contact effects in phonology

Astrid Monrad, 20071314. Thesis. Department of Linguistics, Aarhus University, summer 2012.

Contact Effects in Phonology: A Case-study of Finno-Romani

Index Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ 21. Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 22. Background .................................................................................................................................. 5

2.1. Sociolinguistic explanations ................................................................................................ 52.2. Structural explanations ........................................................................................................ 92.3. Typological explanations ................................................................................................... 122.4. Summary ............................................................................................................................ 13

3. Method ....................................................................................................................................... 143.1. Data .................................................................................................................................... 153.2. Procedure ........................................................................................................................... 17

4. Preliminary data analysis ........................................................................................................... 204.1. Cases which might be both loanwords and inherited words .............................................. 214.2. Cases with semantic shift ................................................................................................... 224.3. Cases with different cognates ............................................................................................ 244.4. Morphology ....................................................................................................................... 254.5. Other considerations .......................................................................................................... 25

5. Data analysis .............................................................................................................................. 265.1. Analysis of correspondences with vowels ......................................................................... 275.2. Discussion of vowel inventories ........................................................................................ 335.3. Analysis of correspondences with consonants ................................................................... 36

5.3.1. Sonorants .................................................................................................................... 365.3.2. Obstruents .................................................................................................................. 41

5.4. Discussion of consonant inventories .................................................................................. 515.5. Stress and length ................................................................................................................ 58

5.5.1. Stress .......................................................................................................................... 585.5.2. Length in vowels ........................................................................................................ 595.5.3. Length in consonants ................................................................................................. 61

6. Discussion .................................................................................................................................. 637. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 70 References ..................................................................................................................................... 71 Appendix 1 – Sorting of wordlists ................................................................................................. 74 Appendix 2 – Cognates used in the analysis ................................................................................. 82 Appendix 3 – Correspondence sets ................................................................................................ 85 Appendix 4 – Protoforms ............................................................................................................... 96

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AbstractThis paper investigates phonological contact effects through a case study of Finno-Romani.

Existing research on the topic is presented, covering sociolinguistic, structural and typological

studies. The development of Finno-Romani since its contact with Finnish is examined using the

comparative method, and the changes are discussed in relation to the sound system of Finnish. I find

that many changes are predictable from a combination of knowledge of the sociolinguistic situation

and analysis of the sounds of the involved languages. In addition to this, I also find that certain

changes in Finno-Romani cannot be explained solely with contact with Finnish, but that these

changes have nevertheless happened because of it. I discuss two different views of phonological

change and how they are applicable to the case of Finno-Romani, and find that although the two are

not immediately reconcilable, they each contribute important information. I conclude that more

studies with a structural focus are needed in order to better understand the mechanics of

phonological change in contact situations.

1. Introduction

In this thesis I systematically examine the process of phonetic and phonological change in a

language in close contact with another language. The goal is to produce a thorough case-study of

the phonetic and phonological aspects of language contact, and to propose future ways to study this

phenomenon. The case-study in question is of Finno-Romani which has been in very close contact

with Swedish and Finnish for a long time, and is reported to have changed significantly as a result

of this contact, including its phonology (Granqvist 2002; Granqvist 1999a; Granqvist 1999b).

Romani is well suited for this kind of study because its various branches have been in contact with

many different languages. For this reason, there are rich grounds for future comparisons. Finno-

Romani in particular is suited for this explorative case-study as its geographical placement means

that it has a much more limited range of possible contact languages than for instance some of the

Romani dialects of Central Europe. When reconstructing the development of Finno-Romani's sound

system since its split from the other Romani dialects, I compare the changes in Finno-Romani with

the phonological systems in its latest contact language, Finnish. This is in order to determine which

of the possible contact-induced changes have happened and which have not, and what this might

reveal about the mechanics of language change in contact situations.

There are many different aspects of language contact and many different ways of studying

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them (sociolinguistic studies, studies of politically motivated language change, studies of mixed

languages and studies of language attrition to name but a few), and all of these aspects are

obviously interconnected and can each provide a deeper understanding of the others. In section 2 I

provide a general overview of the suggested explanations of contact-induced language change that

seem most relevant to the present study. However, as this subject field is so enormous, I focus in the

main analysis almost exclusively on the structural aspects of language change and what these might

reveal about the general workings of human languages.

Languages are in close contact with other languages all over the world, and the situation in

which they start to affect one another can reveal much about the nature of human language. From a

structural point of view, any situation in which two language systems are in contact with each other

can reveal something crucial about both the languages involved and the human language capacity.

Or, as Matras (2009: 3) puts it, it can help us gain “an understanding of the inner functions and the

inner structure of 'grammar' and the language faculty itself”.

For this reason, as well as for many others, the field of contact linguistics is large and

growing (Matras 2009: 3), but to the best of my knowledge no studies like the present one have

been carried out: A study in which a careful mapping of the phonetic and phonological language

history is compared to that of the given language's contact language(s). Two studies examine

phonetic and phonological effects of language contact: Shaw & Balusu (2010) study changes in

Japanese fricatives caused by contact with English, and Lleó, Cortès & Benet (2008) deal with

changes in vowels in Catalan caused by contact with Spanish. Both do so by choosing a specific

sound type and examining only that. In the case of Lleó, Cortès & Benet 2008, it is not even clear

what the motivation for choosing those specific sound types is. Inspired by the point made by

Thomason (2001: 93) that it is important to study the whole of a system when determining whether

a change is contact-induced or not, I therefore examine the whole of the segmental inventories

involved, as well as stress patterns and length in vowels and consonants. Ideally, the scope would be

even broader and include not only phonotactics, but also morphological, syntactic and

sociolinguistic factors as well, in addition to more precise phonetic measurements. This would

provide a larger context for the sound changes in language contact studies. However, given the

limited space available for this study, I have deemed it more useful to pick out a single, clearly

demarcated subject of analysis instead of including bits and pieces from all domains.

The term 'language contact' covers a broad spectrum of different kinds and levels of contact.

My focus in this paper is on situations in which one language has caused considerable change in

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another but not (at least not yet) caused actual language death, and in which the changed language

can still be recognised as the original language. That is, I will not focus on actual mixed languages

or creoles, nor on language attrition or substratum effects, only on intensive contact in a situation of

bilingualism.

As already mentioned, my focus within the area of language contact is phonetics and

phonology. There are several reasons for this. First and foremost, it is a field of study which –

compared to contact morphology and syntax – has been neglected in recent years. Second, given

that phonetics and subsequently phonology work within the boundaries of the human articulatory

capacity, it offers a more finite set of variations than morphology and syntax, which are limited

mainly by cognition. This limitation makes it easier to gain a good understanding of which contact

effects are more likely to occur as many can be ruled out from the very beginning.

Given the focus on the structural aspects and the declared goal of investigating the human

language faculty through it, I will also touch (however briefly) upon the psycholinguistic aspects of

bilingualism and multilingualism, as it is neither entirely possible nor indeed desirable to separate

the synchronic aspects of language change from the diachronic aspects. In this I am inspired by

Matras (2009: 2-6), whose declared goal it is to incorporate synchronic as well as diachronic studies

into a coherent, functionalist model of communication which also takes into account “inner

coherence of language systems” as well as models of bilingual language processing, typological

findings and contact linguistics. While the construction of such a model is very much outside the

scope of this study, I nevertheless present my analysis in a way that might later be useful in the

discussion of such models. This is clearly an area of study which is nowhere near exhaustion and

one which I hope to contribute to.

The structure of this paper is as follows: In section 2 I give a more detailed presentation of

the work already done in the field of contact linguistics in general and in phonetic and phonological

aspects of language contact in particular. I then explain my choice of method and the data used in

the analysis (section 3), and then move on to the analysis of my chosen case: Finno-Romani

(section 4). This is followed by an actual analysis of the sound changes that have taken place in

Finno-Romani since its arrival in Finland, and these are compared with Finnish throughout the

analysis (section 5). I round off this presentation with a discussion of my findings and the

theoretical consequences they have for the study of phonetics and phonology in contact situations

(section 6) and I conclude the paper in section 7.

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2. Background

I now present the research area of contact-induced sound change. In order to make the presentation

more structured, I split the topic into three different branches, following Matras 2007. Each of these

branches will be presented and related to the subject of the case-study presented in section 5.

In an overview of proposed explanations of structural borrowing, Matras (2007: 34)

identifies three different directions that explanations of contact-induced change might take: (1)

Explanations that are concerned with “the degree of borrowing as related to the intensity of

exposure to the contact language” (from here called 'sociolinguistic explanations'), (2) Explanations

that are concerned with “the outcome of language contact as a product of the structural similarities

and differences (congruence) among the languages concerned” (called 'structural explanations'), and

(3) Explanations that are concerned with borrowability as a product of inherent traits of a given

category (called 'typological explanations').

As all three aspects (sociolinguistic, structural and typological) are obviously relevant to an

explanation of a contact situation and its effects, I will not in the following limit myself to dealing

with only one of them. In fact, they are not entirely separable anyway. The main analysis in this

study, however, is designed to cast light on the process from the point of view of the second type of

explanations – the structural. In order to give the reader a solid context for the structural analysis, I

also give an overview of the first (sociolinguistic explanations) and third (typological explanations)

types of explanations, and provide the most basic information needed to understand how Finno-

Romani might be explained according to these.

2.1. Sociolinguistic explanations

Without doubt the most influential work concerned with the degree of contact and its consequence

for the degree of borrowing, is the monograph by Thomason & Kaufman (1988). As is very clearly

stated, Thomason & Kaufman hold the view that, while purely linguistic considerations are

relevant, “it is the sociolinguistic history of the speakers, and not the structure of their language,

that is the primary determinant of the linguistic outcome of language contact” (Thomason &

Kaufman 1988: 35). While it has been suggested that this is not quite right (Treffers-Daller 1999),

the view has also been defended from many different sides (see for instance Beeching 1999;

Poplack & Meechan 1999; Sebba 1999; Thomason 1999; Winford 1999). To my knowledge nobody

disputes that the degree and type of contact is indeed very relevant to the linguistic outcome of the

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contact situation. In the frame-work of Thomason & Kaufman (1988: 50), the sociolinguistic

circumstances of Finno-Romani can be characterised as being a case of language maintenance (as

opposed to language shift) as Finno-Romani is not quite in the process of being abandoned by their

speakers (see Vuorela & Borin 1998 for a more nuanced view on this though). In addition to this, it

is a case with “intensive contact, including much bilingualism among borrowing-language speakers

over a long period of time” (Thomason & Kaufman 1988: 50). Indeed, speakers of Finno-Romani

are probably all dominant in Finnish. According to the model, this leads to a high degree of lexical

borrowing, and moderate to heavy structural borrowing, especially at the phonological domain. This

is to some extent true, although the lexical borrowing from Finnish into Finno-Romani is

surprisingly limited (for more on this, see section 3.2). Finally, Finno-Romani can be argued to be

under a fairly strong cultural pressure from the surrounding Finnish-speaking society (see however

again Vuorela & Borin 1998 for a more nuanced presentation of the situation), which is predicted to

lead to massive grammatical replacement. This is also true, depending on the exact definition of

'massive'. The model thus seems to predict the results of the contact quite well based on the

sociolinguistic parameters of the situation.

In a similar tradition, but within a more speaker and communication oriented model, Matras

2009 proposes a functionalist view of communication in contact situations which explains contact-

induced language change with the bilingual speaker as the central actor. In this model, change in

contact situations happens to balance two opposing tendencies: The tendency to remain loyal to a

specific repertoire in specific contexts (that is – to keep the acquired languages strictly separated

and to keep each language linked to its specific social contexts) and the tendency to exploit the full

expressive potential of the whole of the available repertoire (that is – to mix the acquired languages

in order to be able to choose the most fitting trait in the situation, no matter which language specific

items belong to). The way to balance these things is to reduce the amount of choices the bilingual

has to make between the two opposing tendencies. This balance can be achieved for the speaker by

making the involved languages more similar to each other. If one language borrows a word from the

other, it becomes unnecessary for the bilingual speaker to make a decision of whether or not to use

the given word in a context that invites loyalty to the recipient language. At the same time, the full

expressive potential is freely available.

When it comes to phonology in a contact situation specifically, Matras (2009: 221) notes

that certain aspects are notably different from other grammatical domains such as morphology and

syntax. Firstly, sound material falls somewhere between matter (content) and pattern (structure; for

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a more thorough discussion of these terms and their roles in language change, see Sakel 2007).

Sounds obviously have a clear and audible content (and therefore matter), but at the same time

sounds on their own cannot carry actual meaning in the way that for instance morphemes can.

Therefore, the borrowing of sound patterns is not quite comparable to the borrowing of grammatical

structures. Secondly, physiology restrains phonetics and phonology, but not morphology and syntax.

There are therefore limits to the speakers' choice of whether or not to adopt new sounds from a

contact language, especially if the speaker is an adult.

Matras (2009) claims that all levels of phonetics and phonology may be borrowed, from

phonetic features to phonemes to more prosodic features. Based on various degrees of contact (and

in this his model is similar to that of Thomason & Kaufman 1988), he then lists four different types

of processes leading to contact-induced phonological change. These four types (called A, B, C and

D) cover both changes in a speaker's native language and in the contact language as spoken by the

bilingual non-native speaker. In type “A” changes happen to elements borrowed into a language and

not to the language that borrowed them. This is the kind of change that Singh (1996) calls

“adaptation” and in which the phonology of borrowed words are adapted to fit the phonology of the

recipient language. In Matras' speaker-centered model, this reflects a situation in which the speakers

wish to remain loyal to their native language (while obviously still exploiting the potential for

expression, given the fact that the borrowing has happened at all).

In the type called “B”, there is also borrowing of words from a contact language into the

recipient language, but no phonological adaptation is taking place. Rather, the borrowed words are

allowed to keep their original shape leading to an enrichment of the phonology of the recipient

language. This is what Singh (1996) calls “incorporation”, and this requires a degree of competence

in the bilingual speakers which is not necessary for adaptation. In Matras' model, this reflects a

situation in which the speakers are less concerned with staying loyal to their native language, and

they are more concerned with allowing borrowed words to keep their foreign traits. This is

generally due to the source language having a higher status than the recipient language. Both type A

and type B describe situations in which individual borrowed words are affected and not the whole

phonological system.

In the type called “C”, there is widespread bilingualism, and speakers are uncomfortable

maintaining two separate phonological systems. The solution to this for the speakers is to speak the

contact language with something close to, or significantly influenced by, the native language's

phonology. This is frequently described as 'substrate effects' and in individuals the process is

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commonly known simply as 'accent': The speakers are competent in both languages but find it

easier to use the same phonological system (or at least parts of it) in both. In Matras' model this

helps speakers avoid the choice between which phonological system is most fitting in a given

context. One might argue that if the language spoken has to be decided upon, then the choice of

phonology is a simple consequence of this choice and should therefore not offer any dilemma.

Matras does not specifically comment on this, but, as already mentioned, it is noted that there are

physiological limitations as well as communicative ones when it comes to phonology. I find it likely

that physiological ability is more relevant to the phonological aspect than the competing forces of

loyalty and communicative efficiency. Type C is similar to type A in that there is a transfer of the

native language's features onto the foreign material, and not the other way around.

In the type called “D”, something similar to type C happens, but in this case the contact

language is dominant enough (that is, it has high status and there are many and competent

bilinguals), that it is the phonology of the native language ('native' in this case being a somewhat

dubious label as it might not always be the speaker's first language) which is adapted to fit the

phonology of the contact language. Type D is similar to type B in that native material adapts to fit

the foreign sound patterns. Type D is similar to type C in that speakers in both of these types try to

avoid the selection of sounds from two distinct inventory sets and therefore end up using just one

set.

There is no claim that the four types are meant as each describing only one specific and

distinct type of language contact, as there is overlap between the types. Furthermore, various types

can often be found in the same contact situation. The main claim is that speakers in contact

situations constantly navigate the opposing pressures of loyalty to one given language and the

practical urge not to have to choose between two separate sound systems. The result is that speakers

find themselves somewhere on a continuum which goes from having two completely separate

systems and having the systems overlap and essentially become one. The placement on this

continuum correlates with the degree of bilingualism found in the community: The higher the level

of bilingualism, the more likely a convergence of the involved systems is found.

While it is outside of the scope of this study to discuss sociolinguistic factors thoroughly, I

will in this section - drawing heavily on work done by Vuorela & Borin 1998 - briefly summarise

what is known about the social and political conditions of Finno-Romani in present and past. This is

intended to give the reader an idea about which sort of language contact is being dealt with here,

and where contact effects might have come from.

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The Roma-speakers of Finland are descendants of a group of Roma who came to Sweden in

the early 16th century, after having split from the other Roma groups (which are now spread across

Europe). They first appeared in Finland (which was a part of Sweden until 1809) in the late 16th

century (Vuorela & Borin 1998: 52). The Roma continued to come to Finland from Sweden until

1809, when Finland became Russian, and the Roma residing in Finland at that time are thought to

be the ancestors of the modern day Finnish Roma (Vuorela & Borin 1998: 53). To this day, many

Finnish Roma (an estimated third of the total 9000) live partly in Finland and partly in Sweden

(Vuorela & Borin 1998: 55). During the centuries since the Roma's arrival in Finland, they have

been singled out as a group with various negative traits by authorities (Vuorela & Borin 1998: 54).

and for this reason Finno-Romani has always been a low-status language. All Finnish Roma also

speak Finnish and for many of them it is their first and perhaps even only language. Nevertheless,

Romani is kept alive as an in-group language which is learnt in late childhood as a part of the

adoption of Roma cultural behaviour (Vuorela & Borin 1998: 60). In 1998 Finland signed the

European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages and identified Romani as a non-territorial

minority language of Finland (Ministry of Social Affairs and Health of Finland 2004: 22). This

however does not mean that the Roma (and in extension their language) generally enjoy a high

status. All speakers of Finno-Romani are bilingual, and as already mentioned, Romani is in most

families learned in late childhood. Romani is therefore the second language of the younger

generations with Finnish being the first. According to the models of both Thomason & Kaufman

(1988) and Matras (2009), this puts the contact situation between Finnish and Romani in the groups

that is expected to show the most contact effects. According to Matras' model, given this degree of

contact, the two phonological systems are likely to have more or less converged into one. Whether

or not this expectation holds true will be discussed further in section 6.

2.2. Structural explanations

When it comes to the more structurally-oriented explanations of the processes of contact-induced

phonological change, there is to my knowledge no coherent model of what might be the expected

outcome when two languages are in close contact. However, there are several smaller contributions

to the field, and I will present some of them here.

Still within the framework of the model described above, Matras (2009) describes various

types of phonological contact effects based primarily on the empirical work described in (Matras

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2007). As these various effects do not seem to be grouped or in any hierarchy, they will simply be

presented one by one.

One process that is commonly found in situations with a great amount of contact, is that

sounds in loanwords are reinterpreted as native sounds. Matras (2009: 226) notes the following of

the process: “Speakers perceive similarities between a sound X in one language, and a sound Y in

another. These similarities usually derive from shared features in the position of articulation of the

two sounds, sometimes also in the mode of articulation. On this basis, one sound is allowed to

represent the other.” In types A and C this process happens with the native language as the template

and the borrowed words as something which is mapped onto it. This process is called

'approximation'.

Another process is the loss of features, and this process leads to the omission of one or more

features in a phoneme in a loanword. The omission is typically due to the feature being difficult for

speakers of the recipient language to pronounce, and omissions are therefore unlikely to have

counterparts in the recipient language. This might happen not only to single features but also to

phonemes or specific phoneme combinations such as consonant clusters, which might be reduced in

loanwords. In some cases these reductions of features or phonemes may result in a disruption of the

general phonological system, as some distinctions might be lost. This might lead to words which

were minimal pairs in the source language to merge in the recipient language.

Related to feature loss is phoneme substitution. In this process, phonemes in loanwords are

substituted by phonemes in the recipient language that share enough features with them, so that they

seem somewhat similar. According to Matras (2009: 227), this is a very common process, as it is

very likely that a given pair of languages share features of a given phoneme but a lot more unlikely

that they share the exact same combination of features in the same phoneme.

Syllable structure and stress systems too are susceptible to changes when loanwords are

incorporated into a recipient language, although this does not always happen. Even when no actual

changes in the phonological system happen, there might be a frequency effect when a certain

phoneme with a somewhat peripheral function in the recipient language is given a more prominent

role due to its occurrence in many loanwords. It might also happen that loanwords are allowed a life

outside the general phonological rules of the recipient language. In contrast to this it might also

happen that an extensive borrowing leads to a deeper change in the phonology than merely an

enrichment of the inventory. If, for instance, a sufficiently large amount of loanwords are borrowed

in which a given phoneme type is found in positions where it is not usually found in the recipient

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language, then the established system might adjust. In cases with even more effect on the recipient

language's phonology (“convergence”, Matras 2009: 229), the similarities between the languages

involved increase. This might lead to enrichment of one of the inventories, but also loss of

phonemes in one of the languages. A very frequent stating point of convergence is the borrowing of

an allophonic variation and/or the rules for its distribution.

In direct relation to the notion that phonological convergence starts with the borrowing of

allophonic variations or distributions rather than of new sounds, Shaw & Balusu (2010) present a

study of changes found in Japanese due to contact with English. Their proposal is that new

phonological distinctions that are found in loans, are parasitic on existing phonetic (but non-

phonemic) differences found in the receiving language. The example studied by Shaw & Balusu

(2010) is the phonological contrast between [ti] and [tʃi] which is found in Japanese in loanwords

from English. Japanese does have the contrast [ti] – [tʃi], but only as a prosodically conditioned

difference: [tʃi] appears in prosodically strong environment such as heads of feet and accented

syllables, while [ti] appears elsewhere. The phonological contrast in the English loanwords thus has

a ready phonetic continuum to map unto, and it is the suggestion of Shaw & Balusu (2010: 157) that

this is a prerequisite for the preservation of the contrast in the loanwords. The suggestion is

strengthened by the reported fact that most contrasts not found in the native phonology are simply

neutralised in English loanwords in Japanese.

Singh (1996) combines structural explanations with typological ones to explain why certain

features will be more easily borrowed than others. Citing The Universal Syllabic Template (which

states that the nucleus of a syllable is the peak of sonority and that going out from this peak (to both

sides) the sonority will be steadily falling), he states that it is easy to borrow something that fits a

general principle (such as the Universal Syllable Template) even if the recipient language originally

has a gap in that place. As an example he mentions that English does not have the consonant

combination [vl] in syllable onset even though this fits the Universal Syllable Template. However,

the fact that it does fit the Universal Syllable Template, makes it easy for English speakers to

pronounce borrowed words from Russian such as 'Vladimir', and this fact will make words with

these phoneme sequences more likely to be borrowed unchanged into English than others.

Lleó, Cortès & Benet (2008) set up two different sets of expectations to the outcome of a

study of Catalan vowels during contact with Spanish. One of the sets of expectations is based on a

general typological basis while the other is based on a comparison of Spanish and Catalan

phonologies. While the results are not entirely clear-cut, the comparison of the specific phonologies

11


is deemed by the authors to be the best predictor of the outcome. Catalan has a vowel system with

four mid-vowels: /e/, /o/, /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ whereas Spanish only has /e/ and /o/. As the Spanish system is

less complex, it is expected that Catalan in contact with Spanish will have a tendency to merge /e/

with /ɛ/ and /o/ with /ɔ/ (cf. Matras' description of phoneme loss in section 2.2). The authors wonder

which of the two original mid-vowel sets ([e] – [o] and [ɛ] - [ɔ]) will be the realisation of this

merged phone in Catalan. In order to investigate this, they make recordings of three generations of

speakers of Catalan living in two different parts of Barcelona with different proportions of Catalan

speakers. It turns out that in speakers who displays most contact effects, the [e] - [o] vowel set is the

one primarily found in Catalan as the realisations of the merged phonemes. Lleó, Cortès & Benet

(2008) do not really explain why they chose to look at vowels rather than something else, or how

they started suspecting that there might be something to look for. I find that this lack of insight into

the whole of the phonological systems makes the study a little hard to assess.

