheritors of the Black Sea coast region once inhabited by the Pontic Greeks, [INDICATE AREA ON MAP FROM TURKEY TO SOUTHERN RUSSIA] many would correctly identify the Laz in Turkey and the Abkhaz and other Caucasian tribes in Georgia and southern Russia. However, few people know of the existence of one of the most widespread and populous groups in this area, which has a population of as many as several hundred thousand. This group, which refers to itself as home(n)cik or residents of Hamshen (Turkish heminli), occupies a continuous area stretching along the Black Sea coast from the province of Samsun in north-central Turkey to southern Russia in the north. There are also significant Homshenci communities in the Izmit region of western Turkey, in various cities in Central Asia, and amongst the gastarbeiters in Germany. One is immediately struck by two facts about the Homshencik: they are orig
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L'article traite du dialecte armenien provenant de la region d'Aslanbeg (nord-ouest de l'Asie mineure). L'A. fait le point sur les differents aspects de ce dialecte a partir d'une monographie de 1898 d'ACarean : il... more
L'article traite du dialecte armenien provenant de la region d'Aslanbeg (nord-ouest de l'Asie mineure). L'A. fait le point sur les differents aspects de ce dialecte a partir d'une monographie de 1898 d'ACarean : il retrace son systeme phonologique (inventaire phonetique, structure syllabique, accentuation, dialecte en tant que langue cryptique), sa morphologie (au niveau verbal, nominal, et description du systeme numeral), sa syntaxe (conjonction, subordination) et evoque les possibles influences turques. L'article propose une translitteration et une transcription orthographique d'une partie de la monographie.
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The theory of metrification presented by Fabb and Halle in Chapter 2 (henceforth F&H) seems to us to be flawed in a number of respects. At the root of the problem is F&H's assumption that metrical structure is projected from... more
The theory of metrification presented by Fabb and Halle in Chapter 2 (henceforth F&H) seems to us to be flawed in a number of respects. At the root of the problem is F&H's assumption that metrical structure is projected from the surface syllables of a linguistic text. We argue that an alternative view not discussed by F&H is superior. This view, shared in its essentials by Deo (2007), Hanson (2006), J. Halle (2008), Kiparsky (1991), Lerdahl (2001) among others, holds that metrification proceeds via the mapping of linguistic structures ...
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The Harvard Dialect Survey of 2002-3 represented the first linguistic foray into large-scale crowdsourcing (60K respondents) incentivized by dynamic geospatial imaging. Working in tandem with statistics graduate student Josh Katz of North... more
The Harvard Dialect Survey of 2002-3 represented the first linguistic foray into large-scale crowdsourcing (60K respondents) incentivized by dynamic geospatial imaging. Working in tandem with statistics graduate student Josh Katz of North Carolina State University I expanded this in 2013 to make the New York Times dialect quiz, which deployed Josh's brilliant tweaks of existing clustering, visualization, and prediction algorithms to attract responses to my survey questions from more than 21 million humans. Since that time I have been collaborating with forensic linguist Jack Grieve of Aston University to extract linguistically-significant patterns and trends from our megacorpus. In this talk I report on the development of the New York Times quiz and some of the leading discoveries that have emerged from it, including isogloss conspiracies and stability, the role of political and commuting zones, and multivariate non-local cultural regions.
Research Interests: Teaching English as a Second Language, Languages and Linguistics, Dialectology, Dialects of English, Computational Linguistics, and 27 moreEnglish language, English, Historical Dialectology, Applied Linguistics, World Englishes, Survey Methodology, Survey Research, Teaching English As A Foreign Language, Linguistics, English Grammar, Survey Research (Research Methodology), English language and linguistics, English language teaching, English Education, English language and literature, Mapping, English as a Foreign Language (EFL), Digital mapping, Surveying and Mapping, Big Data, Dialectology and Geolinguistics, Dialects, Big Data Analytics, English Language Teaching, English Language, English As a Second Language (ESL), and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
The Harvard Dialect Survey of 2002-3 represented the first linguistic foray into large-scale crowdsourcing (60K respondents) incentivized by dynamic geospatial imaging. Working in tandem with statistics graduate student Josh Katz of North... more
The Harvard Dialect Survey of 2002-3 represented the first linguistic foray into large-scale crowdsourcing (60K respondents) incentivized by dynamic geospatial imaging. Working in tandem with statistics graduate student Josh Katz of North Carolina State University I expanded this in 2013 to make the New York Times dialect quiz, which deployed Josh's brilliant tweaks of existing clustering, visualization, and prediction algorithms to attract responses to my survey questions from more than 21 million humans. Since that time I have been collaborating with forensic linguist Jack Grieve of Aston University to extract linguistically-significant patterns and trends from our megacorpus. In this talk I report on the development of the New York Times quiz and some of the leading discoveries that have emerged from it, including isogloss conspiracies and stability, the role of political and commuting zones, and multivariate non-local cultural regions.
