Showing papers in "Language in 1961"
985 citations
TL;DR: In contrastive accent as discussed by the authors, two or more items are counterbalanced and a preference indicated for some member or members of the group, by using contrastive stress, which is the most conspicuous of all the occurrences of phonetic highlighting by reason of its frequency and the extra oomph that we put into it.
Abstract: 'This whiskey,' said O'Reilly, sampling spirits that claimed to be from his homeland, 'was not exported from Ireland; it was deported.' This is the familiar phenomenon of contrast, by which two or more items are counterbalanced and a preference indicated for some member or members of the group. It is the most conspicuous of all the occurrences of phonetic highlighting by reason of its frequency and the extra oomph that we put into it, and because our attention is focused in a way that makes us aware of our speech and not just of our meaning. The name we generally give is contrastive stress, but I propose contrastive accent because of the major contribution that the fundamental pitch of the voice makes to it.l I will keep the old term contrastive stress as well, but restrict its meaning in a way to be explained later. The primary role of pitch in contrastive accent has been known for a long time. H. O. Coleman, in his oft-quoted article of 1914,2 made it the basis of his distinction between 'prominence' and 'intensity.' As an example of prominence he gives
245 citations
TL;DR: For example, this article pointed out that the more evidence the transformational grammarian brings himself to consider, the more he is likely to find that his formulas are hedged in and the more restrictions he must apply to make them fit the evidence, and the closer he gets to the point of diminishing returns.
Abstract: Explanations of transformational grammar are needed at a time when this vigorous new approach to syntax is exciting interest and winning converts. Too little is known about its procedures and terminology for some of its more advanced calculus to be intelligible to the average reader of linguistics; there are no texts designed for the complete uninitiate, and no published lists of terms or symbols. An article such as R. B. Lees's Multiply Ambiguous Adjectival Construction in English,l with its outline of aims and its step-by-step analysis of some familiar constructions, is opportune and welcome. At the same time it reveals weaknesses which suggest that the transformational approach may be fated to run the same course as the phonological one which Lees's article is mainly designed to refute. The easy problems are attacked first. Being successfully overcome, they are taken as models of all the problems to be met, and the investigator becomes overconfident. One can make a convincing case for phonological grammar by selecting the data-not by being consciously selective, but by merely having one's mind so tuned to certain preconceptions that other evidence does not make its way into one's awareness. It is only when some very scrupulous and obstinate disciple begins to turn up plus junctures in the oddest places that the part of phonological grammar that depends on plus junctures begins to look suspect. The more evidence the transformational grammarian brings himself to consider, the more he is likely to find that his formulas are hedged in, the more restrictions he must apply to make them fit the evidence, and the closer he gets to the point of diminishing returns. This point may well be reached later in transformational grammar than in phonological grammar, but I doubt that it can be averted. I want to use Lees's article to illustrate three things: a certain proneness to skimp the specimen-gathering phase of our science and to base generalizations on insufficient data, the existence of syntactic blends which make it difficult if not impossible to single out 'the' transformational origin of certain constructions, and the permeation of the entire grammatical structure by threads of idiom. Since his article is conveniently subdivided into syntactic types, I shall use this subdivision as a basis for my comments.
110 citations
TL;DR: The authors showed that a morpheme is composed of the phonemes /k/, /ae/, and /t/ in the arrangement of the morphemes in the sentence.