As structural explanations of contact-induced change are the main focus of sections 3 - 6 and

as they will be treated there, I will not elaborate on the phonological structure of Finno-Romani or

Finnish here.

2.3. Typological explanations

Explanations of phonological contact-induced changes based on typological factors are relatively

rare, and the reason seems to be that there simply are not very many: “it does not seem possible at

this stage to point to any position within the phonological system (e.g. certain articulatory modes or

positions, marked features, etc.) as being particularly prone to contact-induced change. It seems that

the details of phonological change are entirely a product of the relations among the two systems –

or congruence – and any statistics of change are likely to simply reflect the mere likelihood of the

two phoneme systems in contact to share certain phonemes, and to differ with respect of others.”

(Matras 2007: 39). Matras (2009: 228) does add that new consonants are more likely to be adopted

than new vowels, but this is attributed to the fact that consonant inventories are generally larger

than vowel inventories and that there is therefore a higher potential among the consonants of not

overlapping between the involved languages. This entails a higher pressure on the consonant

systems to adjust than the vowel systems. Also, prosodic features seem to be more susceptible to

borrowing than segmental phonology, which is attributed partly to the somewhat peripheral role

prosody has to meaning and partly to “the proven neurophysical separation between prosody and

12


other aspects of speech production” (Matras 2009: 233). Here it is quite relevant to mention that

Matras (2009: 231) does not seem to count stress as a prosodic feature stating “prosody seems to be

more prone to cross-linguistic replication in contact situations than segmental phonology, with

stress figuring in-between the two”.

It has been proposed that markedness is highly relevant for the likelihood a trait has of being

transferred. Lleó, Cortès & Benet (2008) present a “Jakobsonian perspective” on markedness (for

more on this, see Jakobson 1968) in which “marked entities presuppose unmarked ones in a

typological, diachronic and acquisition sense” (Lleó, Cortès & Benet 2008: 188), meaning that for a

language to have a marked trait, it must also have the unmarked corresponding version of it. It is

never made entirely clear by Lleó, Cortès & Benet (2008) what exactly one should understand by

'corresponding'. In the case of phonology it seems clear enough that a voiced stop can be said to be

more marked than an unvoiced one with the same place of articulation, but how far the notion of

'correspondence' can be taken is unclear. Is an unvoiced fricative in any way 'corresponding' to an

unvoiced stop, for instance?

Another factor which Lleó, Cortès & Benet (2008: 188) propose as relevant to borrowability

is complexity. 'Complexity' is meant as a psycholinguistic notion and is specifically linked to

allophony. The more allophones a phoneme has, the more complex it will be, as it will cost the

learner more work: There is more decoding to be done, and also more rules to learn in order to

produce the right phone in the right environment. Although it is never overtly stated, the assumption

seems to be that a complex trait might be harder to borrow than a simple one. This assumes that

phonemes are borrowed as a complete packet with all the allophones of the source language.

Finally, Lleó, Cortès & Benet (2008: 188) also suggest that traits which are frequent and

dominating in the source language are more easily transferred to another language. As Lleó, Cortès

& Benet (2008: 188) point out, this should not be confused with frequency in all the languages of

the world as that would be a matter of markedness rather than frequency. This suggestion is not

really followed up in the discussion of the results, but the overall conclusion is that a comparison of

the involved phonological systems (as described in section 2.2) is a better predictor of the outcome

of language contact than any general, inherent traits of the constituents of the phonologies.

2.4. Summary

In conclusion, sociolinguistic explanations of situations of language contact can successfully predict

the degree of contact effects found in the affected language(s). However, if one wants to know more

13


about the contact effects than merely their degree, other explanations and models are necessary.

While typological explanations have limited success in predicting the outcome of language contact,

more structural approaches do seem capable of predicting not only the degree but also more

specifically the type of contact effects. Still, there are limited resources on this in the existing

literature. Shaw & Balusu (2010) and Lleó, Cortès & Benet (2008) each cover only small corners of

the phonological systems of Japanese and Catalan respectively, and while Matras (2009) does list

many possible effects, he does not really comment on how these might be interrelated in one

phonological system. The overall focus missing thus seems to be a cohesive investigation of whole,

specific cases.

In order to at least begin to fill this gap, I now turn to an analysis of Finno-Romani and the

phonetic and phonological changes which have happened to it since it became a separate dialect

branch.

Finno-Romani is very useful for investigations of this sort. Firstly, various branches of

Romani have been in contact with so many different languages that there are very rich possibilities

for further comparisons. These comparisons might be studies of how similar languages behave in

contact with different languages – something that might give a greater understanding of what

language is and needs in order to be a language. This makes Romani in general uniquely suited to

this sort of study. Secondly, Finno-Romani is a collection of very similar but not quite identical

dialect variations. It is found in a relatively isolated part of Europe as Finland is geographically at

the fringe of the European landmass and also to a great extent surrounded by water, and addition to

this, speakers of Finno-Romani are rarely in contact with speakers of other Romani varieties. These

circumstances makes it, in a way, simply easier to work with than many other Romani dialects

spoken in for example Central Europe because there are limited sources of contact. I therefore deem

Finno-Romani a good starting point, and in the following I outline my approach to its investigation.

3. Method

In this section I describe the data I use and the data-base they are collected from (section 3.1) and

outline the procedure of the analysis to be described in sections 4 and 5 which is the basis of the

results summarised and discussed in 6 (3.2). This section also includes considerations about

possible but rejected procedures and the evolution of the remaining one, as it has changed a great

deal since the beginning of this project, and with good reason. I briefly describe the reasons for

14


these changes and why I find the present approach the most reasonable.

3.1. Data

The data used in this thesis is all collected from the Romani Morpho-Syntax database (RMS-

database, http://romani.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/rms/), (see Matras, White & Elšik 2009 for a

more detailed description). The RMS-database is a publicly accessible online collection of sound

files and transcriptions of speakers of various Romani-dialects reading aloud wordlists, translating

sentences into Romani, and engaging in narration. In addition to being simply a collection, the

database also makes various modes of cross-dialectic search available and is thus a very useful tool

in many different kinds of studies involving Romani (see for instance Elšik & Matras 2006) who

used it to compare morphological and syntactic changes found in the various dialects with the

languages they had each been in contact with). In most cases, the RMS-database does not give

information about their transcribers, but they are described as being mainly “graduate students

specialising in Romani linguistics” (Matras, White & Elšik 2009: 11). It is further noted that a great

amount of work went into assuring that the transcribers followed the same standards and

conventions for the transcription. It is also mentioned that the collection in the RMS-database was

gathered using an international network. I take this to mean that the transcribers working on Finno-

Romani were probably living in Finland as well and presumably native speakers of Finnish (which

they could be assumed to be even if they happened to be Finnish Roma, as mentioned in section

2.1). The transcription conventions used in the RMS-database are based on a standard transcription

consensus of Romani, which I have “translated” into broad IPA using both the sound files attached

to each word in the database and the existing transcriptions in the database. I found this the best

approach as I am well aware that there are important differences between various phonemes which I

being a Dane - albeit a linguistically trained one – would be hard pressed to notice, but which are

easily detected by native speakers of Finnish, especially in the realm of allophones. As several

sources note that Finno-Romani sounds a lot like Finnish (Granqvist 2002; Vuorela & Borin 1998),

it seemed the most prudent not to dismiss distinctions made by speakers of Finnish even in cases

when I myself could not hear it. In a very few cases I have deviated from the existing transcriptions,

as differences in the existing transcription and my own interpretation of the pronunciation seemed

large enough to justify it. These cases are discussed in the analysis. A last note on the transcription

is that as stress almost always falls on the first syllable in Finno-Romani, stress is marked only

15

http://romani.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/rms/


when this is not the case.

When it comes to Finno-Romani, the database provides word lists from six different

speakers. Two of these are noted as speaking West-Finnish Romani (These are referred to as FIN-

005 and FIN-011) and the remaining four East-Finnish (Referred to as FIN-002, FIN-006, FIN-008

and FIN-012). One of the West-Finnish lists (FIN-011) is very incomplete and has been excluded

from the analysis for this reason. One of the East-Finnish lists (FIN-002) does not have

corresponding sound files which makes it impossible to verify the transcription given, but as the

transcriptions of the other dialects are generally good, I have chosen to include this sample. The

sound files of FIN-008 have a lot of background noise which makes it virtually impossible to judge

the transcription of especially fricatives and affricates, but this sample has been included in the

analysis too for the same reason that FIN-002 has. In the following, the different samples will be

treated as different dialects although there is only one speaker for each sample. It is quite possible

that others factors such as speaker age and the register used have a greater influence on the data

than the geographical placement and dialect variety does. However, as I am investigating different

outcomes of Finno-Romani in contact with Finnish, it is not so very important which of the factors

might be most influential.

In addition to the samples of Finnish Romani, I also use the two Sinti dialects available in

the database: One currently spoken in Romania (RO-022), which has until very recently been

spoken in Germany, and another dialect currently spoken in Austria (AT-001x). These are assumed

to belong to the group called German Sinti by Matras (2002: 9). I include these samples as Sinti is

closely related to Finno-Romani. Together they form the subgroup Northwestern Romani and they

have many lexical parallels (Boretzky 2012), which makes them suitable for an analysis and

reconstruction like the one described in section 3.2.

Using a resource like the RMS-database has a number of advantages. Most notably, it saves

the researcher doing an analysis very much time, energy and money not having to collect their own

data. In a collection like this, much work has also been done so thoroughly and with so competent

people involved that the quality of the data is probably better than what one person could collect

within a reasonable time-span. That said, there are of course also disadvantages: Mainly, that one

does not get to choose which information is relevant. I would have preferred to know if all the

samples were indeed transcribed by native speakers of Finnish as I have assumed, and also what age

the informants had and what their background was. I find that the advantages are greater than the

disadvantages, and so I judge it reasonable to use the RMS-database for this investigation.

16


3.2. Procedure

I now describe the procedure I use to get the results presented in this project. Briefly stated, the goal

is to determine which sound changes have happened in Finno-Romani since its split from Sinti and

other related varieties, and consequent close contact with (Swedish and) Finnish. These changes are

then compared to the Finnish sounds and sound structures in an attempt to determine whether or not

and to what extent the changes are due to contact with Finnish. The procedure has changed

somewhat in the course of the project, and as these changes are very much a part of the process of

working with the data, and as they are important to know in order to understand the reasoning

behind my method, I will describe those as well.

Using the data from the RMS-database, the goal is to determine the course of phonetic and

phonological changes in Finno-Romani and whether or not these can be ascribed to contact effects.

The first part of the procedure is to determine which words in the word-lists are inherited

and which ones are borrowed. The inherited words are needed for input to the comparative method

(described below) and this is made difficult if recently borrowed material is used, so this distinction

is quite relevant.

Originally, the intention was to also use the borrowed words because I assumed that most of

them would be from Finnish. The idea was to examine these loanwords in order to make a

description of the phonetic and phonological systems they represented when they were borrowed

into Romani. These systems were then expected to be the systems of Finnish at the time of the

adoption. While the form that was borrowed into Romani might very well have been adapted

already at the point of adoption, this was not considered to be a problem as I was happy to

investigate the part of the process taking place after the adoption. The process of adopting

loanwords is a highly interesting topic, but it is more easily examined in studies with a more

synchronic approach such as Lleó, Cortès & Benet (2008) and Shaw & Balusu (2010). I considered

the diachronic perspective of this study to be much more appropriate to investigate the process

happening after the adaptation (although this approach did assume that the adaptation of the words

to the Romani phonology was not complete, and that there would be structural differences between

the loanwords and the inherited words). My intention was then to compare the description of the

phonetic and phonological properties of the loanwords to the phonetic and phonological properties

of Romani and also to the changes which have happened in Finno-Romani since then. It became

apparent that this method would not yield any results when the data sets made it clear that there are

in fact very few loanwords from Finnish in Finno-Romani. The reason seems to be that Romani has

17


been used as a secret language by the Finnish Roma (Vuorela & Borin 1998: 73), and this would

obviously be less effective if too many of the words were recognisable to Finnish speakers.

While this plan was then abandoned, I still needed to know what Romani had looked like

immediately before contact with Finnish (or at least as close to 'immediately before' as it was

possible to get) and which sound changes had happened since then. Inherited words have been

separated from loanwords by a combination of comparing them with the other Romani dialects in

the RMS-database and finding etymological information in the relevant literature (mainly Boretzky

2012; Valtonen 1972 and Matras 2010). If a word appears to have clear cognates in other, more

remotely related dialects attested in the RMS-database, it is assumed to be an inherited word. The

term “inherited” is somewhat relative in the case of Romani as many of the words assumed to be

inherited with the described procedure will in fact be loanwords borrowed at an earlier stage in the

history of the language, and potentially present in (virtually) all dialects or branches. Romani has

borrowed extensively from other languages since its speakers' exodus from India (see for instance

Matras 2002), and even core parts of the lexicon are therefore borrowed. However, in cases where a

word is found to have cognates in different dialect branches, it is assumed to have been borrowed

into Romani such a long time ago that is has been fully adopted to Romani phonology, and is

therefore counted as an inherited word in this study. All of these observations are checked against

the etymological information in the mentioned literature. Some of the more difficult cases of this

procedure are described in section 4.1.

The second part of the process is then to analyse the inherited words in order to establish the

phonetics and phonology of Finno-Romani at the stage before it started adopting loanwords.

“Loanword” in this context refers only to words which are not found to have any plausible cognates

outside of Finno-Romani and which are not traceable as older loans. I do this by comparing Finno-

Romani with the two Sinti dialects found in the database: RO-022 and AT-001x. Using the

comparative method I determine the phonetic and phonological properties of the language stage

immediately before Sinti and Finno-Romani split into separate dialects (this stage will from now on

be referred to as 'Proto-Northwestern'). Proto-Northwestern is the closest it is possible to get to the

phonetics and phonology of Finno-Romani immediately before adoption of loanwords and

extensive contact with Swedish and Finnish. An easier solution would have been to simply use

Early Romani, which is the (already) reconstructed language stage of Romani after extensive

borrowing from Greek in somewhere around the tenth century (Elšik & Matras 2006: 68), but as I

wanted to get as close to the stage of Proto-Northwestern as possible, I deemed this too imprecise

18


and preferred to do my own reconstruction (I am also not aware of any actual word list with

reconstructed forms). This procedure is further described in section 5.

After having reconstructed the proto-stage and the sound changes which have happened

since then, I compare the changes revealed by the analysis with the sounds and sound structure of

Standard Spoken Finnish. Although the ideal subject of comparison would have been the Finnish

dialects spoken in the places where the various Finno-Romani dialects in the analysis are found, I

have chosen not to do so for several reasons. Firstly, very little material about the sounds and sound

structure is available on these Finnish dialects (especially in languages other than Finnish), which

would make for at comparison with great holes at best. Secondly, Standard Spoken Finnish is based

on all the Finnish dialects and is not - like many other standard varieties one particular dialect

which due to status has become the official language (Suomi, Toivanen & Ylitalo 2008: 7). Thirdly,

a very thorough description of the Finnish sound system is available (Suomi, Toivanen & Ylitalo

2008), and it seems preferable to have as basis a seemingly complete and thorough view of the

matter to a collection of partial sources which might not even agree. Fourthly, Suomi, Toivanen &

Ylitalo (2008) actually do comment on dialectic variations, and these comments will of course be

included whenever they occur and are deemed relevant. For these reasons I have decided that taking

Standard Spoken Finnish as basis for comparison is the most reasonable approach to the matter.

In many cases I use the forms of European Romani as listed by Matras (2010) for reference

in the analysis. I have “translated” these forms into broad IPA in line with the other transcriptions in

the paper, and they are listed in the final column in Appendix 2 for reference. Matras defines

“European Romani” as “the reconstructed entity referred to as 'Early Romani' (Elšik & Matras

2006; Matras 2002), along with any modifications that can be assumed to have emerged in the

particular forerunner dialect of British Romani. […] European loanwords that entered the language

prior to the isolation of British Romani and which are widely attested in other dialects of the

language are considered part of the European Romani legacy.” Although British Romani is an

independent dialect branch (Matras 2002: 10), its forerunner – European Romani – is considered

closely enough related to Finno-Romani to serve the present purpose. European Romani is a great

help in reconstructing Proto-Northwestern, as it provides information about a language stage which

comes before Proto-Northwestern and therefore makes it a lot easier to determine the direction of

sound changes. While it is possible to make reconstructions without knowledge of such a language

stage, it is more difficult and the results less certain. Given that the information is available, I

believe it would have been waste of work and knowledge not to use it and to build upon it. The

19


same goes for other published sources I use in the analysis: I see no reason not to make full use of

them, as long as this is done with a critical eye.

To my knowledge, no one has used exactly this procedure for a similar study. The

comparative method is obviously well-used, but as far as I can tell not with this goal. Though there

are aspects of this procedure which are perhaps not ideal, it is my claim that this is the best possible

approach to this topic.

4. Preliminary data analysis

In this section I give a detailed account of the first part of the analysis of Finno-Romani as

described in section 3.2. This account shows the process of determining which words in the RMS-

database' vocabulary lists of Finno-Romani are inherited and which are loanwords, and whatever

else is needed before starting the main analysis.

Appendix 1 shows the word lists for the Sinti dialects and Finno-Romani. Using existing

literature (mainly Boretzky 2012 and Valtonen 1972) and comparisons with the other dialects in the

RMS-database, all words in these lists have been sorted into three groups: words in multi-word

phrases (written in grey in Appendix 1 and not included in further analysis), non-cognates (written

in white on black and used sporadically for certain parts of the analysis and cognates (written in

black on white and used for the central part of the analysis (section 5)).

Several cases from the RMS-lists are not included in the table in Appendix 1. These are

cases where no word form from any dialect was useful: Cases with autonyms and cases with only

whole phrases instead of simple words. Compounds have also been excluded as these complicated

the initial analysis.

Many of the cases listed in Appendix 1 are further discussed in the following four sections:

Cases whose status as loanwords or inherited words is doubtful (section 4.1), cases where it seems

that there has been semantic shift (section 4.2), inflected words (section 4.4) and cases with more

than one cognate (section 4.3). These cases are all marked with a letter in the column labelled

'comments' in Appendix 1.

Cases where fewer than three dialects have inherited words (of the same cognacy) will not

be used in the analysis in section 5 but are nevertheless shown in Appendix 1 with the relevant word

forms noted as cognates.

The outcome of this preliminary data analysis – a list with cognate sets ready for analysis –

20


can be found in Appendix 2 and will work as the basis for the reconstruction described in section 5.

4.1. Cases which might be both loanwords and inherited words

I now briefly discuss the cases in which there is doubt about whether a word form is a loanword or

an inherited word. These cases are marked with the letter 'D' in the column 'Comments' in Appendix

1 and are discussed in numerical order here.

28 “cow” is a difficult case as the Finno-Romani forms [kurun], [kurni], [kurja], [gurunis]

look like both the inherited 'gurumni' but also German 'Kuh' and Swedish 'ko' which both mean

'Cow'. Boretzky (2012: 23) lists the form 'gurni' (which but for the voicing of the initial plosive is

identical with the forms of FIN-005 and FIN-008) as being a regular variation of the word, but only

in South-Balkan dialects. The suffixes -in and -ja are both feminine (see also section 4.4) and go

back to Sanskrit (-in, Valtonen 1972: 16). -ja is less certain, but probably a plural marker. It is

however clear that at least -ja has been productive even after contact with Germanic languages, so

the presence of old inflections does not rule out that these words might be loanwords. There is

nothing to explain how the 'r' present in all dialects would have been added to 'Kuh' or 'ko' though,

and for this reason, all the forms found in 28 “cow” have been counted as inherited words.

Case number 70 “belly” is quite clearly a Germanic loanword (could be from German

'Magen' or Swedish 'mage' for instance), but as the word is found in both Sinti and Finno-Romani, it

seems to have been borrowed before the two branches split, and it has therefore been included. the

same goes for 81 “sky”.

In 164 “lift” the forms [khantel] and [xandela] are found in FIN-002 and FIN-012

respectively. There is nothing to indicate that these forms are loanwords, and there is nothing in

their phonological forms that does not fit with Finno-Romani, but on the other hand none of the

other Romani dialects in the database have similar forms, and I have also not been able to find the

form described anywhere. For this reason they are marked as loanwords, but as there are only two

forms which might be useful, the case would not have been used in the analysis in any case.

In 185 “meet”, the forms [tikkel] and [tikka:] do not seem to be the standard Romani form,

but it turns out to be the word for “see”, which is case number 158. As the two are identical and 158

“see” is more complete, 185 “meet” is left out of the analysis.

In 186 “come”, RO-022 has the form [va] which at first glance does not look like it is

21


cognate with [a:vel] which is found in Finno-Romani. However, [avava] is very frequently found in

the other Romani dialects in the RMS-database, and this form can very easily have both [a:vel] and

[va] as its reflexes. I therefore keep both forms, but as Sinti is the dialects furthest from the most

commonly found form, its differences will not be discussed further.

Case number 197 “pay” is quite possibly not useful as a cognate. While there is a European

Romani form ples-, there is even at this point doubt whether or not this is influenced by the German

word for price, Preis (Matras 2010: 202). As this could have happened early enough to influence

European Romani but also easily at the stage of Proto-Northwestern or even later, it is impossible to

tell if the forms found in data reflect ples or preis and this case has therefore been excluded from the

analysis.

4.2. Cases with semantic shift

While it is outside the scope of this study to investigate semantic shifts in Romani, I will here

briefly mention the cases where a shift seems the most likely explanation and describe how each

case is handled in the analysis. Cases mentioned in this section are marked with the letter 'S' in the

column 'Comments' in Appendix 1.

In case number 46 “lip” FIN-002 has the form [mui] which is clearly an inherited word but

which did not originally mean “lip” but rather “mouth”. It still means “mouth” in case number 47 in

almost all the dialects, including FIN-002, which suggests that [mui] has undergone generalisation

in this dialect. Another possible explanation is that something in the field situation (such as the

researcher pointing) is responsible for this shift. As FIN-002 is the only dialect that uses [mui] to

mean “lip”, and as there are thus no other reflexes of the cognate that mean “lip”, the [mui] in 46

will simply not be included in the segmental analysis.

European Romani had two different words for “foot” (piro) and “leg” (heroj). Finno-Romani

uses forms of piro for both meanings (see cases 61 and 65). In 61 “leg” RO-022 also has a form of

piro, and the phrase RO-022 has in 65 “foot” also includes the word. This indicates that the same

generalisation has partially taken place in Sinti (AT-001x has the form [heri] in 65, so the

generalisation is clearly not complete in all the dialects), and it thus seems to be a generalisation

which has happened before or at the stage of Proto-Northwestern and therefore outside the scope of

this study. The two cases will be treated as two different cases as the different inflections of these

cases in FIN-006 suggests that it might not be two completely identical cases.

22


Matras (2010) lists no European Romani forms for “month” (84), but it is quite clear that all

the dialects in this study have generalised the word for “moon” (83) to cover the meaning of

“month” as well. As this does not seem to have happened after Proto-Northwestern, I will discuss it

no further, but the two cases have been kept separate as they show slight differences in form.

The word phuv meant “ground” in European Romani and not “earth” (which was the word

chik) although it is used in this meaning in all the dialects in this study (see 87). This is not a new

development and will not be treated further.

In 91 “rain” FIN-002 uses the form [pa:ni] which is also found in 90 “water in both FIN-002

and the other Romani dialects. Given that [pa:ni] has a much wider use as the form for “water” than

for “rain” in all the Romani dialects in the RMS-database, I assume that “water” is the original

meaning. I simply leave FIN-002 out of the analysis of 90 “water”.

