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The Vaupes Melting Pot: Tucanoan Influence on Hup
Abstract
Languages can be similar in many ways - they can resemble each other in categories, constructions and meanings, and in the actual forms used to express these. A shared feature may be based on common genetic origin, or result from geographic proximity and borrowing. Some aspects of grammar are spread more readily than others. The question is - which are they? When languages are in contact with each other, what changes do we expect to occur in their grammatical structures? Only an inductively based cross-linguistic examination can provide an answer. This is what this volume is about. The book starts with a typological introduction outlining principles of contact-induced change and factors which facilitate diffusion of linguistic traits. It is followed by twelve studies of contact-induced changes in languages from Amazonia, East and West Africa, Australia, East Timor, and the Sinitic domain. Set alongside these are studies of Pennsylvania German spoken by Mennonites in Canada in contact with English, Basque in contact with Romance languages in Spain and France, and language contact in the Balkans. All the studies are based on intensive fieldwork, and each cast in terms of the typological parameters set out in the introduction. The book includes a glossary to facilitate its use by graduates and advanced undergraduates in linguistics and in disciplines such as anthropology.
... A striking example of the effects of contact-driven grammatical restructuring is provided by the Naduhup family of northwest Amazonia. Within this small family of four languages, Hup (hupd1244) and Yuhup (yuhu1238) have experienced significant grammatical convergence toward Tukanoan languages within the Vaupés (Upper Rio Negro) contact zone (see Epps 2007Epps , 2008c, inter alia), while their sister Nadëb (nade1244) has changed under the influence of the Arawakan languages that once dominated the Middle Rio Negro region. The fourth sister, Dâw (daww1239), has experienced what appear to be somewhat lesser degrees of restructuring, with influence from both Arawakan and Tukanoan sources. ...
... These include the elaboration and restructuring of evidentiality, serial verb constructions, nominal classification systems, and several other domains (see e.g. Aikhenvald 2002;Epps 2007Epps , 2008cBolaños 2016). ...
... For example, Müller (2013: 61) observes that the several degrees of temporal remoteness in Kokama-Kokamilla (Tupi-Guarani; coca1259) are likely to have emerged on the model of its Panoan neighbors. In the Upper Rio Negro region, both Hup (Naduhup) and Tariana (Arawakan; Aikhenvald 2002: 121) have elaborated a recent-remote-future distinction under Tukanoan influence; in the Hup case, this has involved the grammaticalization of a remote past tense marker from an adverb ('yesterday/before yesterday'), and a future marker from a generic nominalizer (itself an erstwhile noun; see Epps 2007Epps , 2008c. Contact is likewise probably responsible for the congruent past tense marking in the Quechuan and Aymaran families, involving a binary distinction between experienced past and non-experienced past (Faller 2004), a distinction that has also been adopted in Andean Spanish (ande1249) as a result of contact (Escobar 1994). ...
... There may be culturally determined limits on lexical borrowing, as in the multilingual Vaupes region of the Amazon, where various polysynthetic languages are spoken (Aikhenvald 2002b, Epps 2006, Sorensen 1967. The tradition of linguistic exogamy among the Eastern Tucanoan and the Tariana (Arawakan) peoples of this region prohibit marriage between speakers of the same language. ...
... And as mentioned in Section 20.6, the traditional ban on lexical borrowing among the predominantly polysynthetic languages in the Vaupes region has not impeded grammatical borrowing. This has led to areal diffusion of grammatical traits, and may in some cases have led to the proliferation of polysynthesis across genetic-linguistic boundaries (see Aikhenvald 2002b, Epps 2006. ...
... 15) argues for the diffusion of polysynthetic structures from one family into languages of another: incorporation from Mixe-Zoquean and Uto-Aztecan into some Mayan languages, and polysynthetic structures from other families into some Arawakan languages. Furthermore, the verbal component of Hup displays a stronger tendency to polysynthesis than that of its sister languages, and the work of Epps (2006Epps ( , 2008 suggests that this profile has emerged under the areal influence of Eastern Thcanoan. Also, the similarity of several polysynthetic structures in various unrelated languages in the Guapore-Mamore region in the Southwestern Amazon may be due to areal diffusion (van der Voort 2005, Crevels and van der Voort 2008). ...