Research Interests: Languages and Linguistics, Dialectology, Dialects of English, English language, Crayfish Ecology, and 13 moreLinguistics, Web GIS, Crowdsourcing, English language and literature, English dialectology, Mapping, Digital mapping, Big Data, Crayfish, Crustaceans, Big Data / Analytics / Data Mining, Big Data Visualisation, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
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An overview of work on age&language in connection with Sankoff and Labov's talks, together with a bit of Tok Pisin.
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This paper has two related goals, one armenological and one theoretical. My theoretical goal is to provide a more accurate formal characterization of the syntactic, morphological, and semantic means employed to express possession and... more
This paper has two related goals, one armenological and one theoretical. My theoretical goal is to provide a more accurate formal characterization of the syntactic, morphological, and semantic means employed to express possession and existence in the range of historical and regional varieties of Armenian. By showing that this can be done in a coherent manner that sheds light on the structure of Armenian in particular and human linguistic cognition in general, I hope as well to achieve my armenological goal of refuting Meillet’s claim that one cannot fruitfully study the syntax of Classical Armenian because it is calqued on Greek and/or Syriac.
My starting point is Benveniste’s well-known 1952 observation that one can make sense of the seemingly unusual Classical “transitive perfect” (e.g. nora ē gortseal ‘(s)he/it has done’, where the subject of (supposedly) transitive verbs is placed in the genitive case, whereas the subject of intransitives is nominative) by relating it to the Classical possessive construction, which also places the possessor in the genitive (e.g. nora ē handerdz ‘(s)he/it has a garment’). In Benveniste’s analysis, the transitive perfect is a possessive construction, parallel to the have-perfect of European languages such as French, Italian, German, Dutch, and (older stages of) English. I show that Benveniste’s generalization, which remains influential in the theoretical syntactic literature up to the present day (cf. Kayne 1993, Thibault and Sankoff 1997), requires two important modifications, one historical and one syntactic: (i) the possession analysis of the transitive perfect was already known by the Armenian monks in Vienna by the mid-nineteenth century (cf. Ajtənean 1866.2:96-97); (ii) these perfect constructions actually distinguish unaccusatives and passives (which select ‘be’) from transitives and unergatives (which select ‘have’). I then show that more concrete evidence for the possession analysis of the perfect occurs in Koriwn, Middle Armenian, and at least two modern dialects (Hamshen and Xotrĵur), which use lexical ‘have’ to form the perfect with “transitive” verbs.
Finally, I demonstrate that the distinction between two classes of intransitive verbs—unaccusative and unergative—shows up in several other situations in Armenian, including:
1. compound verb formation in many modern dialects, e.g. thəmaχ aniel ‘be greedy’ vs. mayil elniel ‘wonder, be amazed’ (Van dialect, Ačařyan 1952:189)
2. progressive aspect formation with guni in Hamshen (Ačařyan 1947:140-1)
3. formation of perfects of witnessed vs. unwitnessed events in some dialects (Grigoryan 1957:171-2)
4. formation of subject vs. object participles in nominal relative clauses in Standard Western Armenian (Sigler 1997)
5. selection of active vs. passive meaning with the -man participial suffix in the New Julfa dialect (Ačařyan 1940)
6. analytic vs. synthetic causative formation in Modern Armenian (Comrie 1981:182)
My starting point is Benveniste’s well-known 1952 observation that one can make sense of the seemingly unusual Classical “transitive perfect” (e.g. nora ē gortseal ‘(s)he/it has done’, where the subject of (supposedly) transitive verbs is placed in the genitive case, whereas the subject of intransitives is nominative) by relating it to the Classical possessive construction, which also places the possessor in the genitive (e.g. nora ē handerdz ‘(s)he/it has a garment’). In Benveniste’s analysis, the transitive perfect is a possessive construction, parallel to the have-perfect of European languages such as French, Italian, German, Dutch, and (older stages of) English. I show that Benveniste’s generalization, which remains influential in the theoretical syntactic literature up to the present day (cf. Kayne 1993, Thibault and Sankoff 1997), requires two important modifications, one historical and one syntactic: (i) the possession analysis of the transitive perfect was already known by the Armenian monks in Vienna by the mid-nineteenth century (cf. Ajtənean 1866.2:96-97); (ii) these perfect constructions actually distinguish unaccusatives and passives (which select ‘be’) from transitives and unergatives (which select ‘have’). I then show that more concrete evidence for the possession analysis of the perfect occurs in Koriwn, Middle Armenian, and at least two modern dialects (Hamshen and Xotrĵur), which use lexical ‘have’ to form the perfect with “transitive” verbs.
