A Lexicographic Study of Ulwa Thomas Michael Green
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A Lexicographic Study of Ulwa by Thomas Michael Green B.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1989) Submitted to the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY September 1999 c Thomas Michael Green 1999. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute copies of this thesis document in whole or in part. Author............................................................................ Department of Linguistics and Philosophy September 9, 1999 Certified by........................................................................ Kenneth Hale Professor Thesis Supervisor Accepted by....................................................................... Alec Marantz Chair, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy A Lexicographic Study of Ulwa by Thomas Michael Green Submitted to the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy on September 9, 1999, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Abstract In this thesis, I present the beginnings of a reference grammar and dictionary of the Ulwa language of the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. I first describe the current state of the Ulwa language and people in light of their historical and sociolinguistic context. I then go into some detail regarding the phonological and morphological nature of the language. Finally I touch on the syntactic and semantic issues that most directly affect the design of a lexical database of the language. These include discussion of verbal diathesis and the nature of complex multi-word verbal idioms. The thesis is a lexicographic study because the aim is to present information sufficient for a reasonable understanding of the lexical entries of the language, as represented in the included dictionary. Thesis Supervisor: Kenneth Hale Title: Professor 2 Acknowledgments Any attempt to express how important Ken Hale has been to my development as a linguist and as a person is doomed to fail. I have had the privilege of being his student now for fourteen years|well over a third of my life (!), and my only regrets are (a) that it took this long, and (b) that I haven't really proven worthy of all the time and effort he has put into me. On a more specific level, it was only through Ken that I was able to get involved in the Ulwa Language Project at all, and to enter into such a personally rewarding relation- ship with the members of the Ulwa Language Committee in Karawala, RAAS, Nicaragua. Leonzo Knight, Lorinda Mart´ınez,Francisco Santiago, Abanel Lacayo, Clementina Abra- ham, Kandler Santiago and their families welcomed me into their homes and willingly shared every aspect of their lives with me. As the tenth aniversary of my first meeting with the Ulwa Committee members approaches, I find myself looking forward to continued contact with them for at least another ten years. I am also deeply indebted to Danilo Salamanca for the numerous ways in which he has helped me over the years, in his capacity as an expert in lingustics and Nicaraguan languages, as director of CIDCA in Managua and thus a provider of essential logistic support on the Nicaraguan side, and as a friend who, among other things, took me to baseball games in Managua. I am grateful to the other members of the CIDCA staff both in Managua and Bluefields. Without all their help the Ulwa Project would most certainly have ground to a halt in the face of a million tiny obstacles. To my classmates, Doug Jones, Toshifusa Oka, Akira Watanabe, and Sigal Uziel, I send my thanks, wherever you are, for all the years of solidarity and friendship that unfortunately seem like so long ago. During my formative grad-school years I was lucky enough have some great housemates, especially Kumiko \Ukmik" Murasugi, Colin /fIlIps/ (can't remember how many l's the real spelling has) and most of all, Hamida Demirdache, who ranks up there with Ken in how much she has influenced my outlook on life. And I mustn't forget to acknowledge the joy that was T¨urk¨o¨ızK¨o¨ok¨ı. Marilyn \Slackey" Goodrich has been great to me and to the Project throughout these last ten years. Having her as a confidante has pulled me through many a trying time, and even made most of them seem funny. Wayne O'Neil is the first professor I remember meeting at MIT, back in 1984, and I guess he is partly responsible for getting me interested in linguistics. I have always relished hearing his take on any issue, and his collaboration, both