Odd natlang features thread

The best topics from Languages & Linguistics, kept on a permanent basis.
chris_notts
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 275
Joined: Wed Dec 15, 2004 9:05 am
Location: Nottingham, England
Contact:

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by chris_notts »

Xiądz Faust wrote: Except native speakers, these days.
Well, it has about 100...
Try the online version of the HaSC sound change applier: http://chrisdb.dyndns-at-home.com/HaSC

User avatar
Niedokonany
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 244
Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2007 10:31 pm
Location: Kliwia Czarna

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by Niedokonany »

chris_notts wrote:
Xiądz Faust wrote: Except native speakers, these days.
Well, it has about 100...
Not literally: I meant few wanted to speak it anymore: "Tucano is rapidly replacing Tariana in the Vaupés river basin", "the language
is spoken by only about 100 people (none of them children)." (Dixon, Aikhenvald, The Amazonian languages) On the other hand, as I understand it, it is the Tucano influence that greatly contributed to Tariana's fancy grammatical features.
uciekajcie od światów konających

Solarius
Sanci
Sanci
Posts: 71
Joined: Thu Feb 25, 2010 7:25 pm

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by Solarius »

Xiądz Faust wrote:
chris_notts wrote:
Xiądz Faust wrote: Except native speakers, these days.
Well, it has about 100...
Not literally: I meant few wanted to speak it anymore: "Tucano is rapidly replacing Tariana in the Vaupés river basin", "the language
is spoken by only about 100 people (none of them children)." (Dixon, Aikhenvald, The Amazonian languages) On the other hand, as I understand it, it is the Tucano influence that greatly contributed to Tariana's fancy grammatical features.
According to my Tariana grammar, the Santa Rosa and Santa Terezhina dialects are quite endangered and are mostly spoken by older people, while the Perequitos dialect is thriving and has native speakers as young as ten. The Vaupes River basin also seems to be an area where linguistic identity and cultural identity are intertwined, so it is quite possible that Tariana could experience a revival.
Yo jo moy garsmichte pa

chris_notts
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 275
Joined: Wed Dec 15, 2004 9:05 am
Location: Nottingham, England
Contact:

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by chris_notts »

Xiądz Faust wrote:On the other hand, as I understand it, it is the Tucano influence that greatly contributed to Tariana's fancy grammatical features.
This is only partly true. The awesomeness came from taking Tariana as it was then adding an additional load of features not originally present that are typically Tucano, rather than from just replacing old features with new Tucano ones. The kind of linguistic contact common in the Vaupes, with a lot of bilingualism from childhood, tends to promote additive borrowing of features and distinctions. What I don't know is how much influence has gone in the opposite direction, from Tariana to the Tucano languages, although I suspect the answer is not as much.
Try the online version of the HaSC sound change applier: http://chrisdb.dyndns-at-home.com/HaSC

TomHChappell
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 807
Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2005 2:58 pm

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by TomHChappell »

chris_notts wrote:This is only partly true. The awesomeness came from taking Tariana as it was then adding an additional load of features not originally present that are typically Tucano, rather than from just replacing old features with new Tucano ones. The kind of linguistic contact common in the Vaupes, with a lot of bilingualism from childhood, tends to promote additive borrowing of features and distinctions. What I don't know is how much influence has gone in the opposite direction, from Tariana to the Tucano languages, although I suspect the answer is not as much.
From what I understand of Aikhenvald's hypothesis, she thinks that it was not only the rampant bilingualism and multilingualism, but also the "taboo" against code-mixing (anyone who, while speaking one language, used a word from a different language, would get laughed at).

Therefore Tariana didn't "borrow" much in the way of vocabulary from the neighboring language, because unsophisticated speakers would be aware they were borrowing a word; instead, they borrowed syntactic (and morphosyntactic?) features, because an unsophisticated speaker, or even a sophisticated speaker who just wasn't thinking about it, might not be aware they were borrowing it.

Has that hypothesis been disproven? Or has there been more evidence in its favor?

chris_notts
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 275
Joined: Wed Dec 15, 2004 9:05 am
Location: Nottingham, England
Contact:

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by chris_notts »

TomHChappell wrote: From what I understand of Aikhenvald's hypothesis, she thinks that it was not only the rampant bilingualism and multilingualism, but also the "taboo" against code-mixing (anyone who, while speaking one language, used a word from a different language, would get laughed at).
Yes, it's true that most of then borrowing has been grammatical rather than lexical. The features Tariana borrowed are expressed using native words / affixes which have been adapted to express the borrowed categories.
Therefore Tariana didn't "borrow" much in the way of vocabulary from the neighboring language, because unsophisticated speakers would be aware they were borrowing a word; instead, they borrowed syntactic (and morphosyntactic?) features, because an unsophisticated speaker, or even a sophisticated speaker who just wasn't thinking about it, might not be aware they were borrowing it.
I'm not sure whether awareness is relevant or not... even if they were aware, it could be that direct borrowing of phonological forms is the only thing they're bothered about. Presumably some of them must have noticed that, say, speakers bilingual in Tucano were using serialised perception verbs / the dubitative marker (amongst other sources) to express evidentiality more than speakers not bilingual in Tucano.
Has that hypothesis been disproven? Or has there been more evidence in its favor?
As far as I know it hasn't been disproven.
Try the online version of the HaSC sound change applier: http://chrisdb.dyndns-at-home.com/HaSC

