Anthony P. Grant

Adding typology to lexicostatistics: a combined approach to language classification

Abstract The ASJP project aims at establishing relationships between languages on the basis of the Swadesh word list. For this purpose, lists have been collected and phonologically transcribed for almost 3,500 languages. Using a method based on the algorithm proposed by Levenshtein (Cybernetics and Control Theory 10: 707–710, 1966), a custom-made computer program calculates the distances between all pairs of languages in the database. Standard software is used to express the relationships between languages graphically. The current article compares the results of our lexicon-based approach with the results of a similar exercise that takes the typological variables contained in the WALS database as a point of departure. We establish that the latter approach leads to even better results than the lexicon-based one. The best result in terms of correspondence with some well-established genetic and areal classifications, however, is attained when the lexical and typological methods are combined, especially if we select both the most stable Swadesh items and the most stable WALS variables.

Contact, convergence, and conjunctions: a cross-linguistic study of borrowing correlations among certain kinds of discourse, phasal adverbial, and dependent clause markers

This volume deals with some never before described morphosyntactic variations and changes appearing in settings involving language contact. Contact-induced changes are defined as dynamic and multiple, involving internal change as well as historical and sociolinguistic factors. The identification of a variety of explanations constitutes a first step; analyzing their relationships forms a second. Only a multifaceted methodology enables this fine-grained approach to contact-induced change. A range of methodologies are proposed, but the chapters generally have their roots in a typological perspective. The contributors recognize the precautionary principle: for example, they emphasize the difficulty of studying languages that have not been described adequately and for which diachronic data are not extensive or reliable. Three main perspectives on contact-induced language change are presented. The first explores the role of multilingual speakers in contact-induced language change, especially their spontaneous innovations in discourse. The second explores the differences between ordinary contact-induced change and change in endangered languages. The third discusses various aspects of the relationship between contact-induced change and internal change.

Contact-Induced Change and the Openness of 'Closed' Morphological Systems: Some Cases from Native America

This paper examines the effects of contact-induced language change on the nominal and verbal inflectional morphology of several Native American languages, most of which have also replaced large amounts of their basic vocabulary with loans from other language. It shows that although there are few if any limitations on the kinds of concepts which may be expressed by borrowed items, borrowing as a source of morphological renewal is an infrequently-employed process in these languages, and even those languages which have borrowed heavily have not always borrowed the same types of morphemes from other languages. Information derived from diachronic inspection of inflectional morphology remains the most reliable means of classifying languages genealogically with accuracy.

The Western Micronesian Sprachbund.

This discusses the western part of Micronesia (the Marianas and the western Carolines) as a linguistic area.

Ruth Mace, Clare J. Holden and Stephen Shennan (eds.), The evolution of cultural diversity: A phylogenetic approach

Ruth Mace, Clare J. Holden and Stephen Shennan (eds.), The evolution of cultural diversity: A phylogenetic approach . London: UCL Press, 2005 Pp. x, 291. Pb

Jazyk Cam: Ustnyje Govora Vostocnogo Dialekta (review)

34.95. This book is in two parts, the first of which presents papers on unified anthropological themes and the second, coevolutionary approaches to some anthropological questions, involving the integration of findings from more than one anthropological field.

The complex of creole typological features: The case of Mauritian Creole

In 1979 a joint Soviet-Vietnamese research commission conducted primary 2eldwork on a number of under-documented languages in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The results of three of these linguistic investigations, those carried out on the Mon-Khmer languages Muong (which belongs to the Vietic branch of Mon-Khmer) and Xinh Mul (a Khmuic language and therefore also Mon-Khmer), and on the Kam-Tai language Laha, have already been published (Laha 1986, Muong 1987, Xinh Mul 1990). Now, after 20 years, there appear some of the results of a linguistic investigation into an Austronesian language, namely Eastern Cham or Phan Rang Cham, a member of the Chamic subbranch of the Malayo-Chamic subdivision of Western MalayoPolynesian. This research was conducted in Phan Rang (the former city of Panduranga), southern coastal Vietnam, by Natalia Alieva, a Russian specialist in Malay and Mâori with interests in Cham (for instance, Alieva 1992), and the Vietnamese linguist Bùi Khành Theå. With the appearance of a large Eastern Cham-Vietnamese dictionary (Bùi Khành Theå 1995) and the imminent publication of a structural sketch of the language (Thurgood to appear) that is based largely upon an analysis of three texts that were collected and published by the SIL missionary linguist Doris Blood (Blood 1978), Eastern Cham ranks second only to Acehnese among Chamic languages in terms of its degree and range of coverage in modern linguistic descriptions. It is clear that the book’s focus is solidly on Eastern Cham, though here and there mention is made of the occurrence of different forms in Western Cham. Acehnese parallels of certain Eastern Cham words are cited occasionally, but very little is said about other Chamic languages such as Jarai, though the authors quietly acknowledge the existence of a Chamic group of languages. The “oral lects” that are referred to in the Russian subtitle indicate that the subject matter of the book under review is the spoken modern Eastern Cham language, rather than the arti2cially conservative written language that was used in Champa both before and after its political dissolution—which represents an earlier form of speech that is ancestral both to Eastern and Western Cham. The book’s cover shows an illustration of a typical Cham house with balcony and pointed roof. The work opens with an introduction to the history and fate of the Chams, which contains much information that is otherwise rather hard to 2nd, and which includes two useful maps (9, 11) of the positions of Cham settlements. The table of letters in the traditional Cham alphabet (19–20) is useful, although it is unfortunate that it is split across two pages. The structural description is of the traditional kind and is organized according to a conception of the parts of speech that is intended to be relevant to a study of Cham. The segmental phonological description precedes the sections on morphology and syntax; there is also a short section (33–36) on the lexicon of Eastern Cham, but this is mostly taken up with a discussion of compounding and of cases of homonymy. The orthography used for writing Cham is phonemic, and the discussion of the seg-