The Languages of Amazonia Patience Epps University of Texas at Austin
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REVIEWS Daniel L. Everett, How Language Began
J. Linguistics (2017), 1–5. c Cambridge University Press 2017 doi:10.1017/S0022226717000172 REVIEWS Daniel L. Everett, How language began: The story of humanity’s greatest invention. New York: W. W. Norton, 2107. Pp. xviii + 306. Reviewed by NORBERT FRANCIS, Northern Arizona University This new book by Daniel Everett stands as a significant contribution to the discussion of language evolution because it puts forward the strongest claims so far in what has been an important exchange, probably the most visible in recent years. While How Language Began (henceforth HLB) is written for a general readership, the main proposals are presented clearly, drawing the lines of the debate sharper than in previous turns. Its strong hypotheses now set the stage for better understanding the points in contention and for drawing us closer to resolving them. Crucially, the first chapters chart a space of common ground with other approaches to the study of human evolution: • the endorsement of a materialist (evidence-based) approach to the natural science of language, and the centrality of natural selection and sexual selection as mechanisms of change; • the systems that arise should not be considered to be optimal in their design, • the out-of-Africa hypothesis, and against polygenesis; • following from the above, the gradual emergence of language capabilities (as opposed to a saltationist view); • that the faculty of language(narrow) consists of more than recursive procedures; and, • most importantly, the requisite participation of cultural/conceptual knowledge and communicative function as forces that drove the emergence of language in the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness. In other words, it is unlikely that the core of linguistic competence (the narrow subset of the language faculty), as it emerged in humans, can be restricted to recursion. -
Mitos E Outras Narrativas Kamayura
Mitos e outras narrativas Kamayura Pedro Agostinho SciELO Books / SciELO Livros / SciELO Libros AGOSTINHO, P. Mitos e outras narrativas Kamayura [online]. 2nd ed. Salvador: EDUFBA, 2009, 210p. ISBN 978-85-232-1203-2. Available from SciELO Books <http://books.scielo.org>. All the contents of this work, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Todo o conteúdo deste trabalho, exceto quando houver ressalva, é publicado sob a licença Creative Commons Atribição 4.0. Todo el contenido de esta obra, excepto donde se indique lo contrario, está bajo licencia de la licencia Creative Commons Reconocimento 4.0. MITOS E OUTRAS NARRATIVAS KAMAYURÁ UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DA BAHIA Reitor Naomar Monteiro de Almeida-Filho Vice-Reitor Francisco José Gomes Mesquita EDITORA DA UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DA BAHIA Diretora Flávia Goullart Mota Garcia Rosa Conselho Editorial Titulares Ângelo Szaniecki Perret Serpa Caiuby Alves da Costa Charbel Ninõ El-Hani Dante Eustachio Lucchesi Ramacciotti José Teixeira Cavalcante Filho Maria do Carmo Soares Freitas Suplentes Alberto Brum Novaes Antônio Fernando Guerreiro de Freitas Armindo Jorge de Carvalho Bião Evelina de Carvalho Sá Hoisel Cleise Furtado Mendes Maria Vidal de Negreiros Camargo PEDRO AGOSTINHO MITOS E OUTRAS NARRATIVAS KAMAYURÁ 2a edição EDUFBA Salvador, 2009 ©2009, By Pedro Agostinho Direitos de edição cedidos à Editora da Universidade Federal da Bahia - EDUFBA Feito o depósito legal. Revisão Rosa Virgínia Mattos e Silva Editoração Eletrônica e Capa Rodrigo Oyarzábal Schlabitz Sistema de Bibliotecas - UFBA Agostinho, Pedro. Mitos e outras narrativas Kamayura / Pedro Agostinho. - 2a edição - Salvador: EDUFBA, 2009. 210 p. ISBN: 978-85-232-0590-4 1. -
Contrastive Linguistics; Determiners Language Classification