The European Romani word mas meant “meat” while balavas meant “bacon”. While there is

no word for “meat” in the wordlists in the RMS-database, all the Finno-Romani dialects use [mas]

to mean “bacon” (case number 106). RO-022 has a completely different form in this case ([ʃuŋka])

which is from German Schinken, and it is possible that the change in meaning has happened only in

Finno-Romani. As the only potential conflict is in the meaning though, and as bacon is meat, 106

“bacon” is treated as any other case.

European Romani skamin meaning “chair” seems to be used in a generalised fashion in both

Finno-Romani and AT-001x to also cover the meaning “bench” (case number 126) in addition to

that of “chair” (case number 127). In both 126 and 127 RO-022 uses a different non-cognate which

is inflected differently in the two cases and for this reason I am not comfortable lumping the two

cases together even though the forms of skamin are identical.

Sinti uses the word [la:p] for both “word” and “name”. It is originally the word for “word”,

but its broader use is quite common among the Romani dialects (Boretzky 2012: 27). Sinti [la:p] is

not included in the analysis of 135 “name”.

In case 147 “light” Finno-Romani uses the form of the word which meant “fire” (see also

case 95) in European Romani. A generalisation of this word has thus taken place, but apparently

only in Finno-Romani. As 95 and 147 are not identical, they are treated separately.

Cases 180 “love” and 181 “want” both go back to the European Romani word kam- which

covered both meanings. It appears that the meaning of 182 “beg” has since been included as well, at

23


least in Finno-Romani. As none of the three cases are identical inflection-wise, they have all been

included in the analysis.

4.3. Cases with different cognates

In this section I discuss some of the cases whose word forms reflect more than one cognate. These

are all marked with the letter 'C' in Appendix 1. In cases where there are clearly two different

cognates and at least one of them have fewer than three reflexes across the dialects, this cognate

will not be used in the following analysis and will not figure in Appendix 2. For cases where this is

the only comment, there will be no further mention.

Case number 16 “horse” seems to have two quite different forms. Not only in Sinti and

Finno-Romani, but also across the other Romani dialects (approximations to either 'gras' or 'graj'). It

is of quite possible that the gras – graj difference has developed in Finno-Romani from a single

ancestor, but the presence of both forms in many other dialects makes it more likely that there are

two different cognates in game in Finno-Romani. As only FIN-008 has the form ending with a

fricative, this occurrence will simply be taken out of the analysis and the other form will be

analysed in the regular way.

Already at the stage of European Romani the word “arm” had two different forms: musi and

vast (Matras 2010: 189) with vast being the most general term meaning both “hand” and “arm” and

musi being more specialised and meaning only “arm”. Various forms of vast still mean “hand” in all

the dialects of this study, but FIN-005, FIN-008 and AT-001x use forms of musi for “arm” instead.

Given that this division is found already in European Romani, it seems clear that this specialisation

happened before the Proto-Northwestern stage and is therefore not the concern of this study. As

there are three instances of both [vast] and [mus-] in 55, they are simply treated separately so that

the forms of [vast] are called 55a and the forms of [mus-] 55b in Appendix 2.

European Romani had a word for “tree” (rukh) and one for “wood” (kašt), but while all the

dialects in the study still use forms of kašt to mean “wood”, FIN-005, FIN-006 and FIN-012 also

use this to mean “tree” while the Sinti dialects and FIN-008 have kept forms of rukh. As there are

three of each form in 96, this case has simply been split up into two separate cases: 96a and 96b.

There are certain similarities in 146 “gold” between Sinti [symnokaj] and Finno-Romani

[sonatiko] (and its variations), but they also look similar enough to possibly be cognates. European

Romani has the form [sonakaj] which appears to be a mixture of the two forms. Both forms, and

24


also forms that look like mixtures of the two, are found in the other Romani dialects in the RMS-

database. It seems then that the two forms are cognates, but that the differences between the two go

back much further than Proto-Northwestern, and I therefore treat them as different cognates.

The same is true for 190 “leave sth”, in which [mukk-] and [mekk-] appear to reflect an

older split (Boretzky 2012), for [arre] and [an] in 216 “in”, and for the Sinti [dis] in 77 “day”.

In case number 199 “bad (nasul)” RO-022 [dʒungalo] appears similar enough to the Finno-

Romani dialects ([pengalo]) that it seems fair to suggest similarity of form. However, as it turns out,

beng is the word for “devil” in European Romani while džungalo originally meant “ugly”. The only

similar thing is -alo, which is an adjectivising suffix. With those two cognates thus separated, there

are not enough occurrences of the form to be included in the analysis.

4.4. Morphology

In this section I make a few observations of inflectional and derivational morphology found in the

inherited words in the data set. The aim is not to analyse the history of morphology in Finno-

Romani in itself, and it is outside the scope of this study to attempt an explanation as to why which

suffixes go on which words in which dialects. Instead, the goal is to use whatever morphological

clues are available to further the phonological analysis, and most of all to avoid drawing

conclusions about sound changes which are really a matter of different suffixes. All suffixes have

therefore been removed both in cases where they were identical and in cases where they were

different across the dialects. The morphemes themselves are not discussed here, but such discussion

can be found by for instance Matras (2002).

4.5. Other considerations

In a few cases there are circumstances to note which are not already presented.

In 59 “finger” there are very clearly reflexes of the same cognate in all the dialects.

However, these forms are unusually different compared to the rest of the cognates, which makes it

almost impossible to know which segments should be matched up across the dialects. In order to

keep the analysis as straight-forward as possible, I have only included the segments where there was

no doubt in Appendix 3.

In 92 “snow” the original RO-022 [ijp] from the RMS-database look like a transcription

mistake. Judging by the sound file, there is nothing wrong with the transcription, but I find that [i:p]

25


is a more reasonable interpretation than the original [ijp]. This makes the case much more

straightforward to handle in the analysis.

5. Data analysis

In this section I give a detailed account of the second part of the analysis of Finno-Romani as

described in section 3.2, namely the analysis of the inherited words in Finno-Romani. The goal is to

describe the language stage before Sinti and Finno-Romani split into different dialects (Proto-

Northwestern), and the sound changes which have happened since then. I present the segmental

inventory of Proto-Northwestern and the sound changes that have occurred since that stage

(sections 5.1 and 5.3. In order to provide an idea of the context these segments are found in, I also

briefly discuss stress and length (section 5.5).

I first reconstruct and discuss the segmental inventory of Proto-Northwestern, which can be

found in sections 5.1 and 5.3. To do so, I follow the procedure for using the comparative method as

described by Crowley & Bowern (2010), starting with the setting up of correspondence sets for each

cognate. An overview of all the correspondences can be found in Appendix 3. This is complicated

by the many cases where one or more dialects for various reasons have gaps and therefore no

correspondence. This sometimes makes it impossible to determine which type of correspondence a

cognate set shows. Appendix 3 therefore simply shows all the correspondence sets with gaps, but

the sets are grouped together according to the groups they most likely belong too (For instance, the

set a;a;a;-;a;a;a most likely belongs to the set a;a;a;a;a;a;a as there are no obvious alternatives). In

cases where there is more than one possibility, a set is grouped with other sets according to what

seems most plausible, and this will be discussed in the following. Each group of correspondence

sets in Appendix 3 is named for the protophoneme which I judge it to be reflexes of (left column).

In cases where a protophoneme has sets of reflexes which are clearly different, these are grouped

separately. All groups are also given a number in addition to the protophoneme for reference. One

group of correspondences is marked with “N” as the relevant segments are different kinds of nasals

– the N symbolizes an unspecified nasal consonant. Length is marked as a property of the vowels

(using the standard IPA sign ” : ”) and long vowels are sorted together in the correspondence sets.

This is done because the correspondence sets will serve as basis for the analysis and reconstruction

of both the segmental inventory as well as stress and length. Terminology relating to language

change are used as per Crowley & Bowern 2010.

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For each part of the analysis (vowel inventories, consonant inventories, length and stress), I

compare the changes found with the sound structure of Standard Spoken Finnish (see 3) in an

attempt to determine if or to which degree the change is motivated by contact with Finnish and also

to discover which possible contact-induced changes have not taken place.

It is outside the scope of this study to investigate phonotactics and syllable structure, but I

use the following guideline in cases where it is useful to know the position of syllable boundaries:

“every CV sequence is preceded by a syllable boundary” (Granqvist 2002: 74).

5.1. Analysis of correspondences with vowels

In this section I present my reconstruction of the vowels of Proto-Northwestern and the changes

which they have undergone since then. Firstly (this section), all the correspondences are presented

briefly along with my analysis of them, and secondly (section 5.2), the results of the analysis are

discussed and compared with Standard Spoken Finnish. Matters connected to length and stress as

well as correspondences marked 'Diphthongs' are discussed separately in section 5.5.

[a1-2+5-7] First of all, many words contain the sound [a] across all dialects. These appear to be

unchanged since at least Proto-Northwestern and in many cases also since European Romani as they

are also found there. This correspondence can be assumed to reflect *a.

[a3+8] In three cases (186 “come”, 215 “outside” and 220 “we”), RO-022 has nothing, i.e zero (for

instance in 215 [vri]) where the Finno-Romani dialects have [a] (for instance FIN-012 [auri]). This

occurs in word-initial position in both cases. In 220 “we”, FIN-012 too does not have an [a] ([me])

while FIN-002, FIN-005 and FIN-008 do ([ame]).

While RO-022 only rarely has [a] in word-initial position, it does occur (even among

inherited words) and there is no clear system as to when an [a] disappears word-initially and when it

does not. It is clear, however, from comparison with the other Romani dialects and European

Romani that it is a case of apheresis (loss of an initial segment) in RO-022 and not of prothesis

(insertion of an initial segment) in Finno-Romani. FIN-012 has word-initial [a]'s on several

occasions, and there is no clear reason why it has been lost in 220 “we”. The correspondences of

this group then also reflect *a. Although there are no clear conditions for the rule(s) that account for

the change in RO-022 and FIN-012, the following rule does seem to have taken some effect in both

27


dialects:

*a → Ø / #_ (FIN-012 (Partial: 220) and RO-022 (Partial: 186, 215, 220))

[a4] In two cases (11 “girl” and 16 “horse”), the sound [æ] appears in some of the Finnish Romani-

dialects where the rest of the dialects have [a] (for example FIN-005 [ʦæi] versus FIN-002 [ʦai] in

11). This looks like an example of assimilation (that one vowel has adopted one or more features –

in this case it has become higher - from a neighbouring vowel) as [a] in these cases are next to [i],

but as there are only two cases which are not even completely alike, it is not possible to set up a

general rule for vowel assimilation in Finno-Romani. It does however seem clear that it can be

found in FIN-005 and FIN-012. Although 82 (“star”) appears to be an exception as FIN-005 has the

form [ʦerxai] and not [ʦerxæi], this can be explained by the fact that the diphthong [ai] in 82

(“star”) appears in an unstressed syllable. If the assimilation appears only in stressed syllables, there

are no counter examples. Although FIN-008 only has a single case (11 “girl”) of vowel harmony, it

too seems to have undergone a similar sound change, although it is found next to [j] rather than [i]

in this case. Given how closely [i] and [j] resemble each other articulation-wise, it seems reasonable

to combine them into the same rule.

FIN-006 too seems to have undergone this change judging by 11(“girl”), but 16 (“horse”) is

a clear counter example ([trai]). As there is no logical reason for 16 (“horse”) to have [a] and not

[æ] (or indeed for 11 (“girl”) to have [æ] rather than [a] given that there are only the two cases

where the rule might potentially apply), it is not possible to determine the exact course of change in

FIN-006. It does however seem clear that these correspondences reflect *a as well. The final rule

then looks like the following:

*a [+stress] → æ / _ i,j (FIN-005 (Complete), FIN-006 (Partial: 11) FIN-008 (Partial: 11),

FIN-012 (Partial: 11, 16))

[u1+3] When it comes to correspondences with [u], there are a few cases with plain [u]'s across all

the dialects. There are not nearly as many of these as there are cases with plain [a] across all the

dialects, but it still seems reasonable to reconstruct a *u for Proto-Northwestern for these cases and

not note any changes.

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[v1] Another group consists of cases which have [u] in the Finno-Romani dialects and [p] in RO-

022 - for instance in case number 132 (“word”) which is [lau] in FIN-012 and [la:p] in RO-022. A

comparison with all the other dialects in the database shows that the most widespread form of the

[u]/[p] segment is [v] (which is also found in European Romani), and it seems plausible that this

was also the case in Proto-Northwestern. Since then *v must then have undergone rounding and

become syllabic in Finno-Romani ([u]) and have hardened to a plosive in RO-022 ([p]). This only

happens when the original *v occurs in syllable-final position as shown by 186 “come” where FIN-

006 has [aulo] while FIN-005 has [a:vel]. The syllable boundary is assumed to be between [u] and

[l] in [au.lo] and between [a:] and [v] in [a:.vel]. While this mostly happens after [a], 92 (“snow”)

shows that it can also happen after [i], and 87 “earth” shows that it can also happen after [u] in

which case [u] simply becomes long in Finno-Romani. This then seems to be a general rule that

states that any *v in syllable-coda becomes [u] in Finno-Romani. The result is two new diphthongs,

[au] and [iu], and lengthening of a previously short vowel, [u:], in all the Finno-Romani dialects

with the partial exception of FIN-005 (where case number 132 “word” has to forms: [la:v] and

[lau]).

Case number 215 “outside” suggests that the original *v has stayed a [v] in RO-022 when it

is not word-final (the RO-022 form is [vri]), but as there is only one case where this segment is not

word-final and as Sinti is included in the analysis mainly in order to make the analysis of Finno-

Romani clearer, this will not be discussed further. For this group I then reconstruct a *v.

Whether the conditioning factor for *v to become [u] is the fact that *v occcurs in syllable-

coda or if it is simply the fact that it occurs immediately after a vowel is not entirely sure. If the

condition is only that *v occurs after a vowel, then this rule would predict that forms like 152

[ji:vela] or 186 [a:vel] would instead be [ji:uela] and [a:uel] respectively. This is obviously not the

case. However, in both these two cases [v] is found after long vowels, therefore it is more likely that

they stand in syllable-onset. This again points back to the condition which is concerned with *v's

position in the syllable rather than its direct contact with a vowel. There are no cases where *v

occurs in syllable-coda but not immediately after the vowel and indeed this might not be permitted

by the phonotactics of Finno-Romani, in which case it is a somewhat moot point whether or not the

rule ought to allow for this. Given the available data I prefer a rule that states that *v changes to [u]

when it occurs in syllable-coda for the reason that it explains all the documented occurrences.

Whether or not its claim is too broad must be reconsidered if any cases show up with the structure

VCv in a single syllable. Until this happens, I note the following rule for Finno-Romani:

29


*v → u / _ . (Complete with one partial exception: FIN-005: 132)

[u2] Case number 10 “boy” appears to show a situation where either an original *u has become [o]

in RO-022 making the the Sinti form [tʃao] (RO-022), or an original *o has become [u] in Finno-

Romani making the Finno-Romani form [tʃau] (FIN-012). While this is not an impossible sound

change, a comparison with all the other Romani dialects in the RMS-database and the European

Romani forms strongly suggests that the original form of the word was actually [ʧavo]. This makes

another course of events quite likely: First [o] disappeared in Finno-Romani (-o is a masculine

suffix) and then the resulting [ʧav] underwent the rule stated above where a syllable-final [v]

becomes [u]. RO-022 appears to have lost [v] instead, but I will not discuss this further. The [u]'s in

this correspondence group then reflect *v rather than *u or *o.

[e1+2] As for correspondences with [e], they seem to be quite stable generally, as there are no

changes at the segment level across the dialects in the e-correspondences. I therefore reconstruct *e

for both these correspondence groups without further discussion.

[o1+2] This stability is also found in many cases with o-correspondences: [o] is found across all the

dialects, and it seems reasonable to reconstruct *o for these cases. In the RMS-database case

number 234 (“white”) is transcribed as having [ø] rather than [o] in FIN-012, but I have judged this

to be a transcription error and have noted it as [o] instead. I have based this decision on the fact that

232 (“short”) too is noted as having [ø] in FIN-012, and in that word ([støt]) it is very clearly the

case while in 234 (“white”) I for one cannot hear it. I thus do not note any changes for these groups.

[o3] In two cases, 83 (“moon”) and 84 (“month”) FIN-002 has [u] where the other Finno-Romani

dialects and Sinti have [o] (for instance FIN-002 [tʃu:n] and FIN-012 [tʃho:n]). A comparison with

the other dialects in the RMS-database shows that these two cases are quite clearly reflexes of the

same cognate even though they have different meanings. The two words also show up with identical

forms in FIN-008, FIN-012 and AT-001x (and nearly identical forms in FIN-005, while FIN-006 has

a gap and might also potentially have had an identical form). This is confirmed by Boretzky (2012:

42). Almost all other dialects where this form is found in either 83 (“moon”) or 84 (“month”) have

30


[o] rather than [u]. The most obvious explanation of these facts is that [u] and [o] in 83 (“moon”)

and 84 (“month”) are both to be regarded as reflecting *o and that something has possibly happened

in FIN-002 to change this. As it is not possible to verify the transcription and as there are only these

two cases which more or less only count for one, I will not attempt to explain this any further, and

do not set up a rule for it.

[i1+2] Many cases show [i] across all the dialects, and it seems obvious to reconstruct *i for these

cases.

[j1] Three cases (11 “girl”, 16 “horse”, 47 “mouth”) show a show a pattern where FIN-002, FIN-

005, FIN-006 and FIN-012 have [i] while FIN-008 and the two Sinti dialects have [j] – for instance

is 47 [mui] in FIN-012 and [muj] in RO-022. In all three cases [i]/[j] appears right after a vowel and

thus becomes the last part of a diphthong. A comparison with European Romani and all the other

Romani dialects shows that the segment was originally [j] and these three cases then show a

development parallel to [v] becoming [u] as shown earlier in this section: Certain consonants

become parts of diphthongs in Finno-Romani when they appear in syllable coda. However, unlike

the v → u change, this does not appear to happen in FIN-008 for some reason, although as there are

only two cases to show that it does not and [i] and [j] can be hard to tell apart in syllable-codas, this

might in fact be a general rule for Finno-Romani. Another explanation might be that the various

transcribers of the dialects in the RMS-database have used slightly different transcription

conventions. This does not seem particularly likely given the amount of work which has gone into

unifying these conventions though (see Matras, White & Elšik 2009: 11), so I am simply noting that

FIN-008 appears to behave differently in this regard:

*j → i / _ . (Complete except in FIN-008)

There are several correspondence sets where a vowel segment appears in one dialect but not in

others. In order to decide whether these groups show sound addition or sound loss, I compare them

to the forms listed by Boretzky and to the European Romani forms listed by Matras (2010). In cases

where there was no European Romani form listed, I have compared the Finno-Romani forms with

the other Romani dialects in the RMS-database and noted the most widespread form as an

31


approximation of a protophoneme.

[Ø1] In two cases a dialect has added [e] word-finally. In 6 “friend” it is FIN-006 ([ma:le]) and in

84 (“month”) it is FIN-005 ([ʦo:ne]). As it does not appear to be a general tendency in either of the

dialects and as it happens in two different dialects but in both cases to nouns, it seems likely that

this might be a morphological matter. There are several Romani nominal suffixes with the form -e

but these are either plural markers or vocative suffixes (Matras 2002: 82-85) and it is not clear why

the words in the given cases would display either outside of any context. However, as there are also

no apparent reason for the variation in the segmental structure, it seems more likely that it should be

a morphological matter and I will therefore not treat it any further.

[Ø2] In 206 “now” Finno-Romani has lost a word-final [a] (also a word-initial one, but that

development is shared by Sinti and is thus assumed to have happened before Northwestern split into

a separate branch and is therefore not relevant here) which Sinti has kept ([ka:na]). As this is the

only case where this has happened and as the word can be assumed to be quite frequent and

therefore vulnerable to sound loss, I will not deal any further with this than to note that the

Northwestern protoform of the word most likely has an *a.

[Ø3] The European Romani form of 139 “pocket” reveals that the original form is kept in Sinti (The

form [posita] which is also listed as common in the Northern dialects by Boretzky (2012: 71), while

it has lost a syllable in Finno-Romani, giving it the form [posta]. 139 “pocket” is unusual in that the

stress is on the second syllable instead of the first in RO-022, and this might have been the reason

that this word alone has lost a word-medial [i]. The most likely course of change is that the stress

moved to the first syllable and that the [i] was consequentially lost (syncope), but as there is only

this one case, it is not possible to say for certain. It seems reasonable to construct *i for this

segment, but as it appears to be a unique example, I will not attempt to state the rule governing this

change.

[Ø4] In 85 “wind” FIN-012 has acquired an extra [a] word-medially ([balava]). As with 139

“pocket” this seems to be a unique case, and I will not state any rules for it. Judging by European

Romani and the other dialects in the RMS-database, this word did not have *a in the middle of the

protoform, and according Granqvist (in press) mentions the case as an example of a quite recent

32


process of epenthesis of a svarabakhti vowel in certain words in Finno-Romani.

5.2. Discussion of vowel inventories

In summary of the analysis of correspondences with vowels, it seems, then, that on a segmental

level, no great changes have occurred in the vowels of Finno-Romani since Proto-Northwestern. No

segments have been lost and no new segments have been added. Apart from [v] becoming [u] and

[j] becoming [i] post-vocally in Finno-Romani (which are not vowel changes in a strict sense) there

are only minor, occasional differences between RO-022, AT-001x and the Finno-Romani dialects to

be found, such as the vowel harmony happening in FIN-005 and FIN-012 and to some extent in

FIN-008.

Proto-Northwestern can then be assumed to have had a standard symmetrical five-vowel

system with three heights:

Figure 1 – The vowel system of Proto-Northwestern

While the overall tendency in the cognates seems to be that the vowels have been quite stable in the

Northwestern group of Romani, the picture is a little different when it comes to simple comparison

between the various modern dialects and Proto-Northwestern. All the modern dialects still have all

the vowel segments shown above, but when considering all the inherited words listed in Appendix 1

and not just the ones in Appendix 2, it becomes clear that all the dialects except FIN-002 also have

[æ]. When including the borrowed words as well, FIN-002, FIN-006 and FIN-012 also have [y] and

[ø], and FIN-002 also has [æ] although these are never found in the inherited words. FIN-005 lacks

[y] but does have [ø], whereas FIN-008 seems to be closest to the vowel inventory of Proto-

Northwestern as it has only added [æ]. Generally, then, although there are variations amongst the

33


dialects, the modern dialects of Finno-Romani have gained three front vowels - [y], [ø] and [æ] - in

addition to the original five vowels of Proto-Northwestern. This makes for a quite atypical vowel

system which does not appear to be symmetrical:

Figure 2 – Vowel inventory of most of the modern Finno-Romani dialects

Although there have been relatively few actual changes to the vowels in Finno-Romani, the modern

dialects thus do have vowel inventories which are quite different from that of Proto-Northwestern,

although not all the segments in the inventories are found in the inherited material. The vowel

inventory shown above in figure 2 appears to be identical to that of Standard Spoken Finnish

(Suomi, Toivanen & Ylitalo 2008: 21). Of this inventory Suomi, Toivanen & Ylitalo (2008) note the

following: That the mid-series /e/, /ø/ and /o/ are actually halfway between IPA [e] and [ɛ], [ø] and

[œ] and [o] and [ɔ] respectively, that /a/ is about the same height as /æ/, and that the inventory is

more symmetrical than it immediately appears: There are three height classes (/i/, /y/ and /u/; /e/, /ø/

and /o/; and /a/ and /æ/) and “no vowels not assignable phonetically to a class consisting of at least

two vowels“ (Suomi, Toivanen & Ylitalo 2008: 22). Furthermore, the Finnish vowel system is

described as being very stable and with barely any variation across dialects and registers (Suomi,

Toivanen & Ylitalo 2008: 23). It would require a more specifically phonetic study and a finer

transcription to verify if all these traits are shared by Finno-Romani, but at the phonological level,

34


these two languages do share the same vowel inventory.

