Calendar

• Yana AQUILINA

dans le cadre COVALI

Sounds are temporal entities, in the sense that they necessarily unfold in time and, additionally, can change their acoustic characteristics over time. On the other hand, sound perception has been argued to have a spatial dimension. First, sound waves are known to propagate in the space, ‘reaching’ experiencers (animate entities capable of auditory perception) on their way. Furthermore, due to such indices as sound volume and interaural level difference experiencers can, with different degrees of precision, perceive where a sound source is.
Among philosophers of perception, there has been an ongoing controversy around the relative location of sound. In other words, is the sound located (1) at the sound source, (2) with the sound experiencer or (3) in the medium (air) that separates the two? According to Casati, Dokic & Di Bona (2020), there are three schools of thought that differ from each other in relation to the three possible relative locations cited above: distal ((1), e.g. Casati Dokic 1994; O’Callaghan 2007)); proximal ((2), e.g. Maclachlan 1989; O’Shaugnessy 2000)); medial ((3), e.g. Perkins (1983); Nudds (2009)).
Interestingly, languages express whereabouts of sounds in various ways, providing illustrations for each of the three theories. The present study explores how four languages, English, Russian, French and Japanese, instantiate sound localization by examining data from contemporary popular fiction. More specifically, the study aims at identifying the most frequent linguistic conceptualization(s) in relation to the three views on spatial hearing. If indeed there is such a predominant conceptualization (across the four languages), this could serve as a linguistic argument in favor of one of the non-linguistic theories.

Casati, R & Dokic, J. (1994). La philosophie du son. Nîmes: Jacqueline Chambon.
Casati, R., Dokic, J & Di Bona, E. (2020). "Sounds", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .
Maclachlan, D. L. C. (1989). Philosophy of Perception. Cliffs Prentice-Hall.
Nudds, M. (2009). 'Sounds and Space', in Matthew Nudds, and Casey O'Callaghan (eds), Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays (Oxford, 2009; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 Feb. 2010), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199282968.003.0004, accessed 2 Mar. 2025.
O'Callaghan, C. (2007). Sounds: a philosophical theory. New York: Oxford University Press.

• Emiliana Cruz Cruz (CIESAS-Mexico City)
• Anthony C. Woodbury [presenter] (University of Texas at Austin)

dans le cadre DILIS

Zoom link: https://cnrs.zoom.us/j/93029003876?pwd=B3b8pidFP0SlTUbblgEatWf7fjl8i1.1

‘Crazy rules’ (Bach & Harms 1972) are phonological alternations or patterns lacking in coherent synchronic phonetic motivation. They typically arise when more ‘natural’ rules change over time e.g., by broadening their phonetic scope, merging with other similar rules, or losing their original phonetic context (Blevins 2004:84-5); and they challenge the assumption that phonetic ‘naturalness’ is a necessary condition in the constitution or learning of phonological systems (Moreton & Pater 2012). Rather, they offer a lens through which to consider the extent to which phonological systems may or may not vary (e.g., Kiparsky 2014), as well as the nature, the genesis, and even the persistence over time of patterns that are atypical or unusual (Woodbury 2024).
Documentation and diachronic explanation for ‘crazy rules’ has typically focused on morphophonological alternations involving segments. Here we present a ‘crazy rule’ involving utterance-level tone spreading in the Chatino language family (Otomanguean; Oaxaca, Mexico; Campbell 2013), facilitated by our reconstruction of lexical, grammatical, and phrasal tone in this family well known for its elaboration of tone. We show how a conservative process of utterance-level high tone spreading (attested across the family and preserved in San Marcos Zacatepec Eastern Chatino, Villard 2015, which we describe) has innovated in San Juan Quiahije Eastern Chatino (Cruz 2011) into a ‘crazy rule’ where the class of five high- or superhigh-ending tonal cognate sets that originally triggered the high spreading in conservative varieties underwent tonal changes that left an ‘unnatural’ array of level, rising and falling tonemes as the trigger (and that likewise left the class of non-triggering, originally non-high, tonal cognate sets comparably heterodox). Further, the original unbounded high-tone spread itself turned into the iterative copying and linking of a falling (mid-to-low) toneme to each word up to the end of the utterance, interesting because it transforms the continuation of phonetic high pitch into the stepwise phonological propagation of a particular tonemic figure.
Finally and more speculatively, the process is of interest in its wider sociolinguistic context of apparently rapid village-by-village differentiation: San Juan Quiahije Eastern Chatino is one of about 10 highly distinct village-level Eastern Chatino varieties where originally multimoraic and multisyllabic wordforms became monosyllabic via non-final vowel loss, preserving the tone-based lexical and grammatical classes originally carried in tonal melodies (sequences of tonemes) by elaborating their toneme inventories in various ways (Woodbury 2019); but San Juan Quiahije Eastern Chatino is unique in having fashioned distinctiveness by preserving and transforming this (and several other) sandhi patterns from the protolanguage.

