Misplaced Pages

#834165

61-398: Reconstruction is complicated by the immense diversity of the languages, many of which are poorly described, the lack of inflection in most of the languages, and millennia of intense contact with other Sino-Tibetan languages and languages of other families. Only a few subgroups, such as Lolo-Burmese , have been securely reconstructed. Benedict's method, which he dubbed "teleo-reconstruction",

122-631: A creolization process between the Berber and Old North African languages; this creolized language may reflect the linguistic connections between modern Berber speakers and Guanche speakers of the Canary Islands . Among many unknown elements found in rock engravings on the Canary Islands, some evidence (e.g., few basic lexicon , numbers) of the Punic language and Libyco-Berber script have been found. While

183-830: A consultant and research fellow of the Overseas Development Institute in London. Old North African speakers, who have been misidentified as Paleoberbers and did not speak a language(s) that is linguistically related to existing Berber languages , were foragers of prehistoric North Africa that spoke a presently extinct set(s) of languages. Roger Blench coined the term, "Old North African," to describe and distinguish earlier languages spoken in North Africa from later languages spoken by incoming Berber speakers, Punic speakers, and Arabic speakers. From coastal North Africa to Iberia (e.g., Spain ), ethnic groups spoke

244-467: A date of approximately 4000 B.C., which is roughly on a par with the age of Proto-Indo-European . Language diversification occurred as speakers then moved downstream through various river valleys. The phonology of Proto-Tibeto-Burman here is from Matisoff's 2003 reconstruction, much of which is based on Benedict's earlier reconstructions. Proto-Tibetan–Burman has at least 23 consonants (Matisoff 2003:15). Some descendants of Proto-Tibetan–Burman, especially

305-516: A given word class is subject to inflection in a particular language, there are generally one or more standard patterns of inflection (the paradigms described below) that words in that class may follow. Words which follow such a standard pattern are said to be regular ; those that inflect differently are called irregular . For instance, many languages that feature verb inflection have both regular verbs and irregular verbs . In English, regular verbs form their past tense and past participle with

366-615: A root postulated to explain inconsistent reflexes in daughter languages. The reconstruction of such "allofams" has been heavily criticized by other researchers in the field. Contrary to other hypotheses suggesting a Proto-Sino-Tibetan homeland in the Yellow River valley of northern China, Matisoff (1991, 2015) suggests that the Proto-Sino-Tibetan (PST) homeland was located "somewhere on the Himalayan plateau," and gives Proto-Tibeto-Burman

427-660: A segment is referred to as partial reduplication . Reduplication can serve both derivational and inflectional functions. A few examples are given below: Palancar and Léonard provided an example with Tlatepuzco Chinantec (an Oto-Manguean language spoken in Southern Mexico ), where tones are able to distinguish mood, person, and number: Case can be distinguished with tone as well, as in Maasai language (a Nilo-Saharan language spoken in Kenya and Tanzania ) (Hyman, 2016): Because

488-553: A sentence can consist of a single highly inflected word (such as many Native American languages ) are called polysynthetic languages . Languages in which each inflection conveys only a single grammatical category, such as Finnish , are known as agglutinative languages , while languages in which a single inflection can convey multiple grammatical roles (such as both nominative case and plural, as in Latin and German ) are called fusional . In English most nouns are inflected for number with

549-449: A separate entry; the same goes for jump and jumped . Languages that add inflectional morphemes to words are sometimes called inflectional languages , which is a synonym for inflected languages . Morphemes may be added in several different ways: Reduplication is a morphological process where a constituent is repeated. The direct repetition of a word or root is called total reduplication (or full reduplication ). The repetition of

610-473: A set of inflectional endings), where a class of words follow the same pattern. Nominal inflectional paradigms are called declensions , and verbal inflectional paradigms are termed conjugations . For instance, there are five types of Latin declension . Words that belong to the first declension usually end in -a and are usually feminine. These words share a common inflectional framework. In Old English , nouns are divided into two major categories of declension,

671-722: A set(s) of languages known as Old North African, which were not necessarily genetically related to one another. Ethnic groups of Iberia that spoke the Tartessian language may be considered Old North African speakers. Ethnic groups and the archaeological cultures of North Africa that came before the Capsian culture, ethnic groups of the Capsian culture , and ethnic groups of the Neolithic Maghreb are considered to be Old North African speakers. As large animals migrated into and across

