Etymological notes on Aleut (III). With methodological notes on (Eskimo-Aleut) historical linguistics

[EN] The goal of this contribution is twofold: on the one hand, to review two relatively recent contributions in the field of Eskimo-Aleut historical linguistics in which it is proposed that Eskimo-Aleut languages are related genealogically to Wakashan (Holst 2004) and?/or Nostratic (Krougly-Enke 2008). These contributions can be characterized by saying that their authors have taken little care to be diligent and responsible in the application of the comparative method, and that their familiarity with the languages involved is insufficient. Eskimo-Aleut languages belong to a very exclusive group of language families that have been (and still are) used, sometimes compulsively, in the business of so-called “long-range comparisons”. Those carrying out such studies are very often unaware of the most basic facts regarding the philological and linguistic traditions of those languages, as a result of what mountains of very low quality works with almost no-relevancy for the specialist grow every year to the desperation of the scientific community, whose attitude toward them ranges from the most profound indifference to the toughest (and most explicit) critical tone. Since Basque also belongs to this group of “compare-with-everything-you-come- across” languages, it is my intention to provide the Basque readership with a sort of “pedagogical case” to show that little known languages, far from underrepresented in the field, already have a very long tradition in historical and comparative linguistics, i.e. nobody can approach them without previous acquaintance with the materials. Studies dealing with the methodological inappropriateness of the Moscow School’s Nostratic hypothesis or the incorrectness of many of the proposed new taxonomic Amerindian subfamilies (several of them involving the aforementioned Wakashan languages), that is to say, the frameworks on which Krougly-Enke and Holst work, respectively, are plenty (i.a. Campbell 1997: 260-329, Campbell & Poser 2008: 234-96), therefore there is no reason to insist once more on the very same point. This is the reason why I will not discuss per se Eskimo-Aleut–Wakashan or Eskimo-Aleut–Nostratic. On the contrary, I will focus attention upon very concrete aspects of Krougly-Enke and Holst´s proposals, i.e. when they work on “less ambitious” problems, for example, dealing with the minutiae of internal facts or analyzing certain words from the sole perspective of Eskimo-Aleut materials (in other words, those cases in which even they do not invoke the ad hoc help of Nostratic stuff). I will try to explain why some of their proposals are wrong, demonstrate where the problem lies, and fix it if possible. In doing so, I will propose new etymologies in an attempt at showing how we may proceed. The main difference between this and handbook examples lies in the reality of what we are doing: this is a pure etymological exercise from beginning to end. I will try to throw a bit of light on a couple of problematic questions regarding Aleut historical phonology, demonstrating how much work should be done at the lowest level of the Eskimo-Aleut pyramid; it is technically impossible to reach the peak of the pyramid without having completed the base. As far as Aleut is regarded, I will mainly profit not only from the use of the traditional philological analysis of Aleut (and, eventually, of Eskimo) materials, but also of diachronic typology, bringing into discussion what in my opinion seems useful, and in some cases I think decisive, parallels. It is worth noting that this paper makes up yet another part of a series of exploratory works dealing with etymological aspects of the reconstruction of Proto-Eskimo-Aleut, with special emphasis on Aleut (vid. i.a. Alonso de la Fuente 2006/2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2010a), whose main goal is to become the solid basis for an etymological dictionary of the Aleut language, currently in progress.

Media translation and lesser-used languages: implications of subtitles for Irish language broadcastind

Eguíluz, Federico; Merino, Raquel; Olsen, Vickie; Pajares, Eterio; Santamaría, José Miguel (eds.)

Processing Facilitation Strategies in OV and VO Languages: A Corpus Study

The present corpus study aimed to examine whether Basque (OV) resorts more often than Spanish (VO) to certain grammatical operations, in order to minimi ze the number of arguments to be processed before the verb. Ueno & Polinsky (2009) argue that VO/OV languages use certain grammatical resources with different frequencies in order to facilitate real-time processing. They observe that both OV and VO languages in their sample (Japanese, Turkish and Spanish) have a similar frequency of use of subject pro-drop; however, they find that OV languages (Japanese, Turkish) use more intransitive sentences than VO languages (English, Spanish), and conclude this is an OV-specific strategy to facilitate processing. We conducted a comparative corpus study of Spanish (VO) and Basque (OV). Results show (a) that the fre- quency of use of subject pro-drop is higher in Basque than in Spanish; and (b) Basque does not use more intransitive sentences than Spanish; both languages have a similar frequency of intransitive sentences. Based on these findings, we conclude that the frequency of use of grammatical resources to facilitate the processing does not depend on a single typological trait (VO/OV) but it is modulated by the concurrence of other grammatical feature.

