Whorf's law

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Whorf's law is a sound law in Uto-Aztecan linguistics proposed by the linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf. It explains the origin in the Nahuan languages of the phoneme /tɬ/ which is not found in any of the other languages of the Uto-Aztecan family. The existence of /tɬ/ in Nahuatl had puzzled previous linguists and caused Edward Sapir to reconstruct a /tɬ/ phoneme for Proto-Uto-Aztecan based only on evidence from Aztecan. In a 1937 paper^[1] published in the journal American Anthropologist, Whorf argued that phoneme was a result of some of the Nahuan or Aztecan languages having undergone a sound change changing the original */t/ to [tɬ] in the position before */a/. The sound law was labeled "Whorf's law" by Manaster Ramer and is still widely though not universally considered valid, although a more detailed understanding of the precise conditions under which it took place has been developed.

The situation had been obscured by the fact that often the */a/ had then subsequently been lost or changed to another vowel, making it difficult to realize what had conditioned the change. Because some Nahuan languages have /t/ and others have /tɬ/, Whorf thought that the law had been limited to certain dialects and that the dialects that had /t/ were more conservative. In 1978, Lyle Campbell and Ronald Langacker showed that in fact, Whorf's law had affected all of the Nahuan languages and that some dialects had subsequently changed /tɬ/ to /l/ or back to /t/, but it remains evident that the language went through a /tɬ/ stage.^[2]^[3]

In 1996, Alexis Manaster Ramer showed that the sound change had in fact also happened before the Proto-Aztecan high central vowel */ɨ/, itself derived from */u/ in certain situations and not just before */a/.^[4]^[5] Today, the best-known Nahuan language is Nahuatl.

References

Campbell, Lyle; Langacker, Ronald (1978). "Proto-Aztecan vowels: Part I". International Journal of American Linguistics. 44 (2). Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 85–102. doi:10.1086/465526. OCLC 1753556. S2CID 143091460.
Canger, Una (1988). "Nahuatl dialectology: A survey and some suggestions". International Journal of American Linguistics. 54 (1). Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 28–72. doi:10.1086/466074. OCLC 1753556. S2CID 144210796.
Launey, Michel (1996). "Retour au -tl aztèque". Amerindia. 21: 77–91.
Manaster Ramer, Alexis (1996). "On Whorf's Law and Related Questions of Aztecan Phonology and Etymology". International Journal of American Linguistics. 62 (2): 176–187. doi:10.1086/466285. S2CID 144965142.
Whorf, Benjamin Lee (1937). "The origin of Aztec tl". American Anthropologist. 39 (2): 265–274. doi:10.1525/aa.1937.39.2.02a00070.

[1] Whorf (1937)

[2] Campbell & Langacker (1978)

[3] Canger (1988)

[4] Manaster Ramer (1996)

[5] Launey (1996)

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