This handbook offers an extensive cross-linguistic and cross-theoretical survey of polysynthetic languages, in which single multi-morpheme verb forms can express what would be whole sentences in English. These languages and the problems they raise for linguistic analyses have long featured prominently in language descriptions, and yet the essence of polysynthesis remains under discussion, right down to whether it delineates a distinct, coherent type, rather than an assortment of frequently co-occurring traits. Chapters in the first part of the handbook relate polysynthesis to other issues central to linguistics, such as complexity, the definition of the word, the nature of the lexicon, idiomaticity, and to typological features such as argument structure and head marking. Part II contains areal studies of those geographical regions of the world where polysynthesis is particularly common, such as the Arctic and Sub-Arctic and northern Australia. The third part examines diachronic topics such as language contact and language obsolence, while Part IV looks at acquisition issues in different polysynthetic languages. Finally, Part V contains detailed grammatical descriptions of over twenty languages which have been characterized as polysynthetic, with special attention given to the presence or absence of potentially criterial features.
... The second tier describes local and regional modalities of such relations with others (e.g. exogamy, trade and shared cultural events), and the relevant identity markers within these local systems of complementarity and interaction (see also [34]). ...
... Subsistence strategies and language expansions that are confined within the Amazon would have had little impact on the systems of interaction. These societies would just be incorporated into the regional system, as observed, for instance, in the Vaupes, where subsistence strategies seem to simply be one of the identity markers [11,28,34]. ...
... When compared to three other languages from the sample, which form part of the Vaupés area, where we know intensive interactions have taken place for a long time [28,34], we see a different pattern, shown in figure ...
The Americas are home to patches of extraordinary linguistic (genealogical) diversity. These high-diversity areas are particularly unexpected given the recent population of the Americas. In this paper, we zoom in on one such area, the Northwest Amazon, and address the question of how the diversity in this area has persisted to the present. We contrast two hypotheses that claim opposite mechanisms for the maintenance of diversity: the isolation hypothesis suggests that isolation facilitates the preservation of diversity, while the integration hypothesis proposes that conscious identity preservation in combination with contact drives diversity maintenance. We test predictions for both hypotheses across four disciplines: biogeography, cultural anthropology, population genetics and linguistics. Our results show signs of both isolation and integration, but they mainly suggest considerable diversity in how groups of speakers have interacted with their surroundings.
... McWhorter, Chapter 10, this volume). There is considerable evidence for diffusion within local zones; the Vaupés region is the best explored of these, showing radical restructuring of multiple languages' grammatical systems (Aikhenvald 2002;Epps 2007a;Stenzel & Gomez-Imbert 2009;Stenzel 2013a; inter alia), but evidence for contact has also been observed in the Guaporé-Mamoré (Crevels & van der Voort 2008) and other areas, such as the neighbouring Guianas (Carlin 2006) and Gran Chaco (Comrie et al. 2010;Campbell 2012). Interestingly, much of this diffusion has involved the restructuring of grammatical systems, but is accompanied by relatively low levels of direct lexical borrowing (Epps forthcoming). ...
... Such low selectivity is in keeping with an indeterminate morphology-syntax distinction, which may in turn be associated-at least in some cases-with processes of grammaticalization and diffusion. Hup's graded tense distinctions are almost certainly recently innovated, propelled by contact with Tukanoan languages; while the proximate form páh can be reconstructed to the protolanguage as a general past marker, the distant past form j'ãh has a probable source in the adverb 'yesterday (or before)' (see Epps 2007aEpps , 2008. Tariana (Arawakan) has likewise developed remote/distant past and future tense distinctions via contact with Tukanoan (Aikhenvald 2002: 121). ...
