ALS 2010 Annual Conference Programme - Australian Linguistic ...

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Bowden John Bowden (Jakarta Field Station, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology) Metathesis in Helong Metathesis is a phonological process whereby the expected linear ordering of sounds is reversed under certain circumstances. Metathesis has traditionally been seen as a phonological process which occurs only sporadically in speech errors and child language, or as a more or less random historical process. Recent work by authors such as Blevins and Garret (1998), Hume (2004) and others points to the fact that metathesis occurs far more widely than traditionally thought. The Timor region is an area where many languages have productive metathesis. Productive metathesis has been reported in (amongst other languages) Uab Meto (or ‘Dawan’) (Steinhauer, 1996) and Leti (van Engelenhoven, 1996). Helong, spoken in the immediate vicinity of Kupang city, is another Timor region language with highly productive metathesis. In Helong, words from virtually every open syntactic class may undergo metathesis. In this paper, I describe the main features of metathesis in Helong and argue that current strictly phonological approaches for dealing with the phenomenon are not rich enough to deal with a language like Helong, where the conditioning factors for metathesis need to include syntactic features as well as strictly phonological ones. References Blevins, J. & A. Garrett. 1998. The origins of consonant-vowel metathesis. Language 74(3). 508-555. Hume, Elizabeth. 2004. The indeterminacy/attestation model of metathesis. Language 80(2). 203-237. Steinhauer, Hein. 1996. Morphemic metathesis in Dawanese (Timor). Papers in Austronesian linguistics no. 3, ed. by H. Steinhauer, 217-32. (Pacific Linguistics, A-84.) Canberra: Australian National University. van Engelenhoven, Aone. 1996. Metathesis and the quest for definiteness in the Leti of Tutukey (East-Indonesia). Papers in Austronesian linguistics no. 3, ed. by H. Steinhauer, 207-15. (Pacific Linguistics, A-84.) Canberra: Australian National University.
Cleary-Kemp Jessica Cleary-Kemp (University of California, Berkeley) jessck@berkeley.edu Patterns of lexical borrowing in Saliba, an Oceanic language of Papua New Guinea There has been much pursuit of universal constraints on the outcomes of language contact, but little consensus. One statement that has proven to be robust is that nouns are more easily borrowed from one language to another than any other word class, especially verbs (e.g., Moravcsik 1978; van Hout and Muysken 1994). This paper reports the findings of a study that explored some of the reasons for this tendency in Saliba, an Oceanic language of Papua New Guinea that has had extensive contact with English for many decades. Various factors have been invoked to account for the borrowability of nouns over verbs. The so-called “need hypothesis” (e.g., van Hout and Muysken 1994:42) claims that one of the primary motivations for lexical borrowing is “to extend the referential potential of a language,” and following from this, that “since reference is established primarily through nouns, these are the elements borrowed most easily.” Another suggestion in the literature is that the morphological complexity of verbs acts as a barrier to their being borrowed (e.g., Winford 2003:48-50). A related observation is that verbs, unlike nouns, are “structure building” – they determine the argument structure of the predicate, and assign case to nominal elements – and that this makes them more difficult to integrate into the syntax of the recipient language. Paradigmatic “boundness” (or the lack thereof) has also been cited as an explanation for the ease of borrowing nouns over other word classes (Winford 2003:51; van Hout and Muysken 1994:55). These explanations can essentially be divided into two categories: (i) need (nouns are borrowed because speakers need to refer to new things); and (ii) complexity (nouns are borrowed because they are conceptually or morpho-syntactically simpler than other word classes). The study reported in this paper is based on a lexicon of Saliba, comprising approximately 2000 items, and a text corpus. Of the 2000 lexical items, 135 are clearly borrowed from English. These borrowings were collated and coded for various values, including part of speech in the recipient language, semantic classification (i.e. whether the lexeme evokes a concrete thing, an event, a property, a state, etc.), and “newness” of the thing or concept denoted. The results show that nouns are indeed more easily borrowed into Saliba than verbs: 87% of borrowings are nouns; 9% are verbs. I argue that for Saliba, there is no evidence that morpho-syntactic complexity favours borrowing of nouns over verbs. On the other hand, the fact that borrowed nouns tend to refer to new things (87% of borrowed nouns), does support the “need hypothesis”. In contrast, the semantic distribution of borrowed verbs is not explained by a necessity based account, since only a few borrowed verbs denote new states or activities. I argue instead that verbal borrowing arises in contexts of code-switching, where social indexing (so-called “prestige”), rather than need for increased referential potential, is the driving force. References Moravcsik, Edith A. 1978. ’Language contact.’ In Universals of Human Language, ed. by Joseph H. Greenberg, volume 1: Method and Theory, 93–122. Stanford: Stanford University Press. van Hout, Roeland, and Pieter Muysken. 1994. ’Modeling lexical borrowability.’ Language Variation and Change 6:39–62. Winford, Donald. 2003. An Introduction to Contact Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell.