SECTION 10

#1732868850835

732-540: A suffix but a clitic , although some linguists argue that it has properties of both. Old Norse was inflected, but modern Swedish , Norwegian , and Danish have lost much of their inflection. Grammatical case has largely died out with the exception of pronouns , just like English. However, adjectives , nouns , determiners and articles still have different forms according to grammatical number and grammatical gender. Danish and Swedish only inflect for two different genders while Norwegian has to some degree retained

793-1294: A system of verbal agreement should be reconstructed for proto-Tibeto-Burman. Verbal agreement has disappeared in Chinese, Tibetan, Lolo-Burmese and most other branches, but was preserved in Kiranti languages in particular. This is a topic of scholarly debate, however, and the existence of a PTB verbal agreement system is disputed by such authors as Randy LaPolla . Matisoff postulates the following derivational prefixes. Other constructed prefixes include *l- and *d- . Circumfixes have also been reconstructed for Proto-Tibeto-Burman. In Written Tibetan, s- -n and s- -d are collective circumfixes used in kinship terms (Matisoff 2003:453). According to Matisoff, three Proto-Tibeto-Burman dental suffixes, *-n , *-t , and *-s , are highly widespread, but their semantics are difficult to reconstruct (Matisoff 2003:439). The suffixes *-s , *-h , and *-ʔ are often developed into tones in many Tibeto-Burman languages, and are thus highly "tonogenetically potent" (Matisoff 2003:474). Among other researchers, Paul K. Benedict and James Matisoff have proposed reconstructed vocabulary items for Proto-Tibeto-Burman. Matisoff's Proto-Tibeto-Burman reconstruction

854-418: A verb's tense, mood, aspect, voice, person, or number or a noun's case, gender, or number, rarely affecting the word's meaning or class. Examples of applying inflectional morphemes to words are adding - s to the root dog to form dogs and adding - ed to wait to form waited . In contrast, derivation is the process of adding derivational morphemes , which create a new word from existing words and change

915-451: A word often contains both one or more free morphemes (a unit of meaning which can stand by itself as a word), and one or more bound morphemes (a unit of meaning which cannot stand alone as a word). For example, the English word cars is a noun that is inflected for number , specifically to express the plural; the content morpheme car is unbound because it could stand alone as a word, while

976-536: Is Modern English, as compared to Old English. In general, languages where deflexion occurs replace inflectional complexity with more rigorous word order , which provides the lost inflectional details. Most Slavic languages and some Indo-Aryan languages are an exception to the general Indo-European deflexion trend, continuing to be highly inflected (in some cases acquiring additional inflectional complexity and grammatical genders , as in Czech & Marathi ). Old English

1037-596: Is a British linguist , ethnomusicologist and development anthropologist . He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and is based in Cambridge, England . He researches, publishes, and works as a consultant. Blench is known for his wide-ranging interests and has made important contributions to African linguistics , Southeast Asian linguistics, anthropology, ethnomusicology , ethnobotany , and various other related fields. He has done significant research on

1098-581: Is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense , case , voice , aspect , person , number , gender , mood , animacy , and definiteness . The inflection of verbs is called conjugation , while the inflection of nouns , adjectives , adverbs , etc. can be called declension . An inflection expresses grammatical categories with affixation (such as prefix , suffix , infix , circumfix , and transfix ), apophony (as Indo-European ablaut ), or other modifications. For example,

1159-469: Is also inflected according to case. Its declension is defective , in the sense that it lacks a reflexive form. The following table shows the conjugation of the verb to arrive in the indicative mood : suffixes inflect it for person, number, and tense: The non-finite forms arriv e (bare infinitive), arriv ed (past participle) and arriv ing (gerund/present participle), although not inflected for person or number, can also be regarded as part of

1220-563: Is also simplified in common usage. Afrikaans , recognized as a distinct language in its own right rather than a Dutch dialect only in the early 20th century, has lost almost all inflection. The Romance languages , such as Spanish , Italian , French , Portuguese and especially – with its many cases – Romanian , have more overt inflection than English, especially in verb conjugation . Adjectives, nouns and articles are considerably less inflected than verbs, but they still have different forms according to number and grammatical gender. Latin ,

