Kate Bellamy | Leiden University (original) (raw)

Papers by Kate Bellamy

Theoretical Linguistic Approaches to Multilingual Code-Switching

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jul 31, 2023

Evolution and Spread of Politeness Systems in Indo‐European

Transactions of the Philological Society, Mar 1, 2023

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2022

The Nakh languages Chechen and Tsova-Tush each have a five-valued gender system: masculine, femin... more The Nakh languages Chechen and Tsova-Tush each have a five-valued gender system: masculine, feminine, and three "neuter" genders named for their singular agreement forms: B, D and J. Gender assignment in languages is generally analysed as being dependent on both form and semantics (e.g. Corbett 1991), with semantics typically prevailing over form (e.g. Bellamy & Wichers Schreur 2022, Allassonnière-Tang et al. 2021). Most previous studies have considered only binary or tripartite gender systems possessing one masculine, one feminine, and one neuter value. The five-valued system of Nakh thus represents a more complex and insightful case study for analysing gender assignment. In this paper we build on the existing qualitative linguistic analyses of gender assignment in Tsova-Tush (Wichers Schreur 2021) and apply three machine-learning methods to investigate the weight of form and semantics in predicting grammatical gender in Chechen and Tsova-Tush. Our main aim is thus to show how three different computational classifier methods perform on a novel set of non-Indo-European data. The results show that while both form and semantics are helpful for predicting grammatical gender in Nakh, semantics is dominant, which supports findings from existing literature (Allassonnière-Tang et al. 2021), as well as confirming the utility of these computational methods. However, the results also show that the coded semantic information could be further fine-grained to improve the accuracy of the predictions (see also Plaster et al. 2013). In addition, we discuss the implications of the output for our understanding of language-internal and family-internal processes of language change, including how loanwords are integrated from Russian, a three-gender language.

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Aug 24, 2022

BRILL eBooks, Jan 13, 2023

Termes des parties du corps et complexité morphologique en purépecha

Le purépecha possède deux catégories de noms de parties du corps. La première est morphologiqueme... more Le purépecha possède deux catégories de noms de parties du corps. La première est morphologiquement simple et la seconde, dérivée. Les termes dérivés sont plus nombreux et se divisent en deux sous-groupes : le plus important contient un suffixe locatif de partie du corps, et l'autre n'en contient point. L'inclusion d'un suffixe locatif corporel dans des mots indépendants souligne l'importance de cette catégorie, ainsi que celle de la dichotomie entre la conservation diachronique et l'innovation.

Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics

This study investigated gender assignment strategies in mixed noun phrases containing a Spanish d... more This study investigated gender assignment strategies in mixed noun phrases containing a Spanish determiner and an English noun among Spanish-English bilinguals (n = 38) in New Mexico (U.S.A.). Previous research has reported different gender assignment strategies based on a preference for a default determiner, the gender of the translation equivalent, or shape-based cues from the other language. The present study consisted of (i) a language background questionnaire, (ii) a two-alternative forced-choice judgment task, and (iii) two director-matcher tasks: a forced-switch task and a spontaneous card game. The results of the judgment task indicate that participants preferred the gender of the translation equivalent, i.e., la window ‘the.FEM window’ following the gender of the Spanish noun la ventana. Results from the production tasks also show that participants produced both gender congruent and incongruent mixed NPs, with Late English bilinguals producing more congruent mixed NPs, simi...

Mother-Tongue Instruction and Biliteracy Development in P’urhepecha

Taylor & Francis, 2019

The numeral system of P’urhepecha: historical and typological perspectives

STUF - Language Typology and Universals

The internal structure of numeral systems can shed light on processes of word formation, language... more The internal structure of numeral systems can shed light on processes of word formation, language contact and change. In this article I analyze the numeral system of P’urhepecha on the basis of historical and contemporary sources. The system is unusual typologically and areally since it possesses monolexemic terms to six, while seven to nine are compounds with five; and the forms for the base (20) and next power (400) have clear non-corporeal meanings. I also provide a more nuanced evaluation of vigesimal counting systems in Mesoamerica. The language-internal and external findings underline the importance of more detailed historical studies of P’urhepecha.

