word order in the diachrony of esperanto: a corpus-based study of noun-adjective collocation

Word order in the diachrony of EsperantoA corpus-based study of noun-adjective collocation

Federico [email protected]

SEEPiCLa meeting, University of Amsterdam, 14 december 2015

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A caveat. . .

Konstruata esplorado

Introduction: what is Esperanto?

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The priority of orality in natural languages

[although] no human society [has been] known to exist or tohave existed at any time in the past without capacity of speech[. . . ] the vast majority of societies have, until recently, beeneither totally or very largely illiterate.

Lyons (1981:12-13)

This universal property of natural languages has two exceptions: signlanguages and planned languages.

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What is a planned language?

Languages can be planned from scratch if someone decided to do so,writing the (normative) grammar, setting up the (basic) lexicon andgiving some texts in the language.

You can always identify double articulation (phonetic space +morphosyntactic level) in a planned language – they are languagesfor human beings.

Often the language planner acts alone, rarely in committees or groups– but always with a clear leader, that is called the language planner.

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For planned languages orality is a challenge

..

graphisation

.

natural languages

.

orality

.

planned languages

Few planned languages are used orally by a community of practice

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Community of practice: a sociolinguistic definition

The value of the notion ‘communities of practice’ toSociolinguistics and Linguistic Anthropology lies in the fact thatit identifies a social grouping not in virtue of shared abstractcharacteristics (e.g. class, gender) or simple co-presence (e.g.neighborhood, workplace), but in virtue of shared practice. Inthe course of regular joint activity, a community of practicedevelops ways of doing things, views, values, power relations,ways of talking. And the participants engage with thesepractices in virtue of their place in the community of practice,and of the place of the community of practice in the largersocial order.

Penelope Eckert (2006)

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Why planning languages from scratch?

Languages can be planned for different purposes. The language canbe secret (esoteric) if the grammar is known only by initiates;otherwise it is public (exoteric).

Languages planned with a public in mind can be:

1. auxiliary, if their purpose is to facilitate the communication amongpeople from different nations;

2. non-auxiliary, when languages are planned for other purposes,often for art, literature, especially fiction.

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..

aux

.

non-aux

. pub.secr .

Esperanto

.

Latino sine Flexione

.

Ido

.

Basic English

.

Novial

.

Volapuk (19th c.)

.

Interlingua

.

etc.

.

International Auxiliary Languages

.

Dothraki

.

Klingon

.

Tolkien (21st c.)

.

Volapuk (20th c.

.

Na’vi

.

etc.

.

Hollywood languages

.

Tolkien’s (20th)

.

Bal-A I-Balan

.

Tokipona

.Europanto

Finally, what is Esperanto (ans what is not)?

■ pars construens:

■ Esperanto is a planned language;

■ Esperanto is an International Auxiliary Language;

■ Esperanto is used by a community of practice, orally;

■ pars destruens:

■ Esperanto is not artificial (in the sense first-order logic and otherformal languages);

■ Esperanto is not artificial (in the sense of computer programminglanguages).

■ Esperanto is neither a pidgin nor a creole.

That said, why Esperanto is interesting for SEEPiCLA?

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Esperanto as a contact language

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Esperanto is very regular on a morphological level

Colour codes adopted here for the examples:

1. substantives (NP heads) are in blue;

2. adjectives, determiners, numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan;

3. verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red;

4. adverbs and the like (MAdv, V tails) are in orange;

5. affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray;

6. accusative marker (ending in -n) is in green;

7. lexemes are left in black.

La viro salutas nin

c⃝2014 Stanislavo Belov. Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko

Possible descriptions of the photo

■ La viro salutas la publikon.

■ La viro salutas vin .

■ La viro salutas vin afable.

■ La viro salutas vin per⟨

desegno⟩

.

■ La viro salutas vin per⟨

desegno sur⟨

la nigra tabulo⟩⟩

.

■ La viro apogas la manon sur⟨

la muro⟩

.

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Verbs have 6 possible endings. No exceptions

1. -as for present tense;

2. -is for past tense;

3. -os for future tense;

4. -us for conditional;

5. -u for imperative;

6. -i for infinitive.

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Esperanto and its level of freedom in the word order

....La ..viro ..salutas ..vin ..afable..the ..man ..greets ..you ..kindly

.

root

.

det

.

subj

.

dobj

.

advmod

....La ..viro ..afable ..salutas ..vin..the ..man ..kindly ..greets ..you

.

root

.

det

.

subj

.

dobj

.

advmod

Just one morphological rule for nouns and adjectives

Example

Esperanto Italian Englishgranda elefanto un grande elefante a big elephantmalgranda elefanto un piccolo elefante a small elephantrapida cevalo un cavallo veloce a fast horsemalrapidaj cevaloj dei cavalli lenti slow horses

Adjectives end in -a, -aj, -ajn according to number a case, inagreement with nouns – respectively, -o, -on, -oj, -ojn.

