Research on Macrofamilies: The States of the Art

Bernard ComrieMax Planck Institute for Evolutionary

Anthropology and University of California Santa Barbara

comrie@eva.mpg.de

African Macrofamilies

• Afroasiatic

• Niger-Congo

• Nilo-Saharan

• Khoisan

Niger-Congo

• Mande - inclusion questionable

• Kordofanian - inclusion of Kadugli widely rejected, may be Nilo-Saharan

• Atlantic - may not be a unit, some parts may not be Niger-Congo

• Bulk of phylum generally accepted

Nilo-Saharan

• Lower-level groupings generally accepted, higher-level groupings questionable

• Songhai - almost universally excluded

Khoisan

• Hadza - no clear relation

• Sandawe - possibly related to Central

• South African Khoisan– Central - no clear relation to N, S– Northern - no clear relation to Southern– Southern - no clear relation to Northern– ≠Hõa may be related to Northern

Family Tree Problems

• Presupposes “parthenogenesis”

• Areal spread of innovations (“Wave theory”)

• Loans from other languages

Wave Theory

• “Rhenish Fan” in Germany• North: maken dorp dat appel• Cologne: machen dorp dat appel• Koblenz: machen dorf dat appel• Frankfurt: machen dorf das appel• South: machen dorf das apfel

• Indo-Iranian: dative plural in bh; shift of *kj to s

• Balto-Slavic: dative plural in m; shift of *kj to s

• Germanic: dative plural in m; no shift of *kj to s

Multiple Origins / Language Contact

• Possible definition of genealogical relatedness of languages: Two languages descend from a common ancestor if a substantial portion of basic vocabulary, (inflectional) morphology (if present), and syntax descend from that ancestor.

• Frequent, but usually tacit assumption, that there is a hierarchy:

Morphology > Basic vocabulary > Syntax

Cf. Comrie on Haruai (in relation to Hagahai and Kobon), comparing morphology and basic vocabulary

Basic Vocabulary Loans

• Thai càmùuk ‘nose’ < Khmer crɑmoh, cf. forms like daŋ, laŋ, naŋ in other Tai languages

• English they, them, their <Scandinavian

Morphological Loans

• English loans from Latin / Greek retaining original number morphology:

– criterion criteria– crisis crises– syllabus syllabi / syllabuses– formula formulae / formulas

• Romani singular / plural morphology

– Inherited: kher, PL kher-a ‘house’; šer-o, PL šer-e ‘head’; no plural in -i

– Early Greek loans introduce type for-os (in many varieties > for-o), PL for-i ‘town’

– Other contact languages introduce other plural markers, e.g. -uri < Rumanian, even with older words (some varieties have for-uri)

• Copper Island (Mednyj) Aleut has Aleut basic vocabulary and nominal morphology, but Russian verb morphology, even for inherited verbs:

aba-ju ‘I work’ aba-im ‘we work’

aba-iš ‘you work’ aba-iti ‘you (PL) work’

aba-it ‘s/he works’ aba-jut ‘they work’

Syntactic Loans

• Takia has Austronesian vocabulary and morphology, but the same grammatical structure as its Papuan neighbor Waskia.

• Haitian Creole has French vocabulary and either West African or “universal” syntax.

Regular Sound Correspondences

• Important:

Traditional historical linguists

Starostin / Russian school

• Unimportant:

Greenberg / Ruhlen

Opaque but Regular Correspondences

• French fils /fis/, Spanish hijo /'ixo/ ‘son’

• German fünf, Russian pjatj, Armenian hing ‘five’ < Proto-Indo-European *penkwe

• Mbabaram dog ‘dog’ < Proto-Australian *gudaga

Exceptions to the Regularity of Sound Change

• Latin quinque ‘five’ for expected *pinque

• French cinq /sɛ̃�k/ for expected /kɛ̃�k/

• English she /šiː/ < Old English sēo for expected */siː/; probable developments:

siːo > sjoː > šoː > šuː (dialect form)

> siːe > sjeː > šeː > šiː

Explanations for Similarities

• Common ancestry

• Borrowing

• Naturalness (e.g. onomatopoeia)

• Chance

Eliminating Chance

• English German

• arm Arm y

• finger Finger y

• hand Hand y

• lip Lippe y

• nose Nase y

• English German

• arm Finger n

• finger Hand n

• hand Lippe n

• lip Nase n

• nose Arm n

Loanword Typology Project

• To study patterns of lexical borrowing across a number of languages from different language families, to ascertain in particular if certain lexical items (relating to particular semantic fields, or particularly basic items) are less prone to borrowing than others.

Some Successes

• “Borderline” convincing cases

– Altaic (or at least some branches thereof)– Indo-European and Uralic– (Narrow) Trans-New Guinea

• Yeniseic (western Siberia) and Na-Dene (northwestern North America)– a few dozen possible plausible cognates– very similar, complex, unusual verb

morphology, though similarities could be typological (?contact rather than common ancestor)

(work by Edward Vajda)