A Grammatical Description of Kamsá, a Language Isolate of Colombia
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The Languages of Amazonia Patience Epps University of Texas at Austin
Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America Volume 11 Article 1 Issue 1 Volume 11, Issue 1 6-2013 The Languages of Amazonia Patience Epps University of Texas at Austin Andrés Pablo Salanova University of Ottawa Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/tipiti Part of the Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Epps, Patience and Salanova, Andrés Pablo (2013). "The Languages of Amazonia," Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America: Vol. 11: Iss. 1, Article 1, 1-28. Available at: http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/tipiti/vol11/iss1/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Trinity. It has been accepted for inclusion in Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Trinity. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Epps and Salanova: The Languages of Amazonia ARTICLE The Languages of Amazonia Patience Epps University of Texas at Austin Andrés Pablo Salanova University of Ottawa Introduction Amazonia is a linguistic treasure-trove. In this region, defined roughly as the area of the Amazon and Orinoco basins, the diversity of languages is immense, with some 300 indigenous languages corresponding to over 50 distinct ‘genealogical’ units (see Rodrigues 2000) – language families or language isolates for which no relationship to any other has yet been conclusively demonstrated; as distinct, for example, as Japanese and Spanish, or German and Basque (see section 12 below). Yet our knowledge of these languages has long been minimal, so much so that the region was described only a decade ago as a “linguistic black box" (Grinevald 1998:127). -
Contacto Social Y Lingüístico: El Español En Contacto Con El
CONTACTO SOCIAL Y LINGUISTICO Anna María Escobar Obra sumistrada por la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú Índice Presentación por Rodolfo Cerrón Palomino Prefacio Capítulo 1: Contexto teórico 1.1. Factor lingüístico en el contacto de lenguas 1.2. Factor social en el contacto de lenguas 1.3. El español en contacto con el quechua en el Perú Capítulo 2: Procesos morfosintácticos I 2.1. Orden de constituyentes 2.1.1. Oración 2.1.2. Frase nominal 2.2. Concordancia lingüística 2.2.1. Número 2.2.2. Género 2.2.3. Tiempo 2.3. Elipsis 2.3.1. Verbos 2.3.2. Preposiciones 2.3.3. Determinantes 2.3.4. Pronombres 2.4. Regularización 2.4.1. Género 2.4.2. Número 2.4.3. Derivación verbal finita 2.4.3.1. Expresión morfológica 2.4.3.2. Categoría gramatical verbal 2.4.4. Neutralización 2.5. Conclusión 1 Capítulo 3: Procesos morfosintácticos II 3.1. Reduplicación 3.1.1. Morfemas gramaticales 3.1.1.1. Morfemas emotivos 3.1.1.2. Pronombres 3.1.2. Palabras 3.1.2.1. Sustantivos 3.1.2.2. Verbos 3.1.2.3. Adjetivos 3.1.2.4. Adverbios 3.1.3. Frases 3.2. Redundancia 3.2.1. Diminutivo 3.2.2. Comparación 3.2.3. Superlativo 3.2.4. Posesivo 3.2.5. Pronombre 3.2.6. Artículo 3.2.7. Preposición 3.3. Derivación 3.3.1. Productividad 3.3.2. Cambio de función sintáctica 3.4. Acomodación semántica 3.4.1. Clases abiertas 3.4.1.1. Verbos 3.4.1.1.1. -
A Grammar of the Spanish Language
