Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T05:14:07.294Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Some linguistic paradoxes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

N. E. Collinge
N. E. Collinge
Affiliation:
Department of Classics, University of Durham
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The emphasis on syntagmatic criteria in analysis, especially as interpreted by J. R. Firth (from his 1948 paper onwards) in the phonological aspect of language, has led many scholars, in Great Britain at least, to a disbelief in the adequacy of phonemes alone – or of phonemes aided by such suprasegmental features as intensity, duration and tone – for the tasks of accurate description and powerful theoretical explanation of the operation of a spoken language. Among the fruits of the new emphasis, the studies which are characterized as ‘prosodic’ and ‘polysystemic’, is that treatment of Sanskrit discontinuous retroflexion within words which handles this feature as a prosody operating over a considerable stretch (chain of phonematic units) and being phonetically realized wherever possible, which may be more often than is graphically hinted (Allen, 1951). In this view, apparent historical ‘assimilation’ is trenchantly dismissed: we are not to imagine a shift being induced in one phoneme by another which stands at a distance from it, nor is the first to be spoken of as changing from ‘something it never was’. This, of course, begs the whole historical question; and even if the nature of Indo-European reconstructions is so skeletophonemic that we cannot say with certainty that Skt. ṇ is not the unshifted allophonic reflex of IE /n/ in the relevant positions in the relevant words, nevertheless a phonetic continuation is scarcely likely (e.g. in *plH-nó-). In many cases a different earlier form can be pointed to, attested and unmistakable (e.g. Latin octo before Ital. otto). One cannot lightly oppose a prima facie possibility that ṇ was first one thing and then became another.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , April 1965 , pp. 1 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1965

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Allen, W. S. (1951). Some prosodic aspects of retroflexion and aspiration in Sanskrit. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 13. 939–946 (sec also Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 16.556–605).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, W. S. (1959). Some remarks on the structure of Greek vowel Systems. Word 15. 240–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andrews, S. & Whatmough, J. (1961). Comparative and historical linguistics in America, 1930–1960. Trends in European and American Linguistics 1930–1960, 58–81Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1962). The logical basis of linguistic theory. Preprints, Ninth Internat. Congrest of Linguists. 509–574.Google Scholar
Ellis, J. O. (1958). General linguistics and comparative philology. Lingua 7. 134–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Firth, J. R. (1948). Sounds and prosodics. TPhS. 127–152.Google Scholar
Fry, D. B. (1960). Linguistic theory and experimental research. TPhS. 13–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haas, W. (1962). Two types of phonological value. Proc. Fourth Internat. Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 625–629.Google Scholar
Harris, Z. S. (1944). Simultaneous components in phonology. Lg. 20. 181–205. (= Joos, Readings in Linguistics, 2nd ed., 1958, Washington: ACLS. 124–138.)Google Scholar
Hoenigswald, H. M. (1954). Review of W. P. Lehmann, Proto-Indo-European phonology. Lg. 30. 468–474.Google Scholar
Hoenigswald, H. M. (1960). Language Change and Linguistic Reconstruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Householder, F. W. (1963). Review of Trends in European and American Linguistics, 1930–1960. Lg. 39. 78–87.Google Scholar
Lyons, J. (1962). Phonemic and non-phonemic phonology: some typological reflections. lJAL. 127–133.Google Scholar
Martinet, A. (1955). Économie des changements phonétiques. Berne: Francke.Google Scholar
Martinet, A. (1958). Les ‘laryngales’ indo-européennes. Proc. Eighth Internat. Congres: of Linguists. 36–53.Google Scholar
Palmer, L. R. (1954). The Latin Language. London: Faber & Faber.Google Scholar
Pulgram, E. (1953). Family tree, wave theory, and dialectology. Orbis 2. 67–72.Google Scholar
Pulgram, E. (1961). The nature and use of proto-languages. Lingua 10. 18–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robins, R. H. (1957). Aspects of prosodic analysis. Proc. Univ. Durham Philosophical Society, 1 (Series B, Arts), 1. 1–12.Google Scholar
Scherer, A. (1961). Der Stand der indogermanischen Sprachwissenschaft. Trends in European and American Linguistics 1930–1960. 225–239.Google Scholar
Spang-Hanssen, H. (1961). Glossematics. Trends in European and American Linguistics 1930–1960, 128–164.Google Scholar
Sturtevant, E. H. (1939). The pronoun *so *sā *tod and the Indo-Hittite hypothesis. Lg. 15. 11–19.Google Scholar
Sturtevant, E. H. (1962). The Indo-Hittite hypothesis. Lg. 38. 105–110.Google Scholar
Szemerényi, O. J. L. (1959). Latin hībernus and Greek Xεiμερivós – the formation of time-adjectives in the classical languages. Glotta 38. 107–125.Google Scholar
Twaddell, W. F. (1935). On defining the phoneme. Language Monographs 16. (= Joos, Readings in Linguistics 2, 1958, Washington. 55–80.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watkins, C. (1962). Preliminaries to the reconstruction of IE sentence structure. Preprints, Ninth International Congress of Linguists, 407–412.Google Scholar