tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69210747994681775572024-03-13T11:24:49.760-07:00Lost TribesA Forum for the Study of Lesser-Known LanguagesGabe Pompiliushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794988300218075589noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6921074799468177557.post-73459670053777051392011-11-22T15:16:00.000-08:002011-11-22T15:16:29.164-08:00HiatusDespite the seriously long gap in my writing, I intend to continue. Content you will find here may differ somewhat from what I focused on before. There will still be an emphasis on linguistic research as often as possible, but to create some variety, and hopefully to maintain greater frequency in posting, I will be expanding the focus of this project to lesser-known languages (as opposed to "tribal" languages), remote cultures, factoids about these topics, relevant appearances in popular culture, and maybe even some original artwork. Enjoy!Gabe Pompiliushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794988300218075589noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6921074799468177557.post-77555048576424060492010-05-26T20:37:00.000-07:002010-05-26T23:42:27.784-07:00Historical Implications of Click Consonants in HadzaClick languages are renowned for the novel, popping sounds that speakers use as a part of everyday conversation, a reputation due probably to how rare these sounds are within the world's linguistic inventory. An indication of their scarcity lies in the fact that click languages belong to about thirty groups of people in the world, most of which are found in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and a few other neighboring countries. In fact, the only non-African click language ever recorded was a now extinct Australian language called Damin, but even then clicks in this language were only used ceremonially during certain rituals. You can hear the pronunciation of some basic click sounds <a href="http://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/ipa/nonpulmonics.html">here</a>. <br />
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A central theme in the study of click languages, which all have in common this very rare phonetic feature, is their genetic affiliation to each other. In the 1960s, when the influential linguist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Greenberg">Joseph Greenberg</a> began studying the African click languages, he grouped all of them under one language family - the Khoisan family - which he named after the two major tribal groups that spoke these various languages; the two groups consisted of herders called the Khoe and hunter gatherers called the San. Since then, however, analysis has shown that Greenberg's definition of the Khoisan family can actually be broken up further into at least three distinct language families, while some of the languages classified as Khoisan don't appear to fit any known language families. One of these isolates is Hadza, a language spoken in Tanzania by about 800 people. Hadza is typologically unusual because of the fact that it's one of just a few languages outside of southern Africa to use clicks (Sandawe and Dahalo being the others). In fact, Hadza is located 2000km away from any other region where click languages are spoken. A combination of its geographical, lexical, and phonetic status has lead many linguists to believe that Hadza is a language isolate, which would mean that it's unrelated to any other known language in the world.<br />
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In his time, the late, great phonetician <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Ladefoged">Peter Ladefoged</a> set it upon himself to travel around the globe and document the sound systems of the world's most endangered languages. At the heart of his intentions, Ladefoged felt that a careful investigation of a language's phonology could function as an important first step in determining its relationship to other languages. For the more unusual languages out there that are hard to classify, it may be especially relevant to use phonology as a step towards assigning them to a linguistic family. This method seems to point directly at the problem of establishing a relationship among click languages, which comprise both a common phonetic articulation and relatively close geographic proximity. In addition to the research that suggests Hadza is a language isolate, investigations into the language's sound system have revealed a deeper history about its relationship to human language in general.<br />
