Language contact as an inhibitor of sound change
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Keren Rice
Abstract
In the past 150 years, the Fort Good Hope variety of Dene (also called Slavey), an Athabaskan language of northern Canada’s Mackenzie River valley, has undergone several phonological shifts. I focus on the change of nasals to r. Not all nasals shift in the appropriate environment. At first, this failure to shift appears attributable to functional factors like frequency and uniformity of exponence. Another factor plays a major role: contact with a related language where the n’s that shift to r in Fort Good Hope are distinct from those that do not. Historical records indicate contact occurred around the time of the shift. Both grammatical and social factors play an important role in blocking certain n’s from shifting to r. Keywords: Dene; phonological shift; phonology; historical linguistics
Abstract
In the past 150 years, the Fort Good Hope variety of Dene (also called Slavey), an Athabaskan language of northern Canada’s Mackenzie River valley, has undergone several phonological shifts. I focus on the change of nasals to r. Not all nasals shift in the appropriate environment. At first, this failure to shift appears attributable to functional factors like frequency and uniformity of exponence. Another factor plays a major role: contact with a related language where the n’s that shift to r in Fort Good Hope are distinct from those that do not. Historical records indicate contact occurred around the time of the shift. Both grammatical and social factors play an important role in blocking certain n’s from shifting to r. Keywords: Dene; phonological shift; phonology; historical linguistics
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword vii
- Preface xi
- Introduction xxi
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Section 1. Approaches to the study of the indigenous languages of the Americas
- The diachrony of Ute case-marking 3
- Language contact as an inhibitor of sound change 29
- Stress in Yucatec Maya 53
- The phonetic correlates of Southern Ute stress 85
- Revisiting Tohono O’odham high vowels 107
- Head-marking inflection and the architecture of grammatical theory 133
- A case-study in grass roots development of web resources for language workers 175
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Section 2. Approaches to the study of voices and ideologies
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Language contact, shift, and endangerment – implications for policy
- Spanish in contact with indigenous tongues 203
- How can a language with 7 million speakers be endangered? 229
- A documentary ethnography of a Blackfoot language course 257
- Syncretic speech, linguistic ideology, and intertextuality 291
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Racism in discourse – analyses of practice
- Narrative discriminations in Central California’s indigenous narrative traditions 321
- The voice of (White) reason 339
- Double-voicing in the everyday language of Brazilian black activism 365
- Uptake (un)limited 389
- The silken cord 415
- Afterword 425
- Language index 431
- Subject index 433
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword vii
- Preface xi
- Introduction xxi
-
Section 1. Approaches to the study of the indigenous languages of the Americas
- The diachrony of Ute case-marking 3
- Language contact as an inhibitor of sound change 29
- Stress in Yucatec Maya 53
- The phonetic correlates of Southern Ute stress 85
- Revisiting Tohono O’odham high vowels 107
- Head-marking inflection and the architecture of grammatical theory 133
- A case-study in grass roots development of web resources for language workers 175
-
Section 2. Approaches to the study of voices and ideologies
-
Language contact, shift, and endangerment – implications for policy
- Spanish in contact with indigenous tongues 203
- How can a language with 7 million speakers be endangered? 229
- A documentary ethnography of a Blackfoot language course 257
- Syncretic speech, linguistic ideology, and intertextuality 291
-
Racism in discourse – analyses of practice
- Narrative discriminations in Central California’s indigenous narrative traditions 321
- The voice of (White) reason 339
- Double-voicing in the everyday language of Brazilian black activism 365
- Uptake (un)limited 389
- The silken cord 415
- Afterword 425
- Language index 431
- Subject index 433
