Drafts by Sandra Cronhamn
Database and dataset descriptions for Diachronic Atlas of Comparative Linguistics Online. Data is... more Database and dataset descriptions for Diachronic Atlas of Comparative Linguistics Online. Data is available on https://diacl.ht.lu.se/
Papers by Sandra Cronhamn
Frontiers in Communication
IntroductionThe directionality of semantic change is problematic in traditional comparative model... more IntroductionThe directionality of semantic change is problematic in traditional comparative models of language reconstruction. Compared to, e.g., phonological and morphological change, the directions of meaning change over time are potentially endless and difficult to reconstruct. The current paper attempts to reconstruct the mechanisms of lexical meaning change by a quantitative model. We use a data set of 104 core concepts in 160 Eurasian languages from several families, which are coded for colexification as well as cognacy, including semantic change of lexemes in etymologies. In addition, the various meanings are coded for semantic relation to the core concept, including relations such as metaphor, metonymy, generalization, specialization, holonymy, and meronymy. Further, concepts are coded into classes and semantic properties, including factors such as animacy, count/mass, concrete/abstract, or cultural connotations, such as taboo/non-taboo.MethodologyWe use a phylogenetic compa...
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
Languages of diverse structures and different families tend to share common patterns if they are ... more Languages of diverse structures and different families tend to share common patterns if they are spoken in geographic proximity. This convergence is often explained by horizontal diffusibility, which is typically ascribed to language contact. In such a scenario, speakers of two or more languages interact and influence each other’s languages, and in this interaction, more grammaticalized features tend to be more resistant to diffusion compared to features of more lexical content. An alternative explanation is vertical heritability: languages in proximity often share genealogical descent. Here, we suggest that the geographic distribution of features globally can be explained by two major pathways, which are generally not distinguished within quantitative typological models: feature diffusion and language expansion. The first pathway corresponds to the contact scenario described above, while the second occurs when speakers of genetically related languages migrate. We take the worldwide...
The current study set out to investigate patterns of loanwords in a sample of 1,460 lexical meani... more The current study set out to investigate patterns of loanwords in a sample of 1,460 lexical meanings in the Finnish lexicon by means of quantitative methods. The methodology used was borrowed from the Loanword Typology project (Haspelmath & Tadmor 2009), and consisted of a template including various fields, where information about each lexical item was coded. The fields included measures such as Borrowed status, Age and Donor language, and the data was collected from etymological dictionaries. The values coded for the lexical meanings were analysed to answer the research questions, which had to do with e.g. loanword patterns in relation to semantic domains, immediate donor languages and loanword age. The loanword patterns found in Finnish were also compared to the cross-linguistic averages found by the LTp. It was found that, in general, Finnish is a fairly typical language from a loanword typological point of view. It was also corroborated that the overwhelming majority of loanwords in Finnish come from Indo-European, especially from Germanic languages. Support was also found for correlations between loanword age and donor language branch, in that the loanwords from different language branches layered themselves timewise. Although the findings of this study are largely in line with the previous research on loanwords in Finnish, the most important contribution of this thesis is the restructuring of the previous research into a format which makes it comparable to corresponding data in a relatively large sample of languages cross-linguistically.
Cronhamn, S. (2013) The spread of cultural vocabulary in Rondônia. A study of borrowability in the semantic fields of religion and agriculture
Can semantic evolution be predicted? : A case study on the Eurasian vocabularies for hunting, farming, and technology
In this paper, we have investigated, by means of quantitative and statistical methods, stability ... more In this paper, we have investigated, by means of quantitative and statistical methods, stability and change in cultural vocabulary of Indo-European in Europe, with a focus on agriculture. For this purpose we have created a culture vocabulary list with lexical head words, organized into subcategories based on their role and function in a cultural system, the purpose of which is to give a representative selection of culture vocabulary terms for a specific system and a certain geographic area. Thereupon, we have collected data from a number of Indo-European languages of Europe, removed languages with too little data, omitted post-colonial borrowings, organized the lexemes into cognate sets and divided lexemes according to whether they are inherited (reconstructed or derived from Proto-Indo-European roots), loaned, or have an uncertain origin. For each term we have kept track of number of cognates, number of lexemes in languages, as well as number of reconstructed Proto-Indo-European ro...
