What’s in a Name: Toponyms as Linguistic Data for Historical Comparison

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2015
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Tri-College (Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore Colleges). Department of Linguistics
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Thesis
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eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
A full picture of the linguistic mechanics and social importance of a language can only be arrived at through study of both contemporary and historical states of that language. There are languages, however, for which data is limited. For languages with limited contemporary resources, toponymic data can comprise a large portion of the available information. Analysis of toponyms, however, requires some degree of loss of precision due to obscured phonology and morphology over time. Based largely on toponymic data, Kenneth Jackson (1955) argued for the P-Celtic ancestry of Pictish, and his theory became the prevailing one. Katharine Forsyth (1997) and Alfred P. Smyth (1984) critique his arguments on cultural-linguistic terms. In this paper, I assess the use of toponymic data for studying linguistic relatedness through the application of similar methods to a language with known familial classification. I use the comparative method to analyze the linguistic relatedness of Lenape and Passamaquoddy-Maliseet, Western Abenaki, and Cherokee. The Lenape data consists only of toponyms with attested Lenape heritage. Systematic sound correspondences are found between Lenape and each of the compared languages. Previous scholarship claims that Lenape is related to Passamaquoddy and to Western Abenaki, but not to Cherokee. The absence of this distinction in the analysis of Lenape toponymic data suggests that toponymic data does not provide enough or reliable enough information for historical comparison.
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