1281-674: Is by far the most cited, and with his last version published in the final release of the Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus (2015). Allofams (a term coined by Matisoff to mean alternate proto-forms) are marked using ⪤. Matisoff (2009) lists 47 stable Tibeto-Burman roots (i.e., etyma that have cognates widely distributed in branches throughout the family) and their Proto-Tibeto-Burman reconstructions. Proto-language reconstructions for Tibeto-Burman branches include: Inflection In linguistic morphology , inflection (less commonly, inflexion )

SECTION 20

#1732868850835

1342-573: Is by far the most common and stable vowel in Tibeto-Burman languages. Matisoff (2003) reinterprets diphthongs from Paul Benedict's reconstruction as long vowels. According to Matisoff, Sino-Tibetan languages go through a series of four stages in which final stops and nasals gradually decay (Matisoff 2003:238-239). Proto-Tibeto-Burman was a verb-final ( subject–object–verb or SOV) language. Most modern-day Tibeto-Burman branches also display SOV word order. However, due to syntactic convergence within

1403-528: Is now a trustee of the Kay Williamson Educational Foundation, which exists both to publish the unpublished material left by Kay Williamson and to promote the study of Nigerian languages . A series of publications supported by the trust is under way with Rüdiger Köppe Verlag in Cologne . Blench has also conducted research and evaluations of international development activities worldwide, as

1464-840: The Canary Islands . Though speculative, Guanche speakers may have spoken the Basque language , Tartessian language, and other similar languages of the Iberian Peninsula; supportive evidence for this view may be found in the few lexemes that have been related to the Basque language and an absence of Berber etymology found in some Guanche words. Due to the migration of incoming Arabic (e.g., Hassānīya ), Berber (e.g., Tuareg ), and Punic speakers, Old North African languages may have eventually ceased being spoken in North Africa. Remnants of extinct Old North African languages may have been preserved in

1525-572: The Green Sahara , Old North African speakers, who hunted them as game animals, also migrated into and across the Sahara. The variety of cultures in the Maghreb described by Herodotus in 2500 BP may have been the cultural variety existing among Old North African speakers at that time. In 300 BCE, Guanche speakers, who may have been Old North African speakers rather than Berber speakers, may have peopled

1586-600: The Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area , three Tibeto-Burman branches, Karenic , Mruic , and Bai , display SVO (verb-medial) word order. This syntactic realignment has also occurred in Sinitic , which Scott DeLancey (2011) argues to be a result of creolization through intensive language contact and multilingualism during the Zhou dynasty . According to James Matisoff , Proto-Tibeto-Burman syllables typically consist of

1647-660: The Niger–Congo , Nilo-Saharan , and Afroasiatic families, as well as the Arunachal languages . Additionally, Blench has published extensively on the relationship between linguistics and archaeology. Blench is currently engaged in a long-term project to document the languages of central Nigeria . He has also expressed concern about ranching in Nigeria. Blench collaborated with the late Professor Kay Williamson , who died in January 2005, and

1708-771: The Proto-Indo-European language was highly inflected, all of its descendant Indo-European languages , such as Albanian , Armenian , English , German , Ukrainian , Russian , Persian , Kurdish , Italian , Irish , Spanish , French , Hindi , Marathi , Urdu , Bengali , and Nepali , are inflected to a greater or lesser extent. In general, older Indo-European languages such as Latin , Ancient Greek , Old English , Old Norse , Old Church Slavonic and Sanskrit are extensively inflected because of their temporal proximity to Proto-Indo-European. Deflexion has caused modern versions of some Indo-European languages that were previously highly inflected to be much less so; an example

1769-691: The Qiangic languages , have developed dozens of sibilant fricatives and affricates. According to Matisoff, Proto-Tibeto-Burman also has many final nasals, stops, and liquids. In Matisoff's reconstruction, Proto-Tibeto-Burman vowels can be split into primary and secondary sets. Modern-day Tibeto-Burman languages have anywhere from five vowels (Written Tibetan and Jingpho) to dozens of monophthongs and diphthongs ( Loloish and Qiangic languages ) (Matisoff 2003:157). Matisoff (2003) also notes that languages which have greatly simplified or eliminated final consonants tend to have more vowels. The open front unrounded vowel *a