Abstract: 1. Morphemes and phonemes. The simplest and earliest assumption about the relation between morphemes and phonemes was that a morpheme is COMPOSED OF phonemes: the morpheme cat is composed of the phonemes /k/, /ae/, and /t/ in that arrangement. This put phonemes and morphemes in line with words, phrases, and sentences, since it was also assumed that a word consists of one or more morphemes (in a specified arrangement), a phrase of one or more words, and so on. This assumption is either explicit, or implicit but very close to the surface, in much of the early Prague discussion and in Bloomfield's postulates.l In the latter, for example, morphemes are defined first (?9), and phonemes later (?15, ?16). The wording of the two sections last cited, together with ?18, clearly implies that morphemes are composed of phonemes. While Bloomfield does not say quite this, he does say, in the commentary on Assumption 6 (?18), that 'The morphemes of a language can thus be analyzed into a small number of meaningless phonemes.' It is important to note that the 'composed of' assumption has never been seriously taken to imply that every occurrence of a specified arrangement of specific phonemes constitutes an occurrence of one and the same morpheme. Apart from ordinary homophony (beet and beat), it is permissible for some occurrences of an arrangement of phonemes to be a morpheme, other occurrences of the same arrangement to be less or more than a morpheme-in my speech, cat and the beginning of catalog. This conception is satisfactory as long as we confine our attention to certain parts of the material in any language, but it breaks down when we are confronted with such phenomena as English knife: knive(s) or (dog)s: (cat)s: (ros)es. The very criteria that lead us to reject a morphemic identification of cat and cat(alog)-and we do not even have to concern ourselves here with what those criteria are-also lead us to want to call knife and knive-, or /z/, /s/, and /iz/, the same morpheme. Such identifications are incompatible with an acceptance of the 'composed of' relation between morphemes and phonemes. In fact, the following three assertions constitute an antilogism-a triad of assertions any two of which imply
56 citations
48 citations
TL;DR: The authors focus on a particular group of sentences, those containing two adjectives, and construct rules to generate them, and discuss adjectival comparisons (some of which are covered by the earlier rules) in detail.
Abstract: The linguist is concerned with meaningful generalizations about language.* In writing a generative grammar, an ordered set of rules that predicts the sentences of a given language, he looks for generalizations that can be translated into economical rules. Optimally a generative grammarl uses a relatively small number of general rules to predict many different structures. This paper will focus on a particular group of sentences-those containing2 adjectives-and construct rules to generate them. The first section will be devoted to the formulation of rules that bring adjectives into containing sentences, and the second will discuss adjectival comparisons (some of which are covered by the earlier rules) in detail. There are two steps in accounting for a grammatical fact or group of facts in the framework of generative grammar. First, a rule is formulated that will most simply produce the sentence(s) in question. Second, that rule must be related to the rest of the grammar, which means that a place in the ordered sequence of rules must be assigned to it. This step is as important as the first one: to be really economical, a grammar must exploit structural similarities between sentences whenever possible. At one stage in its development a particular sentence may have a structural similarity with another that it will lose later, so that a new rule must be carefully dovetailed with the others to apply to a maximum number of cases. These considerations will underlie the following discussion.
47 citations
TL;DR: The Linguistic Atlas of the Pacific Northwest as discussed by the authors contains a large number of synopses showing vocalic incidence among cultivated speakers in the Atlantic States of the United States, which are used to identify dialectal types within these areas.
Abstract: As has been pointed out on several occasions,l varieties of American English spoken in the Pacific Northwest are largely derived from eastern sources. A good deal of information is already available on the geographical distribution of vocabulary throughout the United States, so that dialectologists now have a fairly clear idea of lexical continuity in the vast areas of western settlement. For this reason it has become standard procedure to identify dialectal types within these areas in accordance with the criteria presented by Hans Kurath in his Word geography of the eastern United States (Ann Arbor, 1949). A monumental work by Kurath and McDavid on the pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States has now been published,2 and new comparisons of dialect distribution east and west are therefore in order. In the matter of pronunciation it is possible to examine not only the incidence of certain phonetic types among the items furnished by the Atlas questionnaire,3 but also the basic aspects of phonemic structure in various idiolects. In this way, a kind of typology can be developed synoptically for extended areas of transition. For the purpose of describing and epitomizing 'regional dialects' on a given speech level, therefore, Kurath and McDavid have devised a large number of 'synopses' showing vocalic incidence among cultivated speakers in the Atlantic States. Individual deviations around such norms have then been dealt with chiefly from the standpoint of their function as representatives of a phonemic structure. The amazing complexity of variations thus revealed is especially striking when the relatively clear-cut distribution of lexical items in the Word geography is recalled. If pronunciation remains so variegated in older, longer established colonial areas, what are the linguistic results of their proliferation in areas of eventual resettlement? The files of the Linguistic Atlas of the Pacific Northwest, incomplete though they are, give an answer to this question. In general, it seems reasonable to expect that the proportions of regional representation already observed in connection with vocabulary will also hold good for pronunciation. Synoptic examination of phonemic patterns, moreover, represents a new approach to the study of dialect variation. It is at least the first step toward the establishment of a structural dialectology, in the light of which,
TL;DR: The phonemic system of Old English has become a matter of increasing interest to linguists in recent years as mentioned in this paper, however, very few of these studies deal with more than a small segment of the Old English phonemic systems; most of them attack some portion of something which is described as the traditional interpretation or the 'traditional view'. But to the best of our knowledge, no one has yet given us an account of all the old English phonemes from the viewpoint of traditional linguists.
