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On this and other worlds
This edited volume offers a collection of twelve interlinear texts reflecting the vast linguistic diversity of Amazonia as well as the rich verbal arts and oral literature traditions of Amazonian peoples. Contributions to the volume come from a variety of geographic regions and represent the Carib, Jê, Tupi, East Tukano, Nadahup, and Pano language families, as well as three linguistic isolates. The selected texts exemplify a variety of narrative styles recounting the origins of constellations, crops, and sacred cemeteries, and of travel to worlds beyond death. We hear tales of tricksters and of encounters between humans and other beings, learn of battles between enemies, and gain insight in...
Teaching and Learning Resources for Endangered Languages
This volume showcases latest developments and innovations in teaching and learning materials in, about and for endangered languages, as well as discusses challenges in the production of such materials.
The Native Languages of South America
In South America indigenous languages are extremely diverse. There are over one hundred language families in this region alone. Contributors from around the world explore the history and structure of these languages, combining insights from archaeology and genetics with innovative linguistic analysis. The book aims to uncover regional patterns and potential deeper genealogical relations between the languages. Based on a large-scale database of features from sixty languages, the book analyses major language families such as Tupian and Arawakan, as well as the Quechua/Aymara complex in the Andes, the Isthmo-Colombian region and the Andean foothills. It explores the effects of historical change in different grammatical systems and fills gaps in the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) database, where South American languages are underrepresented. An important resource for students and researchers interested in linguistics, anthropology and language evolution.
Mobility and Migration in Indigenous Amazonia
Contrary to ingrained academic and public assumptions, wherein indigenous lowland South American societies are viewed as the product of historical emplacement and spatial stasis, there is widespread evidence to suggest that migration and displacement have been the norm, and not the exception. This original and thought-provoking collection of case studies examines some of the ways in which migration, and the concomitant processes of ecological and social change, have shaped and continue to shape human-environment relations in Amazonia. Drawing on a wide range of historical time frames (from pre-conquest times to the present) and ethnographic contexts, different chapters examine the complex and important links between migration and the classification, management, and domestication of plants and landscapes, as well as the incorporation and transformation of environmental knowledge, practices, ideologies and identities.
Language Documentation and Revitalization in Latin American Contexts
Up to now, the focus in the field of language documentation has been predominantly on North American and Australian languages. However, the greatest genetic diversity in languages is found in Latin America, home to over 100 distinct language families. This book gives the Latin American context the attention it requires by consolidating the work of field researchers experienced in the region into one volume for the first time.
A Grammar of Kwaza
This work contains a comprehensive description of Kwaza, which is an endangered and unclassified indigenous language of Southern Rondônia, Brazil. The Kwaza language, also known in the literature as Koaiá, is spoken by around 25 people today. Until recently, our knowledge of Kwaza was based on only three short word lists, from 1938, 1943 and 1984. Like the language, the culture and the history of its speakers are undocumented. The Kwaza people as an ethnic group have been decimated by increasing ecological, physical, social and cultural pressure from Western civilisation since contact in the past century. This is the situation for many indigenous peoples of Rondônia and of the Amazon regi...
Amazonian Dark Earths: Wim Sombroek's Vision
Amazonian soils are almost universally thought of as extremely forbidding. However, it is now clear that complex societies with large, sedentary populations were present for over a millennium before European contact. Associated with these are tracts of anomalously fertile, dark soils termed ‘terra preta’ or dark earths. These soils are presently an important agricultural resource within Amazonia and provide a model for developing long-term future sustainability of food production in tropical environments. The late Dutch soil scientist Wim Sombroek (1934-2003) was instrumental in bringing the significance of these soils to the attention of the world over four decades ago. Wim saw not only...
Switch Reference 2.0
Switch reference is a grammatical process that marks a referential relationship between arguments of two (or more) verbs. Typically it has been characterized as an inflection pattern on the verb itself, encoding identity or non-identity between subject arguments separately from traditional person or number marking. In the 50 years since William Jacobsen’s coinage of the term, switch reference has evolved from an exotic phenomenon found in a handful of lesser-known languages to a widespread feature found in geographically and linguistically unconnected parts of the world. The growing body of information on the topic raises new theoretical and empirical questions about the development, functions, and nature of switch reference, as well as the internal variation between different switch-reference systems. The contributions to this volume discuss these and other questions for a wide variety of languages from all over the world, and endevaour to demonstrate the full functional and morphosyntactic range of the phenomenon.
Bridging constructions
Many descriptive grammars report the use of a linguistic pattern at the interface between discourse and syntax which is known generally as tail-head linkage. This volume takes an unprecedented look at this type of linkage across languages and shows that there exist three distinct variants, all subsumed under the hypernym bridging constructions. The chapters highlight the defining features of these constructions in the grammar and their functional properties in discourse. The volume reveals that: Bridging constructions consist of two clauses: a reference clause and a bridging clause. Across languages, bridging clauses can be subordinated clauses, reduced main clauses, or main clauses with con...
The Modular Architecture of Grammar
A model of grammar using several independent, simultaneous modules, which allows each module to be simpler than the current theory.