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One of the first analyses of Hadza phonology was carried out in the 60s by the English social anthropologist <a href="http://www.ntz.info/gen/n00980.html">James Woodburn</a>. In his research, Woodburn recorded five basic click types for Hadza, the places of articulation of which were bilabial, dental, lateral, palato-alveolar (hard), and palato-alveolar (flapped). In addition, the clicks correspond to manner of articulation, which are simple, pausal, aspirated, nasal, and nasal compound.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNtwcXoID-iN68u8a5PZWjuLWhn0TVSbQ_xWGJryHM_CC2c6siruOS1nIqpuj2eDE4XXNU1e6d4P9valhLjXNVm6jeq63zrb5-OAA14fE8kMaDtmadpMtOFK97Td4DAh8exjKAt4KB0B0/s1600/hadzaclicks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="117" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNtwcXoID-iN68u8a5PZWjuLWhn0TVSbQ_xWGJryHM_CC2c6siruOS1nIqpuj2eDE4XXNU1e6d4P9valhLjXNVm6jeq63zrb5-OAA14fE8kMaDtmadpMtOFK97Td4DAh8exjKAt4KB0B0/s400/hadzaclicks.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>On the chart above, the places of articulation run horizontally just like on an <a href="http://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/ipa/consonants.html">IPA table</a>, while the manners of articulation, which run vertically, were devised by Woodburn for the purpose of describing Hadza clicks specifically. In total, Woodburn distinguished between <b>twenty-one</b> click sounds in Hadza. However, a more recent investigation, carried out in the early 90s by Ladefoged, reaches a different conclusion about the click inventory of Hadza. Ladefoged's findings indicate that Hadza has three basic click types, those being dental [<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International
Phonetic Alphabet
(IPA)">ǀ</span>], alveolopalatal central [!], and lateral [<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet
(IPA)">ǁ</span>]. In addition, each of these click types has three separate accompaniments, making for <b>twelve</b> click sounds total. The accompaniments are voiceless oral [k<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the
International Phonetic
Alphabet
(IPA)">ǀ</span>, k!, k<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the
International Phonetic
Alphabet
(IPA)">ǁ</span>], voiced nasal [<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the
International Phonetic
Alphabet
(IPA)">ŋ</span><span class="IPA" title="Representation in the
International Phonetic
Alphabet
(IPA)">ǀ</span>, <span class="IPA" title="Representation in the
International Phonetic
Alphabet
(IPA)">ŋ</span>!, <span class="IPA" title="Representation in the
International Phonetic
Alphabet
(IPA)">ŋ</span><span class="IPA" title="Representation in the
International Phonetic
Alphabet
(IPA)">ǁ</span>], and voiceless nasal with glottalization [<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet
(IPA)">ŋ</span><b>°</b><span class="IPA" title="Representation in the
International Phonetic
Alphabet
(IPA)">ǀ'</span>, <span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet
(IPA)">ŋ</span><b>°</b>!', <span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet
(IPA)">ŋ</span><b>°</b><span class="IPA" title="Representation in the
International Phonetic
Alphabet
(IPA)">ǁ'</span>]. Perhaps this is a bold assumption, but, considering the discrepancy between Woodburn's and Ladefoged's research, I'm willing to bet that the latter is more credible, given Ladefoged's wide renown for phonetic analysis of endangered languages. At least one aspect of Ladefoged's research that helped him succeed in creating accurate phonetic descriptions of the languages he studied is his extensive use of audio recordings that captured the actual pronunciation of native speakers. You can click <a href="http://archive.phonetics.ucla.edu/Language/HTS/hts_word-list_1991_03.mp3">here</a> to listen to a file of Hadza speakers from the UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive. And <a href="http://archive.phonetics.ucla.edu/Language/HTS/hts_word-list_1991_02.html#1">here</a> is a word list for the recording, which covers words 1-16, showing the Hadza words and glosses in English and Swahili. In the recording, you can hear Ladefoged and an assistant speaking words in Swahili to a group of Hadzabe, who each respond with the equivalent Hadza word.<br />
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It turns out that the research on Hadza clicks, which differentiates it from other click languages, may have deeper implications. Based on these differences, we have to assume either that Hadza has an entirely separate origin than the other click languages, or that it and the other click languages derive from a very ancient proto-click language, which would have to be from so long ago that today no similarities between the languages are perceivable. But, at the same time, the linguistic (and geographic) differences between Hadza and the other click languages aren't enough to confirm either hypothesis. So, in order to determine the origin of the Hadza people and their language, genetic analysis has become a very informative technique.<br />
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Originally, researchers believed that the Hadzabe must be genetically similar to other click speakers and that they migrated to Tanzania relatively recently, while keeping their own language intact. However, the more recent genetic analyses of mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosomes in the Hadzabe reveal two things to suggest otherwise. First, the DNA sequences of the Hadzabe are very diverse, which is an indicator of early origins. This is because DNA mutations accumulate over time, so greater sequence diversity implies older existence. Secondly, the analyses conducted reveal that the Hadzabe are not at all closely related to the click-speaking San group, !Kung groups from Namibia and Botswana, nor are they related to non-click-speaking groups from central Africa. So, what this means is that the Hadza people were most likely in Tanzania all along, the implication being that they are the descendants of a very ancient pool of click-speakers that originated separately from the others. There are various suggestions as to the time frame in which the Hadza split off from this group; some postulate that it could have occurred as early as 100,000 years ago, but most place the split somewhere between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago, which also happens to be around the same time of the exodus of modern humans out of Africa, an event that some linguists believe to have been the driving force behind the development of human language itself.<br />