Finally, I demonstrate that the distinction between two classes of intransitive verbs—unaccusative and unergative—shows up in several other situations in Armenian, including:
1. compound verb formation in many modern dialects, e.g. thəmaχ aniel ‘be greedy’ vs. mayil elniel ‘wonder, be amazed’ (Van dialect, Ačařyan 1952:189)
2. progressive aspect formation with guni in Hamshen (Ačařyan 1947:140-1)
3. formation of perfects of witnessed vs. unwitnessed events in some dialects (Grigoryan 1957:171-2)
4. formation of subject vs. object participles in nominal relative clauses in Standard Western Armenian (Sigler 1997)
5. selection of active vs. passive meaning with the -man participial suffix in the New Julfa dialect (Ačařyan 1940)
6. analytic vs. synthetic causative formation in Modern Armenian (Comrie 1981:182)
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Research Interests: Phonology, Armenian Studies, Syntax, Morphology, Classical Armenian, and 13 moreSyntactic Theory, Syntactic Change, Sonority-based structure, Morphology (Languages And Linguistics), Armenian Language, Morphology and Syntax, Syllabification, Armenian Linguistics, Epenthesis, The Sonority of Sound's Effect on Syllable, Syntactic Variation, Unaccusativity, and Sonority Hierarchy
whistlestop tour of Armenia, Armenians, and the development of the Armenian language from Proto-Indo-European
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Are the phonological generalisations formed by language learners upon exposure to underdetermined data sets (i) maximally broad (dictated by maximal representational efficiency, as in rule-based phonology of the SPE tradition), (ii)... more
Are the phonological generalisations formed by language learners upon exposure to underdetermined data sets (i) maximally broad (dictated by maximal representational efficiency, as in rule-based phonology of the SPE tradition), (ii) maximally specific (dictated by the Subset Principle, as in Hale and Reiss's 2008 "The Phonological Enterprise", or (iii) variable in scope, depending on (a) minimisation of uncertainty about future events (Gallistel) or (b) Bayesian comparison of competing hypotheses (Tenenbaum)? In this talk I present evidence that a hybrid of (iiia-b) best accounts for what we know about phonological acquisition (and in fact animal learning as a whole), and circumvents problems encountered by theory (i) with scope variation and theory (ii) with trajectories of diachronic change and flaws in applying Gold's subset reasoning to phonology.
Optimologists generally consider Optimality Theory (OT) to be more constrained or at worst extensionally equivalent to Rule-Based Phonology (RBP) (q.v. McCarthy 1998, Mohanan 2000:145). In reality, OT conceals a number of profound... more
Optimologists generally consider Optimality Theory (OT) to be more constrained or at worst extensionally equivalent to Rule-Based Phonology (RBP) (q.v. McCarthy 1998, Mohanan 2000:145). In reality, OT conceals a number of profound pathological differences that have begun to be noticed in the literature, such as counterfeeding from the past (Wilson 2008), cascading credit problems (Pater 2005), and non-locality in Local Conjunction (Pater 2006). My ongoing Pandora's Toolbox project surveys a wide range of such cases where OT creates
unforeseen/unwanted consequences by combining all phonological and morphological processes into a single mega-operation. In the present talk I focus on the pathological consequences of separating structural configurations from repairs within a parallel processing framework. Contrary to optimologists' pou sto, the idea that OT but not RBP provides a unified and insightful account for phonological conspiracies, I show that:
(i) Single constraints are not in fact able to carry out the functions of rule conspiracies, due to a variant of the Underdetermination Problem. In fact, separating separating structural configurations from repairs entails that an infinite (or at least annoyingly large) constraint set is required to cover the territory of a single rule (pace McCarthy 1998 and Mohanan 2000).
(ii) Even if a single constraint could replicate a rule conspiracy, this would problematically (and in all likelihood wrongly) predict that tying that constraint to another relevant constraint in the hierarchy should produce an optional conspiracy.
(iii) OT also produces optionality cascades: tying two F constraints indexed to a set of M constraints causes all of these M constraints to change their repair simultaneously according to the ranking chosen for the tied F pair. (The same phenomenon would require several chained optional rules in RBP, a highly complex operation that appears to be unattested cross-linguistically.)
(iv) In addition to failing to account for the conspiracies it
identifies, OT creates a new host of conspiracies wherein a unified process such as English nasal place assimilation must for theory-internal reasons be attributed to several similar constraints (Idsardi 1997, Mohanan 2000).
unforeseen/unwanted consequences by combining all phonological and morphological processes into a single mega-operation. In the present talk I focus on the pathological consequences of separating structural configurations from repairs within a parallel processing framework. Contrary to optimologists' pou sto, the idea that OT but not RBP provides a unified and insightful account for phonological conspiracies, I show that:
(i) Single constraints are not in fact able to carry out the functions of rule conspiracies, due to a variant of the Underdetermination Problem. In fact, separating separating structural configurations from repairs entails that an infinite (or at least annoyingly large) constraint set is required to cover the territory of a single rule (pace McCarthy 1998 and Mohanan 2000).
(ii) Even if a single constraint could replicate a rule conspiracy, this would problematically (and in all likelihood wrongly) predict that tying that constraint to another relevant constraint in the hierarchy should produce an optional conspiracy.