Abstract: 1. The phonemic system of Old English has become a matter of increasing interest to linguists in recent years. Twenty years ago, structural linguists seldom concerned themselves with the phonemes of a 'dead' language, while traditional linguists and philologists generally regarded phonemes as something exotic, something outside the purview of normal language activities and studies. Since 1939, however, we have seen a fair number of publications dealing with the Old English phonemic system or portions of it, written either from a structural viewpoint or in a manner which indicates an awareness of the structural problems of the language.l Very few of these studies deal with more than a small segment of the Old English phonemic system; most of them attack some portion of something which is described as the 'traditional interpretation' or the 'traditional view'. To my knowledge, no one has yet given us an account of all the Old English phonemes from the viewpoint of the traditional linguists. There are several reasons for this
TL;DR: In a recent article in LANGUAGE as mentioned in this paper, Charles F. Hockett has presented an analysis of the stressed syllabics of the Vespasian Psalter and Hymns.
Abstract: In a recent article in LANGUAGE,1 Charles F. Hockett has presented an analysis of the stressed syllabics of the Vespasian Psalter and Hymns.2 Hockett opposes the traditional view which interprets ea, eo, io, and ie as short diphthongs, and offers a solution of his own which within the limitations of one MS is in part convincing. In general, he equates each vowel letter or digraph with a phoneme. In agreement with us, with Moss6, and with Daunt, but in contradiction of the established tradition, he regards the digraphs ea, eo, io, and ie as spellings for monophthongs; he believes, however, that these short digraphs represent separate short vowel phonemes; we believe that in early OE they represented allophones of the front vowels /i/, /e/, and /ase/; we believe that eo, io, and ie represented allophones ONLY in the earlier period. These allophones later became phonemes, whereas the allophone represented by ea did not. Hockett's speculations about the motivations of the scribes who first selected these particular digraphs in these particular values are appealing. Especially ingenious is his theory about the origin of the letter y in OE, which he considers to have been originally a digraph (591-4). Although we agree to a limited extent with the conclusions of Hockett's article (which might better be entitled The Stressed Syllabics of the Vespasian Psalter and Hymns), we wish to reaffirm the stand taken in our monograph and our subsequent article,3 in particular with regard to me-ea, but also with regard to the structure of OE vowels in general. Concerning the long diphthongs and long vowels we are more nearly in agreement with the position Hockett took in the book that appeared before this article :4 'there were complex nuclei consisting of one or another of the eleven vowels [we do not think there were as many as eleven vowels] plus a glide element. The details are not clear.' There are, however, other basic, more axiomatic assumptions with which we do not agree at all. They are discussed below.
[...]
TL;DR: Hockett as mentioned in this paper proposed a realistic reinterpretation of the Old English spellings ea, eo, io for the first half of the 9th century by investigating the evidence in the Vespasian Psalter and Hymns.
