In this thesis I investigated the hypothesis that the Tocharian agglutinative case system was influenced by Uralic – in particular by the Samoyedic branch of Uralic. The language contact between...Show moreIn this thesis I investigated the hypothesis that the Tocharian agglutinative case system was influenced by Uralic – in particular by the Samoyedic branch of Uralic. The language contact between Tocharian and Samoyedic would have happened in prehistoric times, which means that the attested languages cannot directly be used as the basis for a reliable comparison: reconstructions of both case systems were needed. I discussed (i) the structure of the Proto-Tocharian and Proto-Samoyedic case systems, (ii) the reconstructible functions of the individual cases, as well as (iii) the way in which the two case systems developed, and compared Tocharian and Samoyedic on these three points. Finally, I evaluated whether an explanation based on prehistoric language contact is able to account for the linguistic facts.Show less
The Ancient Greek lexicon contains words that cannot be explained by an Indo-European origin. Many of such words can be explained as loanwords of a Pre-Greek substrate or as Semitic loanwords....Show moreThe Ancient Greek lexicon contains words that cannot be explained by an Indo-European origin. Many of such words can be explained as loanwords of a Pre-Greek substrate or as Semitic loanwords. However, some Greek words seem to originate from a Semitic language, but the morphology and phonology point towards a Pre-Greek origin. To solve this apparent discrepancy, the possibility that Semitic loanwords entered the Greek lexicon via Pre-Greek is examined in this thesis. A sample of fourteen obscure Greek words confirms this hypothesis. The words share semantical and phonological features with equivalent words in Semitic languages, but share phonological and morphological features with Pre-Greek as well. Especially the occurrence of Pre-Greek suffixes that are not present in the Semitic equivalents are strong arguments in favor of this hypothesis. Besides examples of Semitic influence on Pre-Greek, this thesis provides two possible examples of Pre-Greek loanwords in Semitic languages. These findings develop our knowledge of language contact in the Mediterranean region during the Bronze and Iron Age.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
This thesis proposes a sketch description of Brazilian Bergamasch, a Gallo-Italian language spoken in the town of Botuverá, in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina. Brazilian Bergamasch...Show moreThis thesis proposes a sketch description of Brazilian Bergamasch, a Gallo-Italian language spoken in the town of Botuverá, in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina. Brazilian Bergamasch is a non-standard variety of Bergamasch, an Italian language currently spoken in the Italian region of Lombardy, which was brought to Brazil by Italian immigrants in the late 19th century. This thesis has two main goals. Firstly, it aims to provide a grammatical and sociolinguistic sketch of the language, since Brazilian Bergamasch is currently undescribed. The description focuses on the analysis of the sociolinguistic situation present in the community, as well as on the main linguistic structures of the language (lexicon, phonology, morphology, syntax). In both cases, emphasis is given to the features that diverge from the standard variety spoken in Italy. On the basis of numerous discrepancies due to the geographic origins of the community founders on the one hand, and language internal and contact induced change on the other hand, it is argued that Brazilian Bergamasch can in fact be classified as a linguistic system independent from Standard Bergamasch. Secondly, the thesis provides a short wordlist of the basic lexicon of the language. The wordlist, which counts around 770 items, is organized by semantic fields and aims to contribute to projects of language maintenance that are currently being discussed and implemented by the community.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
closed access
The thesis focuses on Megrelian, a language spoken by approximately 500.000 people in the west of the country of Georgia. It is genealogically related to Georgian, the official language of the...Show moreThe thesis focuses on Megrelian, a language spoken by approximately 500.000 people in the west of the country of Georgia. It is genealogically related to Georgian, the official language of the country. Every speaker of Megrelian is bilingual and speaks Georgian from an early age onwards. Georgian is the language of bureaucracy, education and virtually all written communication. Hence, a lot of influence of this standard language on Megrelian is to be expected. However, this influence has not been studied yet (at least not outside Georgia). In addition, Megrelian features several strategies for the grammatical concept of subordination. It shows a conjunction /namda/, which is functionally parallel to English 'that', in 'I saw that John arrived', and finds its parallel in Georgian /rom/. Furthermore, an enclitic element /=ni/ can be added to the end of the embedded clause (in adverbial, complement, and relative clauses alike). /namda/ and /=ni/ can also be combined. Also, Megrelian has several ways to nominalise verbs, which can then be used to form subordinated clauses. This thesis will explore the different strategies of subordination in Megrelian and will try to distinguish which strategy is used for which function. Furthermore, while the Georgian language is bound to have influence on the minority language, it interesting to see if it will also have its impact on a syntactic operation like subordination. In terms of data, it is of interest that numerous folk tales and poems in Megrelian have been gathered around the turn of the century by Georgian scholars, although in more recent years, the amount of fieldwork is very sparse. This thesis seeks to combine these two sources and add contemporary data of spoken Megrelian, as well as make public some of the older narratives.Show less
Yanesha is claimed to be heavily influenced by Quechua, especially in the lexical and phonological domain. The neighbouring Campa languages have probably also been in contact with Quechua. In this...Show moreYanesha is claimed to be heavily influenced by Quechua, especially in the lexical and phonological domain. The neighbouring Campa languages have probably also been in contact with Quechua. In this thesis the influence of Quechua on Yanesha on the one hand and on Campa languages on the other hand are compared, with the focus on structural features of the languages. It becomes clear that Quechua influence on the grammar of Yanesha is meagre. In Campa languages the inclusive-exclusive distinction is probably due to Quechua influence, but this seems to be the only major change in Campa structure because of Quechua. This case study challenges most of the existing theories about structural changes that follow lexical influence (Campa) and those theories who claim that the situation that causes heavy lexical influx, would also cause influence on the structure (Yanesha).Show less