(iii) OT also produces optionality cascades: tying two F constraints indexed to a set of M constraints causes all of these M constraints to change their repair simultaneously according to the ranking chosen for the tied F pair. (The same phenomenon would require several chained optional rules in RBP, a highly complex operation that appears to be unattested cross-linguistically.)
(iv) In addition to failing to account for the conspiracies it
identifies, OT creates a new host of conspiracies wherein a unified process such as English nasal place assimilation must for theory-internal reasons be attributed to several similar constraints (Idsardi 1997, Mohanan 2000).
Greeks and Armenians have been in continuous and extensive contact from Indo-European times to the present day. Until the fifth century, for instance, Christian worship in Armenia was conducted in Greek or Syriac. Greek influence on the... more
Greeks and Armenians have been in continuous and extensive contact from Indo-European times to the present day. Until the fifth century, for instance, Christian worship in Armenia was conducted in Greek or Syriac. Greek influence on the Armenian language is well-documented in the biblical translations of the 5th century and the works of the philhellenic school of Armenian philosophers and translators (6th-8th centuries, though it is disputed who exactly belongs to this category). Greco-Armenian genetic resemblances predating the appearance of Armenian texts in the 5th century have been extensively investigated as well, notably in Clackson’s The Linguistic Relationship between Armenian and Greek (1994). Linguistic cross-fertilisation has continued into the modern era, as seen for example in the Greek dialects of Cappadocia and Pharasa in Turkey (Dawkins 1916) and Lori, Hankavan, and Yaghdan in Armenia (Hodgson 2008)
But what do we know about linguistic interactions between the Armenian and Greek cultures outside of this timeframe and beyond the pale of high literary culture? This talk provides a mise au point of the scattered available scholarship on the diversity of Greco-Armenian language contact in Late Antiquity and Byzantium and traces its early Christian antecedents and post-Byzantine consequences in the Balkan Sprachbund. Materials to be exploited include early Christian loanwords, Greek inscriptions in Armenia, Armenian inscriptions and manuscripts in Greek script, bilingual Byzantine seals and inscriptions, and Byzantine renditions of Armenian personal and place names.
But what do we know about linguistic interactions between the Armenian and Greek cultures outside of this timeframe and beyond the pale of high literary culture? This talk provides a mise au point of the scattered available scholarship on the diversity of Greco-Armenian language contact in Late Antiquity and Byzantium and traces its early Christian antecedents and post-Byzantine consequences in the Balkan Sprachbund. Materials to be exploited include early Christian loanwords, Greek inscriptions in Armenia, Armenian inscriptions and manuscripts in Greek script, bilingual Byzantine seals and inscriptions, and Byzantine renditions of Armenian personal and place names.
Popular opinion maintains that World Englishes have been undergoing radical restructuring over the past two decades or so due to drastic changes in the dissemination of American language and culture via films, television, and the... more
Popular opinion maintains that World Englishes have been undergoing radical restructuring over the past two decades or so due to drastic changes in the dissemination of American language and culture via films, television, and the internet. The same internet also happens to provide us with new tools. In this talk I survey what these new tools reveal about the present state of World Englishes, focusing on data collected from a series of large-scale online surveys I have run over the past seven years.
How can we tell how a language was pronounced long before we have live speakers, recordings, or even linguistically sophisticated descriptions? I address this question using the example of Armenian, an Indo-European language originally... more
How can we tell how a language was pronounced long before we have live speakers, recordings, or even linguistically sophisticated descriptions? I address this question using the example of Armenian, an Indo-European language originally spoken in eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus and now spread in small numbers over most countries of the world. We will consider renditions of personal and place names in contemporary Byzantine documents, errors in manuscripts and inscriptions, phonological patterns in native and borrowed words, triangulation from modern dialects, and rendition of Armenian in non-Armenian scripts (Greek, Roman, Cyrillic, Arabic) and vice versa.
Hračhea Ačařean states in his 1913 Hayerēn Gawařakan Bařaran (1913:39) that Artvin "remains an entirely unknown dialect", and little has happened to change that picture in the subsequent century despite its putative membership in the... more
Hračhea Ačařean states in his 1913 Hayerēn Gawařakan Bařaran (1913:39) that Artvin "remains an entirely unknown dialect", and little has happened to change that picture in the subsequent century despite its putative membership in the mysterious lis dialect subgroup (e.g. ērthlis ēs 'you go'). The dialect is not mentioned in most surveys of Armenian dialects, and the lone thesis on the dialect (Alaverdyan 1969) is lost, according to directors of the dialect institute (personal communication, 2001). The most extensive treatment of the
dialect currently available is Gharibyan 1953:329-342, on which
Grigoryan 1957:435-452 and Alaverdyan (1968a, b) appear to be based. The original but limited presentations by Ačařean and Gharibyan are based on the speech of individuals who grew up in Artvin and Batumi before the Genocide, leaving us unsure of what has become of the dialect in subsequent generations. The primary purpose of the present talk is to address this lacuna based on field work I have conducted
with two middle-aged speakers of the dialect currently residing in the Los Angeles area. I focus on the following questions:
• Where is the dialect currently preserved, and by how many speakers?
