April M. S. McMahon

Finding Families: Quantitative Methods in Language Classification

Over the past two decades, many of the major controversies in historical linguistics have centred on language classification. Some of these controversies have been concentrated within linguistics, as in the methodological opposition of multilateral comparison to the traditional Comparative Method. Others have crossed discipline boundaries, with the question of whether correlations can be established between language families, archaeological cultures and genetic populations. At the same time, increasing emphasis on language contact has challenged the family tree as a model of linguistic relatedness. This paper argues that we must quantify language classification, to allow objective evaluation of alternative methods within linguistics, and of proposed cross–disciplinary correlations; and that a first step in this quantification is represented by the ‘borrowing’ of computational tools from biology.

Prosodic change and language contact

Using evidence from first-hand experimental work and existing studies, Colantoni and Gurlekian take a tentative but encouraging step towards exploring the role of contact in explaining intonational change. Their central question is whether Buenos Aires Spanish intonation is distinctive relative to other varieties of Spanish; and if so, whether that distinctiveness is due to contact with Italian.

Phonology and the Holy Grail

Abstract Current Optimality Theory (OT) is expanding, in terms of theoretical machinery, to include a number of novel types of constraints and constraint interactions. This expansion correlates closely with the application of the model to phonological phenomena outside its area of greatest strength, namely prosody. This paper argues that the considerable benefits of a constrained OT can be maintained if the model is restricted to prosody rather than melody: OT is not, in other words, a Theory of Everything in the sense of superstring theory in modern physics. It is claimed that the roots of the prosody—melody distinction lie in human evolutionary biology, and that indications of their separateness can still be found in connection of intonation with gesture and emotion, and in patterns of brain lateralisation.

Michael Hammond (1999). The phonology of English: a prosodic optimality-theoretic approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. xvi+368.

Hammonds book is the volume on English in the series The Phonology of the Worlds Languages ; and therein lies an inevitable problem. Writing a contribution for a series with as many definite articles as this one, and on English, which like it or not, and with no disrespect to the less attended-to languages of the world, has been the focus of quite disproportionate phonological attention, is for anyone a rather daunting task. This means that there is even more literature to review than usual in a book of this kind, and more controversies to be embroiled in; and in consequence, there will inevitably be restrictions in coverage. What matters, then, is that the author must set out what he intends to do, be consistent with that, and explain his choices in terms of those entirely inevitable restrictions. Although this book has many good points, it often seems that Hammond does not actually carry through his stated intentions, or justify the choices he has made as cogently as might be hoped.

Understanding language change: Three views of sound change

Introduction: types of sound change In this chapter we shall investigate change in phonetics and phonology, primarily by outlining the approaches of three schools of linguists, in chronological order the Neogrammarians, Structuralists and early Generativists. This provides an opportunity to explore the development of sound change theory and introduce schools of linguistic thought which will be mentioned intermittently throughout the book. First, however, it may be useful to outline some of the types of sound change one might expect to encounter in any language. Many sound changes affect single sounds, or vowel or consonant segments, and we shall concentrate on these below. However, some sound changes involve larger units, such as clusters of consonants, or diphthongs; and supra-segmentals such as rhythm, stress and intonation may also change. For instance, students of Germanic languages propose an early Germanic Accent Shift, which in general placed the main word stress on the first syllable of the stem; and English and German intonation patterns differ, although these languages are descended from a common source, so that we must assume changes in the intonational system of one or both daughters. It is certainly harder to study changes in suprasegmental features, since stress and intonation are rarely recorded in writing; but they do nonetheless occur. Segmental sound changes can be conditioned, occurring in particular, specifiable environments, or unconditioned, applying to all occurrences of a particular sound. They may also be regular, or irregular and sporadic.