zompist bboard

vohpenonomae wrote: Sapir connected Wiyot and Yurok to Algonquian in 1913[1] based largely on morphological similarity and very few similar elements; only the basic prefixes look obviously connected between the three Algic branches. But their morphologies are so consistently alike that evoking areal influence is a real stretch. Areal influence rarely, if ever, results in a large number of consistent correspondences in morphological structure; it tends to be more slapdash.
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Your point about areal influences being "slapdash" and not resulting in a large number of consistent morphological correspondences is unfounded I think. And anyway areal influence wasn't evena possibility with Ritwan as they several thousand miles away from the closest other Algonquian languages.

Radagast wrote:Your point about areal influences being "slapdash" and not resulting in a large number of consistent morphological correspondences is unfounded I think.

Can you think of a case where areal influence has resulted in a large number of consistent morphological correspondences? Where, essentially, a language's morphological structure, grammatical distinctions, etc. have been utterly displaced by those of another, unrelated language? With isolating languages, this might possibly occur under influence from a more synthetic language, though I can't name any cases offhand.

And anyway areal influence wasn't evena possibility with Ritwan as they several thousand miles away from the closest other Algonquian languages.

It was precisely areal influence that Michelson blamed for the similarities of Ritwan and Algonquian (and it was generally assumed that Wiyot and Yurok formed a genetic subgroup--Ritwan--back then; though now we know this is probably not so). Blackfoot, Arapaho, Atsina, Nawathinehena, Cheyenne and several other Western Algonquian dialects were far closer than "several thousand miles" from Wiyot and Yurok; they were just a few hundred miles away at the time of European contact. Even in 1913, we knew that Ritwan speakers were quite different from their neighbors in Northern California--there was an implicit assumption that they'd moved in from elsewhere at some point; so areal influence from Algonquian>Ritwan was quite palatable at that time. (Admittedly, the Rockies would be a barrier to such influence, as the Western Algonquian languages belong to the Great Plains and the foothills of the Rockies, but at the time we basically had no idea of who'd moved from where or when.)

vohpenonomae wrote:

Radagast wrote:Your point about areal influences being "slapdash" and not resulting in a large number of consistent morphological correspondences is unfounded I think.

Can you think of a case where areal influence has resulted in a large number of consistent morphological correspondences? Where, essentially, a language's morphological structure, grammatical distinctions, etc. have been utterly displaced by those of another, unrelated language? With isolating languages, this might possibly occur under influence from a more synthetic language, though I can't name any cases offhand.

Kaufman & Thomason 1988 give a lot of examples of wide reaching grammatical borrowings in situations with intense contact. They give examples from India with as many as 16 grammatical features being exchanged between Kannada, Marathi and Urdu in Kupwar. Australian languages in contact have also shown widespread borrowing of affixes. They also mention Uzbek Tadzhik contact with Tadzhik adopting many grammatical categories and corresponding morphemes.

About Sprachbunds they write that:

Kaufman & Thomason wrote:What a multilateral Sprachbund seems to promote in fact is the gradual development of isomorphism (equivalence of form) in all areas of structure except the phonological shapes of morphemes. Thus we find for instance comments such as Capell's about the languages of the central Highlands of New Guinea - that adjoining languages have very different vocabularies, but their grammatical features "recur with almost monotonous regularity from language to language". The case for Kupwar cited by Gumperz and Wilson seems similar in kind to this one ....

vohpenonomae wrote:

And anyway areal influence wasn't evena possibility with Ritwan as they several thousand miles away from the closest other Algonquian languages.

It was precisely areal influence that Michelson blamed for the similarities of Ritwan and Algonquian (and it was generally assumed that Wiyot and Yurok formed a genetic subgroup--Ritwan--back then; though now we know this is probably not so). Blackfoot, Arapaho, Atsina, Nawathinehena, Cheyenne and several other Western Algonquian dialects were far closer than "several thousand miles" from Wiyot and Yurok; they were just a few hundred miles away at the time of European contact. Even in 1913, we knew that Ritwan speakers were quite different from their neighbors in Northern California--there was an implicit assumption that they'd moved in from elsewhere at some point; so areal influence from Algonquian>Ritwan was quite palatable at that time. (Admittedly, the Rockies would be a barrier to such influence, as the Western Algonquian languages belong to the Great Plains and the foothills of the Rockies, but at the time we basically had no idea of who'd moved from where or when.)

Truman S. Michelson 1914 wrote:My reasons briefly are: (i) that the published Wiyot and Yurok material indicates that both have many morphological traits which are thoroughly un-Algonquian; (2) that many of the supposed resemblances between Wiyot and Yurok morphological elements to Algonquian are purely fanciful as different elements are compared; (3) that many of the supposed similarities in morphological elements must be considered as accidental, for they occur likewise in a number of other languages; (4) that Wiyot and Yurok possess some morphological elements which strongly resemble those of several non- Algonquian languages; (5) that fancied lexicographical similarities have little or no weight in view of the above points.

I don't see that Michelson mentions diffusion as a possible explanation for the similarities Sapir finds between Ritwan and Algonquian. To the contrary he mentions similarities with other californian languages to be evidence of Algonquian not being related to Ritwan.

I'm not sure if Kupwar is a good example. The languages concerned (forms of Urdu, Kannada, and Marathi) have essentially merged in structure, differing only in lexification. This goes for the morphological affixes too. A sentence will have exactly the same morpheme glosses in all three languages, but the lexemes and affixes differ.

I don't know if this is parallel to Algonquian / Ritwan or not.

Beyond this, however, Kupwar is a single village where most everyone is at least passively trilingual. That's a far closer level of integration than most sprachbunds.

I concede the former point; it's possible, though I suspect rare. So rare, in fact, that to invoke it would require some good positive reason.

Truman S. Michelson 1914 wrote:My reasons briefly are: (i) that the published Wiyot and Yurok material indicates that both have many morphological traits which are thoroughly un-Algonquian; (2) that many of the supposed resemblances between Wiyot and Yurok morphological elements to Algonquian are purely fanciful as different elements are compared; (3) that many of the supposed similarities in morphological elements must be considered as accidental, for they occur likewise in a number of other languages; (4) that Wiyot and Yurok possess some morphological elements which strongly resemble those of several non- Algonquian languages; (5) that fancied lexicographical similarities have little or no weight in view of the above points.

Initially, Michelson denied any substantive similarities; but he and Sapir argued for several years, into 1915. I don't have JSTOR access anymore, but I'm almost positive it went like this: Michelson denied any similarities; Sapir replied, showing some undeniable ones; Michelson then invoked diffusion as a possible explanation. I wish I could get at those articles; unfortunately, they're not the type I save into my own files, so you'll have to do the legwork here. Diffusion also came up again after Hass wrote "The End of a Controversy" in 1958.