DOCUMENT RESUME ED 430 401 FL 025 837 TITLE Notes on Linguistics, 1998. INSTITUTION Summer Inst. of Linguistics, Dallas, TX. ISSN ISSN-0736-0673 PUB DATE 1998-00-00 NOTE 242p.; For the 1997 "Notes on Linguistics," see ED 415 721. PUB TYPE Collected Works - Serials (022) JOURNAL CIT Notes on Linguistics; n80-83 1998 EDRS PRICE MF01/PC10 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Book Reviews; Computer Software; Computer Software Development; Contrastive Linguistics; Determiners (Languages); Doctoral Dissertations; English; Greek; Language Classification; Language Patterns; *Language Research; *Linguistic Theory; Research Methodology; *Semantics; Technical Writing; *Uncommonly Taught Languages; Workshops IDENTIFIERS Alamblak; Bungku Tolaki Languages; Chamicuro; Kham ABSTRACT The four issues of the journal of language research and linguistic theory include these articles: "Notes on Determiners in Chamicuro" (Steve Parker); Lingualinks Field Manual Development" (Larry Hayashi); "Comments from an International Linguistics Consultant: Thumbnail Sketch" (Austin Hale); "Carlalinks Workshop" (Andy Black); "Implications of Agreement Languages for Linguistics" (W. P. Lehmann); and "The Semantics of Reconciliation in Three Languages" (Les Bruce) . Dissertation abstracts, book reviews, and professional notes are included in each issue.(MSE) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** NOTES ON LINGUISTICS Number 80 February 1998 Number 81 May 1998 Number 82 August 1998 Number 83 November 1998 SUMMER INSTITUTE OF LINGUISTICS 7500 WEST CAMP WISDOM ROAD DALLAS, TEXAS 75236 USA U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND office ot Educatlonal Research and Improvement DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION BEEN GRANTED BY CENTER (ERIC) \This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. -
Waurá E Mehináku: Um Breve Estudo Comparativo
Waurá e Mehináku: um breve estudo comparativo (Waura and Mehinaku: a brief comparative study) Angel Corbera Mori1 1Departamento de Linguística-Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) [email protected] Abstract: Mehinaku, Waura and Yawalapiti are the only languages of the Arawak linguistic family still spoken in the indigenous park of Xingu, State of Mato Grosso. The first observations and linguistic registries of these three languages were presented by Karl von den Steinen (1940 [1886]) in his classical book Between the aborigines of Central Brazil. In this work, Steinen says that the Arawak people of the Xingu divide themselves in two sub-groups: nu and aruak. “Nu is the predominant prefix in these tribes, it is the characteristic pronominal prefix of the first person; […] Mehinaku, Kustenau, Waura and Yaulapiti are Nu-Aruak” (p. 197). Steinen also stated that the Mehinaku and Waura formed a single ethnological unit and that they spoke the same language. Considering these primary observations, I present in this article a brief comparative study between Waura and Mehinaku languages. Keywords: Arawak family; Mehinaku-Waura languages; Alto Xinguan languages; phonetic and lexical comparison. Resumo: Mehináku, Waurá e Yawalapíti são as três línguas arawák que ainda são faladas no Parque Indígena do Xingu, Estado do Mato Grosso. As primeiras observações e registros linguísticos dessas línguas foram feitas por Karl von den Steinen (1940[1886]) em sua obra Entre os aborígenes do Brasil Central. Nesse trabalho, Steinen considera que as sociedades arawák do Xingu compreendem dois subgrupos: os Nu e os Aruak. “Nu é o prefixo dominante dessas tribus, é o prefixo característico pronominal da primeira pessoa; [...] os Mehinaku, Kustenau, Waura e Yaulapiti são Nu-Aruak” (p. -
Language Myths
Language in popular culture Language myths Language myths LING 200: Introduction to the Study of Language Hadas Kotek April 2016 Hadas Kotek Language myths Language in popular culture Language myths Outline 1 Language in popular culture The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis An example: Whorfian Economics 2 Language myths How many words do Eskimos have for snow? Color terms Recursion and the Pirahã Slides credit: Lauren Clemens, Sabine Iatridou Hadas Kotek Language myths Language in popular culture The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Language myths An example: Whorfian Economics Language in popular culture It is not hard to find opinions and speculation on language Perhaps because the structure of language seems so readily accessible, many of us have intuitions about the way language and language acquisition works But. We saw in this class that much of language involves rules you were not explicitly aware of. We are not as well-equipped as we think to make judgements about how language works. ¾ My aim today: Show you that you need to use your LING 200 knowledge to evaluate claims about language. Hadas Kotek Language myths Language in popular culture The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Language myths An example: Whorfian Economics Language in popular culture The question ¾ Does language shape our view of the world? Not our experience with language . bilingualism dyslexia study abroad . but actual facts about our language Many of you will say “yes” I would like to challenge you on this belief. Hadas Kotek Language myths Language in popular culture The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Language myths An example: Whorfian Economics The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: Language determines thought. -
