It’s been a while since there’s been any update on this website, mainly because the description of Muylaq’ Aymara is rapidly coming to a close and I’m spending most of my time measuring vowel formants.
That being said, one can measure only so many formants before going crazy. That’s where the Internet comes in as a necessary evil… below are some highlights which may interest readers of this website:
Rex, a writer at SavageMinds gives a positive review to Breaking the Maya Code, a documentary on the decipherment of those impressive glyphs we all know (and which are, incidentally, on display at the Volkmuseum in Leiden). The PBS series NOVA also has an episode on this topic. Having completed my undergraduate in philosophy, reading about the Mayan glyphs was on the handful of things that eased me into linguistics. I’ll definitely check out this movie.
Radio Praha (Czech Republic) recently had a show on the botanist and ethnographist Alberto Vojtech Fric entitled “Alberto Vojtech Frica: A Czech adventurer and ethnologist who brought a South American Indian to Prague” and can be accessed here on Etnolingüística.org.
You may have noticed that the Discover science blog had an article by Razib Khan that as “language diversity correlates with poverty”,supporting endangered languages is, in fact detrimental. This argument is wrong and plain stupid for so many reasons, all of which are articulately detailed in Greg Downey’s rebuttal on Neuroanthropology.net.
Most people interested in Andean languages know of the parallels between Aymara and Quechua grammar. However, rarely do we think about those same parallels in Chipaya. This is probably due, in large part, to the lack of any complete grammar or dictionary on any Uru-Chipayan language — to the best of my knowledge, our understanding of this family of began with fieldwork performed by Métraux (an interesting fellow who wrote L’organisation sociale et les survivances religieux des indiens uru-čipaya de Carangas in 1934); continued to that done by Olson (1964-67) and Porterie-Gutierrez (1990); and, most recently in 2006,Cerrón-Palomino and Muysken began some research into Uchumataqu (see a sketch of Uchumataqu verbs done by Muysken and Hannss here). Of course in the middle there are plenty of ethnographic notes, wordlists, and the like.
Even so, there are some fascinating parrallels between these Andean languages, perhaps this is most striking is the nominalization strategies in Aymara, Chipaya and Quechua. It may be interesting to show this with a comparison between Aymara and Chipaya.
For illustrative purposes, consider the following nominalization in Chipaya (taken from Peña, ex2):
Luwisitu-ki t’anta lul-ñi-ĉa
Luisito-TOP bread eat-PR.HAB-DEC
‘Luisito usually eats bread’
In the Aymara spoken in the Peruvian highlands, I suppose this same sentence would be:
Luwisitu-x t’ant’ manq’a-jwa-s.k-iri-wa
Lusitu-TOP bread-AC eat-SFT-PR-3HB-AF
‘Luisito usually eats bread’
Apart from the accusative marking on the direct object (perhaps left out of the Chipaya example as this declination is zero marked in this language) and casting aside the fact that the nominalized habitual in Aymara does not also mark the progressive aspect (necessitating the -s(i).k(a) morphology), the structures are virtually identical.
Again, we find parallel examples, though I have my doubts about the naturalness of the Aymara — I suppose it’d be more natural to say Luwisitux t’ant’ muniwa ‘Luisito wants bread’ (the fact that he wants that bread for eating is contextual; what else would he do with it? Anyway, the point remains).
Of course the similarities don’t stop here, and I don’t mean to indicate that these specific examples are chosen to demonstrate a particular kind of linguistic commonality — indeed, a precursory glance seems to indicate a large amount of borrowing and a very strong Aymara grammatical and lexical influence (e.g. just in these examples one can see the Chipaya root lul- ‘to eat’; cf. lulu ’stew’ in Moqueguan Aymara) on various aspects of Chipaya grammar, just as is evident in certain varieties of Quechua.
Congratulations to Daniel Montesinos (a botany student at U. Wageningen), Mr Alvarez, and of course, Edwin Banegas Flores (the Chief Linguistic Consultant on the Aymara documentation project) in their big news — the rare Aristeguietia ballii (of the Asteraceae family) has now been officially registered in Ubinas (Moquegua) at 3500m thanks to their fieldwork.
Tomorrow Edwin Banegas Flores (Chief Linguistic Consultant, Aymara documentation project), here for his final week in Europe, will be speaking at the eighth AIN conference (Americanists In the Netherlands). Edwin will talk about the nature of his work at the LPP lab in Paris and will touch on the phonetics and phonology of his variety of Aymara.
In other news, progress on the Aymara book, tentatively titled, Muylaq’ Aymara Kuwintunaka continues and we are nearly finished. Some minor issues remain — translating Aymara to Spanish is no easy task: not just because of the complex evidentiality and the aspectual subtleties, but because of the way in which a language encodes its own distinct cosmovision. The common ground that speakers from one cultural region share is something we take for granted when translating — that common ground is significantly less in this region — Edwin and I both struggle to produce a translation which is at once faithful and clear.