• How has the dialect changed from the form reported by Ačařean, Gharibyan, and Alaverdyan?
• How does the dialect related to the neighboring Armenian dialect groups (Hamshen, Trabzon, Xodrĵur, Erzerum/Axaltsxa/Axalkalak, Tiflis) and the other dialects of the -lis branch?
dialect currently available is Gharibyan 1953:329-342, on which
Grigoryan 1957:435-452 and Alaverdyan (1968a, b) appear to be based. The original but limited presentations by Ačařean and Gharibyan are based on the speech of individuals who grew up in Artvin and Batumi before the Genocide, leaving us unsure of what has become of the dialect in subsequent generations. The primary purpose of the present talk is to address this lacuna based on field work I have conducted
with two middle-aged speakers of the dialect currently residing in the Los Angeles area. I focus on the following questions:
• Where is the dialect currently preserved, and by how many speakers?
• How has the dialect changed from the form reported by Ačařean, Gharibyan, and Alaverdyan?
• How does the dialect related to the neighboring Armenian dialect groups (Hamshen, Trabzon, Xodrĵur, Erzerum/Axaltsxa/Axalkalak, Tiflis) and the other dialects of the -lis branch?
Language acquisition algorithms tend to cluster around the two logical end points of a data-fitting scale: conservative models such as those employing the Subset Principle (Berwick 1985) and the Size Principle (Tenenbaum and Griffiths... more
Language acquisition algorithms tend to cluster around the two logical end points of a data-fitting scale: conservative models such as those employing the Subset Principle (Berwick 1985) and the Size Principle (Tenenbaum and Griffiths 2001) maintain that learners cling as closely as possible to positive data exemplars, whereas aggressive models such as the one assumed in the Sound Pattern of English (Chomsky and Halle 1968) hold that learners postulate the simplest and broadest-scoped generalizations compatible with the observed data. In this talk we demonstrate using phonological examples that these two classes of learning algorithm make testably different predictions about the possible range of historical changes, and we compare these predictions to the empirical record. The available diachronic facts are shown to primarily involve scope expansion, which is more consistent with the predictions of the aggressive algorithms.
Question 12 in Muradyan et al.’s 1977 manual for the collection of Armenian dialect materials asks for the word for what many English speakers call a sunshower, which he glosses as արեւ եղանակին բարակ անձրեւ arew eƚanakin barak anjrew... more
Question 12 in Muradyan et al.’s 1977 manual for the collection of Armenian dialect materials asks for the word for what many English speakers call a sunshower, which he glosses as արեւ եղանակին բարակ անձրեւ arew eƚanakin barak anjrew ‘light rain in sunny weather’, followed by a number of relatively unremarkable regional variants including արեւմաղ arewmaƚ ‘sun sieve’ (e.g. Kars, Amatuni 1912:69), արեւցող arewc‛oƚ ‘sun dew’ (Muš, ibid.), and կոթաշաղ kot‛ašaƚ ‘stem dew’ (Loṙi, ibid.). The other options provided (without regional attribution) by Muradyan are more intriguing, however: gilacnuk, gēlc‛əknuk, gēlc‛əṙt‛el, gilu harsanik‛, and kyülašaƚ, all connected to wolves and/or weddings or birth.
Tēr Aƚēk‛sandrean observes on p. 83 of his 1886 collection of folkore from the Armenians of Tiflis that when rain falls while the sun is shining they say gēlə tƚay ē berum ‘the wolf is bearing a child’. I have heard the same expression in the village of Vank‛ in Karabagh, and Malχaseants‛ 1944 mentions related forms gayli harsanik‛, gēlc‛ənknuk, and gēlc‛ərel without regional attribution. An article on Armenian folklore of Kayseri in Biwrakn (1899:489) reports that when rain falls while the sun is shining, the wolves were giving birth. Amatuni’s (1912) entry for arewmaƚ attests similar forms involving lupine births in Ararat, Margari, Alaškert, and Arčeš, as well as külašaƚ ‘wolf dew’ in Karabagh and gilu harsanik‛ ‘wolf’s wedding’ in the Eĵmiatsin village of Teƚer. We also find gēl u ampi harsnik‛ (‘wolf and cloud wedding’) in Č‛omaχlu (Galfaean 1930:25).
These expressions may strike the outsider as quite unexpected, but in fact form part of a consistent picture in which the Armenian world labels sunshowers either in terms of the devil beating his wife or as some form of marked birth or wedding, often taking place on a mountain, as in ‘when it is sunny and rain falls, they say gēlə sarə kc‛ənkni “the wolf is giving birth on the mountain”’ and eƚnikə sarə tsni kə ‘the little hind is giving birth on the mountain’’ (Malχaseanc‛ 1944), a close variant of which, aƚnikə leṙə tsni kor, Gabik‛ean 1952:176 mentions as being sung by Sivas children when it rains while the sun is shining and creates a rainbow.