That is not to say that this is necessarily due to Finno-Romani being in contact with Finnish.

(Valtonen 1968, citet via Granqvist 2002) suggests that contact with Hungarian has given Finno-

Romani [y] and [ø], and that [æ] is a later loan from the Scandinavian languages. Granqvist does

not comment on this (except to note that the sequence [æi] resembles old Vlax-dialects spoken in

Russia, but he does not seem to be suggesting that there is any connection between the two

(Granqvist 2002: 64)), but given the fact that [æ] is more widely found in the inherited lexicon than

both [y] and [ø], it does not seem immediately obvious that [æ] should be the newest loan. This

does not, of course, rule out the possibility that Valtonen is right at this point. It is also possible that

[æ] simply is more easily incorporated in words with the phonology of Proto-Northwestern.

As for [y] and [ø] coming from the Scandinavian languages (which I understand to mean the

Germanic languages of Denmark and the actual Scandinavian peninsula), this is perfectly possible

as they all do have the sounds in question or at least some that resemble them closely. There are also

loanwords in Finno-Romani which are clearly of Scandinavian origin which do have some of these

sounds (for instance 124 “bed” which in FIN-006 is [sæŋøs] although the same word has [e] and [o]

instead of [æ] and [ø] in both FIN-002 and FIN-012), although I cannot find any Scandinavian

words in the list containing [y].

While there thus might have been ample influence from the Scandinavian languages, I find it

remarkable that the vowel inventories of Finnish and Finno-Romani resemble each other as closely

as they do. Even is the [y], [æ] and [ø] originally entered Finno-Romani via the Scandinavian

languages or Hungarian, the similarities suggest that Finnish has played and still plays a significant

role in the shaping of Finno-Romani. Even if Finnish is not the source of the enrichment of the

vowel inventory of Finno-Romani, it might be what prevents that the new segments are lost again.

All of that being said, it is also clear that these changes involving the new vowels have only

taken partial effect, as the inventory of the inherited material has only been affected to a small

extent (as opposed to the rule turning syllable-final [v]'s to [u]'s which is found everywhere). Also,

as was noted above, figure 2 is only true for the collected Finno-Romani dialects – not for each of

the dialects on its own. I conclude, then, that having a given vowel appear in loanwords does not

necessarily mean that it has also been adopted to be used in inherited words. This also explains why

the reconstruction did not reveal any major changes: The sounds in borrowed words apparently do

not automatically or directly spread to the inherited lexicon. In the case of [æ] though, it seems that

a borrowed sound has spread. This might be a matter of it having been present in Finno-Romani for

35


a longer time than the others. If this is the case then it might be that borrowed sounds do spread to

the inherited lexicon eventually, but that this process takes a significant amount of time.

I now move on to the analysis and discussion of the correspondences with consonants, in

order to establish the development of consonant inventories in Finno-Romani.

5.3. Analysis of correspondences with consonants

First of all, the segments [m], [n], [t], [s] and [k] all appear unchanged across all the dialects, in

which cases I simply reconstruct *m ([m1]), *n ([n1]), *s ([s1)], *k ([k1]) and *t ([t1]) respectively.

In addition to this, they also seem to have a special status, as they also in some cases have a doubled

or long version in all the Finno-Romani dialects - that is, [mm], [nn], [tt], [ss] or [kk] - instead. This

will be treated as a matter of length and discussed in section 5.5.

5.3.1. Sonorants [n3] In a single case, 84 “month” the soundfile of RO-022 very clearly indicates [tʃoʃ] even though

the word is transcribed in the RMS-database as [tʃon]. As this cannot possibly be a matter of

imprecise transcription and as nothing even remotely like [ʃ] is found as the final sound in this word

in any of the dialects in the RMS-database, I am going to assume it is a matter of mispronunciation

which has been corrected in the transcription. I therefore reconstruct *n for this correspondence as

well as for the correspondences with [n] across all the dialects, and do not note any changes.

[N1] In a few cases (59 “finger”, 95 “fire”, 141 “ring”) [ŋ] appears in the sound files of FIN-005,

FIN-006, FIN-008 and FIN-012 although the transcription in the RMS-database in all cases shows

[n]. Looking at all the words in the chosen dialects and not just the cognates, it is clear that it is a

matter of convention that [ŋ] is written <ng> as this is the case in all the words in the dialects with

sound files. The transcription of FIN-002 and AT-001x also shows [n], but given the lack of sound

files it is not possible to check whether the realisation is [ŋ] in these dialects too, although it seems

highly likely. Nevertheless, I have chosen not to change the transcription from the one found in the

RMS-database in these cases. Whether or not [ŋ] replaces <ng> or only <n> in the sequence <ng>

varies from dialect to dialect. In FIN-005, FIN-006 and FIN-008 there is a complete replacement

of /ng/ by [ŋ]. The transcription suggests that there was initially an alveolar nasal ([n]) and a velar

36


plosive ([k] or [g]) in these sequences, and that the two have fusioned to a segment that has the

nasal's manner of articulation and the plosive's place of articulation. Another hypothesis is that

rather than a one-step fusion, the nasal assimilated in place to a following plosive first, and secondly

the plosive was lost:

[+nasal] → [α place] / _ [+obstruent, -continuant, -delayed release, α place]

[+obstruent, -continuant, -delayed release] → Ø / [+nasal, -anterior, -coronal] _

This hypothesis is supported by several facts: First of all, all nasals found in front of a plosive in

data share the plosive's place of articulation. It thus seems to be a general rule that all nasals

assimilate to following plosives and not just the nasals in front of velar plosives. Secondly, FIN-012

and RO-022 seem to have gone through only part of the same process: The nasal is in all cases

assimilated in place of articulation to the following plosive, but RO-022 still has all the plosives and

FIN-012 has kept all the unvoiced plosives and a few of the voiced ones too (198 “bad” [beŋgalo],

214 “another” [goŋga], 218 “my” [maŋgo]). Thirdly, a short investigation of 141 (“ring”) in a few

arbitrarily picked dialects in the RMS-database (BG-010, HR-001, LT-005, MD-001) suggests that

the nasal assimilation is widespread but that the loss of the plosive is not.

It thus seems that whenever the sequence /ng/ or /nk/ appears, we can reconstruct *ŋg and

*ŋk for Proto-Northwestern. While [ŋ] seems to be an allophone of /n/, both in modern Finno-

Romani and in Proto-Northwestern, it also seems that the rule assimilating the nasal's place of

articulation to the plosive's began to work already before Proto-Northwestern while the rule deleting

the plosive is of a more recent date and only applies to FIN-005, FIN-006 and FIN-008 (and

possibly FIN-002).

When all of this is noted however, there are also two cases (66 “tongue” and 95 “fire”) in

which Finno-Romani has a nasal where Sinti does not, for example 95 in FIN-012 [jaŋkh] and RO-

022 [jak]. This nasal segment does also not occur in neither the European Romani forms listed by

Matras (2010) or the Finno-Romani forms listed by Valtonen (1972) which are at present

approximately 40 years old. Boretzky (2012: 23) too lists the word form for 95 (“fire”) as being

<jag> and does not mention any alternative forms involving nasals. All this indicates very clearly

that there was originally no segment at all where there is now [m] in 66 (“tongue”) and [ŋ] in 95

(“fire”) in Finno-Romani, and the fact that the nasal is not found in Valtonen's forms suggests that it

37


is a fairly recent addition. What is a lot less clear is why a nasal has been inserted in this word. If it

was a matter of inserting a place-assimilated nasal right before a plosive and right after a vowel,

there would have been one in 7, 17, 41, 68, 70, 79, 129, 204 and 229 too, and that is only counting

the cases where the plosive can possibly be thought to be in the same syllable as the preceding

vowel. Then again, in some cases (59, 66, 150) there are nasals in places like the expected, although

there is nothing to indicate that these are not original.

There is a possibility that the insertion could only happen between short vowels and voiced

plosives, although in that case the lengthening of [a] in 7 (“father” [da:t]) must have happened

before this following rule took effect (since there would otherwise have been inserted an [n]):

Ø → [+nasal, α place] / [+syllabic, -long] _ [+obstruent, -cont, -delayed release, +voice, α place]

While this cannot as such be ruled out, it seems a somewhat excessive arrangement to explain a

mere two cases. What is clear, however, is that the nasal in both these cases were not there in Proto-

Northwestern, and I therefore note that there are cases of intrusive nasals in the development of

Finno-Romani.

[r1] In the vast majority of cases with [r], [r] is unchanged across all the dialects, and I reconstruct

*r for these cases and note no changes.

[r2] In one single singe case (141 “ring”), Finno-Romani has [r] while Sinti has nothing, like in the

second, respectively first syllable of FIN-012 [aŋrusti] versus RO-022 [gustrin]. In another syllable

of the same word (third syllable in FIN-012, second syllable in RO-022), the situation is reversed

and Sinti has [r] where Finno-Romani has nothing. According to Boretzky (2012: 216), Sinti shows

the original form (minus prefix) while the Finno-Romani form is the result of metathesis, although,

as he points out (Boretzky 2012: 232), this is not an altogether typical case of metathesis. Even

though the result of it is a simplification of the cluster [str], it also produces a new cluster [gr]

instead (which has later been simplified by /ng/ becoming [ŋ] which is syllable coda to [a] (cf.

[aŋrusti]) and as such not really part of the cluster any longer). Boretzky does not explain how he

has come to the conclusion that the original form must have been [angustri(n)]. It seems strange as

both the European Romani form listed by Matras (2010) and also practically all dialects in the

RMS-database have some variation containing [grusti]. Whether one form or the other is the most

38


original though, is not particularly important here. In any case, I reconstruct *r for the [r] no matter

where in the word it shows up, and simply note that metathesis might have taken place. As

metathesis is typically a local process (Crowley & Bowern 2010: 33) that only happens in a few

words, and can even be considered a lexical change rather than a sound change (Hale 2003), I will

not discuss this any further.

[r3] In a single case (67 “throat”), FIN-008 has [m] ([ʦermo]) where FIN-005 and FIN-012 have [r]

([ʦerro]). The other dialects do not have cognates for this word. In FIN-008 this word actually

appears to be homophonous with 30 “worm”. The European Romani form listed by Matras (2010)

is [kerlo] (and this form is also reflected in very many of the dialects in the RMS-database), but

Valtonen (1972: 125) cites the form [ʧerro] as the general Finno-Romani form. If [kerlo] is indeed

the original form, then that suggests a rule like the following for FIN-005 and FIN-012:

*l → r / _ r

and like the following for FIN-008:

*l → m / _ r

While the first rule seems quite likely as it is a matter of one liquid assimilating to another, there is

no apparent reason why an alveolar lateral would become a bilabial nasal in the vicinity of an

alveolar trill. Alternatively the first rule might have taken effect in all the dialects and been followed

by a rule like the following in FIN-008:

*r → m / _ r

Athough this sounds no more likely than the other explanation, there are no actual counter examples

to either of the scenarios, and the second scenario might explain why Valtonen knows only [ʧerro] if

the second rule is of a fairly recent date. It is also possible that the similarity with the word for

“worm” has influenced the development and that [m] has appeared in analogy with it. In any case it

seems safe to reconstruct *l for this correspondence and note the first rule as having taken place. As

there is no other reason than articulatory unlikelihood not to note the second rule, I tentatively note

39


that as well.

[l1] In almost all cases [l] appears to be stable across all dialects, and for these cases I reconstruct *l

and note no changes.

[l2] In a single case (60 “fingernail”), the Finno-Romani dialects have [l] where Sinti has [j]. A

comparison with the other Romani dialects shows that the original was almost certainly [naj].

According to the earlier established rule (see section 5.1), [j] in coda ought to become [i] in most

Finno-Romani dialects, but this clearly does not apply in this case. There is only the single case

with this correspondence, and it generally seems somewhat unusual compared to the rest of the

analysis as it goes against a pattern that seems quite widespread without any apparent reason. An

alternative explanation could be that both German and Swedish have [nagel] for 'nail' which begins

with [na] and end with [l] (though [ge] comes between). This might mean that 60 “fingernail” is

partially a loanword which is more or less a mix between inherited and borrowed material. As there

is only this one case and it is not really possible to make a good rule for it, I prefer to stick to this

analysis, and therefore will not discuss the l/j alternation further. I reconstruct *j on the basis of

Sinti and European Romani.

[j2] In five cases (68 “eye”, 92 “snow”, 95 “fire”, 104 “egg”, 203 “clean”), all dialects have [j]. In

all these cases [j] is in word-initial position. Comparing with the European Romani forms, it seems

that 92 (“snow”) and 203 (“clean”) did not have a [j] originally, and in both cases the Finno-Romani

[j] is immediately before high vowels - [i] and [u] respectively. As neither AT-001x or RO-022 have

cognates in either case, it is not possible to tell if the present [j] in Finno-Romani was added

(prothesis) in these cases at the proto-stage, or if it is a more recent addition to only Finno-Romani.

With the exception of 129 “door” in FIN-006 a high vowel is never found word-initially in neither

Finno-Romani nor Sinti, which might indicate that there was a dispreference for this in Proto-

Northwestern which might have resulted in the prothesised [j], but as there seem to have been very

few cases of this to begin with going by the European Romani forms, this is hard to prove.

However, as there is no counter evidence either, I am going to assume that [j] in all the mentioned

cases go back to *j in Proto-Northwestern for simplicity's sake.

40


[ʤ1] Five cases have reflexes of the segment which in European Romani is [ʤ]: 13 “woman”, 14

“man”, 17 “dog”, 73 “heart” and 152 “live”. In all these cases, the reflexes are word-initial. The

segment [ʤ] is found sporadically in Finno-Romani, but there does not seem to be any system to

these occurrences. The Sinti dialects consistently show [ʤ] except in 73 “heart” where they both

have [z] instead. The fact that Sinti has a different form than European Romani might suggest that a

change had happened already in Proto-Northwestern, but then we would expect [z] and [ʤ] to be in

complementary distribution. As [z] is found word-initially and in front of [i], this does not seem to

be the case. Rather, the change to [z] seems unmotivated and might well be of more recent date, as

[ʤ] occurs in the exact same circumstances in 152 “live”.

The Finno-Romani reflexes are either [ʤ], [j], [ʦ], [ʧ] or [dj], and there is no clear pattern to

the distribution of these. FIN-006 and FIN-008 only have [j] and [ʦ], but even those two dialects

often have different reflexes in the same word. As [ʤ] is still found in Sinti in most of the cases,

Proto-Northwestern likely had *ʤ in these words. In Finno-Romani this has developed into [ʤ], [j],

[ʦ], [ʧ] and [dj] in no discernible pattern. 73 “heart” is interesting as not even Sinti has kept [ʤ] in

this case, but the reflexes in modern Finno-Romani do not seem any more irregular than the other

cases. As there is only the one case of [z] in the whole data set, I am therefore not going to postulate

a *z, and as [z] is only found in Sinti, I am not going to deal with it any further.

Although there is not much to go on due to few reflexes and a lack of available European

Romani forms, it seems that 100 “flower” and 143 “bead” fit the pattern (though *ʤ was not word-

initial in either case, as opposed to the other cases in this group), and I include them in the group.

5.3.2. Obstruents [s1] There is [s] across all dialects in many cases. In all but one case (127 “chair”) the [s] is not

word-initial. For all these cases, I reconstruct *s.

[s2] In a single case (141 “ring”) all the dialects have [s] (for instance FIN-005 [aŋrustin]) except

FIN-002 which has [h] ([angruhti]). There seems to be no doubt that *s is the correct reconstruction

for this correspondence as [s] is found in so many of the dialects of the RMS-database and also in

the other Romani-dialects, but it is less clear why *s has become [h] in this case. However, as the

transcription cannot be verified and as the case in question has proven unusual in many respects so

far, I will not discuss this any further.

[k1+3] In a large group there are [k]'s across all the dialects. In the cases where European Romani

41


forms exist, these also have [k]. It seems quite straight-forward to reconstruct *k for these. In most

of the cases [k] occurs word-initially and most often also in front of [a]. When none of these

circumstances are present, [k] is found immediately before another consonant and can thus assumed

to be in syllable-coda. Whenever a [k] is found in European Romani in word-initial position and in

front of [e] or [i] (in all cases those factors co-occur), it never has [k] as a reflex in Finno-Romani,

although it does in RO-022. In FIN-002 is has either [ʦ] or [ʧ], in FIN-005, FIN-006 and FIN-008 it

always has [ʦ] (or [s] in FIN-006, case number 109), and in FIN-012 it always has [ʧ]. This is a

clear complimentary distribution leading to the following rule for the development of *k:

*k → [ʦ] or [ʧ] / _ i, e

→ [k] elsewhere

The palatalisation of [k] is assumed to have happened as a consequence of contact with Swedish

(Granqvist in press), and I therefore do not attempt to explain it in relation to Finnish.

In two cases (48 “ear” and 127 “chair”), there is a single occurrence of [t] amongst the other

dialects' [k]. Granqvist (2002:67) mentions that /p/ and /k/ alternate in modern Finno-Romani, but

/t/ is not brought into this, and there is no clear explanation of it.

105 “cheese” and 178 “do” are grouped with these correspondences as they have no

available European Romani forms and seem to fit reasonably with the pattern.

[k4] In 95 “fire” FIN-005 and FIN-012 have [kh] word-finally while FIN-002 and RO-022 have [k]

and FIN-006 and FIN-008 have nothing. According to the European Romani form, this word-final

segment was originally [g], but seeing as this is never found and as both Sinti and Finno-Romani

have variations of [k], it seems likely that a devoicing had already happened in Proto-Northwestern.

This might be due to it being word-final, as this is the only case in the data-set where European

Romani has a word-final [g]. I will not discuss the aspiration further except to say that Granqvist is

apparently not entirely right when he notes that word-final aspirations are not found in Finno-

Romani (2002: 68).

[g1] In some cases (16 “horse”, 28 “cow”, 70 “belly”, 115 “village”) FIN-002, FIN-005, FIN-006

and FIN-008 have [k] where FIN-012 and the Sinti dialects have [g]. It is clear from the European

Romani forms that the segments in this correspondence where originally [g] and as this is retained

42


in both Sinti and FIN-012, I reconstruct *g for Proto-Northwestern. In FIN-002, FIN-005, FIN-006

and FIN-008 *g has undergone devoicing and this seems to be unconditional as [g] is practically

never found in these dialects in the inherited lexicon. The cases that are found are found in FIN-002

and are assumed to be due to the transcription convention stating that [ŋ] is written <ng>. Thus the

following rule applies to FIN-002, FIN-005, FIN-006 and FIN-008:

*g → k

In 16 (“horse”), in addition to the pattern described, FIN-002 and FIN-006 have [t] in stead of [k].

There are no other cases displaying this pattern, but a comparison with the other Romani dialects in

the RMS-database shows that it is clearly a case of *g becoming [t] and not the other way around. It

seems plausible that the change from [g] to [k] took place before this development as [k] becoming

[t] sound more likely than *g becoming [t] and then [k] in some dialects, which is the course the

change would have taken if this step was the first. Also, k → t was already observed in 48 “ear” and

127 “chair”. It might have been a matter of FIN-002 and FIN-006 disfavouring the sequence [kr]

word-initially, but in that case that disfavour has since ceased to exist as 25 “animal” [kriatu:ros]

clearly shows. While the conditioning factor is thus not clear, I note the following rule for this

correspondence as taking place after the rule above:

k → t / # _ r

This probably applies to FIN-008 as well, as the process seemed to have happened to [tres] as well,

even though this form is assumed to have been different already at the protostage (Boretzky 2012).

[x1] 24 “hen”, 140 “dress” and 175 “burn” have [x] in their European Romani forms. This seems to

have been retained in Sinti, but the reflexes are slightly more mixed in Finno-Romani: Apart from

[x], there are also many occurrences of [h] and one of [ht]. Nevertheless, I reconstruct *x for this

group. The explanation of the diversity might be that the segment in question is in three different

positions in the three cases. In 175 “burn” it is word-initial in front of [a], and this case looks fairly

straight-forward as Sinti has [x] and all the Finno-Romani dialects have [h]. In 140 “dress” it is

word-internal between two vowels and here [x] is found in all the dialects represented except FIN-

002 which has [hh]. In 24 “hen” it is word-final, and again [x] is quite prominent across the dialects.

FIN-002 has [ht] and FIN-005 has [h], but the full form in this dialect is [kahni], meaning that [h]

here is word-internal and syllable-final. It might thus be that the development looks like this (I will

not deal with long consonants or the word-final [t] in FIN-002 here):

*x → h everywhere (only FIN-002)

43


→ h / # _ ; _ . (FIN-005, FIN-006, FIN-008, FIN-012)

→ x / V _ V ; _ # (FIN-005, FIN-006, FIN-008, FIN-012)

There are very few cases to support the formulation of these rules, and it might be that the

distribution is far more random than this. Granqvist (2002: 69) states that Finno-Romani /x/ often

surfaces as [h] or [kh] in addition to [x], but does not make any claims about the regularity of it.

More data would be needed to determine this.

In addition to the cases already mentioned, 31 “pig” and 103 “cabbage” also seem to fit the

pattern and are included in the group.

[ʧ1] A group of cases has [ʧ] in European Romani. All of these also have [ʧ] in Sinti and FIN-012,

and in FIN-005 the segment is [ʦ]. Given this, I reconstruct *ʧ for these cases. The other Finno-

Romani dialects are slightly more mixed and here [ʦ], [ʧ], and occasionally [s] are found with no

clear pattern. In FIN-008 [ʧ] is only found in front of [i] whereas the other cases all have [ʦ], but

this pattern is not found in either FIN-002 or FIN-006. All the cases discussed here have European

Romani forms available, and in these [ʧ] is always in word-final position. 189 “stay” does not have

a European Romani form, but as it has [ʧ] in RO-022, it seems likely that it might belong to this

group. If that is so, then the reflex of *ʧ is [hh] in all the Finno-Romani dialects which do not have

gaps. This is not impossible as this reflex is the only one to be found in word-internal position:

[a:hhel(a)]. I tentatively go with this grouping and note the following rules (the lengthening of [h] is

treated in section 5.5.3):

*ʧ → h / V _ V (all Finno-Romani dialects)

→ ʦ elsewhere (FIN-005)

→ ʧ elsewhere (FIN-012)

→ ʧ / # _ i (FIN-008)

→ ʦ elsewhere (FIN-008)

→ ʦ, ʧ, s elsewhere (FIN-002, FIN-006)

[ʦ1] A group of cases have [ʦ] in European Romani. In Sinti, they have [ʦ] and [ʧ]. As it is quite

unusual for European Romani and Sinti to not have the same segments, I do not immediately

44


reconstruct *ʦ for this group. In the Finno-Romani dialects, the relevant cases have a mix of [ʦ],

[ʧ], [s] and [h]. [h] occurs only in 19 “cat”, [mahka], which is also the only case where it is found

syllable-finally. I am going to assume that the position in syllable-coda is the conditioning

environment for the change ʦ → h. Both the Sinti dialects have gaps in this case, which makes it

impossible to tell if the [h] was already there in Proto-Northwestern or is a more recent

development.

In the other cases, FIN-005 always has [ʦ], and FIN-012 always has [ʧ] although both

dialects also have gaps. In 140 “dress” FIN-008 has [s] while all the other dialects without gap have

[ʦ]. There is no obvious explanation of this as both [ʦ] and [s] occur word-initially in front of a

vowel in FIN-008, but it is interesting that a similar pattern is found in 84 “month”. Here it is FIN-

006 that has [s] while the other dialects have affricates, but in both 84 “month” and 140 “dress”, [s]

is found word-initially in front of [o]. In 105 “butter” the same change is found in FIN-005, but this

time in front of [i]. This seems to be a examples of onset-cluster reduction as mentioned by

Granqvist (2002: 70): Understanding a word-initial affricate as a cluster, speakers of Finno-Romani

are believed to follow a common Finnish pattern for cluster reduction and omitting the first

segment(s) of a cluster (Suomi, Toivanen & Ylitalo 2008: 55). Unless there are different rules for

this in the various dialects, there does not seem to be a fixed pattern to the reductions except that

they happen word-initially.