User avatar
patiku
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 285
Joined: Wed Oct 24, 2007 7:38 pm

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by patiku »

If you say "beer can" with a British accent, it sounds like you're saying "bacon" with a Jamaican accent.

chris_notts
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 275
Joined: Wed Dec 15, 2004 9:05 am
Location: Nottingham, England
Contact:

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by chris_notts »

patiku wrote:If you say "beer can" with a British accent, it sounds like you're saying "bacon" with a Jamaican accent.
Is that true? If I try to mimic what I think of as a Jamaican accent, I have a long mid-height monophthong in the first syllable of "bacon". "Beer", at least in my dialect (Nottingham, East Midlands), has [i@], or at worst [I:] in rapid speech.
Try the online version of the HaSC sound change applier: http://chrisdb.dyndns-at-home.com/HaSC

jmcd
Smeric
Smeric
Posts: 1034
Joined: Fri Mar 12, 2004 11:46 am
Location: Réunion
Contact:

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by jmcd »

Yeah what Chris Notts is saying seems right.

In any case, there is no such thing as a British accent. There are British spellings and vocabulary items but there are very few commonalities among the accents of English within the British Isles which are not also shared with other accents of English.

Atom
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 86
Joined: Sun Dec 21, 2008 1:51 pm

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by Atom »

The discussion of Tariana is fascinating. What are good sources to learn more about it?

User avatar
Whimemsz
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 690
Joined: Fri Jun 20, 2003 4:56 pm
Location: Gimaamaa onibaaganing

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by Whimemsz »

Basically just this, as far as I know

User avatar
ol bofosh
Smeric
Smeric
Posts: 1169
Joined: Tue Dec 06, 2011 5:30 pm
Location: tʰæ.ɹʷˠə.ˈgɜʉ̯.nɜ kʰæ.tə.ˈlɜʉ̯.nʲɜ spɛ̝ɪ̯n ˈjʏː.ɹəʔp

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by ol bofosh »

patiku wrote:If you say "beer can" with a British accent, it sounds like you're saying "bacon" with a Jamaican accent.
You mean, there's just one British Accent???

I they it, and I can sort of see what you mean, it resembles a Jamaican accent (just one?), but to say it's the same is pushing it. Imagine the Queen saying "beer can" and then trying to convince us she's saying "bacon" with a Jamaican accent (my Southern accent is actually far less posh).
It was about time I changed this.

Travis B.
Sumerul
Sumerul
Posts: 3570
Joined: Mon Jun 20, 2005 12:47 pm
Location: Milwaukee, US

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by Travis B. »

jmcd wrote:Yeah what Chris Notts is saying seems right.

In any case, there is no such thing as a British accent. There are British spellings and vocabulary items but there are very few commonalities among the accents of English within the British Isles which are not also shared with other accents of English.
That is, if one is considering things in terms of genetic "trees" of dialect nodes, a model that appears to be of little validity or usefulness in practice, rather than the in terms of the model of dialect continua.

In terms of dialect continua, the conventional grouping of English dialects is largely valid, with the primary exception that there clearly is no real separation between "American English" and "Canadian English", with the two being merely merged as a single North American English dialect continuum or reorganized as a main NAE dialect continuum paired with a separate Atlantic Canadian English dialect continuum, that Scottish English dialects exist in a sort of diasystem with the somewhat-but-not-completely-separate Anglic language Scots perpendicular to their relationship with any other groupings of English dialects, and that the interrelationship of AAVE with the rest of main NAE is unclear, with thoughts about it ranging from it being closely allied to Southern AE dialects to being an independent English creole that has been pulled into a closer relationship with main NAE over time.

And yes, even in this model one will get things such as two different varieties in two clearly different continua being closer together than other dialects in the same continuum. A good example of this, of course, is General American and Received Pronunciation being much closer together than many English English dialects or, to a lesser extent, North American English dialects are. Yet this is not of much significance, in practice, as the notion of dialect continua does not specify any assumptions with regard to the relationships between separate non-contiguous continua (whereas a dialect-tree model assumes that different groups are either separate and valid clades that one group forms a valid clade that includes a clade corresponding to another group).
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

jmcd
Smeric
Smeric
Posts: 1034
Joined: Fri Mar 12, 2004 11:46 am
Location: Réunion
Contact:

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by jmcd »

Well I'm not talking about either dialect continua or genetic trees. I'm talking about phonetic similarities. Which does follow on from a comment about "British accent". Accents of English in Britain just don't sound the same at all, except for them being part of the English language.

