Bootstrapping Sound Changes
Gasper Begus
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004299
November 2018
This paper presents a new technique for estimating the influences of channel bias on phonological typology called Bootstrapping Sound Changes (BSC). The BSC technique enables the estimation of Historical Probability, the probability that a synchronic alternation arises based on two diachronic factors — the number of sound changes required for an alternation to arise and their respective probabilities. With the BSC technique, we can estimate Historical Probabilities of attested and unattested alternations, compare Historical Probabilities of alternations and perform inferential statistics on the comparison, and compare outputs of the diachronic model against the independently observed synchronic typology to evaluate the performance of the Channel Bias approach. The BSC technique also identifies mismatches in typological predic- tions of the Analytic Bias and Channel Bias approaches. By comparing these mismatches with the observed typology, this paper attempts to quantitatively evaluate the distinct contributions of the two influences on typology.

Series shifts and mergers in the obstruent phonology of Tahltan (Northern Athabaskan)
John Alderete, Amber Blenkiron, Judy C. Thompson[ed?sdi]
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004221
September 2018
A survey was conducted to investigate the development of the Proto-Athabaskan obstruent series, *ts/tš/tšr/k, into present day Tahltan. Results from seven native speakers and quantitative analysis of a larger corpus establish t?/ts/ts/tš as the standard obstruent system, alongside three alternate systems that relate to independently motivated historical changes. These findings support the long-held view that differences in the obstruent reflexes do not reflect deep phonological differences among Northern Athabaskan languages, but instead represent areal influences and patterns of individual variation in a highly dynamic language network.

Contrastive Grammar of Brazilian Pomeranian
Gertjan Postma
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004212
September 2018
Cover text: Pomeranian is the West Germanic language spoken by European emigrants who went from Farther Pomerania (present-day Poland) to Brazil in the period 1857 – 1887. This language is no longer spoken in cohesive societies in Europe, but the language has survived and is in remarkably good shape on this language island in the tropical state of Espirito Santo. This monograph offers the first synchronic grammar of this language. After a historical introduction, the book offers a systematic description of its phonology, morphology, and syntax. The language is contrasted with its European sisters, more particularly High German, Dutch, and Frisian. It highlights various phenomena that will presumably contribute to the ongoing theoretical debate on the Germanic verbal system. It provides new data on cluster V2, do-support, and the two infinitives. As to the infinitival syntax, the language shows remarkable parallels to the system of Frisian. As to the rich Pomeranian system of subtractive morphology, the phonological account that is offered, will be important for the ongoing discussion of the abstractness of phonological representations. Finally, Pomeranian is a welcome addition to the set of languages on which our etymological understanding of West Germanic is based.

Basic Features of the Phonematic System in the Prehistory of the German
Zapolovskyi Mykola
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004209
September 2018
The article provides an insight into the relations between the German language and other Germanic and Indo-European languages. The first phonetic shift, Verner’s law, rhotacism, apophony and other phonetic phenomena in the prehistory of German have been described.

Polarity focus as focus
Daniel Goodhue
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004205
September 2018
In this paper, I argue that polarity focus (sometimes also called verum focus) is a focus phenomenon that can and should be accounted for under a general theory of focus marking such as that developed by Rooth (1985, 1992); Kratzer (1991). There are two challenges to overcome in order to defend this view. One is that polarity focus, unlike other focus effects, seems to be optional in some cases. The other is that polarity focus often seems to emphasize the truth of the proposition it appears with. I review earlier accounts of polarity focus as focus (Richter, 1993; Wilder, 2013; Samko, 2016a), and demonstrate issues they face. In particular, I show that the theory in Schwarzschild 1999 faces serious challenges when extended to cover polarity focus by Wilder (2013). I also review accounts that claim that the general theory of focus has no role to play in explaining the phenomenon, and that rely instead on a special VERUM operator (Romero & Han, 2004; Gutzmann & Castroviejo Miró, 2011; Gutzmann et al., submitted). I demonstrate challenges for this view, and argue for a more parsimonious account that relies on the general theory of focus and other independently motivated pragmatic principles that together explain the idiosyncrasies of polarity focus.

Deconstructing Information Structure
Angelika Kratzer, Elisabeth Selkirk
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004201
September 2018
The paper argues that the core of what is traditionally referred to as ‘Information Structure’ can be deconstructed into bona fide morphosyntactic features that have familiar types of meanings and just happen to be spelled out prosodically, rather than segmentally or tonally, in Standard American and British English. Setting aside topicality, we discuss two such features, [FoC] and [G]. [FoC] highlights contrasts and, in Standard American and British English, aims for highest prominence in a sentence. [G] is sensitive to discourse givenness and, in Standard American and British English, resists (phrase-level) prominence. There is no representation of newness. Apart from the idiosyncratic properties of [FoC] and [G], which guide their syntactic distribution, felicitous use, and phonological spellout, no special grammatical mechanisms or architectures have to be assumed to account for the many phonological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic manifestations of Information Structure notions related to givenness and focus.

A note on understanding the relationship between linguistic diversity and biodiversity in the Indian context
Sibansu Mukherjee
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004285
October 2018
On the basic of the assumption that linguistic diversity and biodiversity are correlated, many a few studies have been done. For example, significance of the relationship between language and species richness through different area-specific parameters has been demonstrated. This demonstration also reveals that there is a similar kind of relationship between linguistic varieties and forest area cover of the Indian states. Result shows a strong positive correlation between these two variables.