These curious collocations are not limited to Armenian or even to the Armenian homeland: compare for instance southern American English and Burgundy French ‘the devil’s beating his wife’, Fijian ‘siar’s wedding’ (the siar is a small deer-like animal), Costa Rican Spanish la venada está dando crio ‘the doe is giving birth’, and Senâya Arabic (spoken in Iranian Kurdistan) dēwe gōrīlu ‘the wolves are marrying’.
In this presentation I attempt to construct a lexical geography of the sunshower, surveying the range of Armenian expressions for the sunshower and placing them within the context of related expressions used in neighboring and other languages. I also discuss speculations in the literature on origins of these expressions, focusing on work by Kuusi (1957) and Blust (1999).
Tēr Aƚēk‛sandrean observes on p. 83 of his 1886 collection of folkore from the Armenians of Tiflis that when rain falls while the sun is shining they say gēlə tƚay ē berum ‘the wolf is bearing a child’. I have heard the same expression in the village of Vank‛ in Karabagh, and Malχaseants‛ 1944 mentions related forms gayli harsanik‛, gēlc‛ənknuk, and gēlc‛ərel without regional attribution. An article on Armenian folklore of Kayseri in Biwrakn (1899:489) reports that when rain falls while the sun is shining, the wolves were giving birth. Amatuni’s (1912) entry for arewmaƚ attests similar forms involving lupine births in Ararat, Margari, Alaškert, and Arčeš, as well as külašaƚ ‘wolf dew’ in Karabagh and gilu harsanik‛ ‘wolf’s wedding’ in the Eĵmiatsin village of Teƚer. We also find gēl u ampi harsnik‛ (‘wolf and cloud wedding’) in Č‛omaχlu (Galfaean 1930:25).
These expressions may strike the outsider as quite unexpected, but in fact form part of a consistent picture in which the Armenian world labels sunshowers either in terms of the devil beating his wife or as some form of marked birth or wedding, often taking place on a mountain, as in ‘when it is sunny and rain falls, they say gēlə sarə kc‛ənkni “the wolf is giving birth on the mountain”’ and eƚnikə sarə tsni kə ‘the little hind is giving birth on the mountain’’ (Malχaseanc‛ 1944), a close variant of which, aƚnikə leṙə tsni kor, Gabik‛ean 1952:176 mentions as being sung by Sivas children when it rains while the sun is shining and creates a rainbow.
These curious collocations are not limited to Armenian or even to the Armenian homeland: compare for instance southern American English and Burgundy French ‘the devil’s beating his wife’, Fijian ‘siar’s wedding’ (the siar is a small deer-like animal), Costa Rican Spanish la venada está dando crio ‘the doe is giving birth’, and Senâya Arabic (spoken in Iranian Kurdistan) dēwe gōrīlu ‘the wolves are marrying’.
In this presentation I attempt to construct a lexical geography of the sunshower, surveying the range of Armenian expressions for the sunshower and placing them within the context of related expressions used in neighboring and other languages. I also discuss speculations in the literature on origins of these expressions, focusing on work by Kuusi (1957) and Blust (1999).
quick overview of Vedic Sanskrit and its meters and performance.
In this talk I introduce the Abkhaz language and its main dialects, and then zoom in on some of the main phonetic and phonological properties of the severely endangered Cwyzhy dialect spoken in western Turkey. We will consider the unusual... more
In this talk I introduce the Abkhaz language and its main dialects, and then zoom in on some of the main phonetic and phonological properties of the severely endangered Cwyzhy dialect spoken in western Turkey. We will consider the unusual vowel and consonant inventories, (putative) vowel coloring and dispersion, and oddities of vowel and consonant syllabification and reduplication.
After outlining the place of nanovariation at the nexus of labovian and chomskyan linguistics, I survey a representative range of cases of nanovariation in aphasia, language acquisition, developmental disorders, lexical semantics,... more
After outlining the place of nanovariation at the nexus of labovian and chomskyan linguistics, I survey a representative range of cases of nanovariation in aphasia, language acquisition, developmental disorders, lexical semantics, ludlings, synesthesia, pigeons, and regular adults. I suggest that the nanovariation research program significantly expands our empirical space, avoids fatal confounds, and can help us (dis)favor theories of how language is acquired.
identifies the author of a 17th century heptaglot manuscript in the Bodleian Library as having been composed by noted polyglot Wojciech Bobowski, identifies the language of his Armenian entries as belonging to the "European Armenian"... more
identifies the author of a 17th century heptaglot manuscript in the Bodleian Library as having been composed by noted polyglot Wojciech Bobowski, identifies the language of his Armenian entries as belonging to the "European Armenian" dialect group and most closely related to the Suczawa and Crimea branches of that group, and suggests that Bobowski was himself a (Ukrainian) Armenian.