tayi^éii^:]. 1. V- C/\{ V A GRAMMAR OF THE SPANISH LANGUAGE, FOR THE USE OF THE STUDENTS IN KING'S COLLEGE; IN WHICH » THE PECULIAR QUALITIES AND ACCIDENTAL DIFFER- ENCES OF THE PARTS OF SPEECH ARE ACCURATELY ANALYSED, AND THE SYNTAX FULLY EXPLAINED, EXEMPLIFIED, AND COMPARED WITH THE ENGLISH CONSTRUCTION: WITH AN APPENDIX, CONTAINING THE EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULES OF GENDERS, AND TABLES OF THE SPANISH ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS OF A DIFFERENT ETYMOLOGY FROM THE SAME IN ENGLISH. By J. DE ALCALÁ, LL.B. PROFESSOR OF SPANISH LITERATURE IN KINO's COLLEGE. SECOND EDITION. LONDON: DULAU AND CO., 37 SOHO SQUARE; LONGMAN AND CO.; ROLANDI, 20 BERNF.RS STREET; AND ACKERMANN AND CO., 96 STRAND, 1838. PRINTED BY RICHAKD AXD JOHK E. TAYLOR, RED LION COURT, FLEET STREET. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. This Grammar has been submitted to the judge- ment of the public for four years, and the author is happy to state he has received with gratitude the approbation of many persons who, from thei: ac- quaintance with the Spanish language, are well qualified to pass their opinion on its merits, with regard to the accuracy of its rules, and the perspi- cuity of the examples therein given. The author avails himself of the opportunity which a new edi- tion presents, to correct an omission which had escaped him at page 51, Rule II. there given: ought to have been accompanied by the obser- vation that in certain cases it is now fallen into disuse. That page, therefore, as well as the fol- lowing, have been in this edition entirely altered. -
Spanish and P'urhepecha: Mutual Influences in an Ongoing Case of Language Contact in Central Western Mexico
SPANISH AND P’URHEPECHA: MUTUAL INFLUENCES IN AN ONGOING CASE OF LANGUAGE CONTACT IN CENTRAL WESTERN MEXICO Martha Mendoza* * Associate Professor of Linguistics & Spanish. Florida Atlantic University Correo electrónico: [email protected] * Mendoza, Martha. “Spanish and P’urhepecha: Mutual Influences in an Ongoing Case of Lan- guage Contact in Central Western Mexico”. Thesaurus 58(2016): 156-179. Web. 156 n.o 58, octubre 2016 - abril 2017 Abstract Spanish in Mexico is in contact with numerous indigenous languages still spoken in its territory. Such is the case of P’urhepecha in the state of Michoacán, a language isolate part of the sixty eight indigenous language groups remaining in the country today, with as many as 125 000 speakers. Both Spanish and P’urhepecha have been influenced by each other’s presence through centuries of close contact. Over time, Spanish has been modified mostly with respect to its lexicon, while P’urhepecha has experienced both lexical and grammatical influences. Examples of the lexical in- fluence of P’urhepecha on the Spanish of Michoacán are nouns likehuarache ‘san- dal’, tacuche ‘suit’, and corunda ‘tamale’. Examples of the massive lexical influence of Spanish on P’urhepecha are words such as pensarini ‘think’ < Spanish pensar, butella ‘bottle’, mesa ‘table’, telebisioni ‘television’, etc. To this date, however, the contact between Spanish and P’urhepecha has not yet been sufficiently investigat- ed. Thus, the present study provides an overview of the history and current state of the contact between these two -
Can Grammar Define Similarity of Human Natural Languages?
