The Cao Bang Theory

The Cao Bang TheoryMichael WeissDepartment of LinguisticsCornell University

ECIEC XXVIIIJune 13, 2009University of IcelandReykjavk1The Cao Bang Theory

The Helix Nebula

2Things everyone in this audience will agree onThe stop systems of the attested IE languages are best derived from the post-Brugmannian standard:Laryngeal ProcessCovervoicelessT voicedDbreathy*Dh*Was breathiness really obligatory? See Davis 1994 on Hindi.3Reconstruction of breathy series Both Indic and Proto-Armenian have the breathy series.Since contrastive breathy stops are not common, they should be reconstructed for PIE.On Armenian see Garrett 1991, 1998.4Nonarchaism of Germanic and ArmenianLoanwords in both Germanic and Armenian show that they have innovated in devoicing the voiced series. (Barrack 2003, et al.)Loanwords from Germanic into Finnish with voiced stop exhibit pre- and post-Grimms Law treatments. (Rasmussen 1987)

5Distinctness of three seriesSome evidence for distinct treatment of voiced and breathy series everywhere but Anatolian and Albanian.Winters Law in PBS *gw *gwh in Celtic (Cowgill 1980)*d > ts, *t, *dh > t in Tocharian (Pinault 2008)

Some evidence for distinct treatment of voiced and voiceless series everywhere.

6Comparative evidence for Glottalic Theory dubiousLachmanns Law See Jasanoff 2006Winters Lawlengthening before voiced stops common cross-linguisticallysmall qualm: vowels before breathy stops tend to be longer than before voiced stops. So why lengthening only before voiced stops?Other evidence of lesser value

77But are we satisfied with this?The specific 3-way contrast reconstructed for PIE is very uncommon.

Roman Jakobson8Jakobson 1957:528

To my knowledge, no language adds to the pair /t/ /d/ a voiced aspirate /dh/ without having itsvoiceless counterpart /th/, while /t/, /d/, /th/frequently occur without the comparatively rare /dh/, and such a stratification is easily explainable (cf. Jakobson-Halle); therefore theories operatingwith the three phonemes /t/ /d/ /dh/ in Proto-Indo-European must reconsider the question oftheir phonemic essence.9Jakobson and Halle 1956:27

The presence of B implies the presence of A and, correspondingly, B cannot emerge in the phonemic pattern of a language unless A is there.

This is a non-explanation explanation.

Is Jakobsons observation still true?

10The alleged cases of Kelabit, Madurese and MbattoKelabit (Blust 1969, 2006) aspirated labial, alveolar, and velar stops, respectively, which begin voiced and end voiceless. Except in the environment after schwa, they have approximately twice the duration of the stops in the other two series. They are found only intervocalically.

Kelabit, Sarawak, Malaysia11

Kelabit does not exactly have murmured stops.

tpu [tp:u] grandparent (vocative)tabuh [tabuh] container made from a dried gourdtbhuh [tbphuh] sugarcane12vowels lenghtened after schwa12But the voiced aspirates are unitary segments.

there are no morpheme internal clusters.

the voiceless stops are unaspirated. So if bh etc. are really clusters where does aspiration come from?

13Possible analysis after Kehrein 2002The make-up of laryngeal contrast for stops: with the three features voice, spread, constricted there can be a maximum of six contrasting types.The ordering of the laryngeal and super-laryngeal gestures cannot be distinctive.

spreadconstrictedttht, t, t , implosive t[voice]dd, d, dth, d, d, dt14In the case of [+ spread], [+ voiced]: [+spread][+ spread][+ spread][+ voice][+voice][+ voice] SL SLSLIgbo [b]Hindi [b]Kelabit [bph]

(SL = Supra-laryngeal)If this is correct then Kelabit is a true counter-example to Jakobsons claim.15Historical origin of Kelabit voiced aspirates:

Voiced geminates arising through assimilation or gemination after stressed schwa:

PMP *bakbak peel of skin or bark > BK bbhak tornPMP *beduk (kind of monkey) > *bdduk > BK bdhuk16MbattoMbatto was first brought into the literature by Comrie 1993 (and again in 2001), but the case is problematic.Mbatto does have a three way stop contrast with two types of voiced series, but the contrast is between non-implosive and implosive voiced stops. (Stewart 1993)17Mbatto, a member of Kwa branch of of Atlantic-Congo branch of Niger-Congo familyMvmmb

Mbatto region, Cte dIvoire18MbattoThe Mbatto system descends from a Proto-Potou system with a four-way contrast between voiced and voiceless implosive and non-implosives.