THE AINU LANGUAGES: TRADITIONAL RECONSTRUCTION, EURASIAN AREAL LINGUISTICS, AND DIACHRONIC (HOLISTIC) TYPOLOGY

El objetivo principal de esta tesis doctoral es, en primer lugar, ofrecer una reconstrucción alternativa del protoainu para, en segundo lugar, aplicar conceptos de tipología diacrónicaholística con el fin de discernir algún patrón evolutivo que ayude a responder a la pregunta:¿por qué la lengua ainu es como es en su contexto geolingüístico (lengua AOV con prefijos),cuando en la región euroasiática lo normal es encontrar el perfil 'lengua AOV con sufijos'? En suma, se trata de explorar las posibilidades que ofrece la tipología diacrónica holística,combinada con métodos más tradicionales, en la investigación de las etapas prehistóricas delenguas aisladas, es decir, sin parientes conocidos, como el ainu, el vasco, el zuñi o elburushaski. Este trabajo se divide en tres grandes bloques con un total de ocho capítulos, unapéndice con las nuevas reconstrucciones protoainúes y la bibliografía.El primer bloque se abre con el capítulo 1, donde se hace una breve presentación delas lenguas ainus y su filología. El capítulo 2 está dedicado a la reconstrucción de la fonologíaprotoainu. La reconstrucción pionera pertenece a A. Vovin (1992), que de hecho sirve comobase sobre la que ampliar, corregir o modificar nuevos elementos. En el capítulo 3 se describela morfología histórica de las lenguas ainus. En el capítulo 4 se investiga esta opción dentrode un marco más amplio que tiene como objetivo analizar los patrones elementales deformación de palabras. El capítulo 5, con el que se inicia el segundo bloque, da cabida a lapresentación de una hipótesis tipológica diacrónica, a cargo de P. Donegan y D. Stampe, conla que especialistas en lenguas munda y mon-khmer han sido capaces de alcanzar unreconstrucción del protoaustroasiático según la cual el tipo aglutinante de las lenguas mundasería secundario, frente al original monosilábico de las lenguas mon-khmer. En el capítulo 6se retoma la perspectiva tradicional de la lingüística geográfica, pero no se olvidan algunas delas consideraciones tipológicas apuntadas en el capítulo anterior (el hecho de que la hipótesisde Donegan y Stampe no funcione con el ainu no significa que la tipología diacrónica nopueda ser todavía de utilidad). En el capítulo 7 se presentan algunas incongruencias queresultan tras combinar las supuestas evidencias arqueológicas con el escenario lingüísticodescrito en capítulos anteriores. Las conclusiones generales se presentan en el capítulo 8. Elapéndice es una tabla comparativa con las dos reconstrucciones disponibles a fecha de hoypara la lengua protoainu, es decir, las propuestas por A. Vovin en su estudio seminal de 1992y en el capítulo 3 de la presente tesis. Dicha tabla incluye 686 reconstrucciones (puedehacerse una sencilla referencia cruzada con Vovin, puesto que ambas están ordenadasalfabéticamente).

Proficiency, Attitude and Conventions in Minority Languages

In this paper we study a simple mathematical model of a bilingual community in which all agents are f luent in the majority language but only a fraction of the population has some degree of pro ficiency in the minority language. We investigate how different distributions of pro ficiency, combined with the speaker´attitudes towards or against the minority language, may infl uence its use in pair conversations.

Discriminating languages in bilingual contexts: the impact of orthographic markedness

Does language-specific orthography help language detection and lexical access in naturalistic bilingual contexts? This study investigates how L2 orthotactic properties influence bilingual language detection in bilingual societies and the extent to which it modulates lexical access and single word processing. Language specificity of naturalistically learnt L2 words was manipulated by including bigram combinations that could be either L2 language-specific or common in the two languages known by bilinguals. A group of balanced bilinguals and a group of highly proficient but unbalanced bilinguals who grew up in a bilingual society were tested, together with a group of monolinguals (for control purposes). All the participants completed a speeded language detection task and a progressive demasking task. Results showed that the use of the information of orthotactic rules across languages depends on the task demands at hand, and on participants' proficiency in the second language. The influence of language orthotactic rules during language detection, lexical access and word identification are discussed according to the most prominent models of bilingual word recognition.