MPI (with DOBES funding) has a call for papers from Master’s students for a workshop from 30 May to 4 June 2010:
The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics will award five student bursaries for participation in the workshop Hunter-gatherers and semantic categories and we hereby invite talented young Master’s students to submit applications. Preference will be given to Master’s students in linguistics or anthropology enrolled at a German university …
The workshop addresses the following questions: In what way does a way of life influence categorisation strategies in language and cognition? Are natural ecology and subsistence economy of speech communities significant determinants of categorisation? Is there a shared ‘hunter-gatherer mode of categorisation’, common to all hunter-gatherer communities? Do hunter-gatherer practices of categorisation differ from that of other groups? Finally, is ‘hunter-gatherer’ a grouping which is relevant to linguistic and cognitive science? We shall also investigate how theoretical questions like these can enhance and develop the documentation of endangered languages and cultures further.
Read more about it and find relevant links here. (Thanks, Aline)
The writers, Virginia Beavert and Sharon Hargus have authored the dictionary, which comes with over 9000 sound files. According to the University of Washington Press:
Sahaptin, or Ichishkíin Sínwit (literally, “this language”), is a Plateau Penutian language spoken in south-central Washington and northern Oregon. This dictionary documents the dialect of Sahaptin that is spoken by the Yakama people. Ichishkíin Sínwit Yakama / Yakima Sahaptin Dictionary is the first modern published dictionary of any Sahaptin dialect.
Part of the dictionary can be seen online (the perfect place for any dictionary).
Foreign Policy magazine has an article online about modern Tibet. It deals with a variety of political and religious implications of a modern China, but one of the more interesting facets of the article has to do with the effect of tourism on native populations. Such realities are, of course, not just limited to Tibet, though I suppose they tend to be stronger in areas romanticized in the literature e.g. Hilton’s Shangri-La, but also the pyramids of Giza, and, of course Machu Picchu. In all these locations, external market-driven forces encourage peoples to create a Simulacrum from a patchwork of outsider stereotypes and simplified (and often false) historical accounts for outsiders in search of Authenticity.
The exotic romanticisation of the Inca Empire both by part of the visitors but also the locals and even the Quechua themselves permeates Peruvian culture. While the wealth of stylized murals of Incan nobility, indigenous-themed logos, and 3D prints of Machu Picchu may be argued to reflect cultural pride, in a certain sense they also bespeak of the drive of all former colonies to create their own identity through collective mythology.
David Eberhard has published his Mamaindê grammar with the LOT dissertation series (236). The abstract can be seen on the LinguistList. An excerpt can be found here.
Incidentally, the TLS has a review of a new collection, published in Gallimard’s Bilbiothèque de la Pléiade, of Lévi-Strauss’s collected works. Wilcken writes:
The Pléiade edition benefits from previously unpublished material from Lévi-Strauss’s recently opened archive at the Bibliothèque nationale, which gives a tantalizing glimpse backstage into his classic work. Tristes Tropiques was written in record time – almost 500 pages in the space of four months – and the original manuscript shows how this extraordinary feat was accomplished. Written on a small German typewriter that Lévi-Strauss had picked up in a bric-a-brac shop in São Paulo, the manuscript was one continuous ream of words, with no breaks for chapters. As if working up a collage, Lévi-Strauss literally cut and pasted sections from old papers and notes onto the page; whole chunks of his “petite thèse”, La Vie familiale et sociale des Indiens Nambikwara, were included verbatim, pasted onto blank pages, modified only by replacing the academic “nous” with the more intimate “je”.
Even if you’re not interested in this book, the review itself makes for interesting reading.
The journal Child’s Nervous System has what appears to be an interesting article by Schijman on this interesting cultural phenomenon in pre-Columbine Andean culture. The article includes a picture to illustrate the “artificial deformation” of an Aymara skull from Humahuaca (Jujuy, Argentina). Schijman mentions the Aymara in his text only twice. He writes:
In certain pre-Columbine cultures like the Caribe Indians in Colombia, the Aymaras in Bolivia, and the Patagones in Argentina, cranial deformation was performed only on men and it was an important factor for becoming a member of the “warrior class”
He continues:
Some ancient writings linked the purpose of this practice to the intention by certain populations to dominate other people. According to Santa Cruz Pachacuti, the Inca leaders Manco Capac and L’oke Yupanki ordered the heads of the newborn Aymara Indians to be tightly squeezed to make them foolish, unintelligent, and obedient
It makes for an interesting read, though something about the wording in his conclusion strikes me as a little distasteful:
This cultural custom, a sign of the human behavior of the past, should not be analyzed through the eyes of the present, but from the perspective of the magical beliefs of the primitive peoples who carried it out. Tattooing and body-piercing are forms of body alteration from prehistoric times that are enjoying a rise in popularity today.
Of course I could be misreading this paragraph, but it looks as if Schijman classifies practitioners of this custom as victims of the influence of “the magical beliefs of primitive peoples”. Issues of the academic legitimacy of words like “primitive peoples” and “prehistoric” aside, it seems a fallacy to equate body-piercing and tattooing with what Vaughan refers to as “decorative skull reshaping” in terms of their mutual “prehistoric” origins (whatever the author means by that). It seems it would be more socially appropriate to classify this on the continuum of those things humans do to each other for religious and sociocultural reasons, e.g. the widespread and current practice of female genital mutilation. Though given that the author concludes that “there is no scientific evidence of any neurological disability caused by the external pressure placed on the skull” in comparison to the damage done by female genital mutilation, skull reshaping seems far less primitive.