Argues that existing OT learning algorithms do not generate conspiracies or teleology in the ways claimed in the literature.
Conspiracy Theory (the idea that cases of homogeneity of target/heterogeneity of process call for a theory based on surface constraints rather than rules; McCarthy 1999 etc.) is particularly à propos for this conference, as it constitutes... more
Conspiracy Theory (the idea that cases of homogeneity of target/heterogeneity of process call for a theory based on surface constraints rather than rules; McCarthy 1999 etc.) is particularly à propos for this conference, as it constitutes the primary argument for the abandonment of the rationalist Chomsky/Hallean research program so closely identified with the history of MIT linguistics, and its key players pro and con cut across the history of the department:
--Ross first applied the term “conspiracy” to the linguistic concept
--Halle suggested Yawelmani to Kuroda and Kisseberth
--Archangeli and Blevins refined the Yokuts analysis
--McCarthy and Prince demonstrated the relevance of conspiracy theory to OT
--Kiparsky, Mohanan, and Idsardi problematised the notion of synchronic conspiracies
I argue that existing implementations of Optimality Theory (OT) fail to provide satisfactory mechanisms for generating conspiracies (particularly due to properties of their acquisition algorithms), and because of their separation of target and repair make undesirable predictions involving optional conspiracies and conspiratorial cascades. Rule-Based Phonology (RBP) along the lines of Kenstowicz 1993 in tandem with Kiparsky’s 1972/82 perspective on what does and does not require synchronic explanation provides a more viable and insightful account of the relevant phenomena.
--Ross first applied the term “conspiracy” to the linguistic concept
--Halle suggested Yawelmani to Kuroda and Kisseberth
--Archangeli and Blevins refined the Yokuts analysis
--McCarthy and Prince demonstrated the relevance of conspiracy theory to OT
--Kiparsky, Mohanan, and Idsardi problematised the notion of synchronic conspiracies
I argue that existing implementations of Optimality Theory (OT) fail to provide satisfactory mechanisms for generating conspiracies (particularly due to properties of their acquisition algorithms), and because of their separation of target and repair make undesirable predictions involving optional conspiracies and conspiratorial cascades. Rule-Based Phonology (RBP) along the lines of Kenstowicz 1993 in tandem with Kiparsky’s 1972/82 perspective on what does and does not require synchronic explanation provides a more viable and insightful account of the relevant phenomena.
We cover different sorts of writing systems (from hieroglyphs to txt language), look a little at evolution of scripts and decipherment of scripts (including some remarks on recent attempts to decipher undeciphered scripts) and also look... more
We cover different sorts of writing systems (from hieroglyphs to txt language), look a little at evolution of scripts and decipherment of scripts (including some remarks on recent attempts to decipher undeciphered scripts) and also look at how humans have adapted to become so good at reading and using script, and what the different scripts of the world can tell us about language, and human cognition.
A quick intro to Haitian Creole, encouraging students to identify patterns in the correspondences between it and Standard French, which initially seems hopeless but turns out to be satisfyingly systematic.
Humans have in recent years been found to be able to identify with stunning accuracy a speaker's age, race, class, region, gender, and sexual orientation from just a short audio sample of their speech. More disturbingly, these judgments... more
Humans have in recent years been found to be able to identify with stunning accuracy a speaker's age, race, class, region, gender, and sexual orientation from just a short audio sample of their speech. More disturbingly, these judgments have been found to trigger subconscious assessments of education, intelligence, trustworthiness, and even height and attractiveness. In this presentation we examine the evidence for this so-called linguistic profiling and the related phenomenon expectancy violation, and consider how they might have developed, whether they can or should be combated, and their larger implications for human society.
Though this conference focuses on the language *of* conflict, I consider in this presentation a case study of languages *in* conflict: Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew, and many varieties of Armenian, all competing for space in the Armenian of the... more
Though this conference focuses on the language *of* conflict, I consider in this presentation a case study of languages *in* conflict: Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew, and many varieties of Armenian, all competing for space in the Armenian of the inhabitants of the Armenian Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem. How does this battle play out in the public literary sphere (street signs, tourist ceramics, stamps, manuscripts, inscriptions) vs. the private oral sphere? I suggest that three main varieties of distinctly Jerusalem Armenian have evolved in the Armenian Quarter, and consider a number of reasons why these varieties manifest extensive influence from Arabic and Turkish but not Hebrew.
This presentation reports on two mapping advances developed in connection with the Cambridge Online Survey of World Englishes: (i) dynamic mapping of online linguistic survey data using a modified form of the google maps engine, and (ii)... more
This presentation reports on two mapping advances developed in connection with the Cambridge Online Survey of World Englishes: (i) dynamic mapping of online linguistic survey data using a modified form of the google maps engine, and (ii) an algorithm for automated isogloss generation.
