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The Linguistics of Endangered Languages THE LINGUISTICS OF ENDANGERED LANGUAGES The Linguistics of Endangered Languages Contributions to Morphology and Morphosyntax W. Leo Wetzels (ed.) LOT Utrecht 2009 Published by LOT phone: +31 30 253 6006 Janskerkhof 13 fax: +31 30 253 6406 3512 JK Utrecht e-mail: [email protected] The Netherlands http://www.lotschool.nl/ Cover illustration: Ingaricó girl learning to write. Manalai village, Roraima, Brazil. Photo by Odileiz Cruz, 1999. ISBN 978-90-78328-98-8 NUR 616 © copyright 2009 by the individual authors. The Linguistics of Endangered Languages Contributions to Morphology and Morphosyntax W. Leo Wetzels (ed.) Contents Kees Hengeveld (University of Amsterdam) Preface ...................................................................................... 1 1. Leo Wetzels (Paris III, Sorbonne Nouvelle/CNRS, LPP and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) Introduction ............................................................................. 3 Part I : South America 2. Jesús Mario Girón (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) Morfología y función de las construcciones nominalizadas en wãnsöjöt (puinave) .................................................................. 15 3. Dany Mahecha Rubio(Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) El nombre en Nkak ................................................................ 63 4. Sérgio Meira (Leiden University Centre for Linguistics) and Spike Gildea (University of Oregon) Property concepts in the Cariban family: Adjectives, adverbs, and/or nouns? .......................................................................... 95 5. Eithne B. Carlin (Leiden University Centre for Linguistics) Truth and knowledge markers in Wayana (Cariban), Suriname ............................................................................... 135 6. Francesc Queixalós (CELIA/CNRS Paris) La posture du corps dans la classification et la localisation: l’exemple du sikuani ............................................................ 151 7. Willem Adelaar (Leiden University Centre for Linguistics) Inverse markers in Andean languages: A comparative view ....................................................................................... 171 Part II : Africa 8. Mulugeta Seyoum (Ethiopian Languages Research Centre and Leiden University Centre for Linguistics) Negation in Dime .................................................................. 189 9. Azeb Amha (Leiden University Centre for Linguistics) The morphosyntax of negation in Zargulla ........................... 199 10. Anne-Christie Hellenthal (Leiden University Centre for Linguistics) Possession in Sheko .............................................................. 221 11. Kofi Dorvlo (Language Centre, University of Ghana) Noun class system and agreement patterns in Logba (Ikpana) ...................................................................... 243 12. Mercy Lamptey Bobuafor (Leiden University Centre of Linguistics) Noun classes in Tafi: A preliminary analysis ....................... 267 Part III : Middle East and East-Timor 13. Masayoshi Shibatani (Rice University) and Khaled Awadh Bin Makhashen (Hadhramout University and Universiti Sains, Malaysia) Nominalization in Soqotri, a South Arabian language of Yemen ................................................................................... 311 14. Aone van Engelenhoven (Leiden University Centre of Linguistics) On derivational processes in Fataluku, a non-Austronesian language in East-Timor ......................................................... 333 Index ............................................................................................... 363 Preface Kees Hengeveld (Amsterdam Center for Language and Communica- tion, University of Amsterdam) At the recommendation of an advisory committee consisting of Tjeerd de Graaf, Silvia Kouwenberg, Maarten Mous, Pieter Muysken and Leo Wetzels, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) started a research programme in 2002 that aimed at encouraging research on endangered languages and at disseminating the results of that research among the peoples concerned, the general public, and the academic com- munity. The Endangered Languages Programme (ELP) implemented the first aim by funding seven projects on languages and language groups from Africa, Asia, and South America. The board of the programme, consisting of Kees Hengeveld (chair from 2005), Rosalyn Howard, Ul- rike Mosel, Stephane Robert, and Rieks Smeets (chair until 2005), and guided and assisted first by Frank Zuijdam and later by Marc Linssen from NWO, selected these projects from a large number of proposals of high quality, which made clear that there is a great interest and an enor- mous potential for language documentation among Dutch linguists and the