Yesterday Edwin Banegas Flores, a native speaker of Moqueguan Aymara (and one of the primary consultants in this documentation project), arrived in Paris from Lima (after a brief afternoon in Amsterdam).
The phonetic testing began with an ePGG analysis using technology developed by Honda, Maeda, & Kitamura. Basically, the ePGG sensor they created detects glottal transillumination generated by a high-power LED placed on the outside of Edwin’s neck resulting in a defuse illumination of the hypopharynx and thus glottal transillumination. Aspiration during production was simultaneously measured. This was the first time this sort of equipment was used on an Amerind language (previously used on European languages and Korean).
As for now, we await the arrival of the data gathered in Praat format so it can be analyzed on a laptop.
–
Ayer Edwin Banegas un hablante nativo del Aymara Moqueguano (y uno de los principales consultantes en la documentación de este proyecto), llega a Paris desde Lima (después de una tarde de breve permanencia en Ámsterdam).
La prueba fonética comenzó con un análisis ePPG, usando la tecnología desarrollada por Honda, Maeda y Kitamura. Básicamente, el sensor ePPG, creado por ellos, detecta la transiluminación glotal generada por un LED de alta potencia colocada en la parte externa del cuello de Edwin que produce una desactivación de la iluminación en la hipofaringe y por lo tanto la transiluminación glotal.
Durante la producción, la aspiración fue simultáneamente medida. Esta era la primera vez que este tipo de equipo era utilizado en lenguaje amerindio (previamente se uso en lenguas europeas y el coreano).
Aquí hay algunas fotos de Kiyoshi Honda, Shinji Maeda, y Antonia Colazo - Simon con Edwin Banegas, durante el experimento.
Por ahora, estamos a la espera de la llegada de los datos recogidos en el formato Praat de tal manera que pueden ser analizados en una computadora portátil.
Research into the phonology of Aymara continues productively thanks to the guidance of Antonia Colazo Simon at the phonetics lab at Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris 3. Stage 1 is well underway — so we are hard at work going through hundreds of elicited words and annotating them on a text grid in Praat. Results are really shedding light not only on the glottal and aspirated phonemes, but also bring to focus some other more mysterious aspects of Aymara phonetics. The image below is pretty indicative of how the post-velar glottal [q'] looks sandwiched between two vowels in the word laq’a ‘earth’.
Once Edwin Banegas Flores, the native speaker, arrives here from Peru we will have a chance to delve still deeper into the phonetics of the language with some of the really unique tools available at the lab.
Here are some photos sent to me by my good friend Fredy Quinonez-Nina, a very talented musician who I met in Ichuña in late 2009. Fredy and some of his friends have a band called Waynas (’The young guys’) and they produces very nice songs in Aymara, some of which I’ve been able to record. These pictures, however, documented his activities with another group, the Estudiantina Juvenil Yunguyo who played over Carnival in Yungyo.
Actually, the Andean Outreach Program is considering the possibility of helping Fredy produce a CD of Aymara music. It goes without saying that the vitality of a language is directly proportional to the amount of media it can produce, so I’m hopeful to be able to underwrite this project, perhaps including the music text in Aymara with a Spanish and English translation to bring Fredy’s elegant and poetic songs to a wider audience.
I’ve been meanig to post an update on the Muylaq’ Aymara documentation project for some time now, but things have been so busy that it’s only now that I’m getting to it. Here’s a summary of some of the latest developments:
Thanks to the help of Edwin Banegas and his family, the book of Aymara stories is nearing completion. All the Aymara texts are edited and translated into English and Spanish. With the kind help of Susana Montesinos the next step is to edit the Spanish and then, finally, publication.
I have been in touch with CEDLA (Center for Latin American Research and Documentation in Amsterdam) about displaying some of the photos from the fieldwork at the UvA and so have been preparing that, soon some of these pictures will be on display.
Later this month I will be going to Paris to work with Antonia Colazo Simon, an expert in glottalization in Maya, to document phonetic properties of Aymara. If things go as planned, the chief linguistic consultant, Edwin Banegas, will join us there. This will represent the first time that Aymara will be subject to such an analysis.
The description itself nears completion. Verbal morphology, the most complex aspect of the language, is undergoing a final edit.
Leo Wetzel’s AmazonianLinguistics website has recently posted news of Amazonicas III scheduled for 19-24 April in Bogotá. The main topics include the phonetics/phonology of laryngeal features, the expression of spatial notions, valency increasing devices in Arawakan languages, and lexical categorization. More information can be found on the site.
