ALT News No. 56

July 2019

 

1. Message from the president, Jeff Good:

 

As we get closer to the 13th meeting of the Association for Linguistic Typology, the local

organizers at the University of Pavia are working hard to prepare for the event. Even if you are

not able to attend, I hope you will take some time to look at the program to get a sense for the

work that people are doing on typology today. As usual, the talks and posters contain an

interesting mix of studies focusing on individual languages, different language families and

areas, and more general typological topics.

 

At the end of this year, my term as President will be complete, and the Nominating Committee is

working now on developing a list of nominees for a number of ALT positions where those who

have served the Association will be rotating off. Please look out for more information on ALT

nominations and elections as it becomes available.

 

Below in this newsletter, you will find further announcements regarding the upcoming ALT

meeting as well as reports from the Greenberg and Pāṇini Award Committees. I would like to

give my sincere thanks to Peter Arkadiev for serving as Chair of the Greenberg Award

Committee and Hilary Chappell for serving as Chair of the Pāṇini Award Committee. The other

members of the Greenberg Award committee were: Sonia Cristofaro, Frans Plank, Larry Hyman,

Eva van Lier, Marina Chumakiba, Mark Donohue, Matti Miestamo, Tatiana Nikitina, and Sergey

Say. The other members of the Pāṇini Award Committee were: Niclas Burenhult, Denis

Creissels, Wilson De Lima Silva, Diana Forker, Alice Gaby, Tom Güldemann, Hirofumi Hori,

Gwen Hyslop, Nerida Jarkey, František Kratochvil, Florian Lionnet, Danqing Liu, Enrique

Palancar, Andrey Shluinsky, Martine Vanhove, Yogendra Yadava. One of the pleasures of

serving in my role as ALT President has been to discover how many scholars are willing to

dedicate their time to support ALT by serving on these committees. Giving out these awards is

one of ALT’s most important functions, and I am grateful to everyone who assisted ALT in

evaluating the submissions. I take it as strong evidence of the strength of typology as a discipline

that the level of acceptance of invitations to serve on these committees is very high, even though

I know that those serving have many other commitments.

 

I am looking forward to seeing many of you soon in Pavia!

 

2. ALT13Announcements

2.1. Updates

 

All information regarding the upcoming ALT conference, including the program, may be found

online: https://sites.google.com/universitadipavia.it/alt2019/program?authuser=0

 

The 13th biennial Association for Linguistic Typology meeting will be held 4-6 September, 2019

at the University of Pavia, Italy. The organizers include Sonia Cristofaro, Silvia Luraghi, Elisa

Roma, and Chiara Zanchi.

 

 

 

 

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2.2 Attendee Conduct at the ALT Meeting in Pavia

 

The ALT Executive Committee asks all attendees of the 13th Meeting of the Association for

Linguistic Typology to respect the Code of Ethics of the host of the meeting, the University of

Pavia, by following those elements of its Code that are most applicable to academic visitors to

the university. These include, in particular:

 

Article 1: Basic Principles

Article 7: Rejection of any form of discrimination

Article 8: Abuses, nuisances and harassment of a sexual nature

Article 10: Moral harassment and bullying

 

The official version of the Code (in Italian) can be found at https://web.unipv.it/wp-

content/uploads/2019/03/Codice-Etico.pdf, and an English translation can be found

at https://web.unipv.it/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Code-of-Ethics-English-transaltion.pdf.

 

Attendees with any concerns related to the conduct of individuals at the meeting should feel free

to report them to any member of the Local Organizing Committee, Sonia Cristofaro, Silvia

Luraghi, Elisa Roma, and Chiara Zanchi, or any of the following members of the ALT Executive

Committee: Mark Dingemanse, Jeff Good, Masha Koptjevskaja Tamm, Felicity Meakins, Rachel

Nordlinger, and Ljuba Veselinova.