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Ultimately, the historical implications one can gather from the linguistic and genetic evidence surrounding the Hadza people and their language are enormous. If the predictions are accurate, and the Hadzabe - along with their click sounds - truly did originate over 50,000 years ago in what is today Tanzania, then we may very well have pinpointed something concrete about how the very first human language would have sounded. Now, the research that makes this claim is admittedly somewhat speculative, and the correlation between genetics and linguistics may not be cohesive enough to uphold that claim, but when I listen to that recording of the Hadzabe speaking and hear the unusual staccato of their clicks, protruding from a flow of otherwise pulmonic sounds, I can't help but think that I've just caught a glimpse of the language of our oldest ancestors.<br />
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<a href="http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AeoMmk_7lOXMZHpkY2hmal8xNDhuc25ycmY5&hl=en">References </a> <br />
<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet
(IPA)"> </span>Gabe Pompiliushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794988300218075589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6921074799468177557.post-67082970635149746722010-04-29T21:25:00.000-07:002010-05-23T17:52:28.736-07:00New York City - Refuge of World LanguagesI've been to New York City twice and both times the people I encountered made all sorts of impressive claims about the celebrity of the city's character. One of the claims I heard was that on any given day, someone from every country in the world will invariably walk across Times Square. I didn't know whether to actually believe this or not, but it reminded me of how abundant the history of cultural diversity must be in a city like New York, where people from all over the world are drawn to find opportunity and success. The implications of this are vast; I mean, who knows what obscure cultural curiosities you might find in the boundless corners of that city? Of all the possibilities, you can definitely guarantee that a lot of languages are spoken in New York City. This is interesting because, as it turns out, some of the languages found in New York have more speakers there than in the places where they originate. Because of this, linguists are finding more and more enclaves within the city where speakers of some of the world's rarest and most obscure languages reportedly live. In this way, New York is becoming a very useful, and more accessible, territory for linguists looking to document endangered languages.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_geBvQYugIfQKLWAbMw7K3twLjstr_SBqclj6UxgR1dMIc9RAs_MLNTYnIYlDiQFUF7j7qo99opF5J847_TWCCTAhBbZSiejHSKvCGzKeiIm-ZNownXtBoBrFa9gHxiMV2pWqA5aA4Ug/s1600/NYC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_geBvQYugIfQKLWAbMw7K3twLjstr_SBqclj6UxgR1dMIc9RAs_MLNTYnIYlDiQFUF7j7qo99opF5J847_TWCCTAhBbZSiejHSKvCGzKeiIm-ZNownXtBoBrFa9gHxiMV2pWqA5aA4Ug/s320/NYC.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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Check out the article about this in yesterday's New York Times.<br />
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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/nyregion/29lost.html?pagewanted=1">City of Endangered Languages</a>Gabe Pompiliushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794988300218075589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6921074799468177557.post-12888576934567411592010-03-27T15:29:00.000-07:002010-04-07T19:31:52.943-07:00Inalienable Possession in the Jarawa Language<div style="color: black;">Nestled in the Bay of Bengal, between India and Burma, there is a cluster of archipelagic islands known as the Andaman Islands. Consisting of over 200 islands total, this territory is home to the Andamanese people, a collection of indigenous cultures that have been present in this location since pre-neolithic times, ca. 60,000 years ago. Four primary tribal identities are to be distinguished in the Andaman group. There are the Great Andamanese tribes (a highly endangered group once consisting of ten distinct tribes that have more or less coalesced into one), the Jarawa, the Onge, and the Sentinelese.</div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsbXSCS0WbGl0e-PVBx_gBRwcfj_ccc3Oc8-KZsDNF2mqot5UdY0lJUN6BPoq19QCIkIugMsoz6RNst-3ofKnI6PHebmP6k0L9awOfYPoek1QD1jcIrpOgC4e8G0vWo-Hd-XF7VyZJ7BE/s1600/jarawa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsbXSCS0WbGl0e-PVBx_gBRwcfj_ccc3Oc8-KZsDNF2mqot5UdY0lJUN6BPoq19QCIkIugMsoz6RNst-3ofKnI6PHebmP6k0L9awOfYPoek1QD1jcIrpOgC4e8G0vWo-Hd-XF7VyZJ7BE/s320/jarawa.jpg" /></a></div><div style="color: black;"><br />