Page 1 and 2: Wednesday 7 July 8:00 Registrations
Page 3 and 4: Friday 9 July Papers (14-216) Paper
Page 5 and 6: 1:45 (14-219) Joint ALS/ALAA Colloq
Page 7 and 8: 3:00 Rob Pensalfini (University of
Page 9 and 10: Plenary 1: Michael Walsh University
Page 11 and 12: Plenary 3: Jeff Siegel University o
Page 13 and 14: Denise Angelo (Far North Queensland
Page 15 and 16: Abakah & Ofori Emmanuel Nicholas Ab
Page 17 and 18: Allan Keith Allan (Monash Universit
Page 19 and 20: Chilton, Paul and Christina Schäff
Page 21 and 22: Andrews Avery D. Andrews (Australia
Page 23 and 24: Au Yeung Kai Yin Gigi Au Yeung (Uni
Page 25 and 26: (2) Wubuy (Heath 1980: 361) ngi-mun
Page 27: (3) estah Qala waÃhek wa-ana-abu:k
Page 31 and 32: Any evidential clause may involve o
Page 33 and 34: Cutfield Sarah Cutfield (Australian
Page 35 and 36: Disbray (1) Samantha Disbray (North
Page 37 and 38: Douglas & Stirling Susan Douglas &
Page 39 and 40: Eades Diana Eades (University of Ne
Page 41 and 42: Previous treatments of this phenome
Page 43 and 44: Guillemin Diana Guillemin (Griffith
Page 45 and 46: Harkins & Lissarrague Jean Harkins
Page 47 and 48: Most importantly, I will demonstrat
Page 49 and 50: with the noun as the subject concep
Page 51 and 52: Secondly, and moving away from the
Page 53 and 54: ducted separately for males and fem
Page 55 and 56: y her mentors: to gain some knowled
Page 57 and 58: Levisen Carsten Levisen (University
Page 59 and 60: Li Hannah Li (University of Aucklan
Page 61 and 62: Lin Yi-An Lin (Hsuan Chuang Univers
Page 63 and 64: Liu Kun-Long Liu (Australian Nation
Page 65 and 66: Martin Marjolaine Martin (Laboratoi
Page 67 and 68: McConvell & Bowern Patrick McConvel
Page 69 and 70: Meakins Felicity Meakins (Universit
Page 71 and 72: Modi Yankee Modi yankeemodi@gmail.c
Page 73 and 74: Mushin Ilana Mushin (University of
Page 75 and 76: Nash David Nash (Australian Nationa
Page 77 and 78: Palmer & Evans Bill Palmer (Univers
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Pensalfini Rob Pensalfini (Universi
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Each learner at a time, I will exam
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Rixon Sascha Rixon (University of M
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• Hodiernal and recent past conte
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larger set which defies (1a), and w
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7. information on source of the dat
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Simpson Jane Simpson (University of
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Sullivan Karen Sullivan (University
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Thieberger Nick Thieberger (Univers
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was realized in the same way (eithe
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2006) and Baskeet (own field notes)
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Results demonstrate that establishe
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these types correlate with specific
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Walsh Michael Walsh (University of
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Willis Daniel Willis (University of
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Zuckermann & Walsh Ghil‘ad Zucker
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