Or do you prefer treegod's phrasing?:
treegod wrote: You mean, there's just one British Accent???

Travis B.
Sumerul
Sumerul
Posts: 3570
Joined: Mon Jun 20, 2005 12:47 pm
Location: Milwaukee, US

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by Travis B. »

jmcd wrote:Well I'm not talking about either dialect continua or genetic trees. I'm talking about phonetic similarities. Which does follow on from a comment about "British accent". Accents of English in Britain just don't sound the same at all, except for them being part of the English language.

Or do you prefer treegod's phrasing?:
treegod wrote: You mean, there's just one British Accent???
Well of course there isn't a single "British accent", even if there is a valid grouping of dialects into at least an English English dialect continuum, a member of which most people mean when they say "British accent".

But by context you can generally tell what people mean by "British accent", if they use that term at all; e.g. most Americans, e.g. patiku, in saying that would really mean either one of Received Pronunciation or Estuary English, especially since these are probably the only English English varieties most Americans have any awareness of in the first place (except for maybe Cockney, but that is always thought of as some historical thing from back in the days of Dickens and like, not as something anyone actually speaks today).

About phonetic similarities, though, that is not really a valid thing to go by, except in the specific context of comments like patiku's that specifically speaks of X sounding like Y. For instance, my own English and conservative General American, when actually transcribed out, differ a whole fucking lot, probably to such an extent that when compared to RP the conservative GA is probably closer phonetically to it than it is to my own English. Yet diachronically my dialect is quite close to GA, much closer to it than GA is to RP, and indeed except for a few somewhat irregular vowel shifts (or in a couple cases, splits) can be practically directly derived phonologically from conservative GA.

Likewise, when one is speaking of groupings of dialects, while their phonologies may be all over the place, they may still have common underlying phonological features that are each present in a good portion of the dialects in question, even if one gets a rats' nest of isoglosses where no single isogloss covers the entire grouping of dialects and separates it from some other grouping of dialects. But this is the nature of dialect continua in reality; sound changes are not simply hierarchically inherited as the genetic-tree model assumes but rather spread outward from different centers to varying extents, often either being present in only limited areas or conversely covering most of the continuum but leaving outliers lacking them.
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

jmcd
Smeric
Smeric
Posts: 1034
Joined: Fri Mar 12, 2004 11:46 am
Location: Réunion
Contact:

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by jmcd »

Travis B. wrote:Well of course there isn't a single "British accent", even if there is a valid grouping of dialects into at least an English English dialect continuum, a member of which most people mean when they say "British accent".

But by context you can generally tell what people mean by "British accent", if they use that term at all; e.g. most Americans, e.g. patiku, in saying that would really mean either one of Received Pronunciation or Estuary English, especially since these are probably the only English English varieties most Americans have any awareness of in the first place (except for maybe Cockney, but that is always thought of as some historical thing from back in the days of Dickens and like, not as something anyone actually speaks today).
So basically because they don't know much about it.
Travis B. wrote:About phonetic similarities, though, that is not really a valid thing to go by, except in the specific context of comments like patiku's that specifically speaks of X sounding like Y.
So basically it is actually relevant, especially in this particular context.
Travis B. wrote:Likewise, when one is speaking of groupings of dialects, while their phonologies may be all over the place, they may still have common underlying phonological features that are each present in a good portion of the dialects in question, even if one gets a rats' nest of isoglosses where no single isogloss covers the entire grouping of dialects and separates it from some other grouping of dialects.
But this is not really the case with "British English", as I've already said twice. It may be the case for English English to some extent but certainly not for British English.

You talk a whole lot about your own dialect but seem to just ignore what other people say about their own.

On the other hand, it was patiku so he may well have been trolling.

User avatar
Pthagnar
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 702
Joined: Fri Sep 13, 2002 12:45 pm
Location: Hole of Aspiration

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by Pthagnar »

jmcd wrote:On the other hand, it was patiku so he may well have been trolling.
It is a commonplace in Britain.
So this means pretty much everything everybody said is terrible.

Travis B.
Sumerul
Sumerul
Posts: 3570
Joined: Mon Jun 20, 2005 12:47 pm
Location: Milwaukee, US

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by Travis B. »

jmcd wrote:You talk a whole lot about your own dialect but seem to just ignore what other people say about their own.
I use it as an example a lot because it is a variety that I can speak of reliably other than General American, whereas for most other language varieties I can generally only go by what I have read about them elsewhere, which is often not sufficiently complete for me to really speak definitively about them.