Abstract: 1.1. A realistic reinterpretation of the Old English spellings ea, eo, io has been suggested by Charles F. Hockett, who approached the problem de novo by investigating the evidence in the Vespasian Psalter and Hymns (Anglian dialect of the first half of the 9th century) and by interpreting this evidence in the light of modern descriptive techniques.l Hockett finds that the three digraphs in question represented independent phonemes (not allophones of /ae/, /e/, /i/) at a time prior to the writing of the VP, although 'Sound change and dialect mixture had probably led to a state of affairs in which every form pronounced with io had a by-form pronounced with eo (though not conversely), and in which every form pronounced with ea had a by-form pronounced with a or with eo (though again not conversely). These conclusions account both for the spelling habits which the Vespasian Scribe inherited and for the particular way in which he modified and varied those habits' (590). In determining the phonetic values to be ascribed to ea, eo, io before the onset of the secondary modifications evident in VP, Hockett turns to the testimony of the Icelandic First Grammarian (ca. 1150). A bilingual person attempting to represent Old English sounds was faced with the paucity of vowel symbols in Latin. To find new symbols, the Old English vowels were analyzed with respect to the five Latin vowels, as was done for Icelandic by the First Grammarian. The latter, for instance, analyzed the sound represented by 0 as 'made up from the sounds of e and o, spoken with the mouth less open than for e and more than for o, and therefore [is] written with the cross-bar of e and the circle of o'2 Hockett suggests, therefore, that those who established the Old English orthography chose ea (older spellings aea aeo) to represent the height of /ae/ and the retracted tongue position of /a/, i.e. [a]; eo to represent the height and lip position of /e/ and the tongue position of /o/, i.e. [a]; and io (older iu) to represent the height and lip position of /i/ and the retracted tongue position of /u/ or /o/, i.e. [i]. He then makes a theoretic pronouncement of great import for the interpretation of mutation in Germanic: 'From the point of view of realism in phonetic change, particularly in assimilations, it is certainly as likely that a back-umlauting of front unrounded vowels should produce unrounded back vowels as it is that a front-mutating of back rounded vowels should produce front rounded vowels. The same applies to the modification of vowel color by a following consonant: "breaking" is a loaded term stemming from the habit of talking about letters instead of sounds, and prejudices reinterpretation' (595).3
TL;DR: In the case of the third person, the lack of agreement between the stems of the oblique cases of this pronoun in these three languages, especially between Greek on the one hand and Sanskrit or Gothic on the other, would seem to indicate clearly enough the striking lack of a settled inflection without need for further evidence as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: 1. In spite of the common practice of speaking of 'pronominal inflection' in explaining the origin of certain case endings in various Indo-European languages, and, in particular, when discussing the declension of adjectives in Germanic, it is generally recognized that the inflection of the pronoun, of all the categories of forms with which we have to deal in Indo-European grammar, is the most disparate and least tractable to reconstruction by the comparative method. It is indeed probable that there was no fixed pronominal declension in the parent speech-fixed, that is, to the same extent as the declension of the nouns. This too is generally recognized, especially in the instance of the personal pronouns of the first and second persons.l However, the same thing is only slightly less true of the demonstratives of the third person, and indeed of the demonstrative par excellence, Gk. ho, he, to, Skt. sa(s), sa, tad, Goth. sa, so, pata. The lack of agreement between the stems of the oblique cases of this pronoun in these three languages, especially between Greek on the one hand and Sanskrit or Gothic on the other, would seem to indicate clearly enough the striking lack of a settled inflection without need for further evidence-for example, the dative singular feminine, Gk. tii (
TL;DR: For example, Prokosch as discussed by the authors defined Proto-Germanic as a stage of German which was spoken between the period of the great medieval German poets and the Reformation. But these definitions are not precise in their definitions or explicit in regard to criteria used for the definitions they give.