Languages borrow words when there is a need for it, all languages contain loanwords, and no part ... more Languages borrow words when there is a need for it, all languages contain loanwords, and no part of the lexicon is entirely “loan-proof”. These are statements about lexical borrowing that are typically found in linguistic textbooks (Hock and Joseph 1996). Further, we know that that there are large discrepancies in the borrowability of different lexical concepts, where core vocabulary domains (sense perception, spatial relations, the body, kinship, and motion) in general are more resistant to borrowing, whereas culture-dependent domains (religion and belief, clothing and grooming, the house, law, social and political relations, agriculture and vegetation) belong to a more loan-intense part of the lexicon. We are also aware that there are large differences in borrowability between languages, something that has multiple connotations, including language history, populations size, language contact, grammatical structure, and so forth (Haspelmath and Tadmor 2009).Our study aims at investi...
The mechanisms of gender assignment : An evolutionary study of the Indo-European three-gender system
Borrowability, inheritance, and semantic change in the Indo-European and Caucasian vocabulary for hunting, farming, and technology
Vocabulary for subsistence and technology may vary a great deal in their degree of borrowability,... more Vocabulary for subsistence and technology may vary a great deal in their degree of borrowability, depending on time, place, inherent subsistence and technology, and the situation of the borrowing. In cross-linguistic typological studies of borrowability, these words tend to group somewhere from middle to high in borrowability, depending on lexical concept (Haspelmath & Tadmor, 2009). We have compiled a set of 100 lexical concepts of importance to hunting, farming, and technology from a perspective of high age and presumed high stability from a cultural perspective. These concepts include, e.g., bovine cattle (BULL, OX, COW), animals of traction (HORSE, DONKEY), important metals (GOLD, IRON, COPPER), important crops (GRAIN, WHEAT), important game (HARE, DEER), essential technological innovations (WHEEL, WAGON). We have compiled a complete data set of lexemes from Indo-European, Caucasian (Kartvelian, Nakh-Dagestanian, Northwest Caucasian), as well as adjacent Uralic and Turkic langua...
The Mouton Atlas of Languages and Cultures
The notion of cultural aspects of language variation and change is a growing fi eld. However, col... more The notion of cultural aspects of language variation and change is a growing fi eld. However, collective works on the current stance within this domain are still scarce. The Mouton Atlas of Languages and Cultures embraces a substantial part of the Eurasian continent and equips the reader to better observe, reconstruct and understand the impact of culture and cultural changes on language diversity and linguistic developments. Along the way, a fascinating range of interdis-ciplinary issues, from database encoding conventions to etymologies and cultural anthropology, are discussed. Based on an extensive database assembled by Gerd Carling and her team in Lund, Sweden, the atlas presents typological and lexical data of more than 200 ancient and modern languages, any encoded for the very fi rst time. Alongside classic maps, the atlas features new visualizations, such as polygons and network diagrams, which smartly illustrate complex linguistic patterns of borro-wability, co-lexifi cation and semantic evolution and thereby provide entirely new perspectives. Analyzing language spread and diversity in relation to environment, subsistence, and cultural contact Smart visualizations of complex language patterns Containing data from both ancient and modern languages
PLOS ONE, 2019
All languages borrow words from other languages. Some languages are more prone to borrowing, whil... more All languages borrow words from other languages. Some languages are more prone to borrowing, while others borrow less, and different domains of the vocabulary are unequally susceptible to borrowing. Languages typically borrow words when a new concept is introduced, but languages may also borrow a new word for an already existing concept. Linguists describe two causalities for borrowing: need, i.e., the internal pressure of borrowing a new term for a concept in the language, and prestige, i.e., the external pressure of borrowing a term from a more prestigious language. We investigate lexical loans in a dataset of 104 concepts in 115 Eurasian languages from 7 families occupying a coherent contact area of the Eurasian landmass, of which Indo-European languages from various periods constitute a majority. We use a cognacy-coded dataset, which identifies loan events including a source and a target language. To avoid loans for newly introduced concepts in languages, we use a list of lexical concepts that have been in use at least since the Chalcolithic (4000-3000 BCE). We observe that the rates of borrowing are highly variable among concepts, lexical domains, languages, language families, and time periods. We compare our results to those of a global sample and observe that our rates are generally lower, but that the rates between the samples are significantly correlated. To test the causality of borrowing, we use two different ranks. Firstly, to test need, we use a cultural ranking of concepts by their mobility (of nature items) or their labour intensity and "distance-from-hearth" (of culture items). Secondly, to test prestige, we use a power ranking of languages by their socio-cultural status. We conclude that the borrowability of concepts increases with increasing mobility (nature), and with increased labour intensity and "distance-from-hearth" (culture). We also conclude that language prestige is not correlated with borrowability in general (all languages borrow, independently of prestige), but prestige predicts the directionality of borrowing, from a more prestigious language to a less prestigious one. The process is not constant over time, with a larger inequality during the ancient and modern periods, but this result may depend on the status of the data (non-prestigious languages often remain unattested). In conclusion, we observe that need and prestige compete as causes of lexical borrowing.