The ‘X does Y’s head in’ construction

Aries netwerk: een constructicon, Sep 30, 2016

On the external relations of Purepecha : an investigation into classification, contact and patterns of word formation

This thesis considers Purepecha from the perspectives of genealogy and contact, as well as offeri... more This thesis considers Purepecha from the perspectives of genealogy and contact, as well as offering insight into word formation processes. The genealogy study re-visits the most prominent classification proposals for Purepecha, concluding on the basis of a quantitative lexical comparison and a typological comparison of affix ordering that there is no signal of relatedness between Purepecha and any other sampled language. The two language contact studies address possible interaction between Purepecha and other languages at long-distance, regional and local levels. The lexicon of metallurgy, the most convincing archaeological evidence for long-distance interaction, does not support this contact scenario although the lack of observable loanwords in this domain may reflect the largely non-verbal nature of technology transmission. At the regional and local levels Purepecha also displays very few borrowings from the prehispanic period. This paucity of borrowings is reversed in the modern ...

Lapurdum, 2021

Bilinguals commonly draw on their two languages within a single speech event, a practice known as... more Bilinguals commonly draw on their two languages within a single speech event, a practice known as code-switching. On the basis of different methods and bilingual populations, various theoretical accounts of code-switching have been developed. Yet, while theories proliferate, cross-fertilization between them remains limited. Hence, the question that guides this paper is: how can we better understand the nature of mixed interactions, with a view to creating more accurate models of (multilingual) language competence? We show how a multimethod, comparative approach that integrates linguistic, psycholinguistic and social factors will help us draw a distinction between which codeswitching patterns are uniform across communities and language pairs, and which patterns are variable. Addressing both the nominal and verbal domains, we present findings from a series of comparative studies that investigate how bilinguals from different communities produce, judge, or process bilingual structures. We discuss to what extent bilinguals (i) produce strings that can be seen as having the same syntactic structure within and across communities, (ii) make the same linguistic judgments, and (iii) converge in their processing of these strings. We highlight the importance of surveying the patterns that emerge across communities, rather than on an example and counterexample basis, in order to bring our understanding of code-switching, and of language as a whole, forward.

Gender assignment in mixed noun phrases: State of the art

John Benjamins, 2021

Investigating Interaction Between South America and West Mexico Through the Lexicon of Metallurgy

Findings from archaeology and genetics suggest long-distance contact between the Andean region of... more Findings from archaeology and genetics suggest long-distance contact between the Andean region of South America and West Mexico from the Formative through to the Late Postclassic. Previous studies in linguistics, however, have focussed on possible genealogical relations rather than traces of contact, offering little substantial support for the connection. In this paper I use the lexicon of metallurgy, the most robust line of archaeological evidence for interaction, in order to investigate the proposed contact relations between the two regions. On the basis of a specialised wordlist for over 100 languages, I find no clear evidence of contact, other than borrowings at the more local level, especially in the Andes. The reason for this absence of loans may lie in the nature of knowledge transmission which, in both technical and everyday situations, relies more on the non-verbal than the verbal, especially in non-industrialised contexts. The use of existing terms for metals and new metal objects, as well as shared naming strategies based largely on colours and physical properties, underlines both the cultural continuity inherent in the adoption of a new technology as well as the diversity stemming from multiple local adaptations.

When semantics and phonology collide: Gender assignment in mixed Tsova-Tush–Georgian nominal constructions

International Journal of Bilingualism, 2021

This paper investigates the gender assignment strategies employed when genderless Georgian nouns ... more This paper investigates the gender assignment strategies employed when genderless Georgian nouns are inserted into gendered Tsova-Tush utterances. We explore the linguistic and extra-linguistic factors motivating the strategies, and compare how these code-switches behave in relation to loans. Taking a broadly usage-based approach, we collected three types of data: (a) naturalistic corpus data; (b) semi-naturalistic production data from a forced-switch director–matcher (DM) task; and (c) a three-response forced-choice acceptability judgement task (AJT). The responses from the DM task ( n = 12) and AJT acceptability ( n = 12) were analysed using descriptive (Chi-square) and inferential (log-linear) statistics. The corpus data are described qualitatively. Both the gender of the Tsova-Tush translation equivalent (TE) and the Georgian phonology of the code-switched noun were significantly related to the response, with the TE being the stronger determinant of the two. Only marginal eviden...