... Although these forms are very short, at least some of these similarities may be due to direct borrowing. Otherwise, clear evidence for diffusion in the grammaticalization of valence-adjusting morphology comes once again from the detailed studies of contact in Vaupés languages Hup (Epps 2007a(Epps , 2010 and Tariana (Aikenvald 2002: 113-16). ...
The volume deals with the multifaceted nature of morphological complexity understood as a composite rather than unitary phenomenon as it shows an amazing degree of crosslinguistic variation. It features an Introduction by the editors that critically discusses some of the foundational assumptions informing contemporary views on morphological complexity, eleven chapters authored by an excellent set of contributors, and a concluding chapter by Östen Dahl that reviews various approaches to morphological complexity addressed in the preceding contributions and focuses on the minimum description length approach. The central eleven chapters approach morphological complexity from different perspectives, including the language-particular, the crosslinguistic, and the acquisitional one, and offer insights into issues such as the quantification of morphological complexity, its syntagmatic vs. paradigmatic aspects, diachronic developments including the emergence and acquisition of complexity, and the relations between morphological complexity and socioecological parameters of language. The empirical evidence includes data from both better-known languages such as Russian, and lesser-known and underdescribed languages from Africa, Australia, and the Americas, as well as experimental data drawn from iterated artificial language learning.
... Other cases of less visible borrowing patterns have been observed in Hup, a language that is in close contact with Tucanoan languages in the Vaupés Amazonian basin. Epps (2007) demonstrates that the linguistic exogamy exercised between Hup and Tucanoan speakers contributes to the devaluation of overt borrowing, yet Hup has gone through extensive externally motivated restructuring of its grammar. Aikhenvald (2003) shows that the cross-linguistic influence in the same region between Tucanoan and Arawak languages is limited with respect to overt borrowing but extensive when it comes to underlying syntactic patterns. ...
... Speakers are highly aware of the purist linguistic ideologies that govern kiva speech, but Kroskrity (1998) finds evidence of Hopi influence (evidential "ba") in more mundane story-telling practices. The examples on Hup and Tucanoan contact and on Basque and Spanish contact also show that the ideology of linguistic purism may halt the exchange of seemingly "overt" linguistic material (lexical borrowing) yet still allow "less visible" structural changes to occur (Epps, 2007;Rodríguez-Ordóñez, 2016). ...
The field of contact linguistics has long argued for the paramount importance of social factors in understanding the outcomes of linguistic contact. In contrast, linguistic ideologies have not played a central role in theories of language contact, though this has begun to change in recent decades. This article provides an account of early theorizations of linguistic ideologies and their increasingly important applications to the study of contact phenomena. A brief survey of more recent theoretical advancements with respect to ideologies and contact phenomena follows, paying special attention to studies in linguistic anthropology and variationist sociolinguistics. While recognizing the challenges inherent in the study of linguistic ideologies, this article argues that they should be at the foreground of contact linguistics. To this end, methodological tools for such study are presented, along with theoretical considerations and future directions.
... Compared to other languages in Northwest Amazonia such these of the multilingual Vaupés River Basin (Aikhenvald 2002, Epps 2006, Stenzel and Gomez-Imbert chapter X and Aikhenvald chapter X §2.4 this volume), the Boran and Witotoan languages do not have 'elaborate' evidentiality systems. However, they do have a relatively 'modest' set of grammatical markers for a number of information source types. ...
... Note that unmarked clauses in Witotoan languages have evidentialityneutral meanings. Our study will prove to be particularly valuable to researchers interested in evidentials in language families located 'outside' the 'Vaupés' linguistic area, a region known to be the 'epicentre' of diffusion of evidentiality in Northwest Amazonia (Epps 2006, Aikhenvald 2002 Marking (E/EM) following verbs and constituents verbs and constituents verbs and constituents verbs and constituents verbs and constituents ? indicates that data that are not sufficient nor consistent enough to clarify the issue at hand. ...
