Low Vowel Dissimilation in Vanuatu Languages
Journal article by John Lynch; Oceanic Linguistics, Vol. 42, 2003
Journal Article Excerpt
Low Vowel Dissimilation in Vanuatu Languages. by John Lynch Robert Blust in this journal in 1996 drew attention to a process in a number of widely separated Oceanic languages in which the first a of an aCa sequence dissimilates to a higher vowel. In some of these languages the rule is still productive, while others show only historical dissimilation. He briefly presented data from three areas in Vanuatu comprising ten languages. More recent research, however, shows that there are about thirty Vanuatu languages that exhibit this phenomenon, though only four seem to do so as part of their synchronic morphophonemics. While an initial analysis suggests that there are four different types of dissimilatory processes, three of these (accounting for all but three or four of the thirty languages) can be shown to be derivable from a single historical process in which dissimilation applied iteratively from left to right: *a, whether stressed or unstressed, developed the allophone [[??]] as a result of this, though dissimilation was apparently blocked by intervening or adjacent postvelars, velars, and labiovelars. In languages that reflect the dissimilation, this [[??]] is now phonemic /[??]/,/e/, or less frequently /i/. (The fourth type is dependent on stress, but is almost certainly a more recent development in just one small geographical area.) I propose that dissimilation occurred in the ancestor of all languages from Malakula and Ambrym in the north to Aneityum in the south, and that the nondissimilating languages within this region have subsequently reversed the process, allophonic [[??]] becoming [a]. A brief comparison is made with similar cases in Micronesia, but it seems impossible, on the basis of data available, to suggest any historical connection between the two regions. 1. INTRODUCTION. Blust (1996a, b) points out that, in a few scattered areas within Oceanic, the first occurrence of *a in *aCa sequences dissimilated, most frequently to e, though occasionally to some other vowel. He describes dissimilation as occupying "an awkward position in discussions of phonological change" and says that "both the motivation behind dissimilation and its rarity in comparison with assimilation remain perplexing." In summarizing his findings, he states: "We are confronted with a number of cases of low vowel dissimilation in Oceanic languages that appear to be reducible to no fewer than five historically independent sound changes. ... The questions will not go away. Is low vowel dissimilation motivated by some still unrecognized feature of the human language faculty, or does it result from structural pressure peculiar to Proto-Oceanic or some higher-level Austronesian protolanguage? Why is it always the first of two low vowels (never the second) that raises? Is the prior loss of final vowels a precondition of LVD, or an accidental concomitant?" (Blust 1996b:309). In his two 1996 studies, Blust refers to five separate cases of low vowel dissimilation (LVD), the last three below being in Vanuatu: (1) Ere on Manus Island in the Admiralties (where *a dissimilates to i); (2) Marshallese and Woleaian (and perhaps in fossilized form in other Micronesian languages); (3) the language of the Maskelyne Islands just south of Malakula; (4) the southern dialect of Paamese; and (5) the languages of the Southern Vanuatu subgroup. In this paper, I expand on the three Vanuatu cases Blust has mentioned, but also add a number of others from Vanuatu languages. There are at least four languages where dissimilation is still productive. Of greater interest, however, is the fact that there seem to be almost thirty languages that evidence historical dissimilation, of which fourteen are spoken on the island of Malakula or on small islands offshore. Data sources for Vanuatu languages cited here are given in the appendix, and the major islands involved can be located on the map at the right. (1) The significantly large number of Vanuatu languages that exhibit LVD may make the situation even more perplexing than Blust described, but it does also mean that we may be able to reduce his figure of five "historically independent sound changes"--though to exactly how many is one of the topics of this paper. That is, if LVD is SO widespread in Vanuatu. because it occurred in some early ancestor of large numbers of Vanuatu languages, we may at least be able to describe all, or many, Vanuatu cases as having a single origin. Whether the Micronesian cases also have the same origin is another question that will be addressed later in this paper.The occurrence of LVD in Vanuatu, however, seems to be sporadic and somewhat irregular. By sporadic I mean that ... |
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