1830-458: The ancient Egyptian language . For example, language contacts between Darfurian and Chadian proto-languages with the ancient Egyptian language. Additionally, the Tehenu and Temehu , which may have been ethnic groups with cultures and languages distinct from one another, may have also had their languages preserved in the ancient Egyptian language. The Libyco-Berber script may be the result of

1891-416: The sources of the syllable changes (i.e., reversal of the list above). However, Roger Blench (2019) argues that Proto-Sino-Tibetan did not have sesquisyllabic structure; instead, sesquisyllabicity in present-day Sino-Tibetan branches had been borrowed from Austroasiatic languages due to typological convergence . According to many authors such as James Bauman, George van Driem and Scott DeLancey ,

Proto-Tibeto-Burman language - Misplaced Pages Continue

1952-466: The strong and weak ones, as shown below: The terms "strong declension" and "weak declension" are primarily relevant to well-known dependent-marking languages (such as the Indo-European languages , or Japanese ). In dependent-marking languages, nouns in adpositional (prepositional or postpositional) phrases can carry inflectional morphemes. In head-marking languages , the adpositions can carry

2013-540: The Berber languages have been diverged from other Afroasiatic languages , may reflect inheritance from Old North African languages. While possibly being Nilo-Saharan languages, the Nemadi and Dawada languages may also be descendant languages of the Old North African languages. Genetics may further inform the academic discussion about the connections between Old North African speakers and Nilo-Saharan speakers to

2074-453: The Canary Islands. The internal diversity of the Berber languages are not able to be reconciled with how early the Neolithic (7000 BP, afterwards) and Capsian (12,000 BP - 8000 BP) periods occurred in North Africa; thus, these Neolithic and Capsian periods in North Africa are not able to be characterized as "Berber." The foundational vocabulary of the Berber languages, if not due to how long

2135-508: The English mice , children and women (see English plural ) and the French yeux (the plural of œil , "eye"); and irregular comparative and superlative forms of adjectives or adverbs, such as the English better and best (which correspond to the positive form good or well ). Irregularities can have four basic causes: For more details on some of the considerations that apply to regularly and irregularly inflected forms, see

2196-422: The English language. Despite the march toward regularization, modern English retains traces of its ancestry, with a minority of its words still using inflection by ablaut (sound change, mostly in verbs) and umlaut (a particular type of sound change, mostly in nouns), as well as long-short vowel alternation. For example: For details, see English plural , English verbs , and English irregular verbs . When

2257-411: The Latin verb ducam , meaning "I will lead", includes the suffix -am , expressing person (first), number (singular), and tense-mood (future indicative or present subjunctive). The use of this suffix is an inflection. In contrast, in the English clause "I will lead", the word lead is not inflected for any of person, number, or tense; it is simply the bare form of a verb. The inflected form of

2318-556: The above four cases to the locative marking them by differences in the use of prepositions. Lithuanian breaks them out of the genitive case , accusative case and locative case by using different postpositions. Dual form is obsolete in standard Latvian and nowadays it is also considered nearly obsolete in standard Lithuanian. For instance, in standard Lithuanian it is normal to say "dvi varnos (plural) – two crows" instead of "dvi varni (dual)". Adjectives, pronouns, and numerals are declined for number, gender, and case to agree with

2379-560: The agglutination in Proto-Uralic . The largest languages are Hungarian , Finnish , and Estonian —all European Union official languages. Uralic inflection is, or is developed from, affixing. Grammatical markers directly added to the word perform the same function as prepositions in English. Almost all words are inflected according to their roles in the sentence: verbs, nouns, pronouns, numerals, adjectives, and some particles. Roger Blench Roger Marsh Blench (born August 1, 1953)

2440-405: The article on regular and irregular verbs . Two traditional grammatical terms refer to inflections of specific word classes : An organized list of the inflected forms of a given lexeme or root word is called its declension if it is a noun, or its conjugation if it is a verb. Below is the declension of the English pronoun I , which is inflected for case and number. The pronoun who

2501-417: The conjugation of the verb to arrive . Compound verb forms , such as I have arrived , I had arrived , or I will arrive , can be included also in the conjugation of the verb for didactic purposes, but they are not overt inflections of arrive . The formula for deriving the covert form, in which the relevant inflections do not occur in the main verb, is An inflectional paradigm refers to a pattern (usually

