On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 11:40 AM, Dale McCreery <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> So "ALL THE MORPHOLOGY!" is not as wrong as I once thought?  Interesting
> article, I just reformatted your post for ease of reading,
>
>
Well, the linked book is about phonology, not morphology, so ALL OF THE
MORPHEMES might be a little excessive, still. But ALL OF THE PHONEMES is
looking up.




> muskwatch.
>
>
> > A friend of mine sent me a link to the following paper, adding the note "
> > Yes I have espoused compensation too, but now that it's debunked in some
> > respects, naturalist conlanging is even less constrained that before,
> > which
> > is rather nice."
> >
> > http://203.128.31.71/articles/0199296677.pdf
> >
> > Here's a long quote:
> >
> The nine comparisons made in the preceding section show almost no evidence
> of any tendency for languages to ‘‘compensate’’ for increased
> complexity in one of the phonological subsystems surveyed by greater
> simplicity in another. In fact four of the comparisons show positive
> correlations of increases in complexity between different subsystems.
> Increasing syllabic complexity is positively associated with increasing
> size of consonant inventory, and increasing complexity of tone system is
> positively associated with increasing size of both consonant and vowel
> inventories. The mean number of both vowel qualities and total vowels
> increases with tone complexity...
>  A further four of the comparisons show no systematic relationship at all
> between the variables examined. These are the two relationships between
> syllable complexity and the vowel measures, and the two relationships
> between consonant inventory size and the vowel measures. Despite
> anecdotally based belief to the contrary, increasing elaboration of
> consonant inventory is unrelated to size of vowel quantity inventory
> > (as earlier noted by Stephens and Justeson 1984)...
> > (p. 103) Only one of the relationships shows a tendency to show
> compensation—that between syllable complexity and tone...
>  Although there is no space here for a full discussion of the issues
> raised it may be useful to point out that the relationships found cannot
> be obviously accounted for by ‘‘natural’’ or
> ‘‘functional’’ considerations. For example, the tendency for
> larger consonant inventory and more complex syllable structure to go
> together cannot be ‘‘explained’’ by considerations of which types
> of consonants are more likely, from a cross-linguistic point of view, to
> occur in clusters. In general, the larger consonant inventories are more
> likely to contain a higher proportion of consonants that
> crosslinguistically tend to have their distribution restricted both in
> clusters and in coda position...  Although individual languages may
> historically ‘‘trade’’ elaboration in one subsystem for
> simplification elsewhere, such ‘‘compensation’’ does not seem to
> be a design feature of language. Nor do we find here evidence that
> languages are shaped in a compensatory fashion to avoid testing the
> limits of processing ability. It simply seems to be the case that
> languages vary quite considerably in their phonological complexity, as
> measured by the indices used here. Similar variability and absence of
> compensatory patterning were also found by Shosted (2006b) in comparing
> phonological and morphosyntactic elaboration.
> >
> > --
> > JS Bangs
> > [log in to unmask]
> > http://jsbangs.wordpress.com
> >
> > "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle" -Philo of
> > Alexandria
> >
>



-- 
JS Bangs
[log in to unmask]
http://jsbangs.wordpress.com

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle" -Philo of
Alexandria