Harald Hammarström: Word erosion measurements and the similarity of pronoun roots across language families (Abstract)
It has been observed many times that pronoun roots of different
language families resemble each other. As the argument goes, if these
resemblances are not due to chance or borrowing, they must represent
retentions from macro-families. The resemblances often boil down to a
simple 1PSG / 2PSG canon, yet the most ambitious proponents argue for
macro-families such as Eurasiatic (m-/t-, Greenberg 1997), a
wide-range Trans New Guinea family (n-/k-, Ross 1995), Amerind (n-/m-,
Nichols & Peterson 1996) and many others.
In this presentation we will explore an alternative explanation. If a
form for a meaning is stable, i.e., it seldom undergoes replacement,
the form remains but is subject to 'erosion', i.e., leniting sound
changes. If pronouns are stable, observations of them should then be
more likely to manifest a more eroded form than that found in less
stable items. Consequently, pronoun similarities across families may
well reflect convergent erosive evolution rather than ancient
remnants.
Given tree topologies (from glottolog.org) and wordlists (from
asjp.clld.org) we can test the above hypothesis on a global scale, in
two steps:
(i) estimate the stability of a given form and/or meaning via automatic
cognate judgements
(ii) develop an erosion measurement to quantify how eroded a
given word form is
The ASJP transcriptions and automatic cognate judgments are not of
such quality that they can be used for individual studies, yet are
arguably of sufficient quality for the question at hand.
Greenberg, J. H. (1997). The indo-european first and second person
pronouns in the perspective of eurasiatic, especially chukotkan.
Anthropological Linguistics, 39(2):187–195.
Ross, M. (1995). The great papuan pronoun hunt: Recalibrating our
sights. In Baak, C., Bakker, M., and van der Meij, D., editors, Tales
from a concave world: Liber amicorum Bert Voorhoeve, pages
139–168. Leiden: Department of Languages and Cultures of
Southeast Asia and Oceania, Leiden University.
Nichols, J. and Peterson, D. A. (1996). The amerind personal
pronouns. Language, 72(2):336–371.