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Urarina is an endangered isolate spoken by less than 3,000 people in the rainforests of North-western Peru. This book aims at providing a comprehensive description of Urarina grammar covering all areas of the language. From a linguistic point of view, Urarina is particularly interesting because of a range of unusual grammatical characteristics that are rarely or not at all found in other languages. One remarkable property is the constituent order OVA/VS, which was classified as "non-existing" by Greenberg (1966). However, this atypical syntactic structure is a surprisingly consistent feature of Urarina, which discerns it from the majority of languages which are assumed to follow this syntact...
The goal of this handbook is to provide a comprehensive resource on the Amazonian languages that synthesizes a diverse body of work by a highly international group of linguists. It will provide a review of the current state of the art, thus laying the groundwork for future scholarship in this important area. Volume 2 will focus on theory-neutral grammatical descriptions of smaller Amazonian language families.
Indigenous people are pushing back against more than 200 years of colonisation and rejecting being seen by the academy as ‘subjects’ of research. A quiet revolution is taking place among many Indigenous communities across Australia, a revolution insisting that we have control over our languages and our cultural knowledge – for our languages to be a part of our future, not our past. We are reclaiming our right to determine how linguistic research takes place in our communities and how we want to engage with the academy in the future. This book is an essential guide for non-Indigenous linguists wanting to engage more deeply with Indigenous communities and form genuinely collaborative research partnerships. It fleshes out and redefines ethical linguistic research and work with Indigenous people and communities, with application beyond linguistics. By reassessing, from an Indigenous point of view, what it means to ‘save’ an endangered language, Something’s Gotta Change shows how linguistic research can play a positive role in keeping (maintaining) or putting (reclaiming) endangered languages on our tongues.
In some languages words tend to be rather short but in others they may be dauntingly long. In this book, a distinguished international group of scholars discuss the concept 'word' and its applicability in a range of typologically diverse languages. An introductory chapter sets the parameters of variation for 'word'. The nine chapters that follow then study the character of 'word' in individual languages, including Amazonian, Australian Aboriginal, Eskimo, Native North American, West African, Balkan and Caucasian languages, and Indo-Pakistani Sign Language. These languages exhibit a huge range of phonological and grammatical characteristics, the close study of which enables the contributors to refine our understanding of what can constitute a 'word'. An epilogue explores the status and cross-linguistic properties of 'word'. The book will be an invaluable resource for scholars of linguistic typology and of morphology and phonology.
The Indigenous languages of Australia have been undergoing a renaissance over recent decades. Many languages that had long ceased to be heard in public and consequently deemed 'dead' or 'extinct', have begun to emerge. Geographically and linguistically isolated, revitalisers of Indigenous Australian languages have often struggled to find guidance for their circumstances, unaware of the others walking a similar path. In this context Re-awakening Languages seeks to provide the first comprehensive snapshot of the actions and aspirations of Indigenous people and their supporters for the revitalisation of Australian languages in the 21st century. The contributions to this volume describe the satisfactions and tensions of this ongoing struggle. They also draw attention to the need for effective planning and strong advocacy at the highest political and administrative levels, if language revitalisation in Australia is to be successful and people's efforts are to have longevity.
Colonial anthropology and historical reconstruction -- Drum chant and the political uses of tradition -- Tindanas and chiefs : ethnography -- Chiefs and tindanas : making 'nam' -- Tamale : the Dakpema, the Gulkpe'Na, the Bugulana, and the law of the land -- Chiefs in the national arena.
Crossing Mountains provides important insights about integrating Native-language learning into public education. Using case studies of school districts on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana, Phyllis Ngai argues that carefully designed and inclusive Native-language programs can benefit communities and students regardless of ethnic identity.
This handbook provides the first broadly comprehensive, typologically-informed descriptive overview of the languages of Greater Amazonia. Organized by genealogical units, the chapters provide empirically rich descriptions of the phonology and grammar of all Amazonian families and isolates for which data and descriptions exist. Volume 1 focuses on the many isolates of the region – those languages for which no extant sisters can be identified.
This book presents 18 peer-reviewed and revised papers from the 31st Annual Conference on African Linguistics, 2000. The lead essay urges African linguistics to move in step with the practical development of the African languages as part of the decolonisation struggle. The core areas of theoretical linguistics represented in the book are morpho-syntax, phonetics-phonology and semantics-pragmatics.