There is no explicit normative rule for noun-adjective collocation.

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Compounds always follow the Germanic model

Diachrony of Esperanto in brief

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Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, the language planner

Born in Bia lystok, 1859, a town now in Poland – then under the Tsar– Zamenhof was a Jew (Litvak Ashkenazi), bilingual Yiddish (with hismother) and Russian (with his father).

He had a twofold dream in his life: to set an ethnic-free bridge acrossthe nations, beyond any kind of wall, through a neutral religion(Hillelism) and a neutral language (Esperanto).20 of 62

The cover of the first book of Esperanto, 1887

The first sentence in Esperanto ever (Zamenhof 1887)

The first example has a marked word order!

....[main phrase] ..cu ..vi ..gin ..ne ..vidis ..□?.. ..Polar-Q ..you ..it ..not ..saw ..it

.

movement

.

root

.

question

.

(. . . )

.

subj

.

dobj

.

advmod

Zamenhof did not give clear cues for the word order in Esperanto.

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French Esperantists come into the arena

Source: Garvıa (2015:78)

Universala Kongreso, 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France

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La bela songo de l’ homaro. . .

. . . ends with the Great War (1914-1918)

c⃝ 1915 Louis Raemaekers satirieke kaart van Europa, Het gekkenhuis (oud liedje, nieuwe wijs)

Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War

According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garvıa (2015:100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927), these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US, UK, Germany-Austria):

‘Vestaȷoj malnovaj’, from: The Great Dictator, 1940

CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio

vestaȷoj malnovaj means ‘second-hand cloths’

The dangerous language: Hitler and Stalin againstEsperanto

c⃝ 2014 Dan Mazur. Esperantists

After the end of the Second World War, Esperanto was forced tochange his strategy so to propose

Since the 1950s, Esperanto is part of the linguisticrights

■ Unesco in 1954 (Montevideo, Uruguay) recognizes that the resultsattained by Esperanto correspond with the aims and ideals ofUnesco

■ Unesco in 1985 (Sofia, Bulgary) “Invites the Member States tomark the centenary of Esperanto by suitable arrangements,declarations, issuing of special postal stamps, etc., and to promotethe introduction of a study programme on the language problemand Esperanto in their schools and higher educational institutions”

The map of the future: TEJO Member Associations

TEJO is the umbrella association of the young Esperantists

Major periods of the Esperanto language

■ Planning phase: 1978-1887: Zamenhof prepares the language;

■ Pioneers’ phase: 1887-1905: most Esperantists come from Russia;

■ French phase: 1905-1920: Geneva and Paris become the centres ofinnovation

■ European phase: 1921-1939: Esperanto mainly used between theEast and the West sides of the continent;

■ Polycentric phase: 1945-1993: Esperanto gets the attention of theUN and Unesco, with many centres of innovation across the world.

■ Digital phase: 1993-now: after the fall of USSR and the spread ofthe World Wide Web, the Esperanto Movement is forced torenovate itself again.

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The corpus-based study ofnoun-adjective collocation:preliminary observations

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How diachrony affects the Esperanto word order?

■ Fact: from my participant observation (since 1997), noun-adjcollocation is considered archaic or even wrong in contemporaryEsperanto;

■ Hypothesis: the ‘superlect’ of Esperanto changes across time, andthis partially affects the word order;

1. first, there was Russian (until 1905);2. then, French (until 1945);3. in the aftermath of the Second Word War, English.

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Participant observation: pioneer’s collocation. . .

La Espero

Sur⟨

neutrala lingva fundamento⟩

komprenante unu la alian,la popoloj faros en konsentounu

⟨grandan rondon familian

⟩

Zamenhof (1891)

On a neutral language basis,understanding one another,the people will make in agreementone great family circle.

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. . . and the contemporary collocation

Samideano

samideano, cu vi atendas gis la⟨

fina venko?⟩

samideano, ni ciuj sidas sur⟨

la sama benko⟩

samideano, cu vi laboras por⟨

pli bona mondo?⟩

, oh jes

samideano, kion signifas⟨

‘familia rondo’?⟩

Eterna Rima (2011)

samideano, are you waiting for the final victory?samideano, we all sit on the same bank,samideano, are you working for a better world?samideano, what does ‘familia rondo’ mean?

