Submitted by wjarek on 5 November, 2009 - 14:22.
The Department of Contemporary English Language (DoCELu) invites you to a Phon&Phon meeting:
Dr Ron Kim (Visiting Professor at IFA)
Typological change in progress: The evolution of nonlinear morphology in an older Indo-European language
Wednesday, 18 November 2009, 18:30, Room 601A
Abstract
Nonlinear phonology was developed in the 1970s and ’80s to account for phenomena involving stress, tone, and long-distance assimilations which could not be readily explained under earlier, strictly linear approaches. The insights of nonlinear phonology were then successfully applied to languages with nonconcatenative morphology, e.g. the root-and-pattern structure of the Afroasiatic languages. Yet until now, no one has proposed a model by which such morphology can arise in languages in which it was previously absent.
This paper examines the evolution of nonlinear morphology in Tocharian A, one of two closely related Indo-European languages spoken during the 1st millennium in western China. In both Tocharian languages, palatalized consonants have been reanalyzed as markers of certain morphological categories, including three of the main preterite formations. Unlike Tocharian B, however, Tocharian A underwent a series of sound changes which led to confusion between roots of the shape CVCC and CCVC. Faced with this situation, I argue that speakers reanalyzed palatalization (PAL) as an autosegmental feature and applied PAL from left to right to the first surface-markable consonant.
The hypothesis proposed here explains the diachronically irregular palatalization of numerous Tocharian A preterites, previously dismissed as “analogical”, and offers a plausible account for their creation. If correct, this interpretation suggests that nonlinear morphology may in general be triggered by phonological developments that merge previously distinct root/morpheme shapes.
Submitted by J Weckwerth
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