Abstract: It may seem obvious that when we set out to write a grammar of a language, the definition of that language is one of our first tasks. Further, that since we are dealing with language, the criteria used in our definition should be linguistic. These criteria should delimit the language geographically, that is, from other languages, and chronologically, that is, from earlier and later stages of the same language. Yet in spite of these minimum requirements for an adequate definition, our handbooks are not precise in their definitions or explicit in regard to criteria used for the definitions they give. Though we are here concerned with the definition of Proto-Germanic, the problem applies to all languages. Handbooks often delimit a language through the use of social or political changes rather than linguistic changes. Middle High German, for example, has been defined as that stage of German which was spoken between the period of the great medieval German poets and the Reformation. The Norman Conquest and the introduction of printing have been used to define Middle English. While linguistic changes may coincide with other social changes, the coincidences are interesting correlations rather than defining features for the language. We can determine them only after we have selected those differences in language structure which distinguish successive periods of any language, such as Middle English in contrast with Old English and Modern English, or different languages, such as Italian in contrast with French and Sardinian or Low German in contrast with High German and English. Imprecise definitions are objectionable in part because they permit unnecessary disputes to arise regarding the description of a language. Two inadequate definitions from grammars in general use may indicate the need for improved definitions.l Prokosch, CGG 26, contents himself with indicating the location of the Germanic speakers and adding:2 'Shortly before the beginning of our era, the
TL;DR: It can be concluded that, once a correlation has been established between essential characteristics and the tones heard in speech, a large part of the tonal behaviour of the language can be reduced to regular though complex patterns.
Abstract: The demonstration of the role of tone in Sukima may best be effected by treating the subject as a problem which centres round the assigning to units of tonal characteristics from which may be inferred the tones heard in speech. Certain general features of tonal behaviour found in lexical and grammatical elements of both nominal and verbal words are outlined in the first chapter, which also indicates some of the basic principles of the method of analysis employed. Chapter II carries a stage further the discussion of problems of classification affecting the nominal which were introduced in Chapter I. Experimental tone groups are examined and discarded in favour of tone classes of a more specific nature. These in their turn are abandoned for a system of assigned tonal characteristics with no reference to definite tone classes. From these investigations are adduced rules of tonal behaviour which when applied to selected samples enable further deductions to be made about their tonal characteristics. Chapter III consists of an exposition of the tonal characteristics of verbal Constituents of all kinds, both grammatical and lexical. In it questions concerning the verbal already broached in Chapter I are discussed at length in an attempt to show the part played by each constituent in the aggregate tonal characteristic of a verbal. A similar function is performed for nominals and their constituents by Chapters IV and V, the former dealing with grammatical and the latter with lexical components. It can be concluded from this treatment that, once a correlation has been established between essential characteristics and the tones heard in speech, a large part of the tonal behaviour of the language can be reduced to regular though complex patterns.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the importance of a careful consideration of the phonic character and range of the several phonemes in historical linguistics, even if the phonemic point of view is also essential there, since the primary material of a historical linguist consists of the written reflexes of languages as transmitted to us and all synchronic and diachronic analyses have to be based on them.
Abstract: 1. Historical phonetics and historical phonemics.l In a recent article Hans Kurath2 has admirably stated the importance of a 'careful consideration of the phonic character and range of the several phonemes' in historical linguistics, even if the phonemic point of view is also essential there. Indeed, the primary material of a historical linguist consists of the written reflexes of languages as transmitted to us, and all synchronic and diachronic analyses have to be based on them. Phonetic interpretation is feasible but the obvious impossibility of direct observation or instrumental recording seems to preclude phonetic analysis in the study of a 'dead language'. Is then historical phonetics without scientific value and significance? This judgment would be erroneous, since, after all, we cannot conceive of phonemes without their phonetic variants or allophones, and, what is even more important, we see the origin of phonemic change in the development of such allophones. Phonemic changes are the main events in the phonological history of a language; but they cannot be explained or fully described without postulating specific phonetic values. Thus there cannot be any historical phonemics without historical phonetics. Phonetic identification of phonemes and their variants is an important task in historical linguistics, and the methods used as well as the results achieved deserve a more detailed investigation.
TL;DR: In the case of tone phonemes, however, phonetic similarity is a rather elastic criterion as mentioned in this paper, since it can be shown that two vocalic phones have a common tongue position, or two consonantal phones certain common distinctive features.