Proto-PotouEbriMbatto

vcl.*t

th

t

vcl.imp.*t

t

vcd.imp.*

vcd.*d

d

d

19Madurese (Austronesian, Madura, Indonesia) has a three-way phonation contrast, but it is simply voiced, voiceless, and aspirated. The aspirated series is voiceless. (Cohn and Ham 1999)

20But the Madurese case is still interesting.Proto-Malayo-Polynesian had only a simple voicing contrast.The PMP voiceless stops are retained.The PMP voiced stops become voiceless aspirates.The new voiced series arises from glide hardening.21So how do we get from voiced to voiceless aspirate?*b > *p > ph? but the voiceless stops are unchanged.*b > *bh > ph seems to be the only other option.

22Conclusion: None of the languages alleged attest exactly the reconstructed PIE system.

Kelabit does not have breathy stops, but it does have something which may be phonologically indistinguishable.Mbatto does have two voiced series, but neither is breathy.Madurese does not have breathy stops, but it seems plausible that breathy stops were a mid-stage.

23Does this mean Jakobson was right and that we must reject the post-Brugmannian standard?Hale and Reiss 2008 on what is UGAttested (English-type grammars, etc.)Attestable (Japanese in 200 years)Humanly computable (p > s/_r)Statable (V > V: in prime numbered syllables)24There seems to be little doubt that a language with a three-way phonation contrast is computable.Three-way contrasts (of various sorts) are common.

The primes of representation are independent.either the breathy type is [+ voice], [+ spread glottis] or [+ breathy]. In either case nothing computational prevents the separate manipulation of breathy and aspirated stops.

If phonology is substance-free, the phonetic realization of the the three series is irrelevant.25The reason the PIE type is rare or unattested must be diachronic, i.e. the pathways leading to it must be few or non-existent.

26In particular, the reason the breathy series typically co-occurs with voiceless aspirates is either (a) because a sound change producing breathy stops must also produce aspirated stops, whereas the reverse is not true.(b) because there are more diachronic pathways to aspiration than to breathiness and therefore it is likely that a language which has breathy stops will also have aspirated ones. Further there must be many pathways away from the PIE system.

27If (a) is the true explanation the PIE system should really be excludable and we must despite everything revise the reconstruction for PIE.If (b) is the true explanation, then the PIE system can stand as such. It might indeed be a rare system and may have come into existence relatively recently.

28All this reasoning would be unacceptable to scholars who are committed to incorparting markedness into phonology (OT, HS) or Economy (Martinet, Clements), but Ill let them speak for themselves.The crucial question is: Are there known sound changes which produce breathy stops and do not simultaneously produce aspirates?29Where do breathy stops come from?Languages with alleged breathy stopsKhoisan: !XuBantu: Xhosa, Copi, TsongaIgboArmenianThe IndosphereIndo-Aryan: all except Kashmiri and PunjabiAustro-Asiatic: Kharia, Mundari, SantaliSino-Tibetan: Newari, etc.Dravidian: Telugu, Kurux

30We can eliminate the Indosphere languages since the non-Indo-Aryan languages have acquired them from the Indo-Aryan ones (Neukom 1999) and we dont know where those breathy voiced stops came from.

31Armenian dialects probably inherited them from PIE, but if they didnt, they changed the voiced stops into breathy stops and also at some time changed voiceless stops into aspirates. As far as we know these could have resulted from the same sound change.

32The African languages are tricky

Most of the Southern Bantu examples are debatable. The consonants which act as tone depressors are not necessarily breathy voiced stops. See Traill 1990.The Igbo examples are very well established, http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/vowels/chapter12/igbo.html (Ladefoged 1976)According to Hyman 1972 they derive from earlier consonants with nasal release. Both the voiceless and the voiced aspirates arose in this way. (Matisoffs rhinoglottophilia)

33So in the one certain case (Igbo) and the one possible case (Armenian) the same sound change that introduced the breathy stops also introduced or may have introduced the voiceless aspirates. Here we finally come to Cao Bang.34Cao BangCao Bang is the name of a Central Tai language spoken in Northern Viet Nam.

The Cao Bang province of Viet Nam35Pittayawat (Joe) Pittayaporn. 2009. The phonology of Proto-Tai, Cornell University Ph.D. thesis.Li, Fang-Kuei. 1977. Handbook of Comparative Tai. Proto-Tai StopsLiPittayapornvoiceless*t*tvoiceless aspirated*thvoiced*d*dimplosives**36Pittayaporn demonstrates that the voiceless aspirates are not to be reconstructed for Proto-Thai. They arise in CT and SWT from PT *TrGlossLiSiameseDebaoPo-aiSaekPTforehead*phr-phakDphjakD

pjakDphrakD*pr-headlouse*thr-hawAthawAlawArawA*tr-to seek*xr-ha:Akhja:Ala:Ara:A*kr-37So Proto-Tai had a three-way contrast phonologically identical to that of Mbatto: *t, *d, *What happened to this system?In most dialects the voiced series is devoiced merging with the voiceless series and the implosives become simple voiced stops.38In a few languages on the Sino-Vietnamese border voicing is retained in the voiced series (Wenma), but in Cao Bang the voiced series become breathy.