American Journal of Applied Sciences Original Research Paper Can Grammar Define Similarity of Human Natural Languages? 1Vladimir Nikolaevich Polyakov, 2Ivan Sergeevich Anisimov and 3Elena Andreevna Makarova 1NUST, “MISIS”, Moscow, Russia 2“Yandex”, LLC, Moscow, Russia 3Institute of Linguistics of RAS, Moscow, Russia Article history Abstract: The aim of the present study is to show that similarity of human Received: 11-06-2016 natural languages can be conveyed not only by phonetic data, but also by Revised: 03-10-2016 grammar. The paper regards the largest typological database WALS and its Accepted: 05-09-2016 possibilities in the sphere of genealogic relationship of languages. Using the method of two-objective optimization and data mining, which is new Corresponding Author: Vladimir Nikolaevich Polyakov for linguistic studies, we show that grammatical (structural) data, as well as NUST “MISIS”, Moscow, phonetic data, can deliver information on the similarity of languages. Russia Language isolates and micro-families do not have genealogic relatives Email: [email protected] based on phonetic information, but they do have genealogic relatives based on grammar information. Keywords: WALS, Two-Objective Optimization, Data Mining, Language Isolates, Micro-Families, Similarity, Grammar Introduction became the source of information. WALS, being the result of work of 55 specialists, was the first feature atlas on a The main source of information for the present study world-wide scale, which made it possible to compare is World Atlas of Language Structures-WALS unrelated languages all over the world. (Haspelmath et al ., 2005). It is the world’s biggest The present study uses the data WALS in an attempt database describing structural properties of languages. -
The Ten Tonemes of Ticuna, an Amazonian Oddity
January 2018 – Talk abstract for AMAZÓNICAS VII The ten tonemes of Ticuna, an Amazonian oddity Ticuna is a language isolate spoken by an approximate 50,000 ethnic Ticunas in Western Amazonia, across the borders of Peru, Colombia and Brazil. The language’s unusually rich toneme inventory, consisting of 10 contrastive units in stressed syllables and 5 in unstressed syllables, makes it exceptional from both a typological and an areal point of view. Except for epenthetic syllables, each and every Ticuna syllable is lexically attached one toneme – which in specific morphosyntactic contexts may automatically alternate with some other toneme. No complex sandhi-like realization rules apply: each toneme, whether lexical or morphosyntactically conditioned, is always realized as its corresponding tone in the syllable it belongs to. A relatively straightforward phonological analysis of firsthand data from the San Martín de Amacayacu (SMA; Colombia) variety collected in 2015-2017 yields the following toneme inventory: Toneme inventory in stressed syllables in unstressed syllables 36 pitch 5 pitch 52 — 4 — 34 — 3 — 43 — 1 — 33 — creaky voice phonation1 31 — 22 — 21 — terminal creaky voice phonation1 initial creaky voice — TABLE 1 | SMA Ticuna toneme inventory (N.B.: 6 = highest F0; 1 = lowest F0) A comparably rich analysis probably holds for other Ticuna varieties, among others Caballococha and Cushillococha (Peru) Ticuna (Anderson, 1959, 1962; Skilton, pers. com.). In today’s SMA Ticuna at the very least, there seems to be no way to account for minimal pairs (such as those presented in APPENDIX, TABLE 2) with a more economic toneme inventory (such as Montes, 1995’s pioneering three-toneme analysis based on SMA Ticuna data collected from 1984 onwards). -
A Grammatical Description of Warao Imperatives: Formal Brevity and Morphological Complexity
65 Cadernos de Etnolingüística A grammatical description of Warao imperatives: Formal brevity and morphological complexity Allegra Robertsona and Konrad Rybkab aUniversity of California, Berkeley, bMusée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac Abstract Warao is a morphologically complex language isolate, spoken in Guyana and Venezuela. This paper focuses on the critically endangered Guyanese dialect. First-hand data are used to provide a descriptive analysis of Warao imperative constructions, identify their grammatical features and illocutionary forces, and clarify relevant distinctions concerning telicity. The Warao imperative mood is composed of canonical (2nd singular and 2nd plural) and non-canonical (1st person and 3rd person) imperatives, which are expressed by a set of person-specific verbal suffixes. Both canonical and non-canonical imperatives are negated by the same standard negator. These imperatives commonly express instructions, requests, invitations, warnings, prohibitions, and optatives. As compared to verb forms in other moods, Warao imperatives are syntactically and formally simple; however, the imperative suffixes attach to the morphologically complex Warao verb, thus adding complexity to the compositional meaning of the imperative. In addition to bearing numerous other affixes, the Warao imperatives are often marked as telic. The common marking of telicity in the imperative has led to the reassessment of previous analyses by Osborn (1959) and Romero-Figueroa (2003). The ways in which Warao imperatives adhere to and differ from cross-linguistic trends are also explored. This paper draws on Speech Act Theory, as well as Dixon’s Basic Linguistic Theory more broadly. Keywords: Warao, imperative, morphology, telicity, indigenous language documentation 1 Introduction Imperative constructions are a typologically interesting category of language for several reasons, including their tendency toward simplicity of form. -