In 161 “believe”, FIN-002, FIN-006 and FIN-008 are the only dialects without gaps, and

they all have [ss]. I will in the following assume that the dialects without gaps represent all the

Finno-Romani dialects. This is the only case in the group with this realisation, and it does not seem

different from 175 “burn” (in which not a single dialect has [ss] or [s]), as the relevant segment is in

both cases between two vowels. Granqvist (2002: 70) mentions that “many original instances of

medial /ʧ/ have been substituted by /ss/ in Finnish Romani, e.g. /paʧaa/ > /passaa/ 'to believe'”.

Although this is the only instance of ʧ → ss I have found in my data (and also the only case

Granqvist mentions), according to Granqvist it is a common occurrence. Interestingly is that

Granqvist apparently does not recognise [ʦ] as a possible independent phoneme, neither in modern

Finno-Romani or in older stages. Given that [ʦ] is found in both Sinti and European Romani, and

seems to be in contrastive distribution with [ʧ] in both (for instance, both [ʦ] and [ʧ] are found

word-initially in front of [o]), I do not agree with this assessment, but reconstruct a *ʦ for Proto-

Northwestern. However, the case of 175 “burn” might indicate that the boundary which is found in

European Romani between the two phonemes /ʦ/ and /ʧ/ might have been different in Proto-

45


Northwestern, as 175 “burn” at least in some of the dialects behave more like the cases with *ʧ.

Whether or not 175 “burn” belongs to the group is a somewhat open question. On the basis of the

data from the RMS-database, the development in Finno-Romani can be formalised like this:

*ʦ → [h] / _ . (all Finno-Romani dialects)

→ [ss] / V _ V (All Finno-Romani dialects)

→ [s] / # _ o (FIN-008)

→ [ʧ] elsewhere (FIN-012)

→ [ʦ] elsewhere (FIN-002, FIN-005, FIN-006)

[ʃ1] The group which had [ʃ] in European Romani also seem to have it in Sinti, and for this reason, I

reconstruct *ʃ for the whole group. The Finno-Romani forms are rather more mixed. As stated in

section 4.2 94 and 96a very much seem to be identical reflexes of the same word, and as there is no

difference between the two in the available data, the two cases will be combined to make a more

complete case (in this subsection referred to as 94 “wood”).

In 22 “rabbit”, 103 “cabbage” and 159 “hear”, [ʃ] occurs word-initially in the European

Romani list. [ʃ] occurs in front of [o] in 22 “rabbit” ([ʃoʃ-]), in front of [a] in 103 “cabbage” ([ʃax]),

and in front of [u] in 159 “hear” ([ʃun-]). It seems that *ʃ has become [ʃ] in FIN-012 in these cases,

and has become either [h], [kh] or [kx] in the other Finno-Romani dialects. The most obvious

course of change would be that *ʃ has first become [kh] in FIN-002, FIN-005, FIN-006 and FIN-

008, and that [kh] has later become [h] by the same pattern as [ʦ] has become [s]: That the first

segment in word-initial consonant clusters are occasionally omitted. The pattern for this omission

seems to be that [k] is always lost in FIN-006 and FIN-008, and rarely or never lost in FIN-002 and

FIN-005. In all dialects, though, there are gaps, which makes it impossible to determine to what

extent this is true.

None of this explains the [x]/[h] alternation found in FIN-005 ([kxax]/[khunnel]) as one

would probably expect the very open vowel [a] to influence a preceding fricative to become more

open as well (in the direction of [h]) rather than the slightly more closed [x], but it is nevertheless

the combinations [xa] and [hu] which are found in FIN-005. Unfortunately, there is very little data

available for 103 “cabbage” and only FIN-005 has [kx], although I personally cannot tell the [kx] of

103 “cabbage” from the [kh] of 159 “hear”. This might be a matter of imprecise transcription, but

there is no obvious reason why a transcriber would note [kx] without good reason, and the sequence

46


[kx] is found in various dialects in the RMS-database although only in a very few cases in Finno-

Romani. There is of course also the possibility that it might be a matter of rounding rather than

openness in that [h] might be likelier to be slightly rounded due to its backness. This could explain

why it occurs together with [u].

When it comes to cases where *ʃ is word-internal (22 “rabbit”) or word-final (94 “wood”),

there are so many gaps that a comparison is almost impossible. Given this small amount of data and

the extreme messiness of it, I do not specify the rules for the changes any more than what follows:

*ʃ → ʃ / # _ (FIN-012)

→ kh, h, x (FIN-002, FIN-005, FIN-006 and FIN-008)

It seems likely that the cases with [h] have at some point been [kh], but whether the same is true for

the cases with [x] less certain. It is notable, however, that FIN-002, FIN-005, FIN-006 and FIN-008

show a great deal of overlap in their variations in this group with their variations in group [x1]. This

is not to say that the distributions of the various sounds is any clearer when the two groups are

combined, but it does suggest that the two groups have merged to some degree in these dialects.

[p1] In many cases there are stable [p]'s across all dialects. These [p]'s always occurs word-initially,

and I reconstruct *p for this group and note no changes.

[b1] In other cases there is a [p]/[b] alternation with FIN-002, FIN-005, FIN-006 and FIN-008

having [p] and FIN-012, AT-001x and RO-022 having [b], for example 41 “sheep” which is [pakro]

in FIN-005, FIN-006 and FIN-008, but [bakro] in FIN-012 and RO-022. This correspondence

occurs word-initially like the p1-correspondence, and also in front of the same segments as the [p]'s

in group p1. Given this contrastive distribution, I assume that p1 and b1 show reflexes of two

different protophonemes: *p and *b respectively. It appears as though all occurrences of *b have

simply become [p] indiscriminately in FIN-002, FIN-005, FIN-006 and FIN-008 as there is no

single occurrence of [b] in the inherited words in these dialects. This devoicing then runs parallel

with the devoicing of *g and is also unconditional.

[t1, d1+2] Three cases (51 “fur”, 55a “arm” and 150 “mind”) have [t] across all dialects. In two of

these cases, [t] is found immediately after [s]. In a number of cases (7 “father”, 129 “door”, 158

47


“see”, 201 “stupid”) [t] alternates with [d], and in two cases [d] is found across all dialects (“77

“day” and 149 “god”). Comparisons with European Romani and the forms listed by Boretzky

(2012) strongly suggest that only the cases with [t] across all dialects originally had *t. As none of

these have apparently changed, I feel confident in reconstructing *t for these cases. All others

appear to have been *d, and Finno-Romani thus seems to have undergone devoicing in some cases.

Following the change which has taken place with the other voiced plosives *g and *b, we would

expect *d to have become [t] unconditionally in FIN-002, FIN-005, FIN-006 and FIN-008, but it

does not seem to be quite that simple. FIN-008 has for instance devoiced *d in 158 “see” where it is

word-initial and in front of a high front vowel ([thikkava:]), but not in 77 “day” in that same

environment ([di:ves]). A difference might be that the two cases where [d] is found across all

dialects both have long vowels immediately following [d]. This is found in none of the cases where

[d] and [t] interchange. However, if a short vowel was the conditioning factor for devoicing of [d],

we would expect to find something similar happening with the other plosives, but 49 “hair” has *b

that becomes devoiced in front of a long [a] – [pa:l]. Unless this case is somehow exceptional,

vowel length alone cannot then be the deciding factor. The only two cases found in the cognates

where devoicing does not happen to a plosive in any dialect are 77 “day” and 149 “god”. In both

these cases the plosive is found word-initially in front of a long front vowel which in both cases is

also high or middle high ([i] and [e]). It might thus be possible to state a rule that originally voiced

plosives stay voiced when in front of long high or middle high front vowels, but this seems a

somewhat arbitrary rule as there is nothing to explain why vowel height might influence voicing in

plosives.

What is even less explicable is that in 7 “dad”, it varies very much which dialects devoice

and which do not. FIN-002 always devoices except in 201 “stupid” where [d] occurs word-initially

in front of [i]. This fits the pattern of 77 “day” discussed above (except that [i] is not long in this

case), but does not explain why 158 “see” gets a devoiced plosive word-initially in front of [i]. FIN-

005 seems to keep [d] in front of [a] (as seen with the initial segment in 7 “father” and 129 “door”)

but devoices elsewhere (as seen with the final segment in 7 “father”, 158 “see” and 201 “stupid”)

although there are not very many cases to support this observation. FIN-006 appears to keep [d]

word-internally (129 “door”) but devoices elsewhere. FIN-008 devoices in all the cases in [d2] and

FIN-012 only devoices word-finally (7 “father”). None of the Sinti dialects devoice at all.

Whichever rules apply in the various dialects though, it seems clear from comparison with

European Romani and Sinti that *d should be reconstructed for both [d1] and [d2]. In addition to

48


this, it is also clear that devoicing is widespread, but less so than in the groups with other plosives.

In a single case (58 “hand”) [t] becomes [s] in FIN-012 - [vass]. This could very well be a

complete assimilation to the preceding segment, but there is no clear reason why this happens in

this exact word. Is does not seem to be that FIN-012 disprefers the combination [st] in general as it

is found in 55 “arm” ([vast]), which seems to originally have been the same word as the form is

identical in most of the dialects and the semantic meaning is very close. It should be noted that the

transcription [vass] is based on the transcription found in the RMS-database as I personally cannot

hear a long or doubled [s] but trust that the original transcriber (who I assume to be a native or at

least proficient speaker of Finnish and therefore very sensitive to length in consonants (see also

section 5.4) could. While it seems clear that *t should be reconstructed for this correspondence, it is

not clear why the assimilation took place, although I do note it as having happened.

Case number 141 “ring” was discussed earlier, but in addition to that discussion it should

also be mentioned that it loses a [t] in FIN-008. However, it loses a whole syllable and this is

therefore not as such treated as a sound change involving [t] especially. It is tempting to treat this as

a purely morphological matter, but as there is nothing to suggest that the morpheme is [-tin] rather

than [-in], that leaves the loss of [t] to be explained. it does not seem immediately likely that [t] was

lost after [-in] was lost, because FIN-008 does not seem to have a problem with the ending [st] – see

for example 58 “hand” - [vast]. A possible explanation could be that [t] was originally inserted as

FIN-008 appears to disprefer the combination [si] in non-stressed position, but there is not really

data enough to make a claim about the significant absence of this combination. In any case, even if

[t] was originally inserted for such a reason, it must have happened even before Proto-Northwestern

as this [t] is found in almost all dialects even though the exact placement of it differs. There is thus

no clear reason why [t] is lost in 141 “ring”, but it does seem very clear that *t should be

reconstructed for this case.

[v1] In many cases there is a stable [v] across all dialects, and for these cases I reconstruct *v.

Another case (186 “come”) with [u] in FIN-006 but [v] in the other dialects is easily explained, as

something has happened to the syllable structure of 186 “come” in FIN-006 making *v appear in

syllable-coda where it has undergone the rule stated in 5.1. Another case (152 “live”) has [v] in all

dialects – including AT-001x – except RO-022. A comparison with the European Romani forms

confirms that [v] is the original segment, and that RO-022 is the dialect which has changed. I thus

49


reconstruct *v for these cases as well.

[v2+f1+ph1-2] There are four cases (two of which appear to be identical) with [f]: 116 “town”, 117

“castle”, 118 “prison” and 129 “door”. In 116 “town” there is a stable word-initial [f] across all

dialects, and for this correspondence I reconstruct *f and note no changes. In 117 “castle” and 118

“prison” there is a word-initial [f] in FIN-005, FIN-006 and FIN-008, while FIN-002 and FIN-012

have [ph] (which like [f] is very rare in the cognates). Comparing with the other Romani dialects, it

looks like the most general form of 117 and 118 is [phanlipe] (though there are few enough

occurrences of this and the form is different enough that 117 “castle” and 118 “prison” might not be

cognates after all) indicating that an original *ph has become [f] in FIN-005, FIN-006 and FIN-008.

In 87 “earth”, [ph] is also found as a reflex of European Romani [ph]. In this case it is word-

initial and in front of a vowel like in 117 and 118, but in this case it has stayed [ph] in FIN-008

instead of becoming [f]. As there are gaps in FIN-002, FIN-005 and FIN-006, it is impossible to say

if this case has simply not changed, or if FIN-008 is irregular.

Case number 129 “door” shows a mix of [v] and [f] and no syllable-onset at all in word-

initial position. As the alternation between syllable-onset and no syllable-onset in this word is

generally mixed across Romani dialects (Boretzky 2012: 88), I will not attempt to explain this

difference. The European Romani forms state that the original word-initial sound was *v, and

listening to FIN-008 I am fairly convinced that the informant says [vudar] and not [fudar] although

the background noise does make it hard to distinguish between the two. As it is not possible to

check FIN-002, I am not going to state any rules devoicing *v in this case.

[th1] In one case, 163 “wash” there are once again many different versions of a word-initial sound:

FIN-002 has [kh] ([khouvel]), FIN-005, FIN-006 and FIN-012 have [h] ([houvel], [houva:] and

[houvela] respectively), and FIN-008 has [ʦ] ([ʦu:vava:]). To add to that, AT-001x has [th] ([thov-])

and RO-022 has [ʧ] ([ʧuvej]). Thesleff (1901) notes this word as thouva: and there are no

alternative forms with other initial sounds. It seems then that all the Finno-Romani dialects (and

also RO-022) show different and relatively new innovations for this correspondence which sadly

only appears that one time in data. Given that I earlier noted that [kh] seemed to have become [h] in

some of the dialects, it seems likely that the change happened in this order: [th] → [kh] → [h].

However, it is of course also possible that only FIN-002 has changed [th] → [kh], and that the other

50


dialects have gone directly from [th] to [h], following the earlier mentioned rule of cluster

reduction. Where the [ʦ] of FIN-008 fits into this development is unclear, but given that [ʦ] is a

quite prominent segment in this dialect, it does not seem strange that an unusual sequence would be

reinterpreted as a more widespread one.

[Ø5] In two cases (66 “tongue” and 95 “fire”) there is loss of word-final plosives in addition to the

insertion of a nasal segment. In these cases it seems that FIN-002 and FIN-012 keep both nasal and

plosive while FIN-006 and FIN-008 lose the plosive. FIN-005 keeps both nasal and plosive in 95

“fire” but has two different forms in 66 “tongue”: One where the plosive is lost and one where the

nasal is lost (or was possibly never inserted in the first place). Given that the plosive is [p] in 66 in

all he dialects where it occurs, I reconstruct *p for this correspondence and note that it has a

tendency to be lost. 95 “fire” was discussed earlier, and will not be elaborated further upon.

[Ø6] In some cases, one dialect either has a segment that is found in none of the others, or it misses

a segment all the other dialects have. In some of these cases (68 “eye”, 171 “bring”, 220 “we”) Sinti

is the odd one out when comparing with European Romani, and these cases will not be discussed

any further. In one case (19 “cat”) it is FIN-006, and in two other cases (85 “wind”, 204 “a little”) it

is FIN-012. There does not seem to be any pattern to these deviant cases, and I will not go further

into this. This leaves two cases: 127 “chair” and 141 “ring”. In 127 “chair” only FIN-012 has

retained the word-final [n] which is found in both European Romani and AT-001x. The other Finno-

Romani dialects appear to have lost this segment, but the fact that it is found in both AT-001x and

FIN-012 makes it seem reasonable that it was there in Proto-Northwestern. 141 “ring” is - as noted

before – a quite special case. The European Romani form is angrusti with no word-final [n].

However, both RO-022, FIN-006 and FIN-005 have a word-final [n], indicating that the word might

have had a word-final [n] in Proto-Northwestern. No word-final [n] is found in either FIN-002 or

FIN-012 and FIN-008 seems to have lost the entire last syllable, including any [n] which might

have been there originally.

5.4. Discussion of consonant inventories

Having now analysed all the consonantal segments found in the correspondence sets, we can

51


reconstruct the segmental inventory of consonants in Proto-Northwestern. Table 1 shows the

inventory of all the sounds found (regardless of phonemic status):

bilabial alveolar post-alveolar/

palatal

velar

plosive *p *b *t *d *k *gfricative *v *f *s *ʃ *xAffricate *ʦ *ʧ *ʤnasal *m *n *ŋliquids/glides *r *l *j

Table 1 – Inventory of consonants in Proto-Northwestern

It is clear from simply looking at the cognates that most of the modern Finno-Romani dialects have

changed a great deal since Proto-Northwestern, and far more so than Sinti, which in many cases

appears virtually unchanged since Proto-Northwestern. At the same time, there are only very minor

differences between Proto-Northwestern and European Romani, indicating that only very little

change has taken place between those stages. When comparing Proto-Northwestern with the

segments found in the modern forms of the inherited words though (all of the inherited words listed

in Appendix 1 and not just the ones in Appendix 2), the inventory for all the dialects together does

not look so very different from that of Proto-Northwestern:

bilabial alveolar post-

alveolar/

palatal

velar glottal

plosive *p *b *t *d *k *gfricative *v *f *s *ʃ *x *hAffricate *ʦ *ʧ *ʤnasal *m *n *ŋliquids/glid

es

*r *l *j

Table 2 – Inventory of consonants in the inherited materials in modern Finno-Romani

The only difference between the inventory of Proto-Northwestern and the modern Finno-Romani

52


dialects is [h], which did not occur in Proto-Northwestern. [h] does not appear to be an independent

phoneme, even in modern Finno-Romani, but it is a quite frequent allophone of various obstruents.

While the inventories of all the Finno-Romani dialects taken together seem very close to Proto-

Northwestern, the picture is obviously a little different when looking at the individual dialects.

These differences will be discussed in the following.

First of all, it seems that none of the three nasals have been changed or lost in any of the

dialects, nor has the collection of liquids and glides ([l], [r] and [j]). All in all then, the sonorants

appear to be quite stable in Finno-Romani, although there are minor, spread changes to be found as

well: A few cases of insertion of nasals with no clear motivation which are found in all the Finno-

Romani dialects and must thus be assumed to be a change which has happened fairly early on after

the protostage. There is also the one, unexplained case of metathesis which has happened in either

Finno-Romani or Sinti, although it does not seem possible to decide which. In addition to this, it

also seems that the sequence [lr] is not allowed in Finno-Romani, although to be fair there was only

one case of it to begin with (67 “throat”), so this might be a singular case. Nevertheless, it means

that there are examples of liquid assimilation in Finno-Romani. In the same case, it also appears that

FIN-008 does not allow the sequence [rr] either, but as this very same sequence is found in FIN-008

in 216 “in” this does not seem to be a general thing. Still, dissimilation of the first rhotic in a

sequence with two identical rhotics is found in Finno-Romani. As this is only found in one dialect,

it appears to be a quite recent development. There is also a single case where [j] becomes [l] word-

finally in the two Finno-Romani dialects that have a word form in the case (60 “fingernail). As there

are only the two, it is difficult to say whether this is a general change across all the dialects (in

which case it would be assumed to be a fairly old change) or not, and it was in any case suggested

to be a half-borrowed word and not a sound-change as such. Finally, the protophoneme *ʤ has

become [j] in many cases in FIN-002 and FIN-008, although the exact circumstances for this

change are not clear. As the change is only found in two dialects and is also somewhat sporadic and

unpredictable, this seems to be a quite recent development.

When it comes to plosives only FIN-012 has retained voiced plosives other than [d] (not

counting the cases in FIN-002 with the sequence [ng] which is assumed to represent [ŋ]). [d] is

found in all the modern dialects, but [b] and [g] only in FIN-012.

When it comes to fricatives and affricates, [s] and [h] have been retained in all dialects and

[x] in all but FIN-002. It varies from dialect to dialect which of the original three affricates have

been retained and which have been lost: FIN-002 retains the unvoiced ones ([ʦ] and [ʧ]), FIN-005

53


the unvoiced alveolar [ʦ] and the voiced post-alveolar [ʤ] but not its unvoiced counterpart [ʧ]. This

seems somewhat unusual as the general tendency appears to be that unvoiced segments are more

likely to have been retained than voiced ones. FIN-006 has retained only [ʦ] and the post-alveolar

place of articulation is not in use at all in this dialect. FIN-008 and FIN-012 have both retained all

three affricates.

It thus seems that in terms of whole inventories the obstruents (plosives, fricatives and

affricates) have been the most susceptible to change in the inherited words in Finno-Romani while

the sonorants have scarcely been affected at all.

When the consonants of the loanwords are included, the consonant inventory of FIN-002 is

extended to include [ʤ] which means that FIN-002 has all three original affricates. The inventory of

FIN-005 is extended to include [b] meaning that [g] is the only missing plosive from the expected

set. Apart from that though, including the loanwords in an analysis of consonant inventories does

not change anything in the case of Finno-Romani.

Are the changes found in Finno-Romani related to the inventory of Finnish consonants? As a

first remark, Finno-Romani and Finnish has at least one thing in common: While the vowel system

is more or less stable, the consonant system is a bit of a mess. The consonants of Finnish can be

split into layers according to how frequently they are found in various dialects and registers (Suomi,

Toivanen & Ylitalo 2008: 25). In this hierarchy (First suggested by Karlsson 1983) the consonant

segments always found in varieties of Finnish are /p, t, k, s, h, l, r, m, n, j, v/ (/v/ is noted as /ʋ/, but

as there is no opposition between the two and as the transcriptions in this paper are generally kept

quite broad, I will refer to it as /v/). These segments also all occur in all the Finno-Romani dialects,

but as that was already the case at the protostage and even at the stage of European Romani, this

does not tell us very much. The next layer consists only of /ŋ/, the third layer only of /d/, the fourth

layer only of /f/, and the fifth of /b, g, ʃ/. The hierarchy is to some extent implicational in that a

variety containing the phonemes of the fifth layer will also most often contain all the others and so

forth, but there are exceptions to this as well (Suomi, Toivanen & Ylitalo 2008: 25). Comparing the

outer layers with Finno-Romani, there is nothing to suggest that /ŋ/ is not found in all the dialects

(and again, this was also the case in Proto-Northwestern), and /d/ is likewise found across all the

dialects as well (as the only voiced plosive) although only in a few cases. When it comes to the

more "remote" layers though, the low frequency of the Finnish phonemes seems to be reflected in

Finno-Romani: /f/ is found but in a single case (a case where /f/ has been preserved, not a case

where another sound has become /f/), and /b/, /g/ and /ʃ/ are found almost exclusively in FIN-012

54


and as with /f/, these are cases where an original sound has stayed the same and not cases with new

developments. From this, one might suggest that only the most frequently found segments in

Finnish have had a chance to influence Finno-Romani. Obviously, it might also be a case of the

relevant Finnish contact dialects simply not having the outer layers by coincidence.

It is worth noting that one of the common exceptions to the hierarchy in Finnish varieties is

that although a variety may have some of the more remote layers, it will lack the second layer and

thus /ŋ/. This does not mean that the sound [ŋ] is not found, but it will be as an allophone of /n/

rather than as a separate phoneme. This appears to also be the case in Finno-Romani, but again, this

seems to be an older phenomenon and not something that can likely be ascribed to contact with

Finnish. The Finnish plosives can be voiced in "fast and careless speech" (Suomi, Toivanen &

Ylitalo 2008: 27), but this is not counted as Finnish actually having the voiced versions of the

plosives.

The Finnish /s/ has plenty of room for variation without being confused with other

phonemes as it is the only oral fricative in most versions of Finnish, and it is often pronounced more

like [ʃ] than [s]. In fast speech it might be realised more like [z], especially between two vowels.