Chapter 2. Gender assignment in mixed noun phrases

The Acquisition of Gender, 2022

The Language Learning Journal

In the face of immense pressure from Spanish, the national language, a group of educators in Mich... more In the face of immense pressure from Spanish, the national language, a group of educators in Michoacán are committed to prioritising P'urhepecha in two local primary schools where P'urhepecha is the dominant community language. The history of educational initiatives among the P'urhepecha people illustrates the inconsistent and primarily assimilationist educational environment faced by indigenous populations in Mexico, providing context for the schools' efforts, which encourage literacy skills in both languages. We analyse the biliteracy development of a group of 4th grade students, qualitatively analysing written production in both P'urhepecha and Spanish, with a focus on patterns in orthographic conventions, lexicon (including borrowing and language mixing), sentence structure, and morpho-syntactic complexity. The students clearly have more developed writing skills in P'urhepecha than in Spanish, producing longer, more coherent texts in their mother tongue, and using more variation in vocabulary and tenses. Yet in both languages, the students find creative and unconventional ways to represent oral language in writing. Through this initial analysis of 24 student essays, we consider the interrelationship among literacy skills in two languages, the impact of this educational initiative in terms of biliteracy development, as well as practical implications for educational practices at the bilingual schools.

LIAMES: Línguas Indígenas Americanas

Mochica, an extinct language of northern Peru, possesses an areally uncommon class of morphemes t... more Mochica, an extinct language of northern Peru, possesses an areally uncommon class of morphemes that have been variously termed quantifiers, numeral classifiers and alternative numerals. In this paper I reanalyse these terms as a special counting system for counting pairs, tens or hundreds of particular items, that exists alongside a standard, decimal numeral system. This compound system is compared with the similar special counting systems attested in Oceanic languages, which have also developed in parallel with extensive decimal counting systems to enable more efficient counting of culturally salient items, thereby also reducing cognitive load.

The areal typology of western Middle and South America: Towards a comprehensive view

Linguistics

Against a multidisciplinary background this contribution explores the areal typology of western M... more Against a multidisciplinary background this contribution explores the areal typology of western Middle and South America. Based on a new language sample and a typological questionnaire that is specifically designed to bring some of the poorly documented and extinct languages into the debate, we explore the areal distribution of 77 linguistic traits in 44 languages. While one of the goals of the present article is to provide a general up-to-date view of the areal patterning of these traits on a large scale, we also explore a number of specific questions in more detail. In particular, we address the relationship between known language areas like Mesoamerica and the Central Andes with their respective peripheries, the possibility of detecting an areal-typological signal that predates the rise of these linguistic areas, and, finally, the question of linguistic convergence along the Pacific coast. We find that, while the languages of the Mesoamerican periphery are rather diffuse typologi...

Languages

In early studies, code-switches between a subject pronoun and a finite verb were considered highl... more In early studies, code-switches between a subject pronoun and a finite verb were considered highly dispreferred or even impossible. However, naturalistic data from several language pairs has since highlighted that such switches are possible, although their grammaticality is constrained by the typology of the pronouns involved. In this study, we test the switching constraints postulated for subject pronouns-verbs among P’urhepecha-Spanish bilinguals (n = 12) from Michoacán, western Mexico. Using a two-alternative forced-choice acceptability judgement task (2AFC), we found that, contrary to expectations, switches between a third person singular pronoun and a verb were considered the most acceptable, followed by the coordinated ‘you and I’ second person, then the first person singular. The same order was found for both switch directions, despite third-person pronouns in P’urhepecha having a stronger typological profile. Building on the results of previous studies, we suggest that the l...