Languages of the Middle Andes in Areal-Typological Perspective: Emphasis on Quechuan and Aymaran
Languages of the Middle Andes in areal-typological perspective: Emphasis on Quechuan and Aymaran Willem F.H. Adelaar 1. Introduction1 Among the indigenous languages of the Andean region of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, northern Chile and northern Argentina, Quechuan and Aymaran have traditionally occupied a dominant position. Both Quechuan and Aymaran are language families of several million speakers each. Quechuan consists of a conglomerate of geo- graphically defined varieties, traditionally referred to as Quechua “dialects”, not- withstanding the fact that mutual intelligibility is often lacking. Present-day Ayma- ran consists of two distinct languages that are not normally referred to as “dialects”. The absence of a demonstrable genetic relationship between the Quechuan and Aymaran language families, accompanied by a lack of recognizable external gen- etic connections, suggests a long period of independent development, which may hark back to a period of incipient subsistence agriculture roughly dated between 8000 and 5000 BP (Torero 2002: 123–124), long before the Andean civilization at- tained its highest stages of complexity. Quechuan and Aymaran feature a great amount of detailed structural, phono- logical and lexical similarities and thus exemplify one of the most intriguing and intense cases of language contact to be found in the entire world. Often treated as a product of long-term convergence, the similarities between the Quechuan and Ay- maran families can best be understood as the result of an intense period of social and cultural intertwinement, which must have pre-dated the stage of the proto-lan- guages and was in turn followed by a protracted process of incidental and locally confined diffusion. -
Native American Languages, Indigenous Languages of the Native Peoples of North, Middle, and South America
Native American Languages, indigenous languages of the native peoples of North, Middle, and South America. The precise number of languages originally spoken cannot be known, since many disappeared before they were documented. In North America, around 300 distinct, mutually unintelligible languages were spoken when Europeans arrived. Of those, 187 survive today, but few will continue far into the 21st century, since children are no longer learning the vast majority of these. In Middle America (Mexico and Central America) about 300 languages have been identified, of which about 140 are still spoken. South American languages have been the least studied. Around 1500 languages are known to have been spoken, but only about 350 are still in use. These, too are disappearing rapidly. Classification A major task facing scholars of Native American languages is their classification into language families. (A language family consists of all languages that have evolved from a single ancestral language, as English, German, French, Russian, Greek, Armenian, Hindi, and others have all evolved from Proto-Indo-European.) Because of the vast number of languages spoken in the Americas, and the gaps in our information about many of them, the task of classifying these languages is a challenging one. In 1891, Major John Wesley Powell proposed that the languages of North America constituted 58 independent families, mainly on the basis of superficial vocabulary resemblances. At the same time Daniel Brinton posited 80 families for South America. These two schemes form the basis of subsequent classifications. In 1929 Edward Sapir tentatively proposed grouping these families into superstocks, 6 in North America and 15 in Middle America. -
Current Studies on South American Languages, [Indigenous Languages of Latin America (ILLA), Vol
