Fieldwork and Linguistic Analysis in Indigenous Languages of the Americas
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Fieldwork and Linguistic Analysis in Indigenous Languages of the Americas edited by Andrea L. Berez, Jean Mulder, and Daisy Rosenblum Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication No. 2 Published as a sPecial Publication of language documentation & conservation language documentation & conservation Department of Linguistics, UHM Moore Hall 569 1890 East-West Road Honolulu, Hawai‘i 96822 USA http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/ldc university of hawai‘i Press 2840 Kolowalu Street Honolulu, Hawai‘i 96822-1888 USA © All texts and images are copyright to the respective authors. 2010 All chapters are licensed under Creative Commons Licenses Cover design by Cameron Chrichton Cover photograph of salmon drying racks near Lime Village, Alaska, by Andrea L. Berez Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data ISBN 978-0-8248-3530-9 http://hdl.handle.net/10125/4463 Contents Foreword iii Marianne Mithun Contributors v Acknowledgments viii 1. Introduction: The Boasian tradition and contemporary practice 1 in linguistic fieldwork in the Americas Daisy Rosenblum and Andrea L. Berez 2. Sociopragmatic influences on the development and use of the 9 discourse marker vet in Ixil Maya Jule Gómez de García, Melissa Axelrod, and María Luz García 3. Classifying clitics in Sm’algyax: 33 Approaching theory from the field Jean Mulder and Holly Sellers 4. Noun class and number in Kiowa-Tanoan: Comparative-historical 57 research and respecting speakers’ rights in fieldwork Logan Sutton 5. The story of *o in the Cariban family 91 Spike Gildea, B.J. Hoff, and Sérgio Meira 6. Multiple functions, multiple techniques: 125 The role of methodology in a study of Zapotec determiners Donna Fenton 7. Middles and reflexives in Yucatec Maya: 147 Trusting speaker intuition Israel Martínez Corripio and Ricardo Maldonado 8. Studying Dena’ina discourse markers: 173 Evidence from elicitation and narrative Olga Charlotte Lovick 9. Be careful what you throw out: 203 Gemination and tonal feet in Weledeh Dogrib Alessandro Jaker 10. Revisiting the source: 223 Non-finite verbs in Sierra Popoluca (Mixe-Zoque) Lynda Boudreault iii Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication No. 2 (May 2010): Fieldwork and Linguistic Analysis in Indigenous Languages of the Americas, Foreword ed. by Andrea L. Berez, Jean Mulder, and Daisy Rosenblum, pp. iii-iv http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/ldc/ http://hdl.handle.net/10125/4462 This timely special publication represents a welcome stage in the development of the field of linguistics. The discipline is witnessing an intertwining of approaches to the study of language that have been evolving, often as independent strands, for well over a century. Major progress has been made in all traditional domains: phonetics, phonology, morphol- ogy, syntax, semantics, and discourse. The importance of understanding how linguistic categories and structures emerge over time, how children acquire them, and how social and cultural uses shape them are now widely recognized. More is being learned every day about how language is utilized by speakers for social and cultural purposes. Technologi- cal and analytic advances have opened up possibilities for discoveries unimaginable at the outset, from fine acoustic analysis to the manipulation of corpora. Theories are becoming ever stronger, more detailed, and more sophisticated as we learn more about what occurs in typologically diverse languages. This growth of knowledge has necessarily led to greater specialization on the part of individual researchers: there is simply too much for one person to master. At the same time, it is becoming increasingly clear that no aspect of language can be understood fully in isolation. There has been a palpable shift in attitudes within the discipline, with greater respect among individual scholars for lines of research outside of their own, and greater appre- ciation of the contributions each can make toward understanding others. Where once dis- tinctions were sometimes drawn between ‘description’ and ‘theory’, there is now general recognition of the fact that the two are necessarily interlocking elements of an empirically- based science. This recognition may have been stimulated, at least in part, by a heightened awareness of the immanent loss of linguistic diversity in the world. Informed documenta- tion and description of endangered languages has become a priority for the field, as one by one, languages are slipping away before our eyes and ears. The present collection is a fine example of the evolution of the discipline, in par- ticular the fading of impenetrable boundaries. It is now understood that good language documentation and description require