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Methodology of the study (currently undergoing)

■ The corpus-based analysis of frequent expressions in the commonEsperanto discourse aims to test the hypothesis. The two toolsused for the study are:

1. The digital online corpus http://www.tekstaro.com/ by BertiloWennergren; XML-encoding (TEI initiative), 4,675,412 words (Feb2009; in particular Zamenhof’s texts can be selected as a distinctsub-corpus;

2. Frequency Dictionary Esperanto by Sabine Fiedler et al. (2014) at theUniversity of Leipzig; it gives the most frequent words in real-worldEsperanto discourse, so to choose meaningful noun-adj. 250,000entries.

■ Nota Bene: my results are very preliminary!

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Pilot study: ‘Esperanto’, ‘internacia’, ‘lingvo’

According to the Frequency Dictionary Esperanto:

■ Esperanto (67) is the most frequent noun;

■ internacia ‘international’ (277) is used together with lingvo with asymbolic significance (personal observation);

■ lingvo (92) is of course one of the most used words – with theother forms: lingvoj (195), lingvon (253), lingvojn (887), not tomention compounds like planlingvo (8298)

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Zamenhof’s use of ‘international language’ 1/3


Note that there are only 4 entries with the adj-noun word order –zero entries for internaciaj lingvoj, internacian lingvon, internaciajnlingvojn.

Early use of ‘language’ with adjectives

■ Pioneers Vojagimpresoj [Trip impressions, 1895] is a notebookpublished after a trip of two students of the University of Uppsala(Sweden) across Europe, members of the Upsala KluboEsperantista.

■ (Early) French period selection of texts just after 1905 andbefore the Great War, the moment of enthusiasm – and fundingsfor publication.

■ European phase:□ use in Vivo de Zamenhof [Life of Zamenhof, 1920] by Edmond Privat,

eminent figure of the Swiss Movement in Geneva.□ use in Zamenhof [1929] by Ernest Drezen, Soviet Esperantist, eminent

interlinguist and Esperantologist.□ use in Vortoj de Kamarado E. Lanti [Words of Comrade E. Lanti,

1920-1929], the founder of the anationalist Esperanto Movement.

‘language’ with adjectives in the French period 1/2

‘language’ with adjectives in the French period 2/2

Use by Edmond Privat 1/2

Use by Edmond Privat 2/2

Use by Ernest Drezen 1/2

Use by Ernest Drezen 2/2

Use by Eugeno Lanti 1/2

Use by Eugeno Lanti 2/2

Modern use of ‘language’ with adjectives

■ Polycentric phase:□ use in Azia strategio [Asian strategy, 1963] by Victor Sadler, British

esperantist living in the Netherlands, who played an important role inthe international movement.

□ use for literature (mainly short stories and poems) by Hungarianauthors Kalocsay, Szilagyi and Szathmari in the 1950-60s

□ use in Tokio invitas vin [Tokio invites you, 1963] by Yagi, JapaneseEsperantist

□ use in Por pli efika informado [For a more effective information, 1974],by Ivo Lapenna, the most influent Esperantist in the 1950-1970s.

■ Digital phase:□ use in the articles of the monthly magazine Monato [Month], in the

years 1997-2003 – 578,826 words.

‘language’ used by Victor Sadler

How it is used by Hungarian authors

How it is used by a Japanese author

The use of ‘language’ by Ivo Lapenna 1/2

The use of ‘language’ by Ivo Lapenna 2/2

The use of ‘language’ in Monato 1/2

The use of ‘language’ in Monato 2/2

A lot of work still to be done. . .

■ There are almost no studies on the diachrony of Esperanto. Still tobe explored.

■ In Russian ‘international language’ is mezhdunarodnyy yazyk, likeEnglish, but Zamenhof followed mainly the model of French(langue internationale).

■ Even if Zamenhof was naturally considered the first stylistic modelof Esperanto, in truth his style – at least in the adj-nouncollocation – was not followed by the Esperanto authors, even hiscontemporaries.

■ The expression lingvo internacia remains a pseudo-idiomatic form,referring to Zamenhof himself by other authors.

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A “natural” equilibrium in the system?

Corpus-based data do not corroborate fully the hypothesis. Perhapsthe structure of Esperanto leads towards the adj-noun structure“naturally”, having seen that:

1. the compounds are borrowed from the Germanic Sprachbund(remember terpomo)

2. the pronominal system also tends to a similar form: nia lingvo is‘our language’, while lingvo nia is ‘one of our languages’ – markedform, pertaining the prestigious, high register of the language use.

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Thanks for your attention! Dankon por via atento!

Questions? Comments?

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⟨[email protected]⟩

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word order in the diachrony of esperanto: a corpus-based study of noun-adjective collocation