Bach, Emmon & Robert T. Harms. 1972. How do languages get crazy rules? Linguistic change and generative theory, edited by Robert Stockwell & Ronald Macaulay, 1-21. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Blevins, Juliette. 2004. Evolutionary phonology: The emergence of sound patterns. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Campbell, Eric W. 2013. The internal diversification and subgrouping of Chatino (Otomanguean). International Journal of American Linguistics , 79 (3), 395-420.
Cruz, Emiliana. 2011. Phonology, tone, and the functions of tone in San Juan Quiahije Chatino. Doctoral dissertation. University of Texas at Austin.
Kiparsky, Paul. 2014. New perspectives in historical linguistics. In Bowern, Claire, & Evans, Bethwyn, Handbook of Historical Linguistics.
Moreton, Elliott, & Joe Pater. 2012. Structure and substance in artificial-phonology learning, part II: Substance. Language and Linguistics Compass 6/11:702-718.
Villard, Stéphanie. 2015. The phonology and morphology of Zacatepec Chatino. Doctoral dissertation. University of Texas at Austin.
Woodbury, Anthony C. 2019. Conjugational double-classification: The separate life cycles of prefix classes vs. tone ablaut classes in aspect/mood inflection in the Chatino languages of Oaxaca, Mexico. In Matthew Baerman, Timothy Feist & Enrique Palancar (eds.), Amerindia 41, Inflection class complexity in the Otomanguean languages of Mexico. Woodbury, Anthony C. 2024. Seeing linguistic systems as intellectual, aesthetic, and expressive achievements. Language 100 (4), 732-775.

Présentation de Christine Dunoyer, Centre d'Etudes francoprovençales "René Willien", Vallée d'Aoste, Italie

• Tim Mukhin (Université de Liège)

séminaire DiLiS

In this talk, I investigate cross-linguistic evidence for the functional extension of verbal and non-verbal spatial markers (SM), such as verbal directional, associated motion (AM) or locational markers or non-verbal spatial adpositions, into applicative uses (Zuniga & Creissels 2024).

Verbal SMs have only recently been established as a source for applicatives; see Van linden (2022) on Harakmbut, Payne (2021) on Nilotic and Pakendorf & Stoynova (2021) on Tungusic languages. It is still unknown how widespread this pathway is, and what the main types of variation are. This talk presents the results of a pilot study investigating these issues from a typological perspective. The first part considers various types of SMs in a balanced 75-language sample, compiled using Miestamo’s (2005) Genus-Macroarea method, while in the second part, I use a convenience sample and focus only on AM markers.

References:

Miestamo, Matti (2005), Standard negation, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Pakendorf, Brigitte & Natalia Stoynova (2021), Associated motion in Tungusic languages: a case of mixed argument structure, in A. Guillaume & H. Koch (eds.), (2021), Associated Motion, 855–898, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Payne, Doris L. (2021), The extension of associated motion to direction, aspect and argument structure in Nilotic languages, in A. Guillaume & H. Koch (eds.), (2021), Associated Motion, 695–746, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Van linden, An (2022), Spatial prefixes as applicatives in Harakmbut, in S. Pacchiarotti & F. Zúñiga (eds.), (2022), Applicative morphology: Neglected syntactic 18 and non-syntactic functions, 129–159, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Zúñiga, Fernando & Denis Creissels (2024), Applicative Constructions in the World’s Languages, Berlin, Boston: Mouton de Gruyter.

Biography:

Tim Mukhin is a PhD student at the University of Liège (Liège, Belgium), where, as a member of the collaborative SPACEGRAM project, he investigates how elements with spatial meaning develop into applicative markers from a typological perspective. For his BA and MA in Theoretical and Computational Linguistics at HSE University (Moscow, Russia) he worked on East Caucasian languages.