 

2.3. Awards

 

Both the Greenberg and Panini awards have been decided, and the recipients were announced in

a general email earlier in 2019. What follows are the final reports from the jury chairs, and

another word of thanks to the jury members:

 

CHAIR'S REPORT FOR THE GREENBERG AWARD, 2019, PETER ARKADIEV, CHAIR:

 

(i) THE 2019 WINNER

 

Shelece Easterday. 2017. Highly complex syllable structure: a typological study

of its phonological characteristics and diachronic development

University of New Mexico

Supervisor: Caroline Smith

 

In her dissertation Shelece Easterday engages in a very ambitious project of determining the

properties of “highly complex syllable structures” asking if such systems constitute an

identifiable “type”. To do this, Easterday established a database of 100 phonological systems

from a diversified sample of languages which she examined and coded individually to test if

such structures correlate with other phonological and morphological properties. The research

exacted a deep and broad study that is truly impressive and ambitious in scope.

 

The dissertation consists of eight chapters, of which chapter 1 serves as a general introduction

and chapter 2 describes the language sample. Chapter 3 surveys syllable structure patterns

 

 

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attested in the sample, examining onset and coda sizes and their mutual relationships, properties

of nuclei and morphological patterns associated with different syllable structures; the syllable

structures in the 24 languages of the sample with highly complex syllable structure are

investigated in detail. Chapter 4 discusses the relationship between syllable structure complexity

and inventories of vowels and consonants, showing that highly complex syllable structures are

associated with specific properties of phoneme inventories, such as presence of palato-alveolar,

uvular, and ejective consonants and of length contrast in vowels. Chapter 5 discusses the

relationship between syllable structure complexity and suprasegmental features, showing that

languages with highly complex syllable structures tend to have word stress rather than tone, and

to use vowel duration as a phonetic correlate of word stress, as well as to have such stress-related

phonological properties as unstressed vowel reduction and deletion. In chapter 6 Easterday

specifically discusses the role of vowel reduction in the development of syllable structure

complexity and observes, on the one hand, that vowel deletion in languages with simple and

moderately complex syllable structures only rarely produces non-canonical tautosyllabic

consonant sequences, and, on the other, “that vowel deletion is more likely to create clusters in

languages which already have a prevalence of consonant clusters” (p. 402). Chapter 7 addresses

the issue of consonant allophony and shows that stress- and vowel-conditioned processes such as

palatalization are associated with less complex syllable structures, while lenition and

sonorization processes are not sensitive to syllable complexity. Chapter 8 summarizes the results

of the study, addressing such issues as the relationship between syllable structure complexity and

morphology, the properties of highly complex syllable structure as a linguistic type and pathways

of its diachronic development. Easterday concludes that highly complex syllable structure, often

considered to be functionally dispreferred, is a synchronically and diachronically stable pattern

in the languages of the world, whose long-term maintenance is motivated by specific phonetic

characteristics derived from temporal properties of gestural organization in such languages.

 

The main text of the dissertation is followed by appendices including the full encoding of the

inventories and contrasts in the 100 languages with respect to fifteen different criteria, thereby

allowing readers to evaluate the author’s interpretations and replicate the study of the

(un)successful correlations reported in the different chapters.

 

The dissertation shows an impressive command both of theoretical and methodological issues, an

open-mindedness and respect for others’ views. Extensive citation of preceding work shows a

scholarly disposition as Easterday considers different interpretations of her findings, including

the formal theoretical literature (the dissertation ends with 50 pages of references.). Easterday

masterfully produces a thoroughly typological work, considering the claims of other system

“types” such as stress- vs. syllable timing, consonantal vs. vocalic languages etc., as well as

holistic claims of correspondence between morphological typology and syllable structure. This

thesis is clearly outstanding, both as a phonological investigation and a work in typology, and

should be read by anyone who wants to be taken seriously with claims about patterns of syllable

complexity, becoming a standard reference for some time to come.