(Actually, I can speak of it more reliably than GA, as I do not actually natively speak "pure" GA per se in the first place; even when trying to speak GA my underlying phonology is clearly not actual native GA phonology but still has considerable substratum influence from my native dialect.)
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

User avatar
Pthagnar
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 702
Joined: Fri Sep 13, 2002 12:45 pm
Location: Hole of Aspiration

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by Pthagnar »

Travis B. wrote:
jmcd wrote:You talk a whole lot about your own dialect but seem to just ignore what other people say about their own.
I use it as an example a lot because it is a variety that I can speak of reliably other than General American, whereas for most other language varieties I can generally only go by what I have read about them elsewhere, which is often not sufficiently complete for me to really speak definitively about them.

(Actually, I can speak of it more reliably than GA, as I do not actually natively speak "pure" GA per se in the first place; even when trying to speak GA my underlying phonology is clearly not actual native GA phonology but still has substratum influence from my native dialect.)
are you trying to tell us you speak a regional dialect rather than an artificial standard
fascinating
tell us more

Travis B.
Sumerul
Sumerul
Posts: 3570
Joined: Mon Jun 20, 2005 12:47 pm
Location: Milwaukee, US

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by Travis B. »

Pthug wrote:
Travis B. wrote:
jmcd wrote:You talk a whole lot about your own dialect but seem to just ignore what other people say about their own.
I use it as an example a lot because it is a variety that I can speak of reliably other than General American, whereas for most other language varieties I can generally only go by what I have read about them elsewhere, which is often not sufficiently complete for me to really speak definitively about them.

(Actually, I can speak of it more reliably than GA, as I do not actually natively speak "pure" GA per se in the first place; even when trying to speak GA my underlying phonology is clearly not actual native GA phonology but still has substratum influence from my native dialect.)
are you trying to tell us you speak a regional dialect rather than an artificial standard
fascinating
tell us more
I am explaining why I use that regional dialect - well not exactly even regional, as it is more a dialect limited to a metropolitan area in the form I use here - in transcriptions and when talking about English phonology rather than a standard variety.
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

jmcd
Smeric
Smeric
Posts: 1034
Joined: Fri Mar 12, 2004 11:46 am
Location: Réunion
Contact:

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by jmcd »

Pthug wrote:
jmcd wrote:On the other hand, it was patiku so he may well have been trolling.
It is a commonplace in Britain.
So this means pretty much everything everybody said is terrible.
tbh I'm not sure what "it" is referring to here. Trolling? Referring to RP as the British accent?

Atom
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 86
Joined: Sun Dec 21, 2008 1:51 pm

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by Atom »

Whimemsz wrote:Basically just this, as far as I know
Ah! Thank you.

User avatar
Pthagnar
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 702
Joined: Fri Sep 13, 2002 12:45 pm
Location: Hole of Aspiration

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by Pthagnar »

jmcd wrote:
Pthug wrote:
jmcd wrote:On the other hand, it was patiku so he may well have been trolling.
It is a commonplace in Britain.
So this means pretty much everything everybody said is terrible.
tbh I'm not sure what "it" is referring to here. Trolling? Referring to RP as the British accent?
beer can = jamaican(bacon)

Bedelato
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 193
Joined: Sat Oct 30, 2010 1:13 pm
Location: Another place

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by Bedelato »

Travis B. wrote:
jmcd wrote:You talk a whole lot about your own dialect but seem to just ignore what other people say about their own.
I use it as an example a lot because it is a variety that I can speak of reliably other than General American, whereas for most other language varieties I can generally only go by what I have read about them elsewhere, which is often not sufficiently complete for me to really speak definitively about them.

(Actually, I can speak of it more reliably than GA, as I do not actually natively speak "pure" GA per se in the first place; even when trying to speak GA my underlying phonology is clearly not actual native GA phonology but still has considerable substratum influence from my native dialect.)
Maybe related, maybe not, but this reminds me of the reason why I always talk about "my idiolect" when discussing my English. I use "idiolect" because I really am only speaking for myself, whereas "dialect" to me implies a generalization, that I'm speaking for other people, which I'm not.
The other reason is that I'm not confident in lumping my speech together with anyone else's; "American" is pretty much as detailed as I can get without adding qualifiers.
At, casteda dus des ometh coisen at tusta o diédem thum čisbugan. Ai, thiosa če sane búem mos sil, ne?
Also, I broke all your metal ropes and used them to feed the cheeseburgers. Yes, today just keeps getting better, doesn't it?

User avatar
Nortaneous
Sumerul
Sumerul
Posts: 4544
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2009 1:52 am
Location: the Imperial Corridor

Re: Odd natlang features thread

Post by Nortaneous »

jesus mother of tapdancing fuck, what the hell are you kids doing
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

Post Reply