Proto-Tibeto-Burman language - Misplaced Pages Continue

2562-509: The ending -[e]d . Therefore, verbs like play , arrive and enter are regular, while verbs like sing , keep and go are irregular. Irregular verbs often preserve patterns that were regular in past forms of the language, but which have now become anomalous; in rare cases, there are regular verbs that were irregular in past forms of the language. (For more details see English verbs and English irregular verbs .) Other types of irregular inflected form include irregular plural nouns, such as

2623-619: The exception of the teens, which are handled as plural; thus, 102 is dual, but 12 or 127 are not). In addition, in some Slavic languages, such as Polish, word stems are frequently modified by the addition or absence of endings, resulting in consonant and vowel alternation . Modern Standard Arabic (also called Literary Arabic) is an inflected language. It uses a system of independent and suffix pronouns classified by person and number and verbal inflections marking person and number. Suffix pronouns are used as markers of possession and as objects of verbs and prepositions. The tatweel (ـــ) marks where

2684-616: The feminine forms and inflects for three grammatical genders like Icelandic. However, in comparison to Icelandic, there are considerably fewer feminine forms left in the language. In comparison, Icelandic preserves almost all of the inflections of Old Norse and remains heavily inflected. It retains all the grammatical cases from Old Norse and is inflected for number and three different grammatical genders. The dual number forms are however almost completely lost in comparison to Old Norse. Unlike other Germanic languages, nouns are inflected for definiteness in all Scandinavian languages, like in

2745-523: The following case for Norwegian (nynorsk) : Adjectives and participles are also inflected for definiteness in all Scandinavian languages like in Proto-Germanic . Modern German remains moderately inflected, retaining four noun cases, although the genitive started falling into disuse in all but formal writing in Early New High German . The case system of Dutch , simpler than that of German,

2806-417: The following structure (Matisoff 2003:11-13). (P 2 ) — (P 1 ) — C i — (G) — V(:) — C f — (s) The following types of changes in syllable structure have been attested in Tibeto-Burman languages (Matisoff 2003:155). ( Note : Sesquisyllable , otherwise known as a minor syllable , is a word coined by James Matisoff meaning "one-and-a-half syllables.") Below are

2867-627: The forms or inflections of more than one word in a sentence to be compatible with each other according to the rules of the language is known as concord or agreement . For example, in "the man jumps", "man" is a singular noun, so "jump" is constrained in the present tense to use the third person singular suffix "s". Languages that have some degree of inflection are synthetic languages . They can be highly inflected (such as Georgian or Kichwa ), moderately inflected (such as Russian or Latin ), weakly inflected (such as English ), but not uninflected (such as Chinese ). Languages that are so inflected that

2928-421: The future and conditional). Inflection is also present in adjective comparation and word derivation. Declensional endings depend on case (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative, instrumental, vocative), number (singular, dual or plural), gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and animacy (animate vs inanimate). Unusual in other language families, declension in most Slavic languages also depends on whether

2989-471: The general view of the Berber languages being linguistically connected to the Guanche language is based largely on numerical evidence, it is also as probable that the affinity found between the languages are due to late-added Berber loanwords and that Guanche speakers were Old North African speakers. The Numidian language , which may have also been an Old North African language, constitutes the rock engravings in

3050-422: The inflection in adpositional phrases. This means that these languages will have inflected adpositions. In Western Apache ( San Carlos dialect), the postposition -ká’ 'on' is inflected for person and number with prefixes: Traditional grammars have specific terms for inflections of nouns and verbs but not for those of adpositions . Inflection is the process of adding inflectional morphemes that modify

3111-510: The inflectional plural affix -s (as in "dog" → "dog- s "), and most English verbs are inflected for tense with the inflectional past tense affix -ed (as in "call" → "call- ed "). English also inflects verbs by affixation to mark the third person singular in the present tense (with -s ), and the present participle (with -ing ). English short adjectives are inflected to mark comparative and superlative forms (with -er and -est respectively). There are eight regular inflectional affixes in