 

 

 

 

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(ii) REPORT ON THE HIGHLY COMMENDED DISSERTATIONS

Raina Heaton. 2017. A typology of antipassives, with special reference to Mayan

University of Hawai'i at Mānoa

Supervisor: Lyle Campbell

 

This is the most comprehensive typological study of antipassive constructions to date, impressive

both in the breadth of coverage (the language sample includes 445 languages from 144 language

families) and the depth of analysis. In addition to a substantive typological study comprising ten

chapters which would constitute a full dissertation by themselves, the thesis also offers a detailed

discussion of antipassives and antipassive-like constructions in the Mayan languages, mainly

based on the author’s own extensive fieldwork on Kaqchikel. Moreover, these two parts of the

dissertation are not separate, but rather feed each other in such a way that the analysis of the

Mayan data builds upon the results of the typological study and its theoretical proposals, while

the cross-linguistic part of the dissertation is being constantly informed by the Mayan material.

 

What is particularly impressive, apart from the broad cross-linguistic coverage and many

interesting typological insights, is the methodological rigor and explicitness maintained

throughout the dissertation. At virtually any point of the thesis it is clearly shown how every

particular generalization or analytical result was arrived at and which difficulties the author had

to overcome and how. The thesis contains almost 150-page-long appendices comprising full

information about the sample and dataset, together with statistical models used for testing the

quantitative findings.

 

The examination of the patterns of co-occurrence of various morphological, syntactic and

semantic features of antipassive constructions in the languages of the sample allows the author to

plot a broader typological space where the antipassive belongs and to highlight the similarities

and differences between the antipassive and related constructions. Besides having a clear

typological and theoretical significance, this proves indispensable for the discussion of the

Mayan languages with their multiple antipassive and antipassive-like constructions. Heaton not

only discusses antipassive constructions as such, but also asks what the languages with

antipassives look like. This is achieved by examining possible correlations between the presence

of antipassives and a number of features thereof with such parameters as basic word order,

alignment, head- and dependent marking, encoding of transitivity etc. Perhaps the most

important finding in this domain relates to the relation between antipassives and ergativity: while

the sample corroborates the common belief that that ergative languages have antipassives with

greater chances than nominative-accusative languages, the author suggests that this is not a direct

correlation, but rather a consequence of the fact that both antipassives and ergativity are favoured

in languages with rigid transitivity classes.

 

In sum, this is a very comprehensive study, both in breadth and in depth, which offers a wealth

of new data and insights and should become a standard reference on antipassives.

 

 

 

 

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Dana Louagie. 2017. A typological study of noun phrase structures in Australian

languages

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Supervisor: Jean-Christophe Verstraete

 

This dissertation presents a study of noun phrase structures in Australian languages based on a

sample of 100 languages. The analysis is developed in two main parts. The first part of the

dissertation presents a general survey of NP features, developing a synthesis of the available

Australianist literature, testing some of its ideas on the languages of the sample, and showing

where Australian languages stand in relation to other languages in the world. Chapter 1 deals

with nominal classification, which is the best-described aspect of NP structure for Australian

languages. Chapter 2 discusses the domains of qualification and quantification, which have

received less attention in the literature, and chapter 3 introduces the domains of determination

and NP constituency, which are most poorly understood.

 

The second part of the dissertation presents a more detailed analysis of the last two aspects,

determination and NP constituency, in the languages of the sample. In Chapter 4, on NP

constituency, Louagie concludes that there is in fact no strong evidence against constituency,

contrary to what has been traditionally claimed in the Australianist literature. More generally, it

is shown that constituency is not an absolute value that can be applied to languages as unitary

wholes, but rather a matter of degree. Chapter 5, on determiners, likewise challenges the received

view that Australian languages lack determiners. Interestingly, Louagie shows that a determiner

slot can be filled by a range of structurally different elements, which share the functional feature

of identifiability. This approach is cross-linguistically applicable to languages with and without

‘classic’ determiner systems.

 

This thesis is very clearly structured and reads easily. The analysis and presentation of the data is

very transparent and conscientious, including possible limitations of the research due to scarce or

inconclusive data. An important merit of this thesis is that in addition to providing a detailed

overview of NP structure in 100 Australian languages it also draws on and extrapolates to

general typological work.