This file is freely available for download at http://www.etnolinguistica.org/illa This book is freely available for download at http://www.etnolinguistica.org/illa References: Crevels, Mily, Simon van de Kerke, Sérgio Meira & Hein van der Voort (eds.). 2002. Current Studies on South American Languages, [Indigenous Languages of Latin America (ILLA), vol. 3], [CNWS publications, vol. 114], Leiden: Research School of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies (CNWS), vi + 344 pp. (ISBN 90-5789-076-3) CURRENT STUDIES ON SOUTH AMERICAN LANGUAGES INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES OF LATIN AMERICA (ILLA) This series, entitled Indigenous Languages of Latin America, is a result of the collaboration between the CNWS research group of Amerindian Studies and the Spinoza research program Lexicon and Syntax, and it will function as an outlet for publications related to the research program. LENGUAS INDÍGENAS DE AMÉRICA LATINA (ILLA) La serie Lenguas Indígenas de América Latina es el resultado de la colabora- ción entre el equipo de investigación CNWS de estudios americanos y el programa de investigación Spinoza denominado Léxico y Sintaxis. Dicha serie tiene como objetivo publicar los trabajos que se lleven a cabo dentro de ambos programas de investigación. Board of advisors / Consejo asesor: Willem Adelaar (Universiteit Leiden) Eithne Carlin (Universiteit Leiden) Pieter Muysken (Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen) Leo Wetzels (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) Series editors / Editores de la serie: Mily Crevels (Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen) Simon van de Kerke (Universiteit -
Languages of the World--Native America
REPOR TRESUMES ED 010 352 46 LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD-NATIVE AMERICA FASCICLE ONE. BY- VOEGELIN, C. F. VOEGELIN, FLORENCE N. INDIANA UNIV., BLOOMINGTON REPORT NUMBER NDEA-VI-63-5 PUB DATE JUN64 CONTRACT MC-SAE-9486 EDRS PRICENF-$0.27 HC-C6.20 155P. ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS, 6(6)/1-149, JUNE 1964 DESCRIPTORS- *AMERICAN INDIAN LANGUAGES, *LANGUAGES, BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA, ARCHIVES OF LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD THE NATIVE LANGUAGES AND DIALECTS OF THE NEW WORLD"ARE DISCUSSED.PROVIDED ARE COMPREHENSIVE LISTINGS AND DESCRIPTIONS OF THE LANGUAGES OF AMERICAN INDIANSNORTH OF MEXICO ANDOF THOSE ABORIGINAL TO LATIN AMERICA..(THIS REPOR4 IS PART OF A SEkIES, ED 010 350 TO ED 010 367.)(JK) $. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH,EDUCATION nib Office ofEduc.442n MD WELNicitt weenment Lasbeenreproduced a l l e a l O exactly r o n o odianeting es receivromed f the Sabi donot rfrocestarity it. Pondsof viewor position raimentofficial opinions or pritcy. Offkce ofEducation rithrppologicalLinguistics Volume 6 Number 6 ,Tune 1964 LANGUAGES OF TEM'WORLD: NATIVE AMER/CAFASCICLEN. A Publication of this ARC IVES OF LANGUAGESor 111-E w oRLD Anthropology Doparignont Indiana, University ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS is designed primarily, butnot exclusively, for the immediate publication of data-oriented papers for which attestation is available in the form oftape recordings on deposit in the Archives of Languages of the World. This does not imply that contributors will bere- stricted to scholars working in the Archives at Indiana University; in fact,one motivation for the publication -
Complex Items and Units in Extra-Sentential Code Switching
Journal of Language Contact 13 (2021) 540-572 brill.com/jlc Complex Items and Units in Extra-Sentential Code Switching. Spanish and English in Gibraltar Eugenio Goria Assistant Professor of Linguistics, Department of Humanities, University of Turin, Turin, Italy [email protected] Abstract As is well-known, code-mixing is particularly frequent at clause boundaries and with elements expressing pragmatic meaning. However, most of the literature has focussed on switching of simple elements such as conjunctions and discourse markers. This paper, in contrast, analyses clause peripheral switching involving two complex constructions: left dislocations and pseudo-clefts. The data are from English-Spanish bilingual conversations recorded in Gibraltar. A great majority of the bilingual constructions in the corpus belong to a few types occurring with a restricted set of lexical items. A vast amount of such highly recurrent strings in the data confirm the hypothesis that complex multi word strings that are switched together constitute units in code-mixing, i.e. they are processed as single lexical items. Keywords extra-clausal code-mixing – alternation – Gibraltar – left dislocation – pseudo-clefts – construction grammar 1 Introduction In this paper, I investigate the process of unitisation (Backus, 2003) as an alternative explanation for some aspects of English-Spanish code-mixing in Gibraltar that in previous analyses were mostly attributed to functional-prag- matic features (Goria, 2016). Coherently with the other papers in the pres- ent special issue, I argue that the theoretical assumptions of Construction © Eugenio Goria, 2021 | doi:10.1163/19552629-bja10018 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the prevailingDownloaded cc-by-nc from license Brill.com09/28/2021 at the time of 03:20:32AM publication.