Sarah G. Thomason

Phonetic structures of Montana Salish

Abstract Montana Salish is an Interior Salishan language spoken on the Flathead Reservation in Northwest Montana by an estimated population of about 40 speakers. This paper describes the basic phonetic characteristics of the language based on data from five speakers. Montana Salish contains a number of typologically unusual consonant types. Including glottalized sonorants, pre-stopped laterals, and a series of pharyngeals distinguished by secondary articulations of glottalization and/or labialization. The language also allows long sequences of obstruent consonants. These and more familiar phonetic characteristics are described through analysis of acoustic, electroglottographic, and aerodynamic data, and compared with related characteristics in other languages of the world.

On interpreting ‘The Indian Interpreter’

This paper addresses the proposition that certain multilingual situations favor certain learning strategies on the part of speakers. The paper takes this proposition as the best approach to explaining the development of pidgin grammars, and exemplifies the general approach by studying the seventeenth-century Delaware-based Traders’ Jargon in its linguistic and social context. The task of the paper, then, is to see if the evidence provided by the Jargons grammatical structures fits the theorys predictions, and if the evidence for the multilingual situation in which it arose fits as well. The conclusion is that both types of evidence fit well if we assume that the Jargon arose before the period of European settlement, and that this assumption is indeed justified. (Pidgin and creole studies; languages in contact; early European/Indian; North American Indian languages)

Before the Lingua Franca: Pidginized Arabic in the eleventh century A.D.

Abstract This paper presents and analyzes a ten-sentence text written in a form of pidginized Arabic in the mid-eleventh century A.D. Linguistic features of the text are compared to features of modern Arabic-based pidgins and the Arabic-based creole Ki-Nubi; to Classical Arabic and modern colloquial Arabic dialects; and to Berber languages, which were spoken widely in the part of the Sahara from which the text apparently came. The results of this comparison show that the text shares a significant number of features with the modern pidgins and creole. Although a single brief text hardly provides enough evidence to establish the existence of a fully crystallized pidgin language, we argue that social conditions in towns along the medieval Arab trade routes in northern Africa were likely to have been appropriate for the development of a pidgin. Finally, the main theoretical point we make is that the common view of pidgins and creoles as an exclusive, or almost exclusive, result of European trade and global colonization arises from an accident of history - namely, the fact that most Western scholars are familiar only with European writings from relevant periods - and not from an examination of all the available evidence from multilingual contact situations in which no Europeans were involved.

WHAT ELSE HAPPENS TO OPAQUE RULES

In discussing rule opacity as a factor influencing phonological change, Kiparsky 1971 mentions three common fates of opaque rules within the phonological system: loss; re-ordering with respect to other rules to yield greater transparency; and morphologization. In this paper I discuss another sort of systematic reaction to the presence of an opaque rule, a reaction that has so far been overlooked in the discussion of rule opacity: the elimination of opacity-inducing environments in inflectional paradigms through analogic affix replacements. I argue that effects of this sort will continue to be overlooked until we recognize, and deal explicitly with, nonphonological aspects of inflectional change.*

Is morphosyntactic change really rare

Jurgen Meisel argues that “grammatical variation. . .can be described. . .in terms of parametric variation”, and – crucially for his arguments in this paper – that “parameter settings do not change across the lifespan”. To this extent he adopts the standard generative view, but he then departs from what he calls “the literature on historical linguistics” (by which he means the generative literature only) in developing the arguments leading to his major claims: that only “transmission failure” resulting from L2 acquisition can produce parametric morphosyntactic change; that any L2 learners, children or adults, may be the agents of change; that such changes “happen less frequently than is commonly assumed”; and that, “in larger and more complex societies, situations in which L2 learners exert a major influence on a language are most likely to emerge in periods of substantial demographic changes” (his example is a plague that kills most members of a speech community). Adult L2 learners, according to Meisel, can only be agents of parametric change if they provide most or all of the input for the next generations L1 acquisition.

Language Change, Intentional

This article surveys challenges to the common assumption that every language changes inexorably, for reasons internal to the languages structure and/or dictated by specific social circumstances, with only the most trivial changes under the direct conscious control of the languages speakers. Examples of deliberate, conscious linguistic changes range from trivial lexical innovations to sweeping lexical distortion, significant structural changes, and the creation of bilingual mixed languages. The existence of such changes means, among other things, that children cannot be the sole initiators of linguistic change.