in Nicaragua, in the writing of this thesis, and on matters entirely unrelated, have been invaluable. Michael Kenstowicz has been my chief mentor in the field of phonology, my other lin- guistic passion, and the area in which, as my original committee chair, he almost succeeded in getting me to finish my first thesis about 5 years ago. His encyclopedic knowledge and open mind have been an ideal combination, and now that this thesis is out of the way I look forward to finally being able renew our collaboration in phonological matters. Although Jim Harris was fortunate enough to retire before being asked to be on my thesis committee, he has been wonderful to know and to work with, and has also taught me a few juicy Spanish expressions, for which I'll always be in his debt. I always promised Eugene \Sully" Sullivan that I would put him in my acknowledge- ments if I ever finished this thesis. Sully was the night custodian on the third floor of the now deceased Building 20, where most of the late-night work on the dictionary took place back in the mid-1990's. He was always good for some Red Sox talk or griping about the 3 system or keeping a pot of coffee brewing in one of the biohazard labs. And of course my mom, Andrea, and dad, Michael, plus my brother Dan and sister Julie all were great in supporting me mentally throughout this whole ordeal. I don't really need to thank them explicitly, because they're all more relieved than I am that this is finally finished. My mom taught me about the archaeologists' practice of first assessing the scope of a site and then being careful not to dig up more than a third of it, saving the rest for posterity. Well, I've taken a page from their book and am leaving future linguists (hopefully native Ulwa speaking ones) a veritable blank slate on which to base their investigations of Ulwa. I also want to thank Matt Fahrner, my best friend since the 6th grade, for being a constant reminder of how weird it is that I haven't managed to find a better friend than him in 22 years. It has become obvious to me that I never will. Penultimately, there's still tons of people I've left out because my deadline is fast approaching. Some of them have names like Christian, Linda, Marie, Utpal, D2, Carlos, Pilar, Blastula, Brian, Lenny, Tim, and it just keeps going. So I'll close by thanking Vicki Mountain, who didn't leave me despite the last few months, for which I am truly grateful. 4 Contents 1 The Ulwa Language: Past and Present 10 1.1 Background . 10 1.1.1 Genetic Classification of Ulwa . 10 1.1.2 Precontact Distribution . 11 1.1.3 Postcontact Pressures . 14 1.1.4 Modern demographics . 15 1.2 Karawala . 17 1.2.1 Census data . 17 1.2.2 Origins and early years . 18 1.2.3 The turning point: 1950 . 21 2 The Ulwa Language Project 23 2.1 Foundation . 23 2.2 Activities of the Ulwa Language Project . 24 2.2.1 The Dictionary . 24 2.2.2 Texts . 25 2.2.3 Descriptive Grammar . 27 2.2.4 Education . 27 2.3 Conclusion . 28 3 Segmental Phonology and Syllable Structure 29 3.1 Segmental phonology . 29 3.1.1 Consonants . 29 3.1.2 Vowels . 31 3.1.3 Orthographic conventions . 33 3.2 Syllable structure . 34 3.2.1 Basic generalizations . 34 3.2.2 Structural restrictions on consonant distribution . 34 3.2.3 Syllable-internal cooccurrence restrictions . 35 3.2.4 Exceptions to the core syllable template . 36 3.3 Phonotactics . 38 3.3.1 Consonant clusters . 38 3.3.2 Phonological processes . 40 4 Prosodic and metrical phonology 43 4.1 Initial concepts . 43 4.1.1 Syllable weight . 43 5 4.1.2 The foot . 43 4.2 Prosodic constraints on morpheme shape . 44 4.2.1 Canonical roots . 44 4.2.2 Prosodic minimality and subminimal roots . 46 4.2.3 Oversized roots . 47 4.2.4 Long vowels and `iambic lengthening' . 49 4.3 Infixation and reduplication . 50 4.3.1 Adjectival reduplication . 51 4.3.2 Construct state infixation . 52 4.4 Stress placement . 56 4.4.1 Preliminary observations . 56 4.4.2 Stress in canonical adjectives . 57 4.4.3 Stress and adjectival reduplication . 57 4.4.4 Stress in noncanonical adjectives . 58 4.4.5 Stress in canonical verbs . 58 4.4.6 Stress in derived verbs . 60 4.4.7 Stress in canonical nouns . 60 4.4.8 Stress in oversized nouns . 62 4.4.9 Stress and the construct state . 64 4.4.10 `Pre-accenting' enclitics . 67 4.4.11 Stress in compounds . 68 5 Overview of Ulwa grammar 69 5.1 Word order and directionality of syntactic relations . 69 5.1.1 Head finality . 69 5.1.2 Clausal word order . 70 5.2 Person and number . 71 5.3 Case marking . 71 5.3.1 Invisible case: nominative and genitive .