zompist bboard

Is there a correlation between an area’s geography and the phonology/pronunciation of the languages spoken in that area?

No.

There have been these couple of papers claiming geographic causes for the distribution of ejectives and tonal languages:

Evidence for Direct Geographic Influences on Linguistic Sounds: The Case of Ejectives
Climate, vocal folds, and tonal languages: Connecting the physiological and geographic dots

I haven't read these papers since they came out, but I remember concluding that their data handling and statistical analysis left far too many open questions to take the results completely seriously. If such geographic effects exist, it'll take much more rigorous work to demonstrate them.

It has also been claimed that people in cold climates are more likely to use close vowels /i/ and /u/ prominently whereas in warmer climates you hear more /a/. This is to keep the amount of cold or rushing into the mouth aslt a minimum. I read somewhere that Russians are more likely than other Europeans to have thicker bone plates around the palate, presumably for the same reasn, but I can't find it now.

There are other correlations which may be total coincidence.... voiced stops seem to be most common in the tropics (Australia,
Bantu, some Amazonian langs),whereas outside the tropics if a language has only one stop series it is always voiceless, and if it has a contrast the voiceless stops are more common.

I think a lot of things are just random though. I used to think uvulars were associated with deserts(siberia&Nunavut are deserts,as is much of the andes), but they're apparently found in some tropical rainforest languages and in proto-Austronesian.


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Strictly speaking a correlation does exist.... as demonstrated above.but causation is likely impossible to prove.

Nichols has also done some work purporting to show that mountainous regions (like the Caucasus) tend to become "relic areas" where more complex languages pile up (and become even more complex) while simpler ones spread out over the lowlands (and become more simple in the process). She claims to have a scientific definition of "linguistic complexity" but I lack the expertise to really evaluate it.

If this tendency does exist, it would still probably take a couple thousand years of continuous inhabitation to really manifest itself. 500 years of European colonisation of the Americas hasn't led to mountain varieties that are significantly more complex than what's spoken elsewhere.

Soap wrote:It has also been claimed that people in cold climates are more likely to use close vowels /i/ and /u/ prominently whereas in warmer climates you hear more /a/. This is to keep the amount of cold or rushing into the mouth aslt a minimum. I read somewhere that Russians are more likely than other Europeans to have thicker bone plates around the palate, presumably for the same reasn, but I can't find it now.

they say shit like this about the northern dialects of japan - the classic example is 'watashi', the first person pronoun, which they say is shortened to 'wa' in tohoku dialect (never mind that wa is actually from 我 (watashi is 私), so they have different etymologies) because the farmers there don't want to open their mouths too much because of the cold. Or they're lazy. Or both.

linguoboy wrote:Nichols has also done some work purporting to show that mountainous regions (like the Caucasus) tend to become "relic areas" where more complex languages pile up (and become even more complex) while simpler ones spread out over the lowlands (and become more simple in the process). She claims to have a scientific definition of "linguistic complexity" but I lack the expertise to really evaluate it.

At least remote relic areas don't have a similar pressure for koinesation than large expansive languages. It's also possible to argue that small isolated language communities have an easier time developing complexities since it's more likely that an innovation spreads over a small community than a large one before being wiped out. A good metric for linguistic complexity is a hairy business, though, and I'd take any suggestion for one with a generous pinch of salt.

Anyway, this is all about what the size of a language community is likely to do for a language. Claims of climate conditions etc. affecting sound change is quite a different issue altogether.

gach wrote:There have been these couple of papers claiming geographic causes for the distribution of ejectives and tonal languages:

Evidence for Direct Geographic Influences on Linguistic Sounds: The Case of Ejectives
Climate, vocal folds, and tonal languages: Connecting the physiological and geographic dots

I haven't read these papers since they came out, but I remember concluding that their data handling and statistical analysis left far too many open questions to take the results completely seriously. If such geographic effects exist, it'll take much more rigorous work to demonstrate them.

I was just thinking how similar ancient Syria, the PNW, the Caucasus, Mesoamerica, and the Great Plains are, to name a few regions where ejectives are common. :p

gach wrote:Anyway, this is all about what the size of a language community is likely to do for a language. Claims of climate conditions etc. affecting sound change is quite a different issue altogether.

Sure, but the original question was regarding "an area’s geography", which more conventionally refers to terrain, not climate.

I think the best you could say is that certain geographic conditions favour smaller and more isolated communities, which in turns leads to the effects you mention. Thus whatever correlation there is is weak and indirect and depends significantly on the settlement history of the area in question.

linguoboy wrote:Sure, but the original question was regarding "an area’s geography", which more conventionally refers to terrain, not climate.

Sure, the question covers a couple of largely unrelated issues that have different answers. I had the climactic aspect of the question on my mind because of the papers that I linked and since I remember how fun it was to pick them apart a few years ago.

It's good as a conlanging inspiration but more research needs to done before these ideas can be accepted.

It's tempting though, isn't it? What if Inuktitut is agglutinative because it's too cold to leave your mouth open for too long?

Ryan of Tinellb wrote:It's tempting though, isn't it? What if Inuktitut is agglutinative because it's too cold to leave your mouth open for too long?

Then having such long words doesn't really make much sense. :p

Zaarin wrote:

Ryan of Tinellb wrote:It's tempting though, isn't it? What if Inuktitut is agglutinative because it's too cold to leave your mouth open for too long?

Then having such long words doesn't really make much sense. :p

But now the sentences are shorter (by the wordcount metric).

Ryan of Tinellb wrote:

Zaarin wrote:

Ryan of Tinellb wrote:It's tempting though, isn't it? What if Inuktitut is agglutinative because it's too cold to leave your mouth open for too long?

Then having such long words doesn't really make much sense. :p

But now the sentences are shorter (by the wordcount metric).

Wouldn't it be syllable count that would make a difference if it was too cold to leave your mouth open?