How to Integrate Ethnographical Data Into Linguistic Documentation: Some Remarks from the Kuikuro Project (Dobes, Brazil)
HOW TO INTEGRATE ETHNOGRAPHICAL DATA INTO LINGUISTIC DOCUMENTATION: SOME REMARKS FROM THE KUIKURO PROJECT (DOBES, BRAZIL) Bruna Franchetto Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Museu Nacional Quinta da Boa Vista Rio de Janeiro – Brazil [email protected] ABSTRACT Ethnographical information is an important component of the endangered languages documentation. If the wider goal of such a documentation is not only to collect texts and a lexicon, but also to present and preserve the cultural heritages of the documented languages, one must associate proper ethnographical information with the annotation of linguistic data and with lexical databases. The integration of linguistic and ethnographic data in a comprehensive archive is certainly not an easy task. Moreover, the participation of the indigenous community and individuals as active producers of the documentation work should be a condition sine qua non to achieve satisfactory results of the whole enterprise. Drawing on the experience of the Kuikuro Project/DOBES Program, we will address in this article the following topics: (1) the necessity of the inclusion of a good sketch ethnography in the archive ; (2) the problem of the glossing and definition of cultural traditional categories as kinship terms and key abstract and almost intranslatable notions; (3) the multiple links that should be constructed across the components of the archive in order to assure to the users a satisfactory understanding of the cultural significance of the linguistic data. Ethnographical information must be considered as documented languages, one must associate proper a crucial component of every endangered language ethnographical information with the annotation of linguistic documentation; it is a crucial component of the projects data. -
REVIEWS Daniel L. Everett, How Language Began
J. Linguistics (2017), 1–5. c Cambridge University Press 2017 doi:10.1017/S0022226717000172 REVIEWS Daniel L. Everett, How language began: The story of humanity’s greatest invention. New York: W. W. Norton, 2107. Pp. xviii + 306. Reviewed by NORBERT FRANCIS, Northern Arizona University This new book by Daniel Everett stands as a significant contribution to the discussion of language evolution because it puts forward the strongest claims so far in what has been an important exchange, probably the most visible in recent years. While How Language Began (henceforth HLB) is written for a general readership, the main proposals are presented clearly, drawing the lines of the debate sharper than in previous turns. Its strong hypotheses now set the stage for better understanding the points in contention and for drawing us closer to resolving them. Crucially, the first chapters chart a space of common ground with other approaches to the study of human evolution: • the endorsement of a materialist (evidence-based) approach to the natural science of language, and the centrality of natural selection and sexual selection as mechanisms of change; • the systems that arise should not be considered to be optimal in their design, • the out-of-Africa hypothesis, and against polygenesis; • following from the above, the gradual emergence of language capabilities (as opposed to a saltationist view); • that the faculty of language(narrow) consists of more than recursive procedures; and, • most importantly, the requisite participation of cultural/conceptual knowledge and communicative function as forces that drove the emergence of language in the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness. In other words, it is unlikely that the core of linguistic competence (the narrow subset of the language faculty), as it emerged in humans, can be restricted to recursion. -
Aweti in Relation with Kamayurá: the Two Tupian Languages of the Upper