First contact with most of the tribes has occurred within the last 300 years, but some Andaman groups, such as the Jarawa, have encountered mainlanders only very recently. The first contact with this tribe is believed to have been established in 1997. However, the Sentinelese tribe has yet to be successfully contacted by the Indian government, anthropologists or any other mainlanders. According to the testimonies of those who have tried to make contact, the Sentinelese violently reject contact with outsiders.</div><div style="color: black;"><br />
</div><div style="color: black;">Andamanese linguistics is very important to the revitalization of indigenous languages whose population of native speakers is declining. Based on a demographics survey done twelve years ago, the Jarawa population had been reduced to 300, the Onge to 105, and the Great Andamanese to 40. Since then, at least one of the Great Andamanese tribes has gone completely extinct. This was the Aka-Bo tribe, whose last speaker died earlier this year.</div><div style="color: black;"><br />
</div><div style="color: black;">Part of the urgency associated with preserving Andamanese languages is that relatively little is known about them. For example, there is still uncertainty about the basic historical relationships among these languages, and whether or not they can even be classified under one language family. Traditionally, all of the languages spoken on these islands are classified under the Andamanese language family, which can be divided into the Little Andaman Group and the Great Andaman Group. The former includes Onge, Jarawa, and presumably Sentinelese (though linguists haven't gotten to this one yet), while the Great Andamanese languages belong to the latter. However, a more recent study argues that Onge and Jarawa are typologically distinct from the Great Andamanese languages. Under this theory, it's proposed that Onge and Jarawa actually descend from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Austronesian">Proto-Austronesian</a> and that only the Great Andamanese languages can be classified under the Andamanese family. Ultimately, the decision of how to classify these languages has not yet reached conclusion.</div><div style="color: black;"><br />
</div><div style="color: black;">However, one feature suggesting that all of these languages are in fact related is the way in which each treats a certain type of grammatical possession. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_%28linguistics%29">Possession</a> is a very broad linguistic domain that Chomsky includes in his theory of universal grammar. As such, we expect every human language to have some means of expressing notions of possession. In the same vein, we can also expect a great deal of variability in how possession is expressed across languages.</div><a name='more'></a><div style="color: black;"><br />
</div><div style="color: black;">As a universal property of language, possession can be used for a wide range of ideas. Because of this, linguists sometimes come up with very generalized, abstract-sounding definitions of possession. For example, possession is often described as involving any relationship between two entities. Similarly, Chomsky defines the term as an "intrinsic connection" between entities.</div><div style="color: black;"><br />
</div><div style="color: black;">There are many types of possession. One distinction that's commonly made across languages is that of alienable versus inalienable possession. An understanding of the alienability distinction is based on the notion that some entities in the world are perceived as capable of being separated from their possessors while others are not. Interestingly, there are categories that tend to be treated as inalienable across languages. These are things like body parts, kinship roles, relational spatial concepts (e.g. <i>top </i>and<i> bottom</i>), parts of a whole (e.g. <i>branch</i>), and physical or mental states (e.g. <i>strength </i>and<i> fear</i>). However, it's worth stressing that while these categories <i>tend</i> to be treated inalienably across languages, conceptions of inalienability are really much too variable in different cultural contexts for there to exist a universal model that simplifies the notion of possession so succinctly. In this way, possession may be thought of as culture-specific.</div><div style="color: black;"><br />
</div><div style="color: black;">In addition to the categorical distinction between alienable and inalienable entities, languages also differ with respect to how they mark possession structurally. An obvious way of marking possession is to encode it directly onto the noun morphology. With reference to a familiar case, English uses something called a possessive clitic (<i>'s</i> - as in <i>John's</i> <i>book</i>) to indicate possession. Additionally, English makes use of the preposition <i>of</i> to indicate possession. However, English, like most other languages from mainland Eurasia, does not mark inalienable or alienable possession formally. For those languages that do mark the distinction, altering morphology at the noun phrase level is a common method. Furthermore, when morphology is used in this way, it's almost invariably the case that a language will leave inalienable nouns unmarked but alter the morphology of alienable nouns. However, this is not how Andamanese works.</div><div style="color: black;"><br />