Theoretical Linguistic Approaches to Multilingual Code-Switching

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jul 31, 2023

Evolution and Spread of Politeness Systems in Indo‐European

Transactions of the Philological Society, Mar 1, 2023

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2022

The Nakh languages Chechen and Tsova-Tush each have a five-valued gender system: masculine, femin... more The Nakh languages Chechen and Tsova-Tush each have a five-valued gender system: masculine, feminine, and three "neuter" genders named for their singular agreement forms: B, D and J. Gender assignment in languages is generally analysed as being dependent on both form and semantics (e.g. Corbett 1991), with semantics typically prevailing over form (e.g. Bellamy & Wichers Schreur 2022, Allassonnière-Tang et al. 2021). Most previous studies have considered only binary or tripartite gender systems possessing one masculine, one feminine, and one neuter value. The five-valued system of Nakh thus represents a more complex and insightful case study for analysing gender assignment. In this paper we build on the existing qualitative linguistic analyses of gender assignment in Tsova-Tush (Wichers Schreur 2021) and apply three machine-learning methods to investigate the weight of form and semantics in predicting grammatical gender in Chechen and Tsova-Tush. Our main aim is thus to show how three different computational classifier methods perform on a novel set of non-Indo-European data. The results show that while both form and semantics are helpful for predicting grammatical gender in Nakh, semantics is dominant, which supports findings from existing literature (Allassonnière-Tang et al. 2021), as well as confirming the utility of these computational methods. However, the results also show that the coded semantic information could be further fine-grained to improve the accuracy of the predictions (see also Plaster et al. 2013). In addition, we discuss the implications of the output for our understanding of language-internal and family-internal processes of language change, including how loanwords are integrated from Russian, a three-gender language.

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Aug 24, 2022

BRILL eBooks, Jan 13, 2023

Termes des parties du corps et complexité morphologique en purépecha

Le purépecha possède deux catégories de noms de parties du corps. La première est morphologiqueme... more Le purépecha possède deux catégories de noms de parties du corps. La première est morphologiquement simple et la seconde, dérivée. Les termes dérivés sont plus nombreux et se divisent en deux sous-groupes : le plus important contient un suffixe locatif de partie du corps, et l'autre n'en contient point. L'inclusion d'un suffixe locatif corporel dans des mots indépendants souligne l'importance de cette catégorie, ainsi que celle de la dichotomie entre la conservation diachronique et l'innovation.

Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics

This study investigated gender assignment strategies in mixed noun phrases containing a Spanish d... more This study investigated gender assignment strategies in mixed noun phrases containing a Spanish determiner and an English noun among Spanish-English bilinguals (n = 38) in New Mexico (U.S.A.). Previous research has reported different gender assignment strategies based on a preference for a default determiner, the gender of the translation equivalent, or shape-based cues from the other language. The present study consisted of (i) a language background questionnaire, (ii) a two-alternative forced-choice judgment task, and (iii) two director-matcher tasks: a forced-switch task and a spontaneous card game. The results of the judgment task indicate that participants preferred the gender of the translation equivalent, i.e., la window ‘the.FEM window’ following the gender of the Spanish noun la ventana. Results from the production tasks also show that participants produced both gender congruent and incongruent mixed NPs, with Late English bilinguals producing more congruent mixed NPs, simi...

Mother-Tongue Instruction and Biliteracy Development in P’urhepecha

Taylor & Francis, 2019

The numeral system of P’urhepecha: historical and typological perspectives

STUF - Language Typology and Universals

The internal structure of numeral systems can shed light on processes of word formation, language... more The internal structure of numeral systems can shed light on processes of word formation, language contact and change. In this article I analyze the numeral system of P’urhepecha on the basis of historical and contemporary sources. The system is unusual typologically and areally since it possesses monolexemic terms to six, while seven to nine are compounds with five; and the forms for the base (20) and next power (400) have clear non-corporeal meanings. I also provide a more nuanced evaluation of vigesimal counting systems in Mesoamerica. The language-internal and external findings underline the importance of more detailed historical studies of P’urhepecha.

The ‘X does Y’s head in’ construction

Aries netwerk: een constructicon, Sep 30, 2016

On the external relations of Purepecha : an investigation into classification, contact and patterns of word formation

This thesis considers Purepecha from the perspectives of genealogy and contact, as well as offeri... more This thesis considers Purepecha from the perspectives of genealogy and contact, as well as offering insight into word formation processes. The genealogy study re-visits the most prominent classification proposals for Purepecha, concluding on the basis of a quantitative lexical comparison and a typological comparison of affix ordering that there is no signal of relatedness between Purepecha and any other sampled language. The two language contact studies address possible interaction between Purepecha and other languages at long-distance, regional and local levels. The lexicon of metallurgy, the most convincing archaeological evidence for long-distance interaction, does not support this contact scenario although the lack of observable loanwords in this domain may reflect the largely non-verbal nature of technology transmission. At the regional and local levels Purepecha also displays very few borrowings from the prehispanic period. This paucity of borrowings is reversed in the modern ...