The sequence /sr/ is not allowed word-internally in inherited words in Finnish. When it does occur

in loanwords such as Israel, it is often realised as [sɹ] or [xr]. Overall, in Finno-Romani /s/ is

usually pronounces like [s]. In FIN-006 and FIN-008 this is almost always the case as far as I can

hear, and any occurrences of [ʃ] are few and seem accidental. In FIN-005 there are some fairly clear

examples of [ʃ], and these are not particularly rare, although there is no obvious system in when

they occur. In FIN-012 /s/ seems to be pronounced as [s] most of the time, but as [ʃ] when next to a

back vowel. The exact pronunciation of /s/ in Finno-Romani thus seems to be influenced only to a

small degree by contact with Finnish. The reason could have been that Finno-Romani has the

phoneme /ʃ/ and that this limits the space that /s/ can have allophones in without causing confusion

between phonemes. The problem with this explanation is that /ʃ/ is only found very rarely in

modern Finno-Romani (only in FIN-012, and even then only 6 and 158) outside of the affricate /ʧ/.

Proto-Northwestern, however, did have /ʃ/, and it could be suggested that there is some awareness

of this in the speakers even now, and that this might be the reason why this trait is not very widely

borrowed from Finnish. Another explanation is of course that not all traits are borrowed. Neither

[sr] nor [xr] is ever found, so the only thing this seems to indicate is that traits which are peripheral

in one language are unlikely to affect a contact language, and this is hardly surprising.

The Finnish /h/ has a great variety of allophones: [ç] occurs between a high front vowel and

55


a consonant, [x] is found between a back vowel and a consonant, [ɦ] occurs between vowels,

especially word-internally, and [h] occurs elsewhere. In Finno-Romani [h] is relatively rare, and

seems to appear only as an allophone of other segments. Still, as [h] is found only as aspirations in

Proto-Northwestern, it can be argued that Finnish has had an effect on the frequency of this sound.

The realisations of Finnish /r/ are tentatively described as [ɹ] immediately following [s], as

[ɾ] word-internally, and as [r] elsewhere, especially in /rr/ sequences (Suomi, Toivanen & Ylitalo

2008: 30). This is not including speaker-specific variation. Although the background noise makes it

hard to tell in many cases, it seems that this is only found to some extent in Finno-Romani: The

speakers of FIN-005 and FIN-006 are quite consequent in pronouncing /r/ like [r], while it sounds

like the speakers of FIN-008 and FIN-012 mainly use flaps and only the occasional trill or

approximant with no apparent system. A more thorough phonetic study would be needed to say this

for sure, but it seems from the sound files in the RMS-database that Finno-Romani has not quite

adopted the Finnish realisation of /r/. Granqvist (2002: 71) disagrees with this assessment, but then

he disagrees with the description of Finnish to begin with as he states that the Finnish /r/ is

pronounced like a trill and not a flap.

The Finnish /j/ occurs only in syllable onset position, and is always realised as [j]. The

Finno-Romani [j] is found as reflex of various protophonemes. All the cases with *j have the reflex

[j], when it is found word-initially, but in cases where it was not, *j has in most dialects become [i]

(group [j1]). Finally, [j] is sometimes found as a reflex of *ʤ, which is not found in Finnish. This

only happens when *ʤ is found word-initially. It seems that in the case of [j] and *j, Finno-Romani

has adopted the distribution of a segment: Firstly, *j's occurring in positions which are not allowed

in Finnish, have very frequently changed to the similar but not identical [i]. Secondly, *j's occurring

in positions which are allowed in Finnish have stayed [j]. Finally, segments (phonetically close to

[j]) which are not found in Finnish, are occasionally replaced by [j], but only in positions where [j]

is also allowed in Finnish.

The Finnish /v/ (which is counted as an approximant) is realised as [w] after diphthongs

ending in [u], and as [ʋ] elsewhere. This could perhaps explain why the Proto-Northwestern *v is

realised as /u/ after vowels in modern Romani: If first all /v/'s were pronounced as [ʋ], then they

also have a certain degree of roundedness. This roundedness immediately following a vowel could

quickly become a fusion containing the properties 'roundedness' and 'sonority', and this combination

could very well result in [u]. This presupposes that Finno-Romani could adopt the Finnish

realisation of /v/ and map it onto its own phoneme system.

56


Finnish [ŋ] has a very narrow distribution. In dialects which do not have /ŋ/, it only occurs

word-internally immediately before /k/ and is in complementary distribution with [m] and [n] in this

environment. Even in dialects which do have /n-velar/, the only addition to this is between vowels

where it is realised as [ŋ:] contrasting with [m:] and [n:]. Even in loanwords, the distribution of /ŋ/

is no wider than that, and it is thus a quite marginal phoneme even in the dialects that do have it. In

Finno-Romani [ŋ] also only shows up as an allophone of /n/, but as discussed earlier, this was also

the case in Proto-Northwestern.

Finnish /d/ is quite different from /t/, not only in respect to voicing, but also in occlusion

time. /d/ is described as being halfway a flap (Suomi, Toivanen & Ylitalo 2008: 33), and they are

not pronounced at the same place. Speakers who have /d/ in their paradigm often do not have /b/

and /g/, and it thus seems that /t/ - /d/ is not a true voicing opposition. Historically, /d/ entered

Finnish as /ð/ and was used by the well-educated and especially the clerics, and it still belongs to

the formal registers and in normative language use. It is thus not a stable consonant and it has a

defective distribution in that it only occurs word-internally in the environment V _V or /h/ _ V. In

older loanwords from Swedish /d/ was always replaced with /t/, but in the newer loanwords it is

kept as /d/ and has thus gained a wider use. The Finno-Romani /d/ is rare, but it is the only one of

the voiced plosives to be found in all dialects. The only dialect where it is pronounced a bit different

than a regular voiced stop is FIN-006, although even here it is not quite realised as an approximant

either. This trait thus does not seem to have been adopted, but then again, given the rareness of /d/

in Finnish, this is perhaps not so strange.

Finnish /f/ is quite rare and is only found in a few loanwords of relatively new date. Even in

these loanwords, most dialect replaces /f/ with /v/ (word-initially) or /hv/ (word-internally). The

dialects that do keep /f/ are the western ones, presumably because these are close to Swedish which

does have /f/ (Suomi, Toivanen & Ylitalo 2008: 35). In Finno-Romani [f] is equally rare, but this

was also true for Proto-Northwestern. In fact, in one case (117 “castle”) it seems that original [ph]

has become [f]. This does not seem to be a result of Finnish influence. It might have been an

influence from Swedish at an earlier point, but in any case, it is not a widespread phenomenon.

Finnish /b/, /g/ and /ʃ/ can potentially be counted among the phonemes in some varieties.

These varieties are primarily formal registers and the language of young, urban, well-educated

people – the language of someone who has had some amount of exposure to foreign languages, in

other words (Suomi, Toivanen & Ylitalo 2008: 36). They are found orthographically (in the case

57


of /b/ and /g/), but in many dialects they are pronounced as /p/, /k/ and /s/ respectively and therefore

not separate phonemes. As already mentioned, the voiced plosives /b/ and /g/ found in Proto-

Northwestern are only very sporadic in modern Finno-Romani. FIN-012 has them, but other than

that they are almost not found at all. Instead /p/ and /k/ are found in their places, and this seems to

be a change that is almost complete in FIN-002, FIN-005, FIN-006 and FIN-008. It is worth noting

that the only voiced plosive to be keep its status as phoneme in all the Finno-Romani dialects is also

the most frequent in Finnish. This indicates that frequency in the contact language can play a

significant role in contact effects found in the affected language. This is supported by the case of [ʃ],

which is about as rare in modern Finno-Romani as [b] and [g], and appears to have begun

disappearing during the first half of the 19th century (Valtonen 1968).

5.5. Stress and length

Having described the segment inventories in Finno-Romani, I now briefly examine stress patterns

and length in vowels and consonants as well. This is mainly to explain phenomena found in the

cognates which do not strictly speaking belong at the segmental level.

5.5.1. Stress The basis for the analysis of stress in Finno-Romani is all the inherited words in Appendix 1 and not

just the ones listed in Appendix 2 as it is not necessary for this part of the analysis that there are

more than one reflex of a given word.

All words in the Finno-Romani sample have stress on the first syllable with the exception of

59 “finger” in FIN-008 ([aŋ'nus]). The same goes for Sinti with a single exception in RO-022: 139

“pocket” ([po'sita]). Given that there are only these two cases in the whole sample, I will not

attempt to explain them.

Stress is also always on the first syllable in Finnish. However, it is unlikely that the Finnish

stress pattern is the source of the stress pattern in Finno-Romani, as the pattern with stress on the

first syllable is also found in Sinti and can thus be assumed to have been present in Proto-

Northwestern. If Finnish has had any effect on the Finno-Romani stress pattern at all, it is a

stabilising factor: The fact that speakers of Finnish stress their first syllables might have counter-

acted any inclination speakers of Finno-Romani may have had to change their own stress patterns.

58


5.5.2. Length in vowels Long vowels are never found in European Romani, and there is only a single long vowel noted in

the data from AT-001x (104 “egg”, [ja:ro]). It seems quite clear then, that the stage before Proto-

Northwestern did not have long vowels at all. The question is whether Proto-Northwestern did. The

fact that there is only the one case found with a long vowel in AT-001x seems to indicate that there

was not, but there is generally not very much data to work with from AT-001x, so it does not seem

implausible that there might in fact have been length.

Some, though not many cases have long vowels in both RO-022 and Finno-Romani, and this

fact does suggest that length played a role at some point before Finno-Romani split from Sinti. In

addition to the cases where Finno-Romani and RO-022 share long vowels, there are also a few

cases in which only RO-022 has them: 31 “pig”, 115 “village”, 132 “word” and 135 “name”. The

three last of these are cases with the [au] – [ap] correspondence described in section 5.1. The fact

that Finno-Romani has a diphthong in these cases while RO-022 has a long vowel seems to indicate

that the protoform might have had a somewhat heavier syllable than the European Romani

correspondence [-av] indicates. This is not supported by data from AT-001x though, as 115 is [gab]/

[gav] in this dialect. The last remaining case where RO-022 has a long vowel where Finno-Romani

does not, is 31 “pig”. As the Finno-Romani forms of this word have added the diminutive suffix [-

ixno] and RO-022 has not, it is difficult to decide whether this should in fact be treated as two

different cases with respect to length.

The cases in which both Finno-Romani and RO-022 have a long vowel do not seem to

follow any particular pattern. They all have either one or two syllables, but that is true for the vast

majority of the words in data. The long vowel always appears in the first syllable, but as that is also

where the stress is, this is very easily explained. The long vowels occur in both open (for instance

90 “water” [pa:ni]) and closed (for instance 6 “friend” [ma:l]) syllables, and it seems any vowel

quality can be lengthened although there are no cases with long [i] in both Finno-Romani and RO-

022. Why these particular words (eight in all) share vowel length in Finno-Romani and RO-022 is

thus unclear. The fact that there are no more than eight might suggest that it is a simple coincidence

and that the lengthening is a parallel but separate innovation in the two dialects and that Proto-

Northwestern did not have long vowels. Another possibility is that the vowel lengthening was

actually more widespread in Proto-Northwestern but that RO-022 has since lost the length in most

cases. Matras (2002: 60) mentions that many Romani dialects share vowel lengthening, but that it is

likely to be a result of similar stress patterns rather than shared retention of an older trait. Although

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Matras does not specifically mention that this might be the case for the shared long vowels in Sinti

and Finno-Romani, it seems quite possible that the few cases of shared vowels are parallel

innovation. For this reason I do not note any long vowels in the forms of Proto-Northwestern, but

acknowledge that this is a somewhat open question.

What is not uncertain is that long vowels are very common in Finno-Romani. Here they are

always found in stressed syllables. They are occasionally found in closed syllables, but then mainly

in one-syllable words (such as 48 “ear” [ka:n]). This observation is confirmed by Granqvist (2002:

75) who states that “underlying vowels in stressed syllables are mostly unspecified for quantity. If

there is no coda, the vowels tend to undergo lengthening, but otherwise they are usually realized as

short”.

Finnish has a length system where both vowels and consonants can occur in long and short

versions1 independently of each other, and independently of stress. This means that all possible

combinations of long and short vowels and consonants may occur together (though this is not quite

true for certain South-Western dialects where alternations in vowel length can only occur in the first

syllable of a word (Suomi, Toivanen & Ylitalo 2008: 41)). This is not what is found in the vowel

length of Finno-Romani: Long vowels can only occur in stressed syllables, and there are no

minimal pairs in data to indicate that vowel length is contrastive. It seems quite clear then, that

although Finno-Romani has adopted the ability to lengthen vowels, it has not adopted the

possibilities of using it to create active oppositions. It it neither surprising that Finno-Romani has

adopted vowel length, nor that vowel length in Finno-Romani is not phonemic: A phenomenon

which occurs as often in words as length is bound to be noticeable to the learner of a language.

Vowel length is simply very obvious when listening to a language, and in a language like Finnish

where it carries meaning, stress is a very relevant trait to pay attention to. A proficient speaker of

Finnish therefore deals with long vowels very often, and it is not strange that it should spread to

other languages this speaker is a speaker of. On the other hand, copying the contrastive element of

vowel length into another language requires a much bigger restructuring of not only the language's

phonology but also its lexicon. It is therefore not surprising that this has not happened (at least to a

significant degree) in Finno-Romani.

I have only three cases variation in diphthongs: 61 “leg”, 65 “foot” and 163 “wash”. As

mentioned in section 4.2, 61 “leg” and 65 “foot” are reflexes of the same cognate and very similar.

1 Phonologically, this can be interpreted as cases with double segments rather than underlyingly long phonemes. For further discussion of this, see (Suomi, Toivanen & Ylitalo 2008: 40-41).

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When it comes to the diphthongs, they are identical in my data: The Finno-Romani dialects have

[ie] ([je] in the case of FIN-012), and Sinti has [i:]. Granqvist (In press) mentions that Finno-

Romani developed diphthongs under the influence of Eastern Finnish dialects (presumably towards

the end of the 18th century). However, the outcome [ie] is noted as being the the diphthongisation of

[e:] and not [i:], and if RO-022 is anything to go by (which is has seemed to be so far), the original

vowel was [i]. A lowering can have taken place before the diphthongisation, but there is nothing to

indicate this in any of the other cases.

In 163 “wash”, FIN-002, FIN-005, FIN-006 and FIN-012 have the diphthong [ou], while

FIN-008 has [u:], AT-001x has [o] and RO-022 has [u]. European Romani has [o] as well, indicating

that only AT-001x has retained the original vowel quality. According to Granqvist (in press), the

closing diphthong [ou] is older than the opening diphthong [ie], and is not due to contact with

Finnish. It is worth noting that outside of diphthongs ending with [u] (which are described in

section 5.1), there are very few diphthongs in my data. Although there is no claim of a particular

number or amount, it is my impression that Granqvist (2002) considers diphthongs to be commonly

found in Finno-Romani. Finnish is considered to have 18 different diphthongs (Suomi, Toivanen &

Ylitalo 2008: 49), and it would certainly make sense for Romani to have adopted a preference for

diphthongs through contact with Finnish. This is confirmed by the high number of cases where [v]

has become [u], resulting in quite a few cases with diphthongs, but I can think of no good

explanation why other diphthongs are almost absent from my data.

5.5.3. Length in consonants Certain consonants are long in Finno-Romani. [m], [n], [k], [t], [h] and [s] all exist in long versions,

and the distribution of the contrast seems to be that the consonants become long when they appear

between two vowels, unless the first vowel is long:

C1 → C1C1 / V[-long] _ V2

Diphthongs count as long vowels in this, and as implicitly stated in the rule, the lengthening only

happens when there is only one consonant between two vowels. It also needs to be added that this

2 According to Granqvist (2002: 75) there is a synchronically active process which lengthens any consonant in stem-final position. As I have not really studied the morphophonological processes, this could very well be the case in my data as well.

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rule appears to not affect [r] which is often found in environments where it should be lengthened

according to the rule but is not, such as 231 “high” in FIN-002: [paro].

It seems strange that [ŋ] and [p] are not included in the group that are found in long versions

(which would then be the complete set of nasals and unvoiced plosives), but this might have an

explanation: [p] only ever occur word-initially in the inherited words and can therefore never stand

between two vowels, and [ŋ] might in fact have a doubled version that my ears fail to catch and

which was not noted by the transcribers of the RMS-database due to transcription conventions. In

fact, (Vuorela & Borin 1998: 63) use the convention <ng> = [ŋŋ], and it does not seem implausible

that the transcribers of the RMS-database have done the same.

We might ask whether it is the long vowel preceding a consonant which keeps it from

getting long, or whether it might be the other way around: That a long consonant has kept a vowel

which might otherwise have been long from being it. The fact that the distribution of the consonant

length seems quite clear-cut and without obvious exceptions makes it seem most likely that the

consonant lengthening has happened after the vowel lengthening. If it had happened the other way

around, I would expect the distribution of vowel length to be more regular and the distribution of

consonant length to be more seemingly arbitrary. As this is not the case, I assume that the consonant

lengthening has happened after the vowel lengthening.

Given the fact that consonant length is found only in Finno-Romani and not in either of the

Sinti dialects nor in European Romani, it seems quite certain that Proto-Northwestern did not have

long consonants and that this is a more or less recent addition to Finno-Romani.

In Finnish, consonants as well as vowels can be long (as mentioned, there seems to be an

underlyingly doubled segment rather than a long one, but as the phonetic consequence is length, I

will keep referring to it as such), although there are certain limitations to this. /v/, /j/ and /h/ only

occur in short versions in most dialects. In the dialects where they can occur in long versions, the

quantity distribution is predictable (following a short vowel in a stressed syllable and preceding a

long vowel in the following syllable) and thus not phonemic. All other phonemes in the core layer

can occur in their long versions. /d/ is only found in its long version in recent loans, and for

phonemes in the more distant layers, Suomi, Toivanen & Ylitalo (2008: 42) predict that any dialect

having the short versions will also have the long, although there is no empirical evidence to support

(or the opposite) the claim. Furthermore, alternation in length in consonants only occurs word-

internally and only to a limited degree in consonant sequences: /p/, /t/, /k/ and /s/ can occur in long

versions immediately following a sonorant. The situations in Standard Spoken Finnish and Finno-

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Romani are thus not at all identical. While consonant length is rooted in the phonological level in

Standard Spoken Finnish, the situation in Finno-Romani seems to be more like what is found in

some (unfortunately unnamed) Finnish dialects: That consonant lengthening occurs in certain

circumstances. The circumstances even seem to be more or less identical. The only difference is that

the vowel following a long consonant does not need to be long in Finno-Romani. Also, the affected

segments are not quite the same, as there are cases where Finno-Romani has doubling of [h], which

is not found in Standard Spoken Finnish. As mentioned, the fact that there is no doubling of [p] can

be explained, but other than that, Finnish seems to have long versions of more segments than Finno-

Romani does.

Here it would be very useful to know if the Finnish dialects that the various Finno-Romani

dialects have been in contact with are the ones with only phonetic lengthening of consonants. If this

is the case, then Finno-Romani has adopted the rule for consonant lengthening almost without

changing it. If not, on the other hand, then Finno-Romani has adopted a phenomenon which in the

source language is phonological but is frequently reflected on the surface level, and uses it in a

simpler way that only affects the surface. While the first option is not impossible, it seems

somewhat unlikely that all the Finno-Romani dialects have been in contact with dialects with

surface-only lengthening. The consonant lengthening seems to be a common trait across the Finno-

Romani dialects. Of course, it could be a trait borrowed a long time ago, possibly even before the

various branches split up, and this could well have happened in contact with a Finnish dialect with

surface-only lengthening. It would be necessary to have more data on Finnish dialects than I have at

my disposal to fully answer this question. However, there is no doubt that the lengthening of

consonants in Finno-Romani is a caused by its contact with Finnish.

6. Discussion

Having now analysed the case of Finno-Romani in contact with Finnish, I will now discuss to what

extent these results can be used to deduce something more universal about contact-induced changes

in phonology.

In broad lines, I have found that the following has happened in Finno-Romani in the time it

has been in contact with Finnish: The vowel inventory has been affected to a fairly limited degree.

This is the outcome of a situation in which a quite small, but apparently very stable vowel system

has been influenced by a slightly larger, but supposedly also quite stable vowel system. None of the

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original vowels of Finno-Romani have gone out of use, and while three new vowels have been

added, their use is almost completely limited to loanwords. [v] has become [u] in word-final

position, and since diphthongs are generally frequent in Finnish, this is probably not a coincidence.

The nasals of Finno-Romani and those of Finnish were almost identical in their form and use

already before contact, and the nasals of Finno-Romani have not changed since then, except that

intrusive nasals are found in a few words. Both Finnish and Finno-Romani have the liquids /l/ and

/r/, and the distribution and pronunciation are more or less the same in the two languages. Liquids

have generally been stable as well, although there is a case of /l/ becoming /r/. /j/ is found in both

languages, but the distribution of /j/ is more restricted in Finnish than in Proto-Northwestern was.

Modern Finno-Romani reflects these restrictions to a fairly high degree.

A schematic representation of the following can be found in Table 3 which shows the

changes which have happened from Proto-Northwestern to modern Finno-Romani. Finnish is

included for reference. Dotted lines indicate that a development is found in only one dialect and/or

only in rare cases, and parentheses indicate the same for a segment.

The obstruents found in Proto-Northwestern which are also common in Finnish ([s], [t], [p],

[k], [v], [h]) have been stable and not changed significantly with the exception of [k] and [h]. *k has

remained [k] in most environments, but has changed in position before [i] or [e], though this is most

likely due to contact with Swedish, and has nothing to do with Finnish, where this allophonic

variation is not found. [h] is not found in Proto-Northwestern except as aspirations, but in Finno-

Romani [h] occasionally has status as an individual segment. However, it does not seem to have

phonemic status. [d] and [f] are both found in some Finnish dialects. [f] is very rare in Proto-

Northwestern and is still rare in modern Finno-Romani. The presence of [f] in Finnish does not

seem to have had an effect, but given its rarity, that is not unexpected. [d] is found less often in

Finno-Romani than in Proto-Northwestern, but is still found more often than both [b] and [g]. This

suggests that its presence in Finnish is not quite irrelevant. [b], [g] and [ʃ] are all found in a few

Finnish varieties. All of these segments are either rare or none-existing in most Finno-Romani

dialects, but were relatively common in Proto-Northwestern. Proto-Northwestern had more

consonant segments than Finnish does, and [ʤ], [ʦ], [ʧ] and [x] are not found in Finnish. While [x]

is still relatively common in Finno-Romani, and [ʦ] and [ʧ] have actually spread to be used more

often than in Proto-Northwestern, [ʤ] is quite rare. This might be because it is the only one out of

the four to be voiced, and because voicing of obstruents is not often found (at least phonologically)

in Finnish. Considering the outcome of a situation in which a relatively small consonant inventory

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has affected a larger one, it seems that the affected inventory has lost a distinction which is not

relevant in the contact language - voicing. However, once this loss of voicing distinctions is taken

into account, Finno-Romani has only lost segments to a limited extent. On the contrary, certain

segments seem to be spreading. Finnish did not have any consonant segments which are not found

in Proto-Northwestern, and Finno-Romani has not gained any new consonants.