</div><div style="color: black;">In direct opposition to this tendency, the Andamanese languages mark the inalienable category morphologically but leave the inalienable category unmarked. In the Jarawa language, inalienable nouns are attached to a pronominal prefix that shapes, or specifies, its meaning. One prefix in particular functions by overtly indicating that the noun is inherently possessed by a human being. If the word is dissociated from the prefix, it breaks free from this relationship and takes on a different meaning. Most research claims the same phenomenon occurs in Onge and the Great Andamanese languages, though it's not as clearly documented as it is in Jarawa. For this reason, I will center my attention on possession in Jarawa.</div><div style="color: black;"><br />
</div><div style="color: black;">Kinship terms and words for body-parts in Jarawa always take the personal prefix /<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ɤ</span>n<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ɨ-</span>/, indicating that they are inalienably possessed by a human. If attached to a noun beginning with a vowel, the terminal vowel of the prefix is dropped. Furthermore, inalienable nouns may take the genitive case, which requires an additional prefix. The following is a list of Jarawa kinship terms with their English gloss, which illustrate this phenomenon:</div><ul style="color: black;"><li>/<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ɤ</span>n<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ɨ-</span>kaya/ <i>'mother'</i></li>
<li>/<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">mi-ɤ</span>n<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ɨ-kaya</span>/ <i>'my mother'</i></li>
<li>/<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ɤ</span>n<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ɨ</span>-mum/ <i>'father'</i></li>
<li>/<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">mi-ɤ</span>n<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ɨ</span>-mum<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ə</span></span>/ <i>'my father'</i></li>
<li>/<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ɤ</span>n<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ɨ-k</span><span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ɨ</span><span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ʈ</span>a/ <i>'brother'</i></li>
<li>/mi-<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ɤ</span>n<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ɨ-k</span><span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ɨ</span><span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ʈ</span>a/ <i>'my brother'</i></li>
</ul><div style="color: black;">In some instances, nouns of this type actually occur without the prefix, in which case they take on a meaning different from their inalienably possessed counterparts. Here are some examples of words for body-parts in Jarawa that illustrate this occurrence:</div><ul style="color: black;"><li>/odu/ <i>'head of an animal'</i> </li>
<li> /<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ɤ</span>n<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">-odu/ <i>'human head'</i></span></li>
<li><span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">/iyanbo/ <i>'(elephant's) trunk'</i> </span></li>
<li><span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)"> /<span class="IPA" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ɤ</span>n-iyanbo/ <i>'man's nose'</i></span> </li>
</ul><div style="color: black;">What's interesting about these particular examples is that each root word denotes the body part of an animal. But when either root is joined to the personal prefix, its meaning changes and becomes essentially the equivalent body part of a human being. Something else intriguing about these examples is that they appear to contradict the very notion of inalienably possessed nouns since they can occur independently of a possessive prefix. This is puzzling at first, but my guess is that the root functions on its own with a fixed meaning, but at the same time its meaning can (and must) be manipulated with the addition of a personal prefix when the speaker wishes to convey something that's considered to be intrinsically connected to a human being. Of course, the speaker's understanding of whether or not a noun has this intrinsic connection is part of the internal knowledge specific to Jarawa culture.</div><div style="color: black;"><br />
