Ian Maddieson, University of New Mexico and University of California, Berkeley
Information on basic phonological properties has been assembled in a sizable database currently covering over 600 languages. The information is limited to the kind that is readily available for a large number of languages and hence can be used for large-scale comparison. The database thus includes data such as the size and membership of vowel and consonant inventories, the tone inventory (if any), and canonical syllable structure. Among the languages included at this time are about 90 from each of the North American and South & Central American areal/genetic groupings as are quite frequently used in the analysis of worldwide linguistic typological features (e.g. Dryer 1989). For the purposes of this study the geographical boundary between these zones is the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, which places the Mayan languages in South and Central America.
On the basis of this material several phonological traits that tend to distinguish the languages of the Americas from those of other areas of the world will be highlighted, and properties that demarcate areal or genetic groupings within the Americas will be identified. Some consideration will also be given to how these observations might relate to both recent and ancient patterns of migration and contact.
The properties of note include the following. ‘New World’ languages (including those of Oceania) have on average fewer primary vowel quality distinctions than ‘Old World’ languages (those of Africa and Eurasia). Nasalized vowels are more frequently included in the vowel inventory than elsewhere in the world (though West Africa also has a high frequency), and South & Central America is marked by an especially high proportion of languages which have a nasalized counterpart to each of their oral vowels, rather than a lower number of nasalized vowels as is the dominant pattern elsewhere. Full sets of voiced and voiced stops in contrast are quite rarely found in the Americas (as also in Australia). Ejective consonants are far more frequently found in the languages of the Americas than elsewhere, whereas implosives are quite rare. Within the Americas, there are two particularly clear clusterings of properties marking out areal regions, one primarily covering the Northwestern part of North America and the other centered on the Amazon Basin. The first is characterized by, among other things, elaborated consonant inventories, including ‘marked’ classes of consonants such as obstruent laterals, and complex syllable patterns; the second by reduced consonant inventories, simple syllable structures and the occurrence of equal numbers of oral and nasalized vowels mentioned earlier.
The pattern of cirum-Pacific typological similarities, primarily morphological in nature, which has been commented on by a number of authors (e.g. Nichols 1992, Bickel & Nichols), does not emerge very strongly from examination of the phonological characteristics considered here. However, there are a number of striking ways in which phonological systems of South & Central America share a tendency toward lower elaboration of the phonological system with the languages of Oceania (i.e. the Australian and ‘Papuan’ languages). If this similarity is a trace of an early eastward migration around the northern Pacific and into South America (cf Dixon 1999), then later population movements may have masked the relationship in the North of the Americas.
Bickel, B. & J. Nichols, 2006. Oceania and the Pacific Rim linguistic area. Paper presented at the 2006 Annual Meeting, Berkeley Linguistics Society.
Dixon, E. James. 1999. Bones, Boats, and Bison: Archeology and the First Colonization of Western North America. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.
Dryer, M. 1989. Large linguistic areas and language sampling. Studies in Language 13: 257-292
Nichols, J. 1992. Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