Lapurdum, 2021

Bilinguals commonly draw on their two languages within a single speech event, a practice known as... more Bilinguals commonly draw on their two languages within a single speech event, a practice known as code-switching. On the basis of different methods and bilingual populations, various theoretical accounts of code-switching have been developed. Yet, while theories proliferate, cross-fertilization between them remains limited. Hence, the question that guides this paper is: how can we better understand the nature of mixed interactions, with a view to creating more accurate models of (multilingual) language competence? We show how a multimethod, comparative approach that integrates linguistic, psycholinguistic and social factors will help us draw a distinction between which codeswitching patterns are uniform across communities and language pairs, and which patterns are variable. Addressing both the nominal and verbal domains, we present findings from a series of comparative studies that investigate how bilinguals from different communities produce, judge, or process bilingual structures. We discuss to what extent bilinguals (i) produce strings that can be seen as having the same syntactic structure within and across communities, (ii) make the same linguistic judgments, and (iii) converge in their processing of these strings. We highlight the importance of surveying the patterns that emerge across communities, rather than on an example and counterexample basis, in order to bring our understanding of code-switching, and of language as a whole, forward.

Gender assignment in mixed noun phrases: State of the art

John Benjamins, 2021

Investigating Interaction Between South America and West Mexico Through the Lexicon of Metallurgy

Findings from archaeology and genetics suggest long-distance contact between the Andean region of... more Findings from archaeology and genetics suggest long-distance contact between the Andean region of South America and West Mexico from the Formative through to the Late Postclassic. Previous studies in linguistics, however, have focussed on possible genealogical relations rather than traces of contact, offering little substantial support for the connection. In this paper I use the lexicon of metallurgy, the most robust line of archaeological evidence for interaction, in order to investigate the proposed contact relations between the two regions. On the basis of a specialised wordlist for over 100 languages, I find no clear evidence of contact, other than borrowings at the more local level, especially in the Andes. The reason for this absence of loans may lie in the nature of knowledge transmission which, in both technical and everyday situations, relies more on the non-verbal than the verbal, especially in non-industrialised contexts. The use of existing terms for metals and new metal objects, as well as shared naming strategies based largely on colours and physical properties, underlines both the cultural continuity inherent in the adoption of a new technology as well as the diversity stemming from multiple local adaptations.

When semantics and phonology collide: Gender assignment in mixed Tsova-Tush–Georgian nominal constructions

International Journal of Bilingualism, 2021

This paper investigates the gender assignment strategies employed when genderless Georgian nouns ... more This paper investigates the gender assignment strategies employed when genderless Georgian nouns are inserted into gendered Tsova-Tush utterances. We explore the linguistic and extra-linguistic factors motivating the strategies, and compare how these code-switches behave in relation to loans. Taking a broadly usage-based approach, we collected three types of data: (a) naturalistic corpus data; (b) semi-naturalistic production data from a forced-switch director–matcher (DM) task; and (c) a three-response forced-choice acceptability judgement task (AJT). The responses from the DM task ( n = 12) and AJT acceptability ( n = 12) were analysed using descriptive (Chi-square) and inferential (log-linear) statistics. The corpus data are described qualitatively. Both the gender of the Tsova-Tush translation equivalent (TE) and the Georgian phonology of the code-switched noun were significantly related to the response, with the TE being the stronger determinant of the two. Only marginal eviden...

Chapter 2. Gender assignment in mixed noun phrases

The Acquisition of Gender, 2022

The Language Learning Journal

In the face of immense pressure from Spanish, the national language, a group of educators in Mich... more In the face of immense pressure from Spanish, the national language, a group of educators in Michoacán are committed to prioritising P'urhepecha in two local primary schools where P'urhepecha is the dominant community language. The history of educational initiatives among the P'urhepecha people illustrates the inconsistent and primarily assimilationist educational environment faced by indigenous populations in Mexico, providing context for the schools' efforts, which encourage literacy skills in both languages. We analyse the biliteracy development of a group of 4th grade students, qualitatively analysing written production in both P'urhepecha and Spanish, with a focus on patterns in orthographic conventions, lexicon (including borrowing and language mixing), sentence structure, and morpho-syntactic complexity. The students clearly have more developed writing skills in P'urhepecha than in Spanish, producing longer, more coherent texts in their mother tongue, and using more variation in vocabulary and tenses. Yet in both languages, the students find creative and unconventional ways to represent oral language in writing. Through this initial analysis of 24 student essays, we consider the interrelationship among literacy skills in two languages, the impact of this educational initiative in terms of biliteracy development, as well as practical implications for educational practices at the bilingual schools.