</div><div style="color: black;">In sum, the concept of linguistic possession in Jarawa represents a unique way of viewing relationships within the natural world. Thus, we begin to see ways in which this language operates that are fundamentally different from our own cultural and linguistic perceptions. Considering that the Andamanese tribes have survived on the islands for 60,000 years, enduring isolation from the outside world until somewhat recently, there's reason to assume that their language has changed very little, or at least at a slower rate than others, since that time. If this is the case, then the language may be a gateway to understanding the human capacity for language at a much earlier stage. For this reason, it is important that Jarawa and the other languages spoken on the Andaman Islands be thoroughly researched and documented before they are lost forever. </div><br />
<a href="http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dzdchfj_9cf38d8g9">References</a>Gabe Pompiliushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794988300218075589noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6921074799468177557.post-28864256683569039982010-03-03T21:18:00.000-08:002010-03-14T20:20:06.201-07:00Deixis in the Demonstrative System of Montana Salish<span style="font-size: small;">This entry is based on the term paper I wrote for a linguistics seminar about the Montana Salish language. The Salishan family consists of 23 Amerindian languages spoken throughout the Pacific Northwest, encompassing coastal British Columbia and Washington State, including parts of Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands, the San Juan Islands, and extending as far inland as Idaho and Montana. Salishan languages may be grouped into two primary categories - Coastal and Interior languages. In turn, Interior Salish is grouped into Northern and Southern languages, the latter of which includes Montana Salish. Strictly speaking, Montana Salish is classified as one of three dialects comprising an un-named language, the other two of which are Spokane and Kalispel. Like all Salishan languages, Montana Salish is endangered, with only about 100 native speakers remaining.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">My interest in deixis as it pertains to Montana Salish stems from the absolute lack of published literature on this topic. As such, an understanding of deixis as a pragmatic feature of Montana Salish remains opaque to the scientific community. In general, deixis is itself somewhat obscure in the field of linguistics and, more specifically, the study of pragmatics. In light of this, I suspect at least some of you would benefit from a brief overview of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deixis" target="_blank">deixis.</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">If you read the article on deixis, you now know that it has its etymological origins in the Greek word for "reference," or something that you point at. Similarly, its application in linguistics is used to describe a common phenomenon in language to denote a referent while simultaneously specifying its distance from a certain point of view. A traditional understanding of deixis accounts for variation in distance within local, temporal and personal dimensions. That is, deictic words emphasize distance that is measurable in space and time, or by distinguishing between individuals specifically.</span></div><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">So far my research on deixis in Montana Salish is limited to the demonstratives of the language. As a lexical class, demonstratives are appropriate for a study of deixis because they denote a specific entity, and in doing so distinguish that entity from others of the same class. In English, demonstratives are relatively simple, consisting of merely four pronouns: <i>this</i>, <i>that</i>, <i>these</i>, and <i>those</i>. However, the demonstrative system of Montana Salish, and in fact all Amerindian languages, is substantially different and more complex than what's familiar to most English speakers. Ultimately, understanding the complexity of such a feature in Montana Salish is where we begin to see some of the profound differences in ways of being, in conceptions of the world as they vary across languages and cultures.</span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: small;">Early in the 20th century the influential anthropologist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Boas#Linguistics" target="_blank">Franz Boas</a> and his colleagues published several descriptive studies of Native American languages. Among his many findings, Boas discovered that the demonstrative pronominal systems of Native American languages were complex, utilizing various forms to express nuanced differences in meaning. One example he cites is from Kwak'wala (a language spoken in the north of Vancouver Island), whose demonstrative pronominal system recognizes three degrees of distance. For instance, Kwak'wala would distinguish between <i>the house near me</i> (this house), <i>the house near you</i> (that house), and <i>the house near him</i> (that house that is further away), presumably using a different demonstrative pronoun to capture the meaning of each</span><span style="font-size: small;">. Going further still, Boas notes how many Native American languages include even more points of view in their demonstrative systems. In particular, many languages use different forms to distinguish between entities that are visible and invisible to the speaker. As my own research has shown, a similar situation appears to be true of demonstratives in Montana Salish.