Every language has a way of saying how one knows what one is talking about, and what one thinks about what one knows. In some languages, one always has to specify the information source on which it is based—whether the speaker saw the event, or heard it, or inferred it based on something seen or on common sense, or was told about it by someone else. This is the essence of evidentiality, or grammatical marking of information source—an exciting category loved by linguists, journalists, and the general public. This volume provides a state-of-the art view of evidentiality in its various guises, their role in cognition and discourse, child language acquisition, language contact, and language history, with a specific focus on languages which have grammatical evidentials, including numerous languages from North and South America, Eurasia and the Pacific, and also Japanese, Korean, and signed languages.
... On the other hand, the Vaupés languages have experienced considerable convergence in grammatical structures and categories. These changes include the development and restructuring of systems of nominal classification, evidentiality, serial verb constructions, tense-aspect-mode values, lexical calquing, and many other features, allowing the clear characterization of the region as a linguistic area (see, e.g., Gómez-Imbert 1996, Aikhenvald 2002, Epps 2007, Stenzel 2013. The striking contrast between the paucity of lexical borrowing and the intensity of grammatical diffusion can be understood as a function of speakers' variable awareness to different components of language; as observed by Silverstein (1981), speakers are generally more aware of lexical forms (as referential, segmentable, and presupposing) than of grammatical structures and categories. ...
... Jackson 1983). Even for the Hupd'äh and other groups that do not engage in the practice, participation in the regional language ideologies has been accounted for within their assimilation of a Vaupés cultural profile (see Epps 2007). However, while there is little doubt that the practice of linguistic exogamy does contribute to the social relevance and maintenance of the region's diversity, a comparison with other similarly multilingual, interactive regions in the Amazon basin suggests that linguistic exogamy may be as much an outcome of regional sociolinguistic dynamics as it is a cause. ...
Lowland South America’s striking linguistic diversity presents a major puzzle to scholars of language and human prehistory. This chapter proposes that sociocultural practices provide important clues to a solution, and that linguistic differentiation across Amazonian groups is not so much a factor of isolation, but rather of interaction . Evidence includes the recurrence of regional ‘systems’ across the Amazon basin, characterized by similarly essentializing views linking language and identity, and accompanied by restrained lexical borrowing and code-switching on the one hand, but convergence in grammar and discourse on the other. These phenomena may be grounded in the widespread view that social identity depends on the active maintenance of contrasts, including those relating to language.
... A pesar de su rica diversidad lingüística y cultural, esta región experimenta en la actualidad un proceso acelerado de desaparición de numerosas lenguas minoritarias y prácticas culturales tradicionales. La investigación lingüística y antropológica se ha concentrado principalmente en la elaboración de descripciones gramaticales de ciertos idiomas y en estudios etnográficos de los grupos indígenas que habitan en esta zona (ver, entre otros, Aikhenvald, 1999Aikhenvald, , 2001Aikhenvald, , 2002Aikhenvald, , 2003aAikhenvald, , 2003bBolaños, 2016;Chacón, 2012;Chernela, 1983;Epps, 2006Epps, , 2009Epps, , 2012Epps & Stenzel, 2013;Gómez-Imbert, 1991;Hugh-Jones, 1979a;Hugh-Jones, 1979b;Jackson, 1983Jackson, , 2012Ospina-Bozzi, 2002;Silva, 2012;Sorensen, 1967;Stenzel, 2013); sin embargo, persiste un vacío crítico en la comprensión profunda de la situación sociolingüística de estas lenguas minoritarias, así como de las prácticas comunicativas de sus hablantes y del proceso de desplazamiento lingüístico que están experimentando. Este fenómeno no solo es consecuencia del contacto con el español y de la hegemonía de otras lenguas dominantes, sino que también está intrínsecamente ligado al enfoque del sistema educativo público, el cual ha priorizado la reproducción de conocimientos e ideologías hegemónicas y ha mantenido una orientación monolingüe en español en los planes de estudio escolares, contribuyendo significativamente al menoscabo de las lenguas y las culturas ancestrales. ...