Hračhea Ačařean states in his 1913 Hayerēn Gawařakan Bařaran (1913:39) that Artvin "remains an entirely unknown dialect", and little has happened to change that picture in the subsequent century despite its putative membership in the... more
Hračhea Ačařean states in his 1913 Hayerēn Gawařakan Bařaran (1913:39) that Artvin "remains an entirely unknown dialect", and little has happened to change that picture in the subsequent century despite its putative membership in the mysterious lis dialect subgroup (e.g. ērthlis ēs 'you go'). The dialect is not mentioned in most surveys of Armenian dialects, and the lone thesis on the dialect (Alaverdyan 1969) is lost, according to directors of the dialect institute (personal communication, 2001). The most extensive treatment of the
dialect currently available is Gharibyan 1953:329-342, on which Grigoryan 1957:435-452 and Alaverdyan (1968a, b) appear to be based.
The original but limited presentations by Ačařean and Gharibyan are based on the speech of individuals who grew up in Artvin and Batumi before the Genocide, leaving us unsure of what has become of the dialect in subsequent generations. The primary purpose of the present talk is to address this lacuna based on field work I have conducted with two middle-aged speakers of the dialect currently residing in the Los Angeles area. I focus on the following questions:
• Where is the dialect currently preserved, and by how many speakers?
• How has the dialect changed from the form reported by Ačařean, Gharibyan, and Alaverdyan?
• How does the dialect related to the neighboring Armenian dialect groups (Hamshen, Trabzon, Xodrĵur, Erzerum/Axaltsxa/Axalkalak, Tiflis) and the other dialects of the -lis branch?
dialect currently available is Gharibyan 1953:329-342, on which Grigoryan 1957:435-452 and Alaverdyan (1968a, b) appear to be based.
The original but limited presentations by Ačařean and Gharibyan are based on the speech of individuals who grew up in Artvin and Batumi before the Genocide, leaving us unsure of what has become of the dialect in subsequent generations. The primary purpose of the present talk is to address this lacuna based on field work I have conducted with two middle-aged speakers of the dialect currently residing in the Los Angeles area. I focus on the following questions:
• Where is the dialect currently preserved, and by how many speakers?
• How has the dialect changed from the form reported by Ačařean, Gharibyan, and Alaverdyan?
• How does the dialect related to the neighboring Armenian dialect groups (Hamshen, Trabzon, Xodrĵur, Erzerum/Axaltsxa/Axalkalak, Tiflis) and the other dialects of the -lis branch?
The present series of lectures asks “How is understanding possible against the backdrop of a prevailing spirit that tends to [reduce] the experiences of human intellects to activities such as cognition or reasoning?” I would suggest... more
The present series of lectures asks “How is understanding possible against the backdrop of a prevailing spirit that tends to [reduce] the experiences of human intellects to activities such as cognition or reasoning?” I would suggest shifting this question down one level to “How is understanding possible against the backdrop of a prevailing spirit that tends to [reduce] human intellect and cognition to associations and activation strengths in neural networks? I approach this question by comparing behaviorist/reductionist and rationalist/mentalist theories of language and cognition. The former, which maintains that humans (and other animals) are essentially deterministic automata, has become increasingly dominant in the cognitive sciences since about the late 1980s. The latter, championed by the likes of Noam Chomsky and Randy Gallistel, maintains that, in the tradition of Descartes, animals are rational creatures who form theories, ideas, and concepts, rather than blindly and automatically responding to real-world stimuli.
I present some studies suggesting that the rationalist approach is more likely to be on the right track.
I present some studies suggesting that the rationalist approach is more likely to be on the right track.
"Linguists generally believe that phonological processes are constrained by some sort of locality condition, which restricts interactions to segments that are adjacent at some level of representation. The problem is, as McCarthy 1989:71... more
"Linguists generally believe that phonological processes are constrained by some sort of locality condition, which restricts interactions to segments that are adjacent at some level of representation. The problem is, as McCarthy 1989:71 observes, that “phonological operations frequently affect segments that are not string-adjacent”. Two main responses to this problem are to be found in the literature: Relativized Locality allows interactions between non-adjacent segments, provided that no potential participant in the relevant process intervenes; Strict Locality (SL) asserts that McCarthy’s generalization is incorrect, and long-distance spreading is not allowed under any conditions. Some optimologists have moved slightly beyond SL, notably Rose and Walker, but they still cling to the idea that SL exists as a principle.
I provide a number of arguments demonstrating that phonological spreading is not constrained by Strict Locality. I conclude that some version of Relativized Locality is therefore required, and suggest that the model developed by Calabrese 1995 allows the best account for the facts."
I provide a number of arguments demonstrating that phonological spreading is not constrained by Strict Locality. I conclude that some version of Relativized Locality is therefore required, and suggest that the model developed by Calabrese 1995 allows the best account for the facts."
Investigates the claim that epenthesis cannot counterbleed voicing assimilation.