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Ultimately, what I hoped to accomplish with this project was to formulate a paradigm that characterizes the deictic properties of the Salish demonstratives. In order to do this, my co-author and I referred to textual data in the form of historical narratives. All of the Salish texts were transcribed and analyzed by Professor Sarah Thomason at the University of Michigan. Our task, then, was to record every use of a demonstrative in the texts and describe its deictic properties. In doing so, we came up with the following paradigm:</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinwzyaNaFyVQ9EFfVVsW3Gyg2eCtzPnI4t4MeL9S-GubvW3DeubYm429ot8_YCNhgKjMzGHBprs-lSGHK5VKT18R3EqbTd74eVMPuZ6MTul5sBDK4MhtPZjxPLWHGjfqlaee5XgxMkJxE/s1600-h/SalishDemonstratives.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="175" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinwzyaNaFyVQ9EFfVVsW3Gyg2eCtzPnI4t4MeL9S-GubvW3DeubYm429ot8_YCNhgKjMzGHBprs-lSGHK5VKT18R3EqbTd74eVMPuZ6MTul5sBDK4MhtPZjxPLWHGjfqlaee5XgxMkJxE/s400/SalishDemonstratives.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
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Salish demonstratives may be used alone or with a preceding particle, with reference either to visible or invisible entities. In turn, the entities in both visible and invisible realms fall under three grades of distance - proximal, medial, and distal. If the phoneme characters in the paradigm are unfamiliar, you can refer to this article on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montana_Salish#Phonology" target="_blank">Montana Salish phonology</a>.<br />
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The different categories may seem obscure at this point, but this is how Salish organizes the world linguistically. Visible entities are simply referents in the speaker's physical field of vision. Invisible entities, then, are those which are not in this field, whether the referent itself is theoretically visible (but too distant to see) or abstract, such as an idea or memory. Within each realm, a demonstrative may be used alone or combinatorially to denote a proximal, medial or distal referent. In this order, proximal, medial and distal are determined to be regions close to, somewhat further away from, and furthest from the speaker. Determining distance in this way may seem very subjective, and thus variable, but it's a form of expression that's associated with the culture and therefore fixed in the language.<br />
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There are a few things worth noting about the matrix above. First, considering all of the "deictic dimensions," the demonstratives in this paradigm are only relevant to the local dimension. This is because demonstratives in Montana Salish can't refer to the personal dimension, and they are only rarely used to express temporal distance. Also, with respect to demonstratives used either alone or with a preceding particle, both appear to have essentially the same function in a given instance. That is, there are no clear differences in meaning when using a single demonstrative versus one with a preceding particle for a visible, proximal referent. However, there are some things that can be said about the variants.<br />
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In this vein, both /yé/ and <span style="font-size: xx-small;">LOC <span style="font-size: small;">+ /</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;" title="Representation in the
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ʔ</span>é<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">/ seem to occur interchangeably for visible, proximal referents. <span style="font-size: xx-small;">LOC <span style="font-size: small;">represents a locative particle, which is used to indicate a particular physical location. </span></span>However, what's interesting is that /y</span></span>é<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">/ and </span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">LOC <span style="font-size: small;">+ /</span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ʔ</span>é<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">/ may be used together in a sentence, possibly to emphasize the location of the referent more strongly. </span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span> <br />
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The demonstrative /cí(<span title="Representation in the
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)"><span style="font-size: x-small;">ʔ</span>)/ stands out because it occurs in contexts that read as either medial or distal. Its meaning as such is therefore anchored to the particular situation, from which medial or distal can be inferred. Interestingly, the variants of each include the oblique marker /t/, which appears to de-emphasize distance with respect to the speaker. Note that /</span>šé/ is otherwise used for invisible referents, and /<span style="font-size: x-small;" title="Representation in the