Below is a slideshow of some artefacts shown to me by denizens of some small villages in the Moqueguan altiplano. I have a handful more, but these are the ones which Charles Stanish, an expert in Andean archaeology, has kindly identified (see captions).
The ominpresence of history in these remote locations is something fascinating and unique. These items were not found on some university-sponsored archaeological dig, but rather in the gardens and fields of locals, who, while planting corn or digging foundations for new houses, often come across pottery and other items from the colonial and Inca period. Given the unique climatic realities, these artefacts are often preserved in excellent condition. The fact is, such findings are so common, that unless they have some special characteristic, ancient vessels are often discarded. Some even believe that they can carry bad luck and should be destroyed.
As I continue to go through and catalog these items, I will continue to post them in this Picasa slideshow.
An overview of the artefacts in the slideshow below follows:
Object 1: Spindle whorl, date uncertain.
Object 2: Colonial period spoon or tupu
Vessel 1: Inca period bottle
Vessel 2: Unclear, but looks very late, likely an Inca design made in the Colonial period
Vessel 3: Late intermediate Period or Inca “bootpot” - probably a maize or quinoa toaster.
The Americanists in the Netherlands event, AiN6, is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon at the Radboud Universiteit in Nijmegen (details on their website).
I will be presenting a talk entitled ”Expressing degrees of certainty: A sketch of the Aymara evidential system”. The abstract is below. If you’re in the area, why not stop by.
The Aymara evidential system encodes four evidentials: two are inherent in the distinction between the distal/proximal past (Hardman’s remote-indirect-knowledge vs near-remote),and the other two resemble in many ways enclitics: the inferential past -pacha and the conjectural (or dubitive) -chi. In some contexts, it may make sense to add the root sa- ‘to say’ to this tally of evidentials as it conveys second/third-hand knowledge.
This talk gives a precursory overview of the behavior of these suffixes, takes stock of some non-elicited examples gathered in an undocumented variety, Muylaq’ Aymara, and mentions a handful of ambiguous cases.
He writes that when the first Europeans arrived, there were some 280 languages or so in the US which could be divided into 51 families (incl. isolates). Currently some 150 survive and they are all endangered.
As for a pan-American perspective:
In North America (US & Canada), of 312 known languages, 123 are extinct (40%). Of the 58 families (+isolates), 29 are extinct (50%); and of the 26 isolates, 20 are extinct (77%). Many others will soon follow.
In South America, there were initially 112 families and isolates, a number currently reduced to 53 families and 59 isolates. 420 of the initial 1,491 language (according to Loukotka 1968) are still spoken — representing an extinction of 72% of these languages.
Campbell continues this summary by offering a global perspective:
“America’s 180 language families (+isolates) [58 North America, 10 Central America, 112 South America] represent 51% of the linguistic diversity of the world”. The worldwide total number of language isolates is 127; 65% (i.e. 83) of which are spoken in the Americas.
He goes on:
America’s proportion of the world’s linguistic diversity: 51% (180 of the world’s total of c.350 families (+isolates))
More broadly, already 106 of the approximately 350 independent language families (including isolates) of the world are extinct, 30%.
However, there is one caveat:
“These figures are very misleading, however, in a significant sense: of the c. 150 surviving American Indian languages in the US, only 20 are being learned actively by children in traditional transmission, and even for many of these 20, every year fewer and fewer children are learning them. Very shortly, this set of numbers and percentages will change dramatically (unless revitalization efforts are successful) … a tragedy painful beyond contemplation.”
On 18 February the Americanists in the Netherlands will be meeting from 2-5 at the Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen in room E203. The three talks will be made by Pieter Muysken and Mily Crevels, Loretta O’Connor, and myself. Muyskens will present on the “Lenguas de Bolivia” project, O’Connor will talk about geographical information systems, and I will give a brief summary entitled “Expressing degrees of certainty: A sketch of the Aymara evidential system”.
The Americanists in the Netherlands is always looking for new and interesting presentations, so if you’d like to be involved in a future talk, just drop them a message or join them on Facebook.
Todos que estudaram línguas aglutinantes como o aimara e a quíchua têm notado que muitas vezes uma única palavra em uma língua corresponde a uma frase inteira em um idioma românico ou germânico. Normalmente, essa palavra aglutinante é muito extensa e contém muitos morfemas tanto nominais como verbais – às vezes, até as palavras bissillábicas exigem uma longa explicação.
Considere, por exemplo, a raiz -tila ‘dividir em pequenos pedaços’, quando afixada ao morfema derivacional deverbativo da subcategoria daqueles que têm a ver com a identificação de localização espacial ou movimento,-nuqa (conhecido neste trabalho, como um morfema difuso), o resultado, enganosamente simples, tilanuqa tem algo a ver com a irrigação. Mais especificamente, ele transmite ou (1) a divisão fora do fluxo de água feito por outras pessoas que querem desviar um pouco de água para suas plantas ou animais, ou (2) um método de irrigação em que o fluxo de água num canal é subdividido em pequenas valas estreitas, como na ilustração. No processo de irrigação, o fazendeiro cava canais que posibilitarão a irrigação dos terrenos I e II. No primeiro momento ele abre os canais do terreno I deixando fechados os do terreno II. Quando o terreno I está irrigado, ele fecha seus canais e abre os do terreno II, e continua esse processo até que a terra esteja suficientemente irrigada, evitando enchentes e danos causados pela água.
A ordem para começar a trabalhar sobre este tipo de construção é simplesmente transmitida com a palavra imperativa, ¡Tilanaqam!
Agradacimentos a Edwin Banegas Flores por explicar todo isso.