Table 3 – Changes in obstruents from Proto-Northwestern to Finno-Romani

To what extent would this particular outcome of this particular contact situation have been

predictable? It seems that many of the consequences to Finno-Romani could have been predicted by

a combination of knowing the sociolinguistic factors and making a structural comparison between

the two languages. It could have been predicted that the vowel system of Finno-Romani would not

become smaller and that the existing vowels would not change significantly. It could have been

predicted that the new vowels which Finno-Romani has adopted are these exact vowels and not

other vowels. It could have been predicted that the sonorants have not changed. These things were

predictable because there either was no difference between the two inventories and any change

would seem unmotivated, or because the sociolinguistic factors make it seem likely that Finno-

Romani would converge and become more like Finnish. Other changes are less predictable. The

unvoiced affricates are notably non-existent in Finnish. Yet they prevail in Finno-Romani and it

even seems that other segments, which were rarer in Proto-Northwestern and which have more or

less gone out of use in Finno-Romani, are in many cases replaced by the voiceless fricatives in. In

other words, they seem to be gaining ground despite their not being “supported” by similar sounds

in Finnish. It does not seem then, that this outcome was predictable from the circumstances of the

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contact situation, be they sociolinguistic or structural. There is of course the possibility that these

sounds have come to be a group-marker. Bullock & Gerfen (2004) describe a situation in which

speakers of a Canadian variety of French keep certain French traits in their phonology and loose

others in contact with English. The authors find that it is impossible to predict which low-level

allophonic differences between English and French is kept and which is lost. Firstly, the French

speakers keep their French pronunciation of /r/, which is a trill. This is not what would have been

predicted by for example Anderson (1982), whose point is that convergence of low-level phonetic

features should be expected in situations with language attrition, while there is a greater degree of

preservation of features with a higher functional load, such as phonemic distinctions. According to

this view, /r/ should have undergone convergence quite early in the process and be pronounced like

an American English /r/. Another, apparently quite similar case has a different outcome: The

contrast between two allophones ([ø] and [œ]) of the same phoneme (/ø/) is neutralised, and both

allophones are pronounced as [ɚ]. This fits the expectations of Anderson's model much better, but

there is no clear structural reason why this change happens while the pronunciation of /r/ remains

unchanged. The authors' explanation is that the sound of a trill is quite distinctive, and that speakers

keep this pronunciation of /r/ as a group marker, whereas the distinction between the two vowels is

much less noticeable and thus less relevant to sociopsychological workings. It is possible that

something similar has happened in Finno-Romani and that the voiceless affricates have become a

way to signal membership of the Roma community. Firstly, there is of course no data to say

anything about whether the speakers of Finno-Romani also use these sounds when they speak

Finnish. The fact that many of them have Finnish as their first language strongly suggests that this is

not the case. Still, it might be relevant for speakers to signal group membership only when speaking

Finno-Romani. This seems likely from a sociolinguistic point, as the increasing amount of

assimilation with the Finnish society might be conducive to attempts to reaffirm membership of the

Roma community. Structurally, though, it is not the most obvious sounds to use for this function:

even though neither of the affricates are found in Finnish, the sounds which are involved in them

([t, s and ʃ]) all exist in Finnish and are thus unlikely to appear particularly strange in comparison

with Finnish. I therefore consider it unlikely that marking of group membership is the reason that

the voiceless affricates are still so relatively common in Finnish. Of course, as already noted, they

consist of sounds which are not foreign to Finnish, and this might be the reason why they have not

changed more than they have. Still, the structural comparison between Finnish and Proto-

Northwestern would have predicted that the Finnish constraint on word-initial clusters would have

66


affected Finno-Romani and resulted in [ʦ] becoming [s] and [ʧ] becoming [ʃ] much more frequently

than what is found.

I seems then that the spread of the affricates happens in a tug-of-war between Finno-Romani

and Finnish: The less common segments of Proto-Northwestern which are also not found in Finnish

(such as [ʤ]) have to a large extent been lost due to the influence of Finnish. But instead of

replacing them with Finnish sounds, the speakers of Finno-Romani use other sounds from Finno-

Romani which are structurally close to the lost sounds, but which are more acceptable (although not

actually found) in Finnish. It seems to be a case of internal change happening under the pressure of

contact effects. If even Finno-Romani - which has been described as a language under great

sociolinguistic pressure from Finnish several times – can show a significant internal change, then it

stands to reason that this can happen in other languages in contact situations. In my view that

strongly indicates that our present understanding of the structural aspects of contact-induced

phonological change is severely lacking.

But what is phonological change, be it internal or contact-induced, or a combination of the

two? One view, typically held by linguists of formal persuasion, is that language change (be it

internal or contact-induced) constitutes new interpretations of linguistic input. In this view, the main

event of language change is acquisition: When speakers with a set of rules in their own grammar

produce output, this output is received by the child acquiring its first language. Based on this

output, which then becomes the linguistic input, the child deduces the regularities and rules which

forms its own grammar. Change happening on a more synchronic scale, such as during the lifetime

of a speaker, seems in this view to be insignificant, and there is strict separation between possible

changes (which is a structural, grammatical issue), and the diffusion of them in the language society

(which is a purely sociolinguistic matter) (Hale 2003). In a more sociolinguistic and variationist

view, change occurs when certain variations become more popular and more common than others.

In this view, variation is always present, even in one speaker, in the form of different registers and

dialects. In this view, the mechanisms of the diffusion of one variation rather than another is the

change, while the various variations themselves tend to be in the background (Guy 2003).

This study is made on the premise that there is something in phonological change which can

be examined almost independently from sociolinguistic factors. While I have from the beginning

acknowledged these factors' importance for the contact situation and its outcome, the analysis itself

is purely structural. The declaration that contact studies might teach us more about the human

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language capacity is very close to “The primary goal of theoretical linguistics is to characterize the

innate linguistic endowment, UG.” (Hale 2003: 362). However, I think a strictly formal view of

phonological language change is ill-suited to explain the situation found in Finno-Romani and other

languages strongly affected by contact. The idea that change primarily happens in the formulation

of rules, and that these rules, once they are set, do not really allow for neither variation nor

significant change, supports the Junggrammatikers' proposal of Ausnahmlosigkeit – that

phonological change is regular and exceptionless. This does not seem to fit with the apparently

irregular variations found in modern Finno-Romani, some found even within the same speaker.

Especially when it comes to the obstruents, regularity is simply very hard to come by. A possibly

objection might be that the acquisition in these individuals has happened after infancy and is

possibly not complete. While this is quite possibly true, it seems to me that a language capacity

which does not have room for variation when it comes to a fully learned language, would not be

particularly well-equipped to deal with them in an incompletely or lately learned language either.

And yet these variations seem to exist in abundance. I am not presuming to attempt to falsify

decades' worth of thought on the language capacity. I am merely pointing out that a strictly formal

view on language change does not seem the most obvious partner to the reality described in this

study.

On the other hand, I also find that the typical sociolinguistic way of dealing with

phonological change tends to disregard the formal side of the matter to an unfortunate degree.

Oftentimes, variation found in contact situations with significant effects on one or more of the

involved languages is explained very vaguely (See for instance Winford 2003 and Thomason &

Kaufman 1988). While there is obviously often a great deal of truth to assessments of

unsystematicality in contact situation as I myself have just shown, it is also much less precise than it

need be. There is some system to these changes. There are some segments which do not change, and

segments have limitied sets of other segments that they might turn into. In other words, while

regularity is not immediately apparent in many cases, it is also never completely absent.

Thus, it is my claim that although the formal and functional view on phonological change

might in essence be incompatible, both views would be well served by not completely disregarding

each other.

So how to proceed from here? Firstly, I would like to see many more case-studies like the

present for various types of languages (for instance tone languages in contact with non-tone

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languages, and languages with very different phonological inventories in contact). In addition to

this, I would recommend larger datasets, especially in cases with as much variation as this. There is

simply not always enough cases to gain a sufficient statistical certainty about the variations and the

rules which might or might not govern them. Secondly, there might be many clues to be found in

the phonetic domain, as changes are more immediately noticeable in the articulation of sounds than

in the structure of them. Phonetic investigations might enable researchers to study contact-induced

language change in real time. I propose studies like Shaw & Balusu 2010 and Lleó, Cortès & Benet

2008, but with more focus on the whole phonological system rather than highly selected aspects,

and also, whenever possible, over a much longer span of time. Phonetic investigations might also

shed light on the extent to which changes are adopted. For instance, this study has focussed on the

deeper structural changes and the data is therefore transcribed quite broadly. A finer transcription

might reveal whether speakers of Finno-Romani have only adapted the main features of Finnish

phonology, or if they have also borrowed less significant (but also noticeable) features of

pronunciation such as the rounded versions Finnish has for almost all consonants which occur next

to rounded vowels (Suomi, Toivanen & Ylitalo 2008: 26). It would also be interesting to know

whether the voice-onset times in the two languages have become identical, and whether Finno-

Romani /t/ has been dentalised as the one in Finnish, and so on and so forth. Given that speakers of

Finnish judge Finno-Romani to sound like Finnish (see for instance Granqvist 2002 and Vuorela &

Borin 1998) it seems the most likely that these changes have indeed been adopted, and it also seems

plausible that changes like these are the first to be borrowed as they do not require deeper structural

changes, but merely variation in surface realisations. On the other hand, it also seems that once

second language learners have learned any new sounds there might be in the second language, they

have a hard time improving their pronunciation. The theory is that they simply map sounds in the

second language which sound familiar to what they already know to their existing knowledge of a

sound, and thus do not hear the difference. Subtle changes in allophonic realisations might thus not

be the first to be adapted, but as noted, questions like this would be much easier to answer once

more phonetic investigations of language contact have been carried out (Major & Kim 1999).

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7. Conclusion

In this study I have presented existing theories and explanations of phonological change in contact

situations. Many of these have a sociolinguistic focus, and models of this kind appear to be good

predictors of the degree of change found in the affected languages. I have argued that there is a lack

of studies with a structural focus which take the whole phonological system, and not only single

phenomena, into account. As an attempt to start remedying this, I have described the sound changes

which have happened in Finno-Romani since it has come into contact with Finnish, and I have

compared these changes with the Finnish sound inventories and use of stress and length. I have

found that some changes are completely predictable given the contact situation and the phonologies

of the involved languages. Other changes are language internal, but necessarily take place in a

situation of pressure from the contact language, which reveals a complexity in contact effects found

in phonology than which to my knowledge has not been properly investigated yet. I have also

argued that formal and functional views on phonological change each have something to learn from

each other, and that both tend to be inadequate on their own when it comes to contact situations.

Many more studies with a structural focus are necessary in order to understand the mechanisms of

phonological change in contact situations.

70


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73

Appendix 1 – Sorting of wordlistsWordforms from the RMS-database (see section 3.1).Words written with white on black background are not used in the reconstruction, and words written in grey are not included in any part of the anaysis. Words written black on white are the cognates used for the reconstruction (see section 4 for more information).

Key to abbreviated comments:M = One or more word forms in the case are inflected. See section 4.4.C = There are more than one cognate in the case. See section (different cognates).S = One or more word forms in the case has undergone semantic shift. See section 4.2.D = There is doubt about whether one or more wordsforms in the the case are loanwords or inherited words. See section 4.1O = There are comments to make about the case which do not fit into the other categories. See section 4.5.

FIN-002 FIN-005 FIN-006 FIN-008 FIN-012 AT-001x RO-022 Comments2 Non-Gypsy ka:je:t/ʧi:va ka:je / si:va si:va si:va / ka:je ka:je / si:va gadʒo xujle

4 Soldier hetale xeladoLurdo / kurmangari kormaskeri

6 Friend ma:l ma:l ma:le ma:l kommuʃ mal ma:l 7 Father ta:t da:t ta:t ta:t da:t dad da:d

9 Witch ilako ju:lipeŋale tai ilaka ju:li hi:stigo heksa

10 Boy ʦau ʦau ʦau ʦau ʧau tʧao 11 Girl ʦai ʦæi ʦæi ʦæj ʧæi ʧaj 13 Woman ju:li dʒu:li ju:ja ju:li ju:li dʒuvel M14 Man dje:no ʦe:no je:ne je:no dʒe:no murʃ C16 Horse trai kræi trai tres græi graj graj C17 Dog juklo ʦuklo ʦuklo juklo juklo dʒukel / dʒuklo dʒuklo 19 Cat mahka mahka mahkar mahka mahka murgodʒa kaʦa C22 Rabbit hoxxos hokhos hoxxos ʃoʃoj 24 Hen kaht kahni kax kaxni ʧavre M25 Animal kriatu:ros kreatu:ri kriatu:ros kriatu:ros fixa

28 Cow kurun kurni kurja kurni gurunis gurumni D, M30 Worm ʦermo ʦermo ʧermo rauba31 Pig palihno palixno palikno palixno balixno ba:lo M33 Bull pakro oksos oksos oksos khu:ro biko C35 Wolf ru:v ru: ru: vehesko juklo lup37 Flee ju:vi no:ti puʃou C39 Goose kahni kahni papin 41 Sheep pakro pakro pakro bakro bakro 45 Neck ʧo:n me:n nak ʧhermo me:n men mejn 46 Lip mui lippi lippos lippi vuʃtja S47 Mouth mui mui mui muj mui muj 48 Ear ta:n ka:n ka:n ka:n hunni-poskiero kan 49 Hair pa:l pa:l pa:l pa:l ba:l bal bala 51 Fur postin mo:rti postos postin hauta C, M52 Skin hipiæ muoda hauta blana

53Hide (animal skin) morʦjako mo:rti morʧi feʦi S, M

55 Arm vast mussik vasteŋo musni vast musi vast C, M58 Hand vast vast vast vast vass vas 59 Finger an-gruhti aŋnus aŋrus aŋ'nus aŋgux guʃto guʃtju M60 Fingernail na:l na:l naj naj 61 Leg piero piero pier pieros pjeresko pox heri pi:ru S, M64 Knee ʦaŋ ʧang kni 65 Foot piero piero piero pieros pjero heri talpa fun pi:ru S, M66 Tongue ʧimp ʦip/ ʦim ʦim ʧhim ʧimp ʧip 67 Throat su:n me:n / ʦerro nik ʦermo ʧerro mejn C68 Eye kha jakh jakh jakh jaka 69 Teardrop sva:l sfaja 70 Belly ma:ka ma:ka ma:ka ma:ga per maga D

71 Stomach ma:ka ma:kama:kaŋo malahka buko magaker muj

72 Soul ʧi ʦi:n jinta ji:ben duxu C73 Heart ʧi ʦi:n ʦiri ʦi: ji: zi zi

74 Elbowvastesko kokalos kot

75 Breast ringi riŋa briŋos ʧuʧja77 Day di:ves di:ves dives di:ves di:ves dis C78 Time ti:a stunna ti:ja ti:ja ti:ja ʦiro ʦiro79 Weather vetra vetra vetros raŋkano di:ves wetra ʦiro80 Winter vettesko ti:ja venna / ven vennesko ti:ja ve:nnesko ti:je vennes vendara M81 Sky himmel himmel himmel himla/teulos himla bolapen himlu82 Star himla ʦer/ ʦerxai ʃterni83 Moon su: ʦo:n ʦo:n ʧho:n ʧon montu S84 Month ʧu:n ʦo:ne so:n ʦo:n ʧho:n ʧon / enja ʧoʃ S85 Wind vetres palval palval balava vinta M86 Sea paro pa:ni baro pa:ni paro pa:ni baro pa:ni baro pani / paʃ pa:ni / marja 87 Earth them them them phu: phu: phup S88 Dust mejipa mejiba ʧik ʃtauba

89 Sand parre:n santaphu:jako dommos venta

90 Water pa:ni pa:ni pa:ni pa:ni pa:ni pa:ni 91 Rain pa:ni prissina pa:ni prihno prixmo brihino briʃint S, M92 Snow jiu jiu jiu jiu jiu i:p C93 Ice paxxos paxos paxos ajzo C94 Wood kaht kax kaheŋo lapi kah kax kaʃt kaʃt 95 Fire jank jaŋkh jaŋ jaŋ jaŋkh jak96 Tree parjipo kax kah rux kax rukh ruk C97 Apple tree hampiako kax hampiako kah phampesko ruk hampesko kax phabuj

98 Pear tree kahtesko phu: broula99 Thorn spi:kos dislu100 Flower Parjipa / luluʧa parjipi luluʦi luluʦa parjiposkiero bluma M101 Plum mu:ria flauma

102 Pearphu:jako phampos broula

103 Cabbage kxax phujiŋiere phu:jako ti:ben ʃax ʃax104 Egg kahhengo ja:rt kahjeŋiere jaro ja:ro ja:ro ja:ro D, M105 Cheese ust si:ral ʦi:ral kiral106 Bacon mas mas ko:i / mas mas mas ʃuŋka S, C107 Bread ma:ro ma:ro ma:ro ma:ro ma:ro ma:ro 108 Cake vettos vetti vetti vettos vettos kuxa109 Butter ʧil ʦil sil ʦil ʧil butro C

110 Honeypi:piako / pe:disko ʦi:ral makkipa

phu:jako sma:ga marmelada

111 Oil oil makkipa jaŋkasko pa:ni lejlu

112 Nutphu:jako phampi nusa

113 Flour va:ri ʦerit va:ro jarfu C114 Wheat/rye ʦa:r djiu gru115 Village kau kau kau kau gau gab/gav ga:p116 Town fo:ros fo:ros fo:ros fo:ros fo:ros foro fo:ro M117 Castle paro ʧe:r fannipa tra:jŋo fo:ros fannipa phanniba kastela S, C118 Prison phannipa fannipa fannipa fannipa phanniba ʃtilapen stilepen119 Neighborhood ne:resko kau thai maŋo ne:r ne:r douva gau kartjera120 Bridge kahhesko trom pra:lta brika bruka121 Grass parjipa ʦa:r / ʦar Khos / has khas gra:zo122 Well xa:ni panniposkokiero ha:ni pumpa124 Bed sengos vontros sæŋøs vontros seŋos ʧiben ʧiben

125 Table(s) tafla / tafli tafla / tafli tafla / tafle tafla tafla / tafle xamaskaro tiʃa / tiʃi126 Bench penkos / kamlik skammi skammi skammi peŋkos ʃtamin baŋka S, C127 Chair kamlik skammi skammi skammi skammin ʃtamin baŋko S, C128 Window va:lja va:li va:lja va:li va:li fenstra / voxli fenstra M, O129 Door fu:tar vu:dar u:dar fu:tar vu:dar vu:dar 130 Cart vø:rtia vortu fortu vortuja vorduja vurdin131 Boat panjako pe:ros pe:ro be:ro ʃifo132 Word lau la:v/ lau lau lau lau la:p S133 Song dʒampipa jambipa ʦampipa ji:li dʒi:li give134 Wedding tjau krævyøri bia:p135 Name nau nau nau nau nau la:p S136 Honour pat patti baro ji:ben era137 Work/thing puttia putti / sa:ki putti putti / kuosi butti butin O138 Clothes ko:la ko:la ko:la ko:la ko:la ripen feʦi139 Pocket posta posta posta posta po'sita140 Dress tsohha ʦoxxa ka:leŋo ko:la soxa ko:la ʦoxa141 Ring an-gruht-i aŋrust-in aŋrust-in aŋrus aŋrust-i gust-rin M142 Sword paro ʧu:rivi ʦu:ri kha:ro143 Bead miriʦ smiriʦ miriʦa merdʒele C, M144 Boot tiehi tiehhi tjekhos tiaxa ʃtibla145 Coal jaŋkako hytkøs kholi146 Gold ʦonatik ʦonak sonatiko sonatiko sonati symnokaj C, M147 Light jank jaŋkh jaŋ luʦ jaŋka lixta S148 End slu:t sisto / na ʦi: suʦo endo sisto ʦudelest149 God de:vel de:vel de:vel de:vel de:vel devel 150 Mind jinta jinta jinta dʒinta sinta godli C151 Luck paht paxt toh pahtalo ʧihko baxt baxt C, M152 Live ji:ves ji:vela ʦi:vela ji:vela dʒi:ven dʒiv- dʒiben M

153 Buy ʦinnel ʦinnela ʦinna: ʦinnela ʧinnela kinau154 Write ri:vavel rannel tranna: rannela rannela ʃajbel

155 Say phennel fennel phenna:rakkava: / phennava: phennela phen M

156 Sing dʒambel jampel ʦampa: ʦampava: jambela gi157 Kill tel mer tel mer tela mer me:rava: merdela del ti mer158 See tikkel tikkel tikka: thikkava: dikkela dik M159 Hear khunnel khunnel hunna: hunnava: ʃunnela ʃun D 160 Understand khajuvel sa:njela ʦa:na: ja:nava: hajula hajej

161 Believe passel me a:hheha / passel passa: passava: hajula paʦej M

162 Speak akkavel rakkavel rakkila rakkava: rakkila rakar- rakrej M163 Wash khouvel houvel houva: ʦu:vava: houvela thov- ʧuvej M164 Lift khantel le apre ten apre xandela haldi pre D165 Pull tertel lela pa:lal hyøvylæ sterdela ʦirdi C, M166 Push tyøkævel tikkel sihkas tyøkævææ rigila ʦirdi S167 Guard va:rnavel tikkela vollava: volila de jakh169 Count trapavel reknavel reknila rapava: mukkela gin170 Put ʦu:vel ʦu:vel la:gila ʦu:va: la:gila ʧip C171 Bring a:nel a:nel tro:da: a:nela han172 Throw ja:kavel ʦuravel leŋile leŋava: sleŋgila viʦa

173 Grab, hold ikkavel

le fallo / ikkavel fallo / ikavel fallo le: fallo lela phalo lela phallo papar

174 Open phiravel firavel firina phirava: phirila kr- pre keri prej S, M175 Burn haʦavel haʦavel haʦipa haʦava: haʧila xaʧar- xaʧelu M

176 Cook ʦeravel ʦe:ra: / ʦe:r ʦerava: ʧerila kr-xaʧel o xaben / khervel M

177 Cut ʦu:vel pah ʧinnela ʧin

178 Do ʧe:rel ʦe:rel ʦe:rela ʦe:ra: la:gila kerel M

179 Fly

jou jala apre do:leha ja lejjila do:leha fligi

180 Love ikkavel ikkaven kamma: / ikkila kamlava: rikkila kam- kamau S, M181 Want kammel jinta se:rela kamma: kammava: kammela kam- maŋgau S, C, M182 Beg kammel kammel kammela kammava: kammela mang- S, C, M

183 Praise parkavelparkaven fennen ʦihkas pa:rkila prajzer

184 Find lahhel lahtas lahha: laxava: laxtas haʦjel

185 Meet tikkel tikkel tikka:jou jala lesko ne:r haʦa ame D

186 Come a:vel a:vel aulo a:velajou jala lesko ne:r va D, M

187 Arrive, reach a:vel jou aulo va: vela do:rita vjasel188 Wait ventavel ve/ me ventava: ventila ventava: ventila vater

189 Stay a:hhel a:hhelstammila / a:hhela stammula aʧe D, M

190 Leave sth jal / mukkel mekkel ʦaha nikki mekkava: mukkela dʒa ʦu vek C191 Laugh ʦal ʦan rannata sala sala sondjas M, O192 Scold, quarrel ri:tavel kurrena ri:tela kurrava: ri:tilæ altila ʧiŋgrel opre C193 Embrace ikkavel lel kanja aŋava rikkila iŋkren opre194 Call pahhel au da:ri puhhela pihava: kammela khar- kerene pen196 Deceive hohavel na:/na: passela les vinnaven de mezrembue197 Pay presavel resavel / resava: resila resava: presila pleiskar- plajskerel D, M198 Bad (midzhex) ilako ilako peŋalo ilako beŋgalo ʧilaʧo S199 Bad (nasul) pengalo ʦermalo ilako peŋalo na: ʧihko dʒuŋgalo C200 Better ʦihkide ʦihkide fentite ikhide koni fente miʃteder201 Stupid dinalo tinalo tinalo tum dum dinolo hal tu S

202 Alive ji:vela hivipo ʦi:voku:no dji:vela dʒido M203 Clean ju:so ju:so ju:so ju:so ju:so rejn204 A little kutti kutti kutti kutti kuttji pisa205 Enough endo ʧihko doha206 Now ka:n ka:n ka:n ka:n ka:n ka:na M

209 Tomorrowtala ti:vesko pa:lal sartti sarra sarti tajsa tajsa

210 Yesterday tala ti:vesko na:l kalikos kalikos kalikos varo di:ves tajsa va:verdis213 Other vauro vauro vauro vauro vauro va:ver ʧimoni

214 Another panna vauro vauro / panna vauro tuija panna vauro varo goŋga ʧimoni

215 Outside auri a / auri aru:no auri auri vri 216 In hispa arre arre arre arre an C217 In front na:l na:lal na:l na:l na:l glan tuti M218 My mango maŋo maŋo ma:ŋ maŋgo miro219 Your tukko tukko tukko tu:t tukko ti:ro220 We ame ame meŋo ame me men222 How much sar pu:t sar pu:t sar pu:t sar pu:t sar bu:t kiʦi223 How many sar pu:t sar sar pu:t sar pu:t sar bu:t kiʦi 226 Back pa:lal / pa:le pa:lal pa:lal au pa:le domu C, M227 Wet, moist ʦinnime ʦinno fanjako ʧinno sapana / stajx C, M228 Direct je:nes re:t re:tt dje:nes krat229 Hot tatto tatto tatto tatto tatto tato 230 Long lanahto laŋhto lanahto laŋkhto lanaxto dur231 High paro lanahto uʦo hox C232 Short pesko støt hukko stet støt kurʦ233 Small pesko pesko pesko pesko besko tikno234 White parno parno parno parno parno parno


Appendix 2 – Cognates used in the analysis

The data in this appendix is taken from the RMS-database and Matras 2010. The European Romani forms are given with inflection, but in FIN-002, FIN-005, FIN-006, FIN-008, FIN-012, AT-001x and RO-022 inflectional morphology has been removed.