SECTION 50

#1732868850835

3172-455: The masculine ( أنتم antum and هم hum ), whereas in Lebanese and Syrian Arabic, هم hum is replaced by هنّ hunna . In addition, the system known as ʾIʿrāb places vowel suffixes on each verb, noun, adjective, and adverb, according to its function within a sentence and its relation to surrounding words. The Uralic languages are agglutinative , following from

3233-972: The mother tongue of the Romance languages, was highly inflected; nouns and adjectives had different forms according to seven grammatical cases (including five major ones) with five major patterns of declension, and three genders instead of the two found in most Romance tongues. There were four patterns of conjugation in six tenses, three moods (indicative, subjunctive, imperative, plus the infinitive, participle, gerund, gerundive, and supine) and two voices (passive and active), all overtly expressed by affixes (passive voice forms were periphrastic in three tenses). The Baltic languages are highly inflected. Nouns and adjectives are declined in up to seven overt cases. Additional cases are defined in various covert ways. For example, an inessive case , an illative case , an adessive case and allative case are borrowed from Finnic. Latvian has only one overt locative case but it syncretizes

3294-553: The noun they modify or for which they substitute. Baltic verbs are inflected for tense, mood, aspect, and voice. They agree with the subject in person and number (not in all forms in modern Latvian). All Slavic languages make use of a high degree of inflection, typically having six or seven cases and three genders for nouns and adjectives. However, the overt case system has disappeared almost completely in modern Bulgarian and Macedonian . Most verb tenses and moods are also formed by inflection (however, some are periphrastic , typically

3355-465: The past indicative and subjunctive ( looked ), an inflected form for the third-person-singular present indicative ( looks ), an inflected form for the present participle ( looking ), and an uninflected form for everything else ( look ). While the English possessive indicator 's (as in "Jennifer's book") is a remnant of the Old English genitive case suffix, it is now considered by syntacticians not to be

3416-616: The semantic meaning or the part of speech of the affected word, such as by changing a noun to a verb. Distinctions between verbal moods are mainly indicated by derivational morphemes. Words are rarely listed in dictionaries on the basis of their inflectional morphemes (in which case they would be lexical items). However, they often are listed on the basis of their derivational morphemes. For instance, English dictionaries list readable and readability , words with derivational suffixes, along with their root read . However, no traditional English dictionary lists book as one entry and books as

3477-630: The suffix -s is bound because it cannot stand alone as a word. These two morphemes together form the inflected word cars . Words that are never subject to inflection are said to be invariant ; for example, the English verb must is an invariant item: it never takes a suffix or changes form to signify a different grammatical category. Its categories can be determined only from its context. Languages that seldom make use of inflection, such as English , are said to be analytic . Analytic languages that do not make use of derivational morphemes , such as Standard Chinese , are said to be isolating . Requiring

3538-503: The verb stem, verb form, noun, or preposition is placed. Arabic regional dialects (e.g. Moroccan Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, Gulf Arabic), used for everyday communication, tend to have less inflection than the more formal Literary Arabic. For example, in Jordanian Arabic, the second- and third-person feminine plurals ( أنتنّ antunna and هنّ hunna ) and their respective unique conjugations are lost and replaced by

3599-458: The word is a noun or an adjective. Slovene and Sorbian languages use a rare third number, (in addition to singular and plural numbers) known as dual (in case of some words dual survived also in Polish and other Slavic languages). Modern Russian, Serbian and Czech also use a more complex form of dual , but this misnomer applies instead to numbers 2, 3, 4, and larger numbers ending in 2, 3, or 4 (with

3660-417: Was a moderately inflected language, using an extensive case system similar to that of modern Icelandic , Faroese or German . Middle and Modern English lost progressively more of the Old English inflectional system. Modern English is considered a weakly inflected language, since its nouns have only vestiges of inflection (plurals, the pronouns), and its regular verbs have only four forms: an inflected form for

3721-462: Was to compare widely separated languages, with a particular emphasis on Classical Tibetan , Jingpho , Written Burmese , Garo , and Mizo . Although the initial consonants of cognates tend to have the same place and manner of articulation , voicing and aspiration are often unpredictable. Matisoff attributes this to the effects of prefixes that have been lost and are often unrecoverable. The reconstruction also features "allofams", variant forms of

SECTION 60

#1732868850835
#834165