 

CHAIR’S REPORT ON THE FINALISTS FOR THE FOURTH PĀṆINI AWARD, 2019, HILARY

CHAPPELL, CHAIR:

 

(i)  THE 2019 WINNER

Nadine Grimm. 2015. A grammar of Gyeli

Humboldt University, Berlin

Supervisors: Tom Güldemann and Maarten Mous

 

This thesis presents a remarkable and comprehensive grammar of Gyeli, a Bantu language whose

description is based on the Ngolo speech community in southern Cameroon, West Africa. The

research draws on 19 months of fieldwork, some of which Nadine Grimm carried out as part of a

DoBeS (Documentation of Endangered Languages) team project between 2010 and 2014. The

analysis is firmly anchored in a multimodal corpus, which includes texts of diverse genres such

 

 

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as traditional stories, narratives, multi-party conversations and dialogues, descriptions of

everyday activities, procedural texts and songs. This rich documentation has been supplemented

by data from elicitation work, questionnaires, and experiments. As to be expected of a winning

grammar, it covers all levels of language, ranging from Gyeli phonology to its information

structure.

 

In her analysis, Nadine Grimm has chosen to use an approach which explicitly privileges form

over function in her presentation so that each successive chapter topic neatly mirrors its role in a

hierarchy of structures that she has established. Crucially, the description reveals itself as one

that is well-entrenched in Bantu linguistics, providing a wealth of in-depth comparative and

typological information and supplemented by observations on reconstructed forms for proto-

Bantu. Some more specific comments follow below.

 

An important reason for singling out Grimm’s grammar among the sixteen submitted to the

Pāṇini Award are its in-depth analyses and discussions on a range of topics that will appeal to a

wider typological audience, not just Bantuists. What is particularly laudable is that these analyses

are clearly argued as to the reasons for favouring one theoretical solution over another. This is

not just an occasional instance of good argumentation; it is evident in every chapter, and many

sections within chapters. A few examples follow to illustrate this from different parts of the

grammar.

 

Given the highly complex nature of the Gyeli tone system, the careful attention to phonetic and

phonological detail including the identification of tonal patterns is original and exemplary,

particularly in its treatment of tonal phenomena such as High Tone Spreading, and its relevance

to the discussion of toneless, tone-bearing units (TBUs). The notion of toneless TBUs may in

fact shed a new light on interpreting tonal phenomena in other Bantu languages. The

phonological interpretation of pre-glottalization of labial and alveolar stops is another feature

which is carefully examined by analyzing voice-onset time (VOTs) in spectrograms of the

consonants in question. By this means, Nadine Grimm effectively argues that Gyeli cannot be

considered to possess an implosive series, as found in neighbouring languages, but rather a pre-

glottalized one.

 

The description of gender and agreement classes in chapters 4 and 5 is similarly very rewarding

to read in its intricate detail, wherein the arbitrary basis between semantic category and Gyeli

genders is revealed, which is then contrasted with the formal correspondences between the six

genders and the nine agreement classes. In spite of this, once more we cannot escape the

fascination of Gyeli tone phenomena since, in a subsequent chapter, we learn of the existence of

an object-linking high tone prefix which attaches to the (toneless TBU) noun class prefix of the

object noun which is closest to the verb (§4.1.1.4). Such suprasegmental marking is an essential

feature for the coding of grammatical relations and can thus be gainfully used as a diagnostic for

objecthood in Gyeli. The use of different tone patterns with the further grammatical functions of

coding TAM and negation values is evident in the case of a special portmanteau clitic that

simultaneously codes subject agreement on the verbal complex (§3.9.1).

 

Particularly convincing are also the arguments in favour of a two-unit interpretation of some of

the consonant clusters which are typically considered as one unit in the Bantu tradition, as well

 

 

 

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as the diachronic argument in favour of grammaticalised verbs with a similative morpheme for

the small, colour-qualifier category, and the existence of asyndetic subordinate clauses. The

discussion of the passive (§4.2.3.2) and the autocausative middle voice (§4.2.3.5) will similarly

be of great interest to typologists, not to mention the split genitive (§5.5) and the topic of covert

coordination (§8.1.2). On the latter topic, a succinct but clear explanation is given as to why the

author regards the relevant constructions to involve covert coordination rather than complex

predicates.