O presente arquivo está disponível em http://etnolinguistica.org/xingu Alto Xingu UMA SOCIEDADE MULTILÍNGUE organizadora Bruna Franchetto Rio de Janeiro Museu do Índio - Funai 2011 COORDENAÇÃO EDITORIAL , EDIÇÃO E DIAGRAMAÇÃO André Aranha REVISÃO Bruna Franchetto CAPA Yan Molinos IMAGEM DA CAPA Desenho tradicional kuikuro Dados Internacionais de Catalogação na Publicação (CIP) (Câmara Brasileira do Livro, SP, Brasil) Alto Xingu : uma sociedade multilíngue / organizadora Bruna Franchetto. -- Rio de Janeiro : Museu do Indio - FUNAI, 2011. Vários autores. ISBN 978-85-85986-34-6 1. Etnologia 2. Povos indígenas - Alto Xingu 3. Sociolinguística I. Franchetto, Bruna. 11-02880 CDD-306.44 Índices para catálogo sistemático: 1. Línguas alto-xinguanas : Sociolinguística 306.44 EDIÇÃO DIGITAL DISPON Í VEL EM www.ppgasmuseu.etc.br/publicacoes/altoxingu.html MUSEU DO ÍNDIO - FUNAI PROGRAMA DE PÓS -GRADUAÇÃO EM ANTROPOLOGIA SOCIAL DO MUSEU NACIONAL UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO DE JANEIRO SEBAST I AN DRUDE AWETI IN ReLATION WITH KAMAYURÁ THE TWO TUP I AN LANGUAGES OF THE UPPER X I NGU S EBAST I AN DRUDE Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt/Main Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi INTRODUCT I ON The Aweti and the Kamayurá are the two peoples speaking Tupian languages within the Upper Xingu system in focus in this volume. This article explores the relationship between the two groups and their languages at various levels, as far as space and our current kno- wledge allow. The global aim is to answer a question that frequently surfaces: how closely related are these two languages? This question has several answers depending on the kind and level of ‘relationship’ between the two languages one wishes to examine. -
The Social Instinct
OPINION THE BIG IDEA The social instinct The cultural foundations of human language is a story very much in the making, says Daniel Everett, because it must first challenge the claim that language is innate NOTHING sets Homo sapiens apart from other I must admit I am puzzled by the continued species more clearly than the possession of popularity of nativism. For decades, research language and culture. Using features of supported the idea that language is formed by language unique to our species we can a number of independent factors, leaving communicate almost anything that pops into little, if any, work for a “universal grammar” or our heads. This capacity enables us to learn “language instinct” to do. Some researchers go from and elaborate on the lessons of previous so far as to argue that universal grammar is generations: we use values acquired earlier, nothing more than tautology: humans have plus trial and error, to improve our lives. The language because humans have language. unbeatable combination of language and It may be that nativism persists because it culture has made us lords of the Earth. seems hard to falsify. However, according to The question for anthropologists and Philip Lieberman, a cognitive scientist at linguists, however, is not why language and Brown University, Rhode Island, it makes one culture are so great, but what makes them testable, if paradoxical, prediction. According possible in the first place. p to universal grammar, not all features of We know that these two cognitive-social language would in fact be universal. Under tools are related: the burning issue is to nativism, we would expect that some humans understand the nature of this relationship. -
COLPI Compilation of an Indigenous Brazilian Portuguese L2 Corpus
COLPI Compilation of an Indigenous Brazilian Portuguese L2 corpus Gláucia Buratto Rodrigues de Mello°, Heliana Mello* °UFMG, FAPEMIG *UFMG, CNPq, FAPEMIG COLPI stands for "Corpus Oral de Língua Portuguesa Indígena" or Indigenous Portuguese Language Oral Corpus. It is a small sized oral corpus which documents Brazilian Portuguese as a second language as spoken by Brazilian Indigenous peoples. In this paper we describe its compilation process and its main characteristics. This corpus represents a first step in the attempt to document and make available data that so far has been scattered and not accessible to researchers. The recordings were carried by an anthropologist in her fieldwork and mostly document narratives, therefore portraying monologic texts. COLPI is part of a larger project aimed at documenting Brazilian Portuguese spontaneous speech, the C-ORAL-BRASIL corpus. Keywords: Brazilian Portuguese, Indigenous peoples, second language corpus 1. Introduction: COLPI compilation COLPI is a project dedicated to the compilation of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) spoken as a second language (L2) by Indigenous Brazilian peoples. It is a branch of a larger project the C-ORAL-BRASIL which, on its turn, stands for Spontaneous Brazilian Portuguese spoken corpus as described in Raso & Mello (2012)1. The major goal behind COLPI is to document and make available to the larger research community, samples of L2BP as spoken by different ethno- linguistic indigenous groups in Brazil. The motivation for the creation of COLPI emerged from the availability of previously recorded L2BP files and the opportunity to integrate a portion of them into the C-ORAL-BRASIL corpus. The recordings had been carried in a 1 www.c-oral-brasil.org CHIMERA. -