Abstract: The analysis of tone phonemes, or tonemes, like that of segmental phonemes, necessarily involves considerations of phonetic similarity-necessarily, because there is no other basis upon which tones occurring in noncontrastive distribution can be phonemically identified with one another. But how is 'phonetic similarity' to be understood in the case of tones? Not, certainly, in the sense in which it is understood in the case of segmental phones, where it denotes some objective similarity in the articulatory or acoustic characteristics of the phones themselves. To be sure, even in this case phonetic similarity is a rather elastic criterion; but at least it can be shown, for example, that two vocalic phones have a common tongue position, or two consonantal phones certain common distinctive features. No such objective similarity is demonstrable in the case of tones-at least, of level tones; for, since it is relative rather than absolute pitch that is involved in tonemic systems, a given toneme may occur at virtually any pitch of which the voice is capable. Variants of a man's high tonemes may be acoustically similar to those of a woman's low tonemes; and in the speech of a single speaker a given level of pitch in two utterances or even within one utterance may represent variants of several different tonemes. The possibilities of phonemic overlapping of level tonemes are virtually unlimited. That there is no necessary objective similarity between the pitch levels of tonemic variants does not mean, however, that there is no objective basis for considering the variants phonetically similar. It means only that the basis must be something other than the intrinsic properties of the variants themselves. What other basis is there for considering tones in noncontrastive distribution phonetically similar, and hence variants of a single toneme? The answer that suggests itself is, a similar distinctive relation of the tones to their respective environments. In other words, however acoustically diverse the variants of a given toneme, and however much they overlap those of other tonemes, they may still have in common a relation to their respective phonemic contexts unique to the toneme of which they are members. Such a distinctive relation to the context-and such a relation alone-satisfies the criterion of phonetic similarity in the case of tones. To offer a hypothetical case. In language A, which has a level-tone system, two contrastive tones-one relatively high, the other relatively low-occur with each vowel. The higher tone that occurs with certain vowels is acoustically similar to the lower tone that occurs with certain others. This fact, however, is irrelevant to the phonemic identification of the tones. For, since the basis of this identification is the relation of the tones to their context, rather than the acoustic character of the tones themselves, the CONTRASTIVELY higher tones (whatever their actual pitch) are identified as variants of one toneme, the CONTRASTIVELY
TL;DR: The transition from OIA to MIA has been already described by Pischel, Bloch, Chatterji, and others as mentioned in this paper, and the most significant features of this change are merging of the OIA sonant r with MIA a, i, and u; reduction of OIA diphthongs ai and au to MIA e and o; and shortening of vowels under certain conditions.
Abstract: 1. The classical Prakrit vowel system has been chosen as a starting point to study the history of the vowel system of Gujarati.l The evidence for the intervening stages is supplied by documents, and it is proposed to show how many phonemic systems have to be postulated for these intervening stages. The changes in the phonemic systems have, in turn, been followed by significant changes in the grammatical systems, thus providing us with more reliable data on the stages in the history of the Gujarati language. Statements about changes in the consonants have been excluded mainly because they are relatively few, and do not play a significant role in the changes in the grammatical system. Where the changes in consonant and vowel systems are interdependent, statements about consonant changes have been made. 2. The transition from OIA to MIA has been already described by Pischel, Bloch, Chatterji, and others. The most significant features of this change are merging of the OIA sonant r with MIA a, i, and u; reduction of OIA diphthongs ai and au to MIA e and o; and shortening of vowels under certain conditions. Thus, OIA r > MIA a, i, or u: krta> kaya 'performed', vrsabha> vasaha 'bull', vrsti> vutthi 'rain', drsti> ditthi 'vision'; OIA z > MIA z: vtra> vmro 'brave', szma > stma 'boundary', vtna > vzna 'a musical instrument'; OIA X > MIA i: parzksa > parikkha 'examination', jfrna> jinna 'tattered', vist1rya> vitthi .a 'spread'; OIA i > MIA i: dhigjwvita> dhijjfviya 'wretched life',