 

A further bonus of this grammar comes in the form of the numerous ethnographic,

sociolinguistic, diachronic and comparative remarks, combined with a plethora of insightful and

perceptive observations woven into her explanations in each chapter. The substantial appendices

include an impressive table of Gyeli verb extensions and a Gyeli lexicon, in addition to three

annotated texts from different genres. Notably, this textual corpus has been systematically

solicited to support the argumentation throughout the thesis. Overall, the jury viewed the

accessibility of the grammar to be the sign of a well-crafted work.

 

Jury members also appreciated the ethnographical note on naming strategies and the excursus on

the semantic categories of numerals (Chapter 5.7). Two jury members noted the availability of a

much larger online corpus on the DoBeS website of Gyeli annotated texts and suggested that the

web address might usefully be added to the thesis or to its published version.

 

In sum, the following three qualities were highlighted by the jury as making this grammar the

one that deserves the Pāṇini Award: (i) the originality of the grammatical analysis which is

solidly based on empirical evidence from a diverse range of natural language data, with

appropriate supplementation; (ii) the fact that the grammar is thoroughly embedded in and

explicitly connected to wider scholarship in both Bantu linguistics and typology; and not the

least, (iii) a mastery of Gyeli grammar whose description is presented in a highly clear and

accessible form-to-function style that is reader-friendly, given the cross-referencing links

supplied throughout the volume.

*********************

 

(ii)   HIGHLY COMMENDED (in alphabetical order):

 

Yunfan Lai. 2017. Grammaire du khroskyabs de Wobzi

Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3

Supervisors: Pollet Samvelian and Guillaume Jacques

 

This is an impressively comprehensive thesis on the Tibeto-Burman rGyalrongic language of

Khroskyabs spoken in Sichuan province of China – impressive in its detailed coverage of

different issues from phonetics through to clause-combining. It is based on nine fieldtrips,

carried out between 2010 and 2017, and 93 hours of recordings of five varieties of the language.

The thesis thus contains a great deal of comparative dialectal notes on other varieties of

Khroskyabs, as well as diachronic and typologically informed analyses, to name but a few. In

addition to this, the discussions on templatic morphology, on the many diverse types of relative

clauses (preposed, postposed, head-internal and –external), the rich verbal morphology of

 

 

 

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Khroskyabs, as well the treatment of comparative constructions, adnominal possession,

causatives and anti-causatives, are all really excellent.

 

The organisation is well-thought out and arranged according to the language on its own terms,

while also making it extremely easy for the reader to find the topics or information they are

looking for. One example is the entire section on indexation of person, which covers both

pronouns and verbal agreement in a coherent and well-motivated manner. The depth and detail at

all levels of the discussion and the clarity of the argumentation is admirable and only to be

commended.

In terms of its originality, the thesis represents a new and important contribution to the refining

the classification of rGyalrongic languages and to the broader Sino-Tibetan context. It includes a

description, to take one example, of the impressive collection of consonant clusters which is

arguably the largest possible in the entire family. The discussion of tone sandhi and phonological

processes is equally thorough, with acoustic images provided as additional support for the

various phonetic analyses. The use of different scripts and colours is also both maximally

informative and user-friendly with hyperlinked crossreferences. Finally, the appendices are

especially impressive – they include a lexicon, an extremely useful vocabulary index organised

according to language or language variety of Khroskyabs, as well as transcribed and translated

texts.

 

Sally Akevai Te Namu Nicholas. 2016. A grammar of the Southern Cook

Islands Maori

The University of Auckland, New Zealand

Supervisors: Margaret Mutu and Ross Clark

 

The Southern Cook Islands Maori grammar by Ms Sally Akevai Te Namu Nicholas sets an

admirable standard of comprehensiveness, accessibility, originality, and transparency in its

reliance on natural data. The grammar is a result of a documentation project by a member of the

Ma’uke Southern Cook Islands Maori community, who in the process of her study has become a

specialist of her own linguistic heritage. Her background makes the description rich in cultural

detail and offers unique insights into the Cook Islands Maori culture.