colleagues with which they collaborate internationally. This was rea- son for NWO to ask Maarten Mous, participating in the ELP, to take the initiative for a European programme on endangered languages. Such a programme was indeed approved by the European Science Foundation, and has now started under the name EUROBABEL. Within each of the ELP projects attention was paid to the docu- mentation needs of the peoples concerned, such as the production of teaching materials, dictionaries, and audiovisual materials registering daily life and culture. The general public was informed about language endangerment through cultural events for the interested laymen, and through the development of a multimedia course on language endanger- ment for use in secondary schools. This course was developed by Gotze Kalsbeek and Cecilia Odé and is freely available in Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, English, and Russian at the website www.endangeredlanguages. nl. The academic community was kept informed during the programme through a series of conferences, organized by NWO in collaboration with 2 KEES HENGEVELD Leo Wetzels at VU University Amsterdam in 2004, Kees Hengeveld at the University of Amsterdam in 2007, and Maarten Mous at the Univer- sity of Leiden in 2010. This book too is meant to inform the academic community about the results of the programme. It testifies to the enor- mous richness of human languages in general, and to the need to pre- serve and document this richness in particular. It samples highlights of the grammars of the languages studied, which are described in full in the language descriptions coming out of the individual projects, which are listed as they appear at the programme’s page at NWO’s website www. nwo.nl. The board of the ELP would like to thank W. Leo Wetzels for tak- ing it upon him to act as the editor of this volume; Katherine Demuth, Pattie Epps, Francesc Queixalós, Anne Schwarz, Miriam van Staden, Hein Steinhauer, Mauro Tosco, and Johan van der Auwera for acting as reviewers; and Jeroen van de Weijer for correcting the English contribu- tions and for preparing the manuscript for publication. Introduction W. Leo Wetzels (Paris III, Sorbonne Nouvelle/CNRS, LPP and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) The articles in this volume originate from two sources. The manuscripts by Sérgio Meira & Spike Gildea, Francesc Queixalós, Masayoshi Shi- batani & Khaled Awadh Bin Makhashen, and Willem Adelaar were se- lected by the editor. All others were written by researchers engaged in the Endangered Languages Programme financed by the Netherlands Or- ganization for Scientific Research. The papers are organised according to the geographical distribution of the languages discussed, resulting in the following division, respectively: South America (Colombia, Suriname, Brazil and the Andes), Africa (Ethiopia, Ghana), and Asia (Yemen, East- Timor). South America The language called Wãnsöjöt Yedókjet, more often referred to as Pui- nave, is spoken by some 5000 individuals. These people are divided into two communities, one of which lives in the region of the Inírida River in Colombia, and the other, a smaller group, resides on the shores of the Venezuelan Orinoco. Wãnsöjöt has sometimes been classified as belong- ing to the Makú-Puinave linguistic family, together with the Colombian languages Nikak, Kakua, and the eastern (mainly Brazilian) Maku lan- guages. However, there is a lack of strong evidence for a genetic rela- tionship between Wãnsöjöt and any of these languages. Therefore, it must be considered a linguistic isolate for the time being. Although the Wãnsöjöt represent a relatively numerous group, the number of speakers who master the traditional language is rapidly decreasing, mainly be- cause over half of the population now live in urban areas and many chil- dren and adolescents opt for Spanish. In the article “Morfología y fun- ción de las construcciones nominalizadas en wãnsöjöt (puinave)”, Jesús Mario Girón discusses the question of nominalization in Wãnsöjöt, which has nominalized structures that function either as predicates or as participants. Deverbal nominalizations create agentive or objective nouns. In addition, action nominals and locative nominalizations may be 4 W. LEO WETZELS derived from verbs, which serve as oblique arguments. Nominalization is not limited to the lexicon; syntactic constituents may also be nominal- ized. Extended incomplete clauses and clauses that suffix the resultative -pn or the nominal past -hin function as subordinate and coordinate clauses. Furthermore, the conditional construction is formed by the addi- tion of the locative case marker -u to the initial clause (protasis) of the conditional, whereas the past nominal hin, suffixed to one of two clauses in a sequence, creates adversative complex sentences. The Wãnsöjöt
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