Alliances and Rivalries in Upper Xinguan Wrestiling1
Anuário Antropológico v.46 n.2 | 2021 2021/v.46 n.2 Practices of looking, transformations in cheering: alliances and rivalries in upper xinguan wrestiling Carlos Eduardo Costa Electronic version URL: https://journals.openedition.org/aa/8343 DOI: 10.4000/aa.8343 ISSN: 2357-738X Publisher Programa de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia Social (UnB) Printed version Number of pages: 254-270 ISSN: 0102-4302 Electronic reference Carlos Eduardo Costa, “Practices of looking, transformations in cheering: alliances and rivalries in upper xinguan wrestiling”, Anuário Antropológico [Online], v.46 n.2 | 2021, Online since 30 May 2021, connection on 01 June 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/aa/8343 ; DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.4000/aa.8343 Anuário Antropológico is licensed under a Creative Commons Atribuição-Uso Não-Comercial-Proibição de realização de Obras Derivadas 4.0 International. anuário antropológico v. 46 • nº 2 • maio-agosto • 2021.2 Practices of looking, transformations in cheering: alliances and rivalries in Upper Xinguan wrestling1 DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/aa.8339 Carlos Eduardo Costa ORCID: 0000-0003-1783-0732 Universidade Federal de São Carlos, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia [email protected] Social, São Carlos, SP, Brasil PhD at the Graduate Programme in Social Anthropology at UFSCar, founding member of the Laboratory for the Study of Ludic Activity and Sociability (Laboratório de Estudos das Práticas Lúdicas e Sociabilidade, LELuS/UFSCar), and collaborator at the Ludopédio website. 254 Kindene wrestling is one of the most frequently recorded practices in the Upper Xingu, from the pioneering expeditions of the 19th century to re- searchers who worked toward the demarcation of the Indigenous Land in the mid-20th century. -
Recursion and the Lexicon* Jan Koster University of Groningen
Recursion and the Lexicon* Jan Koster University of Groningen 1. A critique of biolinguistics Current theorizing about the human language faculty, particularly about recursion, is dominated by the biolinguistics perspective. This perspective has been part of the generative enterprise since its inception and can be summarized as follows: The core of language is individual-psychological and may ultimately be explained in terms of human biology. A classical formulation of this program was Lenneberg (1967) and it was revitalized recently by Jenkins (2000) and particularly by Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch (2002) (henceforth: HCF). According to HCF, recursion (in the form of Merge) is the core of the human language faculty biologically conceived. The biological perspective is far from self-evidently correct and, in fact, goes against a long tradition that emphasized the cultural, conventional nature of language. This tradition goes back at least to Aristotle’s De Interpretatione and became the core idea about language since the late Enlightenment and Romanticism, thanks to the influence of Herder, Von Humboldt and others. Most early 20th-century views were offshoots of the great conceptions formulated around the turn of the 18th century. Thus, Ferdinand de Saussure followed German Romanticism in this respect, as did the great American structuralists Franz Boas and Edward Sapir. Saussure was also influenced by one of the founding fathers of sociology, Émile Durkheim, who argued that certain social facts could not be reduced to individual psychology or biology.1 Also philosophers like Wittgenstein and Popper followed the European tradition, the former with his emphasis on the public and language game-dependent nature of linguistic rules, the latter by stipulating that language belongs to his (pseudo-technical) conception of supra-individual human culture known as “world 3” (Popper 1972).