La región del Vaupés se destaca por su diversidad lingü.stica, con unas 25 lenguas pertenecientes a cuatro familias lingü.sticas diferenciadas. Esta región atraviesa un proceso acelerado de pérdida de varias lenguas minorizadas. Existe un vacío teórico sobre las prácticas comunicativas de los hablantes multilingües y del desplazamiento lingü.stico ligado, entre otros, a la educación que ha privilegiado la reproducción de los conocimientos hegemónicos y una orientación monolingüe (en español) en las escuelas, en detrimento de las lenguas y culturas indígenas. Este artículo tiene como propósito contribuir al estudio de las dinámicas de interacción lingü.stica, así como a la discusión y reflexión sobre propuestas de enseñanza inclusivas y sensibles a la diversidad de lenguas, culturas y sistemas de pensamiento de estos grupos. Los datos y las reflexiones que presentamos se derivan de una investigación que combina la metodología de documentación lingüística y un enfoque etnográfico titulada Retos de la educación intercultural y la enseñanza de lenguas indígenas en contextos multilingües. Una mirada a las dinámicas de uso, pérdida y a las valoraciones de la lengua de origen (2022-2024). Se encontró que la escuela en el Vaupés ha contribuido a la hispanización lingü.stica y cultural de estos grupos. Además, el desconocimiento de los repertorios lingü.sticos de sus hablantes promueve procesos de desigualdad e injusticia social y epistémica.
... In connection with these approaches to discourse, and influenced by the shift to typological-comparative interests in linguistics, a good deal of linguistic research has turned to the pervasive fact of Amazonian multilingualism. Of special interest of course is the Northwest Amazon area, where language contact involves different members of Arawak, Tucanoan, Hup (a member of the so-called "Maku" [Epps 2006]) and Carib language families. As these are typologically as well as genetically different languages, linguists are interested in how contact-induced changes may have affected their grammars, or "internal" constructions. ...
... Aikhenvald 1999bAikhenvald , 2002, Hup and Yuhup (Nadahup; e.g. Epps 2007bEpps , 2008b, and Kakua (Bolaños and Epps 2009); and Baniwa (Arawak) has influenced Cubeo (East Tukano; Gomez-Imbert 1996). Another area of Amazonia in which contact may have led to grammatical restructuring is the Guaporé-Mamoré region of Bolivia and Brazil (Crevels and van der Voort 2008). ...
... The Naduhup and Kakua-Nukak speakers are not involved in the institutionalized marriage network, though marriage between Hup women and Tukanoan men does occur (Epps p.c. and see also Arias et al. 2018a for evidence of Curripaco-Nukak contact suggestive of intermarriage). These groups are part of a trade network, and as such they have also undergone influence from East Tukano (Epps 2006;Bolaños 2016). The time depth of the Vaupés contact situation is not known, but the involvement of Tariana is estimated at about 400 years (Aikhenvald 2001: 180-181), which situates this particular contact situation (involving Tariana) relatively late in the time schedule proposed by Chacon (2017) and shows that the contact-induced language effects found in Tariana required relatively little time. ...
The Amazon basin is home to an estimated 350 Indigenous languages, divided over more than twenty language families of radically different sizes, geographical extents, and time depths, plus an unusually large number of isolates. Given this rich panorama of linguistic diversity, this chapter focuses on four different socio-historical environments, which together span most of Amazonia and are representative of the intricate history of the area. The chapter first zooms in on the Tupian and Arawakan expansions, which are often contrasted: the former generally being characterized as a demic expansion, the latter as an example of predominantly cultural diffusion. In addition, two genealogical diversity hotspots at the fringes of Amazonia are highlighted, one in the northwest Amazon, the other in northeast Bolivia in the southwest Amazon, both of which are claimed to be regions of intense historical contact and genetic admixture between groups, though probably based on partly different socio-historical dynamics.