LIAMES: Línguas Indígenas Americanas

Mochica, an extinct language of northern Peru, possesses an areally uncommon class of morphemes t... more Mochica, an extinct language of northern Peru, possesses an areally uncommon class of morphemes that have been variously termed quantifiers, numeral classifiers and alternative numerals. In this paper I reanalyse these terms as a special counting system for counting pairs, tens or hundreds of particular items, that exists alongside a standard, decimal numeral system. This compound system is compared with the similar special counting systems attested in Oceanic languages, which have also developed in parallel with extensive decimal counting systems to enable more efficient counting of culturally salient items, thereby also reducing cognitive load.

The areal typology of western Middle and South America: Towards a comprehensive view

Linguistics

Against a multidisciplinary background this contribution explores the areal typology of western M... more Against a multidisciplinary background this contribution explores the areal typology of western Middle and South America. Based on a new language sample and a typological questionnaire that is specifically designed to bring some of the poorly documented and extinct languages into the debate, we explore the areal distribution of 77 linguistic traits in 44 languages. While one of the goals of the present article is to provide a general up-to-date view of the areal patterning of these traits on a large scale, we also explore a number of specific questions in more detail. In particular, we address the relationship between known language areas like Mesoamerica and the Central Andes with their respective peripheries, the possibility of detecting an areal-typological signal that predates the rise of these linguistic areas, and, finally, the question of linguistic convergence along the Pacific coast. We find that, while the languages of the Mesoamerican periphery are rather diffuse typologi...

Languages

In early studies, code-switches between a subject pronoun and a finite verb were considered highl... more In early studies, code-switches between a subject pronoun and a finite verb were considered highly dispreferred or even impossible. However, naturalistic data from several language pairs has since highlighted that such switches are possible, although their grammaticality is constrained by the typology of the pronouns involved. In this study, we test the switching constraints postulated for subject pronouns-verbs among P’urhepecha-Spanish bilinguals (n = 12) from Michoacán, western Mexico. Using a two-alternative forced-choice acceptability judgement task (2AFC), we found that, contrary to expectations, switches between a third person singular pronoun and a verb were considered the most acceptable, followed by the coordinated ‘you and I’ second person, then the first person singular. The same order was found for both switch directions, despite third-person pronouns in P’urhepecha having a stronger typological profile. Building on the results of previous studies, we suggest that the l...

Code-switching in Kakheti: Gender assignment in mixed Batsbi-Georgian nominal constructions

Bellamy, K. & Wichers Schreur, J. 2019. “Code-switching in Kakheti: Gender assignment in mixed Ba... more Bellamy, K. & Wichers Schreur, J. 2019. “Code-switching in Kakheti: Gender assignment in mixed Batsbi-Georgian nominal constructions”, paper presented at 52nd annual conference of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE), August 2019, Leipzig, Germany.

Multiple methods for investigating code-switching in Batsbi nominal constructions

Wichers Schreur, J. & Bellamy, K. 2019. “Multiple methods for investigating code-switching in Bat... more Wichers Schreur, J. & Bellamy, K. 2019. “Multiple methods for investigating code-switching in Batsbi nominal constructions”, paper presented at “Linguistic Forum 2019: Indigenous Languages of Russia and Beyond”, April 2019, Moscow, Russia.

An interdisciplinary approach to language contact in the Americas: the case of metallurgy

Native American Gene Flow Between Mesoamerica and the Andes (Poster)

Poster co-authored with Nicolas Brucato, Rita Eloranta, Soeren Wichmann and Willem Adelaar (Leide... more Poster co-authored with Nicolas Brucato, Rita Eloranta, Soeren Wichmann and Willem Adelaar (Leiden University Centre for Linguistics)

Investigating interactions between West Mexico and the Andes using the lexicon of metallurgy