FIN-002 FIN-005 FIN-006 FIN-008 FIN-012 AT-001x RO-022European Romani

6 Friend ma:l ma:l ma:le ma:l - mal ma:l -7 Father ta:t da:t ta:t ta:t da:t dad da:d dad10 Boy ʦau ʦau ʦau ʦau ʧau - ʧao ʧavo11 Girl ʦai ʦæi ʦæi ʦæj ʧæi - ʧaj -13 Woman ju:- ʤu:- ju:- ju:- ju:- - ʤu- ʤuvel14 Man dje:n- ʦe:n- je:n- je:n- ʤe:n- - - -16 Horse trai kræi trai - græi graj graj graj17 Dog jukl- ʦukl- ʦukl- jukl- jukl- ʤukl- ʤukl- ʤukel19 Cat mahk- mahk- mahk- mahk- mahk- - - maʦka22 Rabbit - hoxx- hokh- hoxx- - - ʃoʃ- ʃoʃoj24 Hen kaht kah- kax - kax- - - kaxni28 Cow kur- kur- kur- kur- gur- - gur- guruvni30 Worm - ʦerm- - ʦerm- ʧerm- - - kirmo31 Pig pal- pal- pal- pal- bal- - ba:l- balo35 Wolf - ru:v ru: ru: - - - -41 Sheep - pakr- pakr- pakr- bakr- - bakr- bakro45 Neck - me:n - - me:n men mejn men47 Mouth mui mui mui muj mui - muj muj48 Ear ta:n ka:n ka:n ka:n - - kan kan49 Hair pa:l pa:l pa:l pa:l ba:l bal bala bal51 Fur - post- - post- post- - - -53 Hide - morʦ- mo:rt- - morʧ- - - morti55a Arm vast - vast- - vast - vast vast55b Arm - mus- - mus- - mus- - musi58 Hand vast vast vast vast vass vas vast59 Finger angruhti aŋnus aŋrus aŋ'nus aŋgux guʃto guʃtju -

60Fingernail - na:l na:l - - naj naj -

61 Leg pier- pier- pier pier- - - pi:ru piro65 Foot pier- pier- pier- pier- pjer- - - piro66 Tongue ʧimp ʦip/ ʦim ʦim ʧhim ʧimp - ʧip ʧib67 Throat - ʦerr- - ʦerm- ʧerr- - - kerlo

82


68 Eye kha - jakh jakh jakh - jak- jakh70 Belly ma:k- ma:k- ma:k- - ma:g- - mag- -73 Heart ʧi ʦi:n ʦiri ʦi: ji: zi zi ʤi77 Day di:ves di:ves dives di:ves di:ves - - dives80 Winter - venn- - - venn- - vend- ivend83 Moon su: ʦo:n - ʦo:n ʧho:n ʧon - ʧon84 Month ʧu:n ʦo:ne so:n ʦo:n ʧho:n ʧon ʧoʃ ʧon85 Wind - palval - palval balava - - balval87 Earth - - - phu: phu: - phup phuv90 Water pa:n- pa:n- pa:n- pa:n- pa:n- - pa:n- pani91 Rain - - prih- prix- brih- - briʃ- briʃind92 Snow jiu jiu jiu jiu jiu - i:p iv93 Ice - paxx- pax- - pax- - - -94 Wood kaht kax - kah kax kaʃt kaʃt kaʃt95 Fire jank jaŋkh jaŋ jaŋ jaŋkh - jak jag96a Tree - kax kah - kax - - kaʃt96b Tree - - - rux - rukh ruk rukh100 Flower luluʧ- - luluʦ- luluʦ- - - - -103 Cabbage - kxax - - - ʃax ʃax ʃax104 Egg - - jar- - ja:r- ja:r- ja:r- jaro105 Cheese - si:ral - ʦi:ral - - kiral kiral106 Bacon mas mas mas mas mas - - mas107 Bread ma:r- ma:r- ma:r- ma:r- ma:r- - ma:r- maro109 Butter ʧil ʦil sil ʦil ʧil - - khil115 Village kau kau kau kau gau gab/gav ga:p gav116 Town fo:r- fo:r- fo:r- fo:r- fo:r- for- fo:r- foro(s)117 Castle - fannip- - fannip- phannib- - - -118 Prison phannip- fannip- fannip- fannip- phannib- - - -126 Bench - skammi skammi skammi - ʃtamin - skamin127 Chair - skammi skammi skammi skammin ʃtamin - skamin128 Window va:l- va:l- va:l- va:l- va:l- - - valin

129 Door fu:tar vu:dar u:dar fu:tar vu:dar - vu:dar vudar132 Word lau la:v/ lau lau lau lau - la:p lav135 Name nau nau nau nau nau - - -137 Work putt- putt- putt- putt- butt- - but- buti

139 Pocket post- post- - post- post- - posit- posita140 Dress tsohha ʦoxxa - soxa - - ʦoxa coxa141 Ring angruhti aŋrustin aŋrustin aŋrus aŋrusti - gustrin angrusti143 Bead - miriʦ smiriʦ miriʦ- - - - -146 Gold ʦonatik ʦonak sonatiko sonatiko sonati - symnokaj sonakaj

83


147 Light jank jaŋkh jaŋ - jaŋk- - - jag149 God de:vel de:vel de:vel de:vel de:vel - devel devel150 Mind jint- jint- jint- ʤint- sint- - - -151 Luck paht paxt - paht- - - baxt baxt152 Live ji:v- ji:v- ʦi:v- ji:v- dji:v- ʤiv- ʤib- ʤiv-153 Buy ʦinn- ʦinn- ʦinn- ʦinn- ʧinn- - kin- kin-155 Say phenn- fenn- phenn- phenn- phenn- - phen phen-158 See tikk- tikk- tikk- thikk- dikk- - dik dikh-159 Hear khunn- khunn- hunn- hunn- ʃunn- - ʃun ʃun-161 Believe pass- pass- pass- pass- - - paʦ- paʦa-162 Speak akk- rakk- rakk- rakk- rakk- rak- rak- raker-163 Wash khouv- houv- houv- ʦu:v- houv- thov- ʧuv- thov-170 Put ʦu:v- ʦu:v- - ʦu:v- - - - chiv-

171 Bring a:n- a:n- - - a:n- - han -174 Open phir- fir- fir- phir- phir- - - -175 Burn haʦ- haʦ- haʦ- haʦ- haʧ- xaʧ- xaʧ- xaʦaribe

n176 Cook ʦer- ʦe:r-/ ʦe:r ʦer- - ʧer- kr- kher- kerav-178 Do ʧe:r- ʦe:r- ʦe:r- ʦe:r- - - ker- ker-180 Love - - kamm- kaml- - kam- kam- kam-181 Want kamm- - kamm- kamm- kamm- kam- - kam-

182 Beg kamm- kamm- kamm- kamm- kamm- - - kam-

186 Come a:v- a:v- au- a:v- - - va av-189 Stay a:hh- a:hh- a:hh- - - - aʧ- aʧ-191 Laugh ʦa- ʦa- - sa- sa- - - sal(a)201 Stupid dinalo tinalo tinalo - - - - dinilo203 Clean ju:so ju:so ju:so ju:so ju:so - - uʤo204 A little kutti kutti kutti kutti kuttji - - -206 Now ka:n ka:n ka:n ka:n ka:n - ka:na akana213 Other vauro vauro vauro vauro vauro - - vaver215 Outside auri auri aru:no auri auri - vri avri216 In - arre arre arre arre - an andre217 In front na:l na:lal na:l na:l na:l - - anglal220 We ame ame - ame me - men -226 Back pa:l- pa:l- pa:l- - - - - pale227 Wet,

moistʦinn- ʦinn- - - ʧinn- - - -

229 Hot tatt- tatt- tatt- tatt- tatt- - tat- tato234 White parn- parn- parn- parn- parn- - parn- parno

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Appendix 3 – Correspondence sets

Name of corre-spondence group:

FIN-002

FIN-005

FIN-006

FIN-008

FIN-012

AT-001

RO-022

Correspondence set found in cases:

a1 a a a a a - a 10,95,129,229,234a a a a a - - 19,106,118,213a a a - a - - 24- a a a a - a 41a - a - a - a 55aa a a a a - a 58- a - a a - - 85,85,117a a a - a a a 94- a a - a - - 96a- a - - - a a 103- a - a - - a 105- a a a a a - 127a a - a - - a 140a a a a - - a 161a a a a a a a 162,175- - a a - a a 180a - a a a a - 181a a - a a - - 191a a a - - - - 201

a2 a a a a a - a: 31a a a a a a a: 115a a:/a a a a - a: 132a a a a a - - 135

a3 a a - a a - Ø 215a a - a Ø - Ø 220

a4 a æ æ æ æ - a 11a æ a - æ a a 16

85


a5 a: a: a: a: - - a 48a: a: a: a: a: a a 49- a: a: - - a a 60a: a: a: - a: - a 70a: a: - - a: - a 171a: a: - a: - - a 189a: a: a: - - - - 226

a6 a: a: a: a: - a a: 6,7a: a: a: a: a: - a: 90a: a: a: a: a: - a: 107a: a: a: a: a: - - 128a: a: a: a: a: - a: 206

a7 - - a - a: a: a: 104

a8 a: a: a a: - - Ø 186

u1 u u u u u u u 17,47,141,159u u u u u - u 28,137- u - u - u - 55b- - - u - u u 96bu - u u - - - 100, 100u u u u u - - 204

u2 u u u u u - o 10

u3 u: u: u: u: u: - u 13- u: u: u: - - u 35u: u: u: u: u: - u: 129u: u: u: u: u: - - 203

v1 - - - u: u: - up 87

86


u u u u u - p 92u u u u u b/v p 115u v/u u u u - p 132u u u u u - - 135v v - v - - p 170u u u u u - - 213u u - u u - v 215

e1 - e - e e - - 30,67- e - - e - e 80e e e e e - e 149e e - e e - e 220

e2 e: e: e: e: e: - - 14- e: - - e: e e 45e: e: e: e: e: - e 149e: e: e: e: - - e 178

o1 - o o o - - o 22- o - o o - - 51o o o o o - - 65,213o o o o o o o 116o o - o o - o 139o o - o - - o 140o o o - - - - 201o o o o o - - 203

o2 - o o: - o - - 53o: o: o: o: o: o o: 116

o3 u: o: - o: o: o - 83u: o: o: o: o: o o 84

i1 i i i i i - i 66,141,153,158

87


- - i i i - i 91i i i i i - i: 92,109- i - i i - - 117i i i i i - - 118,150- i i i i i - 127- i i i - - - 143, 143i i i - - - - 201i i i i i - - 204i i - i i - i 215i i - - i - - 227

i2 i i: i i: i: i i 73i: i: i i: i: - - 77- i: - i: - - i 105i: i: i: i: i: i i 152

j1 i i i j i - j 11,47i i i - i j j 16

Ø1 Ø Ø e Ø - Ø Ø 6Ø e Ø Ø Ø Ø Ø 84

Ø2 Ø Ø Ø Ø Ø - a 206

Ø3 - Ø - - Ø Ø j 45Ø Ø - Ø Ø - i 139

Ø4 - Ø - Ø a - - 85

m1 m m m m m m m 6,19,30,47,70,107,143,190

- m - - m m m 45- m m - m - - 53- m - m - m - 55bm m m m m - - 106

88


m m - m m - m 220

m2 - mm mm mm mm m - 127- - mm m - m m 180mm - mm mm mm m - 181

n1 n n n n n - - 14,31,150- n - - n n n 45n n n n - - n 48- n n - - n n 60Ø n - n n n - 83n n n n n - n 90n n - - n - n 171n n n - - - - 201n n n n n - n 206,234

n2 - nn - - nn - n 80- nn - nn nn - - 117nn nn nn nn nn - - 118nn nn nn nn nn - n 153,159nn nn - - nn - - 227

n3 n n n n n n ʃ 84

N1 m Ø/m m m m - Ø 66n ŋ ŋ ŋ ŋ - Ø 95ng ŋ ŋ ŋ ŋ - g 141

r1 r r r - r r r 16r r r r r - r 28,107,129,234- r - r r - - 30,67- r r r - - - 35,143- r r r r - r 41- r r - r - - 53

89


r r r r - - r 61,178r r r r r - - 65,213- - r r r - r 91- - - r - r r 96b- - r - r r r 104- r - r - - r 105r r r r r r r 116r r r - r - r 176

r r - r r - r 215

r2 r r r r r - Ø 141

r3 - r - m r - - 67

l1 l l l l l l l 6,17,31,49- l - l l - - 85l - l l - - - 100,100- l - l - - l 105l l l l l - - 109,128l l l l l - l 132l l l l l - l 149l l l - - - - 201,226

l2 - l l - - j j 60

j2 - - j j j - j 68j j j j j - Ø 92j j j j j - j 95- - j - j j j 104j j j j j - - 203

ʤ1 j dʒ j j j - ʤ 13

90


dj ʦ j j ʤ - - 14j ʦ ʦ j j ʤ ʤ 17ʧ ʦ ʦ ʦ j z z 73ʧ - ʦ ʦ - - - 100- ʦ ʦ ʦ - - - 143

possible member j j j j s - - 150j j ʦ j ʤ ʤ ʤ 152

s1 - s - s s - - 51s - s - s - s 55a- s - s - s - 55bs s s s s - s 58s s s s s - - 106,203- s s s s - - 127s s - s s - s 139

s2 h s s s s - s 141

k1 k k k k k k k 17k k k k k - - 19k k k - k - - 24- k k k k - k 41t k k k - - k 48- - k k k - k 68k k - k k k k 94- k k - k - - 96a- k k k k t - 127- - k k - k k 180k - k k k k - 181k k k k k - k 206

k2 kk kk kk kk kk - k 158kk kk kk kk kk k k 162

91


k3 - ʦ - ʦ ʧ - - 67possible member - s - ʦ - - k 105

ʧ ʦ s ʦ ʧ - - 109ʦ ʦ ʦ ʦ ʧ - k 153

possible member ʧ ʦ ʦ ʦ - - k 178ʦ ʦ ʦ - ʧ - kh 176

possible member ʦ ʦ - s s - - 191ʦ ʦ - - ʧ - - 227

k4 k kh Ø Ø kh - k 95possible member - - - x - kh k 96b

g1 t k t - g g g 16k k k k g - g 28k k k - g - g 70k k k k g g g 115

x1 ht h- x - x - - 24possible member h x k x x - - 31possible member - x - - - x x 103

hh xx - x - - x 140h h h h h x x 175

tʃ1 ʦ ʦ ʦ ʦ ʧ - ʧ 10,11possible member - ʦ t - ʧ - - 53

ʧ ʦ ʦ ʧh ʧ - ʧ 66s ʦ - ʦ ʧh ʧ - 83ʧ ʦ s ʦ ʧh ʧ ʧ 84ʦ ʦ - ʦ - - ʧ 170

possible member hh hh - hh - - ʧ 189

ʦ1 h h h h h - - 19- ʦ - ʦ ʧ - - 30ʦ ʦ - s - - ʦ 140

92


ss - ss ss - - ʦ 161ʦ ʦ ʦ ʦ ʧ ʧ ʧ 175

ʃ1 - h h h - - ʃ 22- xx kh xx - - ʃ 22ht x - h x ʃt ʃt 94- x h - x - - 96a- kx - - - ʃ ʃ 103kh kh h h ʃ - ʃ 159

p1 - p - p p - - 51p p p p - - p 61p p p p p - - 65p p p p p - p 90p p - p p - p 139p - p p - - p 161p p p - - - - 226p p p p p - p 234

p2 p p p p b - b 31,137- p p p b - b 41p p p p b b b 49- p - p b - - 85- - p p b - b 91- p - p b - - 117p p p p b - - 118

t1 - t - t t - - 51t - t - t - t 55at t t t s - Ø 58t t t Ø t - t 141t t t t t - - 150

t2 tt tt tt tt tt - t 137,229

93


tt tt tt tt tt - - 204

d1 d d d d d - - 77,149

d2 t t t t t d d 7t d t t d d d 7t d d t d - d 129t t t th d - d 158d t t - - - - 201

v2 v - v - v - v 55av v v v v - v 58- v - - v - v 80- v - v v - - 85v v v v v - - 128,213v v v v v - v 149v v v v v v b 152v v v v v v v 163v v u v - - v 186

v3 f v Ø f v - v 129

f1 f f f f f f f 116

ph1 - f - f ph - - 117ph f f f ph - - 118

ph2 - - - ph ph - ph 87

th1 kh h h ʦ h th ʧ 163

Diphthongs ie ie ie ie - - i: 61ie ie ie ie je - - 65ou ou ou u: ou o u 163

94


Ø5 p p/Ø Ø Ø p - p 66n ŋ ŋ ŋ ŋ - Ø 95

Ø6 - - h h h - Ø 68- l - - Ø - - 85- Ø Ø Ø n n - 127Ø n n Ø Ø - n 141Ø Ø Ø Ø Ø - r 141Ø Ø - - Ø - h 171Ø Ø Ø Ø j - - 204Ø Ø - Ø Ø - n 220

95


Appendix 4 – ProtoformsThe letters and numbers in the column 'Correspondences' correspond to the correspondence groups explained and analysed in section 5. 'D' is short for 'Diphthongs'. The periods mark the separation between the segments.

Protoforms Correspondences6 Friend *mal m1.a6.l1.Ø17 Father *dad d2.a6.d210 Boy *ʧavo ʧ.a1.u211 Girl *ʧaj ʧ1.a5.i613 Woman *ʤu- ʤ1.u614 Man *ʤen- ʤ1.e2.n116 Horse *graj g1.r1.a4.i617 Dog *ʤukl- ʤ1.u1.k1.l119 Cat *maʦk- m1.a1.ʦ1.k122 Rabbit *ʃoʃ- ʃ1.o1.ʃ124 Hen *kax k1.a1.x128 Cow *gur- g1.u1.r130 Worm *kerm- k3.e1.r1.m131 Pig *bal- b1.a2.l135 Wolf *ruv r1.u1.v141 Sheep *bakr- b1.a1.k1.r145 Neck *men m1.e2.Ø3.n147 Mouth *muj m1.u1.i648 Ear *kan k1.a5.n149 Hair *bal b1.a5.l151 Fur *post- p1.o1.s1.t153 Hide *morʧ- m1.o2.r1.ʧ155a Arm *vast v1.a1.s1.t155b Arm *mus- m1.u1.s158 Hand *vast v1.a1.s1.t160 Fingernail *naj n1.a5.l261 Leg *pir- p1.D.r165 Foot *pir- p1.D.r166 Tongue *ʧip ʧ.i1.N1.Ø567 Throat *kerl- k3.e1.r1.r3-68 Eye *jak j1.a1.k1.Ø670 Belly *mag- m1.a5.g173 Heart *ʤi ʤ1.i277 Day *dives d1.i3.v1.e1.s1

96


83 Moon *ʧon ʧ1.o3.n184 Month *ʧon ʧ.o3.n3.Ø185 Wind *balval b1.a1.l1.Ø4.v1.a1.Ø687 Earth *phuv ph2.u1.v190 Water *pan- p1.a6.n191 Rain *briʃ- b1.r1.i1.ʃ192 Snow *jiv j1.i1.v193 Ice *pax- p1.a1.x194 Wood *kaʃ k1.a1.ʃ195 Fire *jak j1.a1.N1.k496a Tree *kaʃ k1.a1.ʃ196b Tree *ruk r1.u1.k4100 Flower *luluʤ- l1.u1.l1.u1.ʤ1103 Cabbage *ʃax ʃ1.a1.x1104 Egg *jar- j1.a7.r1105 Cheese *kiral k3.i4.r1.a1.l1106 Bacon *mas m1.a1.s1107 Bread *mar- m1.a6.r1109 Butter *kil k3.i1.l1115 Village *gav g1.a2.v1116 Town *for- f1.o2.r1117 Castle *phanib- ph1.a1.n2.i1.b1118 Prison *phanib- f2.a1.n2.i1.b1126 Bench *skamin s1.k1.a1.m2.i1.Ø6127 Chair *skamin s1.k1.a1.m2.i1.Ø6129 Door *vutar v2.u3.d2.a1.r1132 Word *lav l1.a2.v1135 Name *nav n1.a2.v1137 Work *but- b1.u1.t2139 Pocket *post- p1.o1.s1.Ø3.t1140 Dress *ʦoxa ʦ1.o1.x1.a1

141 Ring *aŋ(g)rustinr2.u1.s2.t4.Ø6.i1.N1.s1.Ø6

143 Bead *smiriʤ Ø7.m1.i1.r1.i1.ʤ1147 Light *jak j1.a1.N1.k4149 God *devel d1.e2.v1.e1.l1150 Mind *ʤint- ʤ1.i1.n1.t1151 Luck *baxt b1.a1.x1.t1152 Live *ʤiv- ʤ1.i5.v2153 Buy *kin- k3.i1.n2

97


155 Say *phen- ph2.e1.n1158 See *dik d1.i1.k2159 Hear *ʃun- ʃ1.u1.n2161 Believe *paʦ p1.a1.ʦ1162 Speak *rak r1.a1.k2163 Wash *thov- th1.D.v2170 Put *ʧuv M.u7.u2.v2171 Bring *an- Ø6.a5.n1174 Open *phir- ph1.i1.r1175 Burn *xaʦ- x1.a1.ʦ1176 Cook *ker- k3.e2.r1178 Do *ker- k3.e2.r1180 Love *kam- k1.a1.m2181 Want *kam- k1.a1.m2182 Beg *kam- k1.a1.m2186 Come *av- a8.v1189 Stay *aʧ- a5.ʧ1201 Stupid *dinalo d2.i1.n1.a1.l1.o1203 Clean *juso j1.u4.s1.o1204 A little *kuti k1.u1.t2.Ø7.i1206 Now *kana k1.a6.n1.Ø2213 Other *vavro v2.a1.v1.r1.o1215 Outside *avri a3.v1.r1.i1216 In *ar- a1.r1217 In front *nal- n1.a1.l1220 We *ame a3.m1.e1.Ø7226 Back *pal- p1.a5.l1227 Wet, moist *kin- k3.i1.n2229 Hot *tat- t1.a1.t2234 White *parn- p1.a1.r1.n1

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contact effects in phonology

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