Revista Brasileira de Linguística Antropológica, 2017
The current paper describes the deictic system of Kamaiurá, a language of the Tupí-Guaraní family... more The current paper describes the deictic system of Kamaiurá, a language of the Tupí-Guaraní family. The Kamaiurá system of deictic demonstratives and adverbials has a high degree of complexity, including at least 17 different forms, of which several have different functions. The system codes four levels of Participant deixis, with proximal, medial, distal and far distal deixis. Forms can also code anaphora and highly specialized locations of the referent, such as ‘moving away’ and ‘located beside something’. A further peculiar and unusual characteristic of the Kamaiurá system is the coding of Modal and Evidential deixis, which is found among the forms marking far distal deixis. Our study has two foci: the first part describes the system in its independent or exophoric use, and this part is based on deep interviews with native speakers and a deixis elicitation study. The second part of the paper represents the core of our study. Here, we investigate the uses of the deictic system in a...
PloS one, 2018
Feature stability, time and tempo of change, and the role of genealogy versus areality in creatin... more Feature stability, time and tempo of change, and the role of genealogy versus areality in creating linguistic diversity are important issues in current computational research on linguistic typology. This paper presents a database initiative, DiACL Typology, which aims to provide a resource for addressing these questions with specific of the extended Indo-European language area of Eurasia, the region with the best documented linguistic history. The database is pre-prepared for statistical and phylogenetic analyses and contains both linguistic typological data from languages spanning over four millennia, and linguistic metadata concerning geographic location, time period, and reliability of sources. The typological data has been organized according to a hierarchical model of increasing granularity in order to create datasets that are complete and representative.
Language and Cognition
While recent years have seen a substantial increase of studies investigating vocal iconicity in t... more While recent years have seen a substantial increase of studies investigating vocal iconicity in the lexicon of spoken languages, its presence in grammatical structures is poorly understood. This study investigates the presence of vocal iconicity in nominal classification systems by collecting nominal classification devices from the two main system types: 210 non-agreeing languages (126 families) and 151 agreeing languages (123 families). To detect overrepresentations of sound types in class meanings, the nominal classification devices were grouped according to comparable semantic categories, transcribed using comparable phonetic system, and analyzed through Bayesian mixed models. The strongest results were found for associations between nominal classification devices denoting flat and low, front, unrounded vowels, along with several weak associations relating to shape/size/quantity, function, humanness/animacy, and sex. These associations mostly correlate with previous vocal iconici...
Multidisciplinary documentation of Austroasiatic
The current study set out to investigate patterns of loanwords in a sample of 1,460 lexical meani... more The current study set out to investigate patterns of loanwords in a sample of 1,460 lexical meanings in the Finnish lexicon by means of quantitative methods. The methodology used was borrowed from the Loanword Typology project (Haspelmath & Tadmor 2009a), and consisted of a template including various fields, where information about each lexical item was coded. The fields included measures such as Borrowed status, Age and Donor language, and the data was collected from etymological dictionaries. The values coded for the lexical meanings were analysed to answer the research questions, which had to do with e.g. loanword patterns in relation to semantic domains, immediate donor languages and loanword age. The loanword patterns found in Finnish were also compared to the cross-linguistic averages found by the Loanword Typology project. It was found that, in general, Finnish is a fairly typical language from a loanword typological point of view. It was also corroborated that the overwhelming majority of loanwords in Finnish come from Indo-European, especially from Germanic languages. Support was also found for correlations between loanword age and donor language branch, in that the loanwords from different language branches layered themselves timewise. Although the findings of this study are largely in line with the previous research on loanwords in Finnish, the most important contribution of this thesis is the restructuring of the previous research into a format which makes it comparable to corresponding data in a relatively large sample of languages cross-linguistically.
The Cultural Lexicon of Indo-European in Europe: Quantifying Stability and Change
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Drafts by Sandra Cronhamn
Papers by Sandra Cronhamn