... Nadëb is also typologically divergent from its sisters, undoubtedly due in part to different contact histories: in particular, Nadëb with regional Arawakan languages (Epps & Obert forthcoming), and Hup and Yuhup with languages of the Eastern Tukanoan family (Epps 2007). In contrast to its sisters, Nadëb displays OAV basic constituent order (a typologically unusual pattern; Dryer 2013), a preference for prefixing, head-marking, and ergative-absolutive alignment. ...
One of the most robust sources of fresh insights into typological categories comes from our growing knowledge of the indigenous languages of South America, a region that until recently has been significantly under-represented in typological studies. This paper offers a case in point through the investigation of number in Nadëb, a member of the small Naduhup family of the northwest Amazon, which reveals several typologically intriguing features. One of these is Nadëb’s emphasis on marking number on the verb as opposed to the noun, even while any registering of event number appears to be secondary to that of participant number. Nadëb also relies heavily on suppletive or semi-suppletive stem pairs in encoding numberdistinctions in both nouns and verbs. Finally, Nadëb’s resources for expressing number are quite different from those seen in its three sister languages, in which number is primarily a feature of the noun phrase, suggesting a significant reorganization of number-marking within the language family. The Nadëb case underscores the considerable diversity evident in number-marking strategies typologically, and how this diversity may emerge even within a single language family of limited time-depth.
... However, long-term language contact has led to areal diffusion of a large number of grammatical properties, covering phonological, morphological and syntactical features of languages (see Aikhenvald, 1999Aikhenvald, , 2002Aikhenvald, , 2012. Several studies have attributed to establishing the influence of Tucanoan languages on Arawakan, Naduhup, and Kakua-Nukak (Aikhenvald, 1999(Aikhenvald, , 2002Epps, 2005Epps, , 2007Epps, , 2008; Arawakan influence on Tucanoan (Gomez-Imbert, 1996;Stenzel & Gomez-Imbert, 2017); as well as the diffusion among Tucanoan languages themselves (Gomez-Imbert, 1991 Gomez-Imbert & Hugh-Jones, 2000) 5 . ...
This research is dedicated to an overview of formation of adverbial clauses in the Vaupés linguistic area. Based on the data from 22 languages, it presents a description of the major strategies for marking a clause as adverbial: with the use of adverbial linkers, cases or adpositions, bare nominalizations, and switch-reference markers. The results of this study show several tendencies that are best explained as the result of areal diffusion, in this case from Tucanoan languages to other, non-Tucanoan, languages of the area.
... In addition to a high number of languages and linguistic families, the URN is rich in different kinds of language ecologies, which are usually marked by intense forms of language contact and multilingualism. The most widely known view about URN linguistic diversity comes from language ecology in the central Vaupés area, which has been traditionally characterized by structural convergence between languages coupled with low incidence of direct borrowings, strong linguistic awareness, loyalty to the language code, the use of language as an emblem of patrilineal ethnic identity and egalitarian multilingualism [75][76][77][78][79]. However, the URN and the NWA also host a variety of other language ecologies that have shaped different forms of contact-induced changes and diversification patterns. ...
The Upper Rio Negro regional social system is made up of more than 30 languages belonging to six linguistic families. This results from socio-historical processes stretching back at least two millennia, which have built a system with different levels of autonomy and hierarchy associated with a mythical and ritual complex, and with social and linguistic exchanges. The analysis of these processes require an interdisciplinary outlook to understand the ways in which people from different linguistic families interacted and created it. More specifically, we ask how linguistic and cultural diversity have been created in the context of intense relations of multilingualism and inter-ethnic contact. To this end, we integrate perspectives from historical linguistics (regarding languages from the Tukanoan, Arawakan and Naduhup families) with archaeological data from the Amazonian past. Through this multidisciplinary approach, we seek to develop a linguistic–anthropological understanding of the dynamics shaping the region's diversity and inter-ethnic relations. We show that processes creating diversity are interrelated with changes in social histories, and are especially tied to the establishment of new forms of social organization as a result of pre-colonial inter-ethnic relations. This has led to the construction of various local multilingual ecologies connected to macro-regional processes in Amazonia.