a strong theoretical foundation, an understanding of what is currently known about language and at least some of the puzzles that remain. All of the authors represented in this special publication bring such a background to their fieldwork, and each of the articles makes an incisive contribution to linguistic theory. At the same time, it is now generally accepted that any theory of value must be grounded in data. The papers collected here are exemplary in this regard. This volume represents the full range of structural domains, but each study also goes beyond the level of the specific patterns, markers, or constructions under consideration to examine the parts they play in larger domains and their import for larger issues. There is work on the phonetic values of reconstructed vowels as revealed through modern fieldwork; on the tonal foot and the role of low-level allophonic processes in the construction of phonological categories; on pro- sodic, morphological, and syntactic properties of a range of grammatical and lexical clitics and their implications for a general theory of clitics; on the reconstruction of a complex system of number inflection based on noun class; on non-finite inflection, its interaction with argument structure, and its syntactic function; on the semantic thread of event con- strual linking seemingly disparate uses of the middle voice; on the spatial, temporal, and discourse functions of determiners; and on the structural, pragmatic, and social functions of discourse markers. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives License iv Another fading boundary is that between academic linguists on one side and mem- bers of language communities on the other. Work on individual languages, particularly those spoken by smaller populations and those in danger of disappearance, must be shaped not just by current linguistic theory but equally if not more by the needs and desires of communities. Our understanding of linguistic structure would be seriously impoverished without the dedication and insight of the speakers who collaborate in this work. More and more community members are becoming scholars. A recurring theme running through this volume is the important insights provided by speakers. The papers collected here also reflect a maturing of methodology in the field. There are rich discussions of the interplay between data and theory; between elicitation and un- planned spontaneous speech; between direct observation of speech and the insights of speakers; between qualitative and quantitative findings; between current data and analyses and earlier documentation and description. These threads have always been present in the discipline, but not necessarily within the work of individual scholars. It has long been recognized that linguistics includes elements of hard science, of social science, and of the humanities. It has an empirical basis, with strict standards of responsibility to the data. It is a social phenomenon. It is also a human phenomenon, directly concerned with a product of the human mind. The optimal methodologies for the study of language are not necessarily precisely the same as those for physics, mathematics, psychology, philosophy, or literature. In a sense we can see linguistics coming into its own as a discipline, with its own blend of methodologies. The present special publication provides a fine example of this blend. Marianne Mithun v Contributors MELISSA AXELROD, who also specializes in Native American languages and language revitalization, is a professor in the Linguistics Department at the University of New Mexico. Together with Jule Gómez de García and María Luz García, she has been working with Ixil Maya speakers of the Grupo de Mujeres por la Paz of Nebaj, El Quiche, Guatemala, since 2002 on NSF-funded projects to produce an electronic ar- chive of linguistic, cultural and historical materials and, most recently, a grammar of Ixil. Axelrod and Gómez de García have also collaborated on a language revitalization project with the Jicarilla Apache Nation in New Mexico and served as editors on the Dictionary of Jicarilla Apache (2007, Uiversity of New Mexico Press). ANDREA L. BEREZ is a doctoral candidate in the linguistics department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is a descriptive and documentary linguist who works primarily with speakers of Ahtna and Dena’ina, two endangered Athabascan languages of southcentral Alaska. Her linguistic interests include intonation, spatial cognition and discourse-functional approaches to grammar. She is also interested in the development of the technological infrastructure to support language documentation and archiving. LYNDA DE JONG BOUDREAULT graduated from the University of Texas at Austin where she specialized in descriptive linguistics with particular interest in languages of Mesoamerica. Her research