The implosives become voiced stops.

GlossPTSiameseYayCao Bangto fold*bapDphapDS2papDS2bapDS2ashes*dawBthawB2tawB2dwB2pair*gu:Bkhu:B2ku:B2gu:B239Cao Bang labial stops

/baB2/ to mate/baB1/ shoulder

/paB1/ grove/phaB1/ to split < Chinese .

40A Spectrogram of ba41voicingaspirationbIn the closely related dialect Dao Ngan Day studied by Ross (1996), the implosives are realized as preglottalized stops and the voiced series are phonetically either simple voiced stops, breathy stops, or breathy fricatives.Cao Bang does have voiceless aspirates from the Tr- clusters and loanwords.42But the interesting point is that, for the first time to my knowledge, we have an example of breathy stops originating through a sound change totally independent of the origin of aspirates. 43One could argue that Jakobsons observation is still valid (as descriptively it may befor historically attested languages) and that the creation of the voiceless aspirates primed learners to be sensitive to the potential distinctiveness of [ spread glottis]44Although priming is plausibleand hence might explain the rarity of the PIE systemthere is no necessity that a feature be expressed at timen in order to make us of that distinction at timen+1. Most compensatory lengthenings introduce new instances of length to languages where length was already distinctive, but in Friulian compensatory lengthening introduces distinctive vowel length into a language which previously didnt have it.

45The example of Cao Bang shows that breathy stops may arise by a sound change not creating aspirates. The standard post-Brugmannian reconstruction cannot be rejected out of hand.Its rarity and shortlivedness can be explained as the result of the diachronic filter.

46Speculations on PrehistorySome oddities of the voiced series are not indicative of muchthe rarity of *b: became *w initially? (Barrack 2006, et al.)The ban on DeD: In fact identical manner is disfavored in CVC. So what is odd is not the rarity of DED but the frequency of TET (O/E = 1.31) and especially DheDh (O/E = 2.46). [O/E = Observed/Expected]

47O/E values for manner (Cooper 2009)

Manner of articulationSecond segment (-VC-)StopsFricativesNasalsLiquidsGlidesFirst segment (-CV-)Stops0.790.821.311.350.80Fricatives1.230.501.001.211.07Nasals0.981.290.670.981.05Liquids1.051.390.890.001.63Glides1.191.210.681.10.6048Some additional oddities

The voiced stops dont occur in inflectional morphology, but the breathy series does.

Final voicing

49It has often been suggested that the voiced series was or continues a non-modal series.

ejectives (Gamkrelidze and Ivanov 1973, Hopper 1973, etc.)implosives (Haider 1985)both (Kortlandt)

50But the key question about the PIE stop system is actually the breathy seriesthey are cross-linguistically rare yet they are of freer distribution than the voiced seriesthey are the series that falls afoul of Jakobsons observation51A not-so-new proposalThe Pre-PIE system was like that of Mbatto or Proto-Tai.It had two series of voiced stops: implosive and voiced. (implosive to be further defined)PIE underwent the Cao Bang shift, i.e. the voiced stops became breathy and the implosives became simple voiced stops.52Pre-Proto-Indo-EuropeanProto-Indo-European*t*t*d*dh**d53.

Problem for Implosive theory: is the most common implosive:

SegmentPercentage of UPSID languages10.865.11.1.54Solution * > *w before C?The best examples of initial *b (*bel- strong and *bak- stick) are prevocalic. (Matasovi 1994)

*#wr-, *wl- surprisingly common.

Cf. Longsheng w, Yuanyang, Menglian v < PT *

55The nonexplosives after Clements and Osu 2005Nonexplosives (i.e. lacking explosion at release) occur in about 20% of the worlds languages.The traditional definition as involving ingressive glottalic airstream is inadequate.Nonexplosives may be produced with modal voicing, without ingressive airstream, or rarefaction.

56So what characterizes nonexplosives?The absence of air pressure buildup in the oral cavityIn other words, nonexplosives are nonobstruent stops.A detailed study of Ikwere b shows no glottal involvement different from b, no lowering of the larynx, and no air pressure buildup.57My suggestionThe Pre-PIE voiced stops were nonexplosive voiced stops, not classical implosives.One fact that might be explained in this way: final voicing was actually final nonexplosion. This idea is also not new. (Lenisartikulation: Szemernyi 1973; Kmmel 2007)

58Further IssuesAre there other phenomena that can be explained by the Cao Bang theory?Proto-Indo-European or Nuclear Proto-Indo-European?Thanks to Adam Cooper, Abby Cohn, Pittayawat Pittayaporn, and Draga Zec for advice and assistance in various forms.59Thank You!

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