 

The grammar is well written, showing a solid knowledge of Polynesian languages and the

previous research on Maori and Austronesian in general. The discussion in each chapter is well

organized, proceeding from the more general to the concrete and exceptional, often starting with

useful reference to Oceanic patterns. The chapter on phonology employs standard instrumental

measurements in its lucid treatment of Cook Islands Maori phonotactics, including the minimal

three morae rule for the phonological phrase, and processes necessary to fulfil this rule. Links to

audio files are usefully provided.

 

The chapters on word classes similarly offer a critical approach to the study of a predominantly

isolating language, presenting in an elegant way the methodological conundrum about parts of

speech in Maori. The ‘actor emphatic’ construction is also an excellent chapter highlighting a

feature of Cook Islands Maori that is relevant to an ongoing theoretical debate about the actor

construction at least in East Polynesian and beyond. The author demonstrates her ability to

 

 

 

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engage in and relate to these debates and presents the relevant data, concluding diplomatically

that the construction remains ‘recalcitrant’.

 

The examples are well chosen with corpus data being taken as the starting point for more

detailed grammatical investigation. The corpus of over 60 hours of recordings have been

deposited at PARADISEC with 100,000 words transcribed.

 

(iii)   SHORTLISTED (in alphabetical order)

 

Hilde Gunnink. 2018. A grammar of Fwe: a Bantu language of Zambia and

Namibia

University of Ghent

Supervisors: Michael Meeuwis and Koen Bostoen

This is an outstanding grammar that shows a complete mastery of Bantu linguistics and a

typological approach in the examination of Fwe, a Bantu language spoken on the border between

Zambia and Namibia. The data were collected at several fieldsites in both these countries

between 2013 and 2015. At all levels of grammar, the author shows the range and fulsomeness of

her competence in the analysis of the phonology, including prosody and tone patterns of the

language and in her intricate descriptions of the noun classes and their variation, in particular,

changes in noun class membership and allomorphy, verbal derivation and a well-balanced

discussion of many interesting grammatical phenomenon, including the vowel augment and its

uses.

 

The perceptive remarks on phonology and tone change are given with laudable precision

throughout the description, wherever it is relevant in the discussion of grammar and morphology,

for example, tone change caused by left dislocation. Another example is the description of the

high tone change on the subject marker which creates a relative clause out of a main clause.

 

All analyses are clearly argumented, and based on well understood theories. In this respect, the

section on tense and aspect, which are very intricate categories in Fwe, are particularly

convincing, as too the explanations on the use of passive and the causative suffixes. There is

whole chapter dedicated to cleft constructions and focus, as well as a comprehensive study of

topicalisation devices, including word order issues in chapter 16 on syntax. It is also to be

appreciated that the author compares Zambian and Namibian varieties of Fwe throughout the

grammar.

 

The author additionally considers the diachronic perspective in an epilogue on language history

for the origins of certain phonemes such as clicks and derivational morphemes, for example, the

borrowed diminutive and pluractional suffixes. This final chapter considers contact between

Khoisan languages and Bantu-Botatwe Fwe and is again very insightful.

 

The thesis is based on a large and diverse corpus (10,000 elicited sentences; narratives (2 hours)

and conversations (45 mins), and songs. A lexicon of 2,200 words is provided and there is a

section in the appendix on useful phrases, discussing their cultural basis and a narrative text.

 

 

 

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Yankee Modi. 2017. The Milang language: Grammar and texts

University of Bern

Supervisor: George van Driem

 

Yankee Modi's grammar is a comprehensive and innovative study about the Tibeto-Burman

language of Milan, located in Arunachal Pradesh. It is the result of a decade-long language

documentation project by a heritage speaker who decided to rediscover her own passive

knowledge of the language, acquired from her grandmother. Hence, the grammar has first of all

benefitted from the fact that the author is a community researcher who has been exposed to the

culture and language of the Milang speaking community in a way very different from normal

research circumstances. This status has given her access to special knowledge and data, which

clearly outweigh other challenges that may exist, which she explicitly discusses. The advantages

of this situation are especially clear from the detailed and fine anthropological description in

Chapter 1 concerning Milang society, its structure and institutions, its agricultural practices,

lunar seasons and language vitality, in addition to the rich text corpus of the appendix (200

pages).