Of the archaeological evidence suggesting prolonged, meaningful interaction between the Andean re... more Of the archaeological evidence suggesting prolonged, meaningful interaction between the Andean region in South America and West Mexico, metallurgy appears the most convincing. Metalworking technology and knowledge seems to have been transferred from the former, and probably also from Colombia, via a mainly maritime route starting around 600CE. Similarly, a number of linguistic studies (notably Swadesh, 1967) have claimed a deep relationship between Quechua in the Andes and Purépecha in West Mexico, although the lexical data provide insufficient evidence for this grouping to have gained general acceptance. Nonetheless the archaeological record suggests that this is a link worth pursuing further.
In the absence of documentation dating from the pre-Columbian (pre-1500CE) period in both regions, we must turn to alternative sources to try and uncover the linguistic and migratory past of these complex societies. Through a comparative study of the lexical domain of metallurgy, its materials, processes and tools, I am investigating whether the proposed contact can be further clarified. My study covers languages spoken in the so-called ‘West Mexican Metalworking Zone’ (Hosler, 2009) and the known metalworking regions in Central and South America, but with a focus on the language isolate Purépecha, the clearest alleged recipient of the Andean technology.
References
Hosler, Dorothy. 2009. The Metallurgy of West Mexico: Revisited and revised, Journal of World Prehistory, 22: 185–212.
Swadesh, Morris. 1967. Lexicostatistic Classification, in Robert Wauchope and Norman A. McQuown (eds.), The Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 5: Linguistics, Austin: University of Texas Press.

Exploring the external relations of Purepecha: Archaeological and linguistic perspectives

Alla ricerca delle lingue sorelle del Purépecha

The External Relations of Purépecha: Views from the Southwest USA (Poster)

Does estimation vary cross-linguistically? Evidence from English and Georgian (Poster)

Objects in the physical world occur in different quantities and configurations. To determine how ... more Objects in the physical world occur in different quantities and configurations. To determine how many objects are present in an array humans make use of two distinct cognitive systems: analogue and digital numeracy (Feigenson et al., 2004). Analogue numeracy constitutes the ability to estimate an imprecise amount, while digital numeracy comprises the exact assessment of an amount, either by subitisation, the seemingly effortless perception of up to four items, or calculation for larger amounts. Previous research (e.g. Nan et al., 2006) has largely dissociated analogue numeracy from language, assuming it to be pre-linguistic, constituting simply the ability to discriminate the larger of two amounts. However, the verbal expression of estimation (rather than discrimination) is necessarily through the numeral systems available in language.
These numeral systems vary cross-linguistically, in terms of their base, specific dimensionality, extent and morphosyntactic structure (Bender & Beller, 2011). Since language has been demonstrated to influence the perception of other domains, such as colour, event perception, gender, object individuation (Frank, 2011) and navigation and spatial relations (Levinson & Wilkins, 2006), I decided to investigate whether variation between languages can also affect analogue numeracy. Framed in neo-Whorfian terms, I tested empirically whether a specific, but cross-linguistically varying element of linguistic structure – the counting system base – affects how speakers of different languages estimate quantities.
In a novel, limited exposure experiment, British English (base 10; n=26) and Georgian (base 20; n=26) speakers were briefly presented (1.5 seconds) with 50 slides containing numerosities from 1-400 and asked to state (within 5 seconds) how many objects they had seen. Supporting the principal hypothesis, response type and language were moderately related variables, Pearson χ² (7, N = 2600) = 231.396, p (asymptotic) = .000, Cramer’s V = .298. Both participant groups favoured multiples and powers of their numeral bases as estimation responses, in 63.7% of all cases (n = 962) for the English group and 44.54% (n = 962) for the Georgian group. Both groups also showed a secondary preference for ‘other’ responses (i.e. not related to the base), the tendency being much higher in Georgian (31.81% of responses) than in English (16.63%). The weaker preference for estimating in terms of the base and its multiples among the Georgian group may relate to the strong cultural and linguistic influence of Russian, a base ten language. Over 80% of the Georgian participants spoke Russian to at least an intermediate level, whereas the English participants demonstrated far less bilingualism or L2 proficiency. This difference also raises questions regarding the mental representation of number and counting systems in bilinguals. In sum, these findings indicate that participants from both groups make use of the same cognitive process (analogue numeracy, or estimation) when presented with amounts that cannot be readily subitised or calculated but also suggest that a language’s numeral base is associated with its speakers’ estimation preferences.

Mochica: Between a numeral classifier and a special counting system, with Rita Eloranta

Multidisciplinary Approaches to Bilingualism in the Hispanic and Lusophone World