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.