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">ʔ</span>é/ occurs with other preceding particles in the invisible realm as well. Therefore, /t/ is thought to de-emphasize the distance of a referent by making it visible.<span title="Representation
in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)"> </span> <br />
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Perhaps what stands out most about the paradigm is that the categories for invisible, proximal are marked null. This is because we didn't find any examples of demonstratives used for this category in the textual data. However, there are most likely demonstratives in the language that can be used this way. A possible explanation for the complete lack of data for a referent that is both invisible and very close to the speaker is that it's simply a difficult category to satisfy. That is, we can expect that situations arise somewhat infrequently in which a speaker must refer to an entity that is invisible yet close by. If this is the case, then we simply didn't come across any texts that provided this context.<br />
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For referents that are invisible and medial, /šé/ may occur either alone or with the preceding particle /i/, which is thought to act as a specifier. When <i>i šé</i> is used, the details of the referent's location become more specific, as if to say, <i>"this one right here!"</i> Appropriately, there are attestations of a nearly identical usage of an <i>i-</i> specifier in the closely related dialect, Kalispel.<br />
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Finally, referents that are invisible and distal are expressed by one of three forms; either /šéy'/, /l šéy'/ or /<span title="Representation in the
International Phonetic Alphabet
(IPA)">ɬu i </span><span style="font-size: x-small;" title="Representation in the
International Phonetic
Alphabet (IPA)">ʔ</span>é/. However, we were unable to reveal any functional or stylistic differences between these.<br />
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Ultimately, this information is supposed to represent a sketch outlining how demonstratives in Montana Salish function deictically, a feature of the language that has been largely under-researched. Certainly, it would require a greater command over the language and additional research to analyze the deictic properties of Salish more definitively, but this is a start. And from it, we now know about a feature of Salish that is markedly different from our own language. If nothing else, I hope this information offers some insight into the unique world of this remote culture.<br />
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<a href="http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B-oMmk_7lOXMMDVmZWY2MDItNzY3Mi00NDEwLWI3YTYtNzNhZjk5MTFjNGE0&hl=en">References</a>Gabe Pompiliushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794988300218075589noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6921074799468177557.post-16971720905629360212010-02-01T23:23:00.000-08:002010-02-02T08:29:36.624-08:00Wade Davis on Endangered CulturesThis debut post is a lecture given in 2003 by anthropologist Wade Davis, whose work focuses on indigenous cultures around the world. In his own terms, Davis describes the collective cultural network of the world as an "ethnosphere," which, as he goes on to say, is being eroded at an alarming rate. And he specifically notes that a great indicator of this decline is language death. For me, the sentiment conveyed here is directly parallel to my intentions for this blog. At the end of his lecture, Davis maintains that storytelling will be our best effort for the revival of endangered cultures. In this vein, I'd like to think of my blog entries as a storybook of human culture as it is captured by language.<br /><br /><!--copy and paste--><object width="446" height="326"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"></param> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/WadeDavis_2003-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/WadeDavis-2003.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=69&introDuration=16500&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=2000&adKeys=talk=wade_davis_on_endangered_cultures;year=2003;theme=to_boldly_go;theme=media_that_matters;theme=words_about_words;theme=inspired_by_nature;theme=master_storytellers;theme=bold_predictions_stern_warnings;event=TED2003;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;" /><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgColor="#ffffff" width="446" height="326" allowFullScreen="true" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/WadeDavis_2003-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/WadeDavis-2003.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=69&introDuration=16500&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=2000&adKeys=talk=wade_davis_on_endangered_cultures;year=2003;theme=to_boldly_go;theme=media_that_matters;theme=words_about_words;theme=inspired_by_nature;theme=master_storytellers;theme=bold_predictions_stern_warnings;event=TED2003;"></embed></object>Gabe Pompiliushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794988300218075589noreply@blogger.com5