 

Indirectly related to this is a second positive feature of the grammar, namely, that it covers an

impressively wide array of linguistic topics - quite a few of them not yet regularly treated in

grammar writing. There are thus informative sections on kinship, proper names, and expressive

and other discourse-related word types such as interjections and hesitation particles, to name just

a few. Another example is the chapter on clausal syntax is refreshingly organized from the

information structure viewpoint. It draws a natural line between predicative and attributive

clauses and requires the notions of topic and focus to be used. The same chapter is used to

explain interclausal relations and the structure of complex clauses.

 

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of this grammar is the bold attempt to escape the structuralist

mould of grammar writing and get closer to interaction and communication. This effort

culminates in the last three chapters, which target the perspective taking, knowledge states, and

information structure. The chapter on the grammar of knowledge is very nicely argued regarding

the egophoric stance of all independent predicate types that do not take any special kind of

evidential marking. The mere courage to deviate from the organizational canon of grammar

description and analysis gives this grammar its special appeal.

 

Jaime Germán Peña . 2015. A grammar of Wampis

University of Oregon

Advisor: Doris L. Payne

This dissertation represents an excellent example of a comprehensive, descriptive grammar of an

Amazonian language. It consists of 21 chapters that cover all relevant aspects of the grammar

and include a text. The language is Wampis, an undocumented and under-described Jivaroan

language spoken in Peru. The grammar is based on several months of field work during which

the author gathered a corpus of texts (10 hours) to serve as the basis for the grammar, in addition

to elicitation.

 

 

 

 

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As it is a heavily agglutinating language, there are many semantic and syntactic functions that

are required to be encoded at word-level by the morphology in the form of intricate templates.

The author neatly describes the morpho-phonological processes that take place at the

morphotactic level and the functions of each of the morphemes involved, especially those

affecting the verb, with a solid description of each word class. The thesis is impressive in the

clarity and systematicity of its definitions and the motivations for its categories, precisely in the

case of noun, verb, and syllable, for example. The adverbs receiving person markers will

certainly be of broader typological interest.

The grammar is very clearly structured and the detailed table of contents helps the reader to

quickly find individual topics of interest. The author relies on typological literature, whenever

necessary, to clarify the concepts and terms he uses, with the grammatical phenomena under

description being illustrated by numerous examples, which are then explained in the

accompanying text. Numerous tables and figures summarize important points of the discussion

and help the reader to keep track of the relevant points.

 

The grammar also includes a discussion of the language in a broader context and highlights

features that are of typological and general theoretical interest such that non-experts of Jivaroan

languages are able judge and appreciate the grammar.

 

********

 

3. Linguistic Typology 2019-2

(https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/lity.2019.23.issue-2/issue-files/lity.2019.23.issue-2.xml)

Articles

Joan Bybee and Shelece Easterday

Consonant strengthening: a crosslinguistic survey and articulatory account.

FREE ACCESS (Editor’s choice)

 

Thera Marie Crane and Bastian Persohn.

What’s in a Bantu Verb? Actionality in Bantu languages.

OPEN ACCESS

 

Methodological Contribution

Beatriz Fernández, Ane Berro, Iñigo Urrestarazu and Itziar Orbegozo

Mapping variation in Basque: the BiV database

 

Obituary

Pioneer of thought-based linguistics: Wallace Chafe

Dan I. Slobin

 

Book review

Francesca Di Garbo

Torres Cacoullos, Rena and Catherine E. Travis. 2018. Bilingualism in the community. Code-

switching and grammars in contact.

OPEN ACCESS

 

 

 

 

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Grammar Highlights

A new category listing the grammars published during the preceding year

 

4. The new ALT website

 

The ALT website was ported to WordPress, a more modern and more flexible platform. This

also allows for sharing the responsibilities of editing and updating the site and also can be used

to help manage ALT membership information in the future. We plan on soliciting curators for

particular pages in the coming months. There will also be an updated and searchable Grammar

Watch. The address for the new website remains the same: http://linguistic-typology.org. We

welcome feedback on the redesign from members.

 

 

 

 

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