Abigail C. Cohn

THE STATUS OF NASALIZED CONTINUANTS

Publisher Summary Typological surveys show that nasal consonants are very common cross-linguistically. This chapter reviews the cases of both underlying and derived nasalized continuants to better understand the distribution of the segments when they occur. Nasal consonants trigger Nasal Spread, and both vowels and laryngeals are permeable to nasalization. Phonologically, both the [ – nasal, –continuant] and the supralaryngeal [+continuant] consonants block Nasal Spread. This is because of the underlying [– nasal] specification in the former case (including the trill |r|) and the proposed configuration constraint in the latter. Although phonological and phonetic patterns of nasalization differ in Sundanese, in that some phonological blockers are phonetically amenable to nasalization and others are not, both the phonological and phonetic patterns follow the sonority hierarchy proposed in the chapter.

The consequences of dissimilation in Sundanese

Studies of phonological assimilation have played a central role in the development of current phonological theory. As widely discussed in the literature, assimilation is an extremely common phonological process cross-linguistically and therefore an adequate phonological theory should represent it simply and naturally. This has led to the current view of assimilation as spreading (Clements 1976; Goldsmith 1976; Hayes 1986; among others). Much less work has addressed itself to the issue of dissimilation, but recently it has been suggested that dissimilation should be analysed as delinking followed by default fill-in (Odden 1987; Poser 1987; McCarthy 1988; Yip 1988).

Modeling social factors in language shift

Abstract This article introduces a quantitative approach to modeling language shift in communities with millions of speakers. Using Indonesia as a case study, and employing a large body of data from the Indonesian population census, we document how factors such as urbanization, ethnicity, economic development, gender, and religion correlate with the shift from local languages (Javanese, Sundanese, etc.) to the national language, Bahasa Indonesia. Our findings inform ongoing research on the sociological foundations of language shift across both small and large communities. Methodologically, we introduce a statistical approach that borrows from other social sciences, and show how to exploit massive amounts of untapped linguistic, demographic, and sociological data.

Marc D. Hauser (1996). The evolution of communication . Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Pp. xiii+760.

This volume impressively synthesises vast literatures from the fields of linguistics, bioacoustics, psychology, neurobiology, evolutionary biology, ethology and anthropology, and in the process raises a number of provocative questions regarding the contentious issue of human language origins. Because the book is so far-reaching, both in terms of the breadth of communicative phenomena which it covers and the depth in which it discusses them, a short review such as the present one can only scratch the surface of the wealth of information and ideas which it contains. This book was written to fill a perceived need for a text covering a wide range of issues in comparative communication, for which it is certainly well suited. Those interested in the production and perception of auditory and visual signals, as well as in issues as diverse as evolutionary biology and cognitive psychology, will find it an easily readable – or browseable – piece of work. As Hauser notes, he has ‘attempted to write a book that is aimed primarily at the expert while being useful to those wishing to pick out pieces...for undergraduate and graduate instruction’ (p. 14). The book is successful along both lines. It is extremely well organised and well indexed, making it easy to select case studies relevant to specific communicative phenomena (e.g. audition, vocalisation, acquisition, signed languages, etc.) or particular species (humans, monkeys, anurans, birds, etc.). Particularly useful are the large number of graphics and illustrations, as well as conceptual ‘boxes’ which succinctly summarise key concepts or theoretical perspectives which may be unfamiliar to some readers (e.g. statistical information theory, neural tuning curves, source-filter theory and sexual selection theory, to name just a few).