... A well-known case is the reshaping of the inherited Pennsylvania German passive construction in a number of ways, including the replacement of the agent-marking preposition vun by bei, as well as a change in linear order such that the bei-phrase is outside of the discontinuous verb (Burridge 2006). Other examples that have been proposed include Hup, a Nadahup language, which developed a passive construction similar to that found in East Tucanoan languages with which Hup has been in contact, but which is not found in other language from the family (Epps 2006). The Mapudungun reflexive construction may have developed an anticausative function due to contact with Spanish (Zúñiga 2015). ...
Transitivity is often analyzed from the point of view of the formal and functional factors that shape morphosyntax. The contribution of language contact is not often highlighted. This article surveys some evidence for considering language contact in shaping the morphosyntax of transitivity-related phenomena, and proposes that the source of broad areal patterns should be sought in low-level processes of contact-induced change, such as pattern replication, contact-induced grammaticalization, and matter replication of constructional elements of transitivity encoding. Such patterns may call into question the search for purely functional explanations of transitivity encoding.
... Conversely, unilateral directionality (unreciprocated bi/multilingualism) marks the stratified forest/ riverine subsystem: forest peoples learn and use the languages of their Tukanoan neighbors, but rarely the contrary. Our sociolinguistic interviews confirm this pattern, even in villages in which forest-group families now live as virtually permanent residents (Epps, 2007(Epps, , 2008(Epps, , 2009(Epps, , 2016Epps and Oliveira, 2013;Bolaños, 2016). As Epps (2018 p. 2) points out, however, the social inequality of forest peoples prevalent in Vaupés society has not deterred long-term maintenance of their languages. ...
This study examines language ideologies and communicative practices in the multilingual Vaupés region of northwestern Amazonia. Following a comparative overview of the Vaupés as a ‘small-scale’ language ecology, it discusses claims from existing ethnographic work on the region in light of data from a corpus of video-recordings of sociolinguistic interviews and spontaneous everyday conversations. It shows how a practice-based and interdisciplinary approach combining language documentation methodology and ethnographic, structural linguistic, and interactional perspectives can contribute to understanding of macro and micro aspects of multilingualism, thus contributing to future work on the Vaupés, typologies of small-scale multilingual ecologies, and language contact research.
... Could it be the case then that lexical borrowing was avoided, allowing structural borrowing in 'by the back door', as has been observed in the Vaupés region of the Brazilian Amazon (e.g. Epps, 2007)? In the absence of a written record prior to the colonial period for most languages, it is hard to lend greater credence to a particular proposed diffusion scenarios. ...
The internal structure of numeral systems can shed light on processes of word formation, language contact and change. In this article I analyze the numeral system of P’urhepecha on the basis of historical and contemporary sources. The system is unusual typologically and areally since it possesses monolexemic terms to six, while seven to nine are compounds with five; and the forms for the base (20) and next power (400) have clear non-corporeal meanings. I also provide a more nuanced evaluation of vigesimal counting systems in Mesoamerica. The language-internal and external findings underline the importance of more detailed historical studies of P’urhepecha.
... Finally, group cultural factors and human agency affect both the rates and the types of change that languages undergo. One famous case involves the languages of the Vaupés region of Amazonia (Epps 2006), where the combination of widespread exogamy and strong cultural prohibitions against language mixing have led to languages showing almost no lexical borrowings but strong structural convergence. Another positive pressure for increasing disparity is the phenomenon known as esoterogeny, the sociolinguistic drive for communities to differentiate themselves from outsiders (Thurston 1987). ...
Our species displays remarkable linguistic diversity. Although the uneven distribution of this diversity demands explanation, the drivers of these patterns have not been conclusively determined. We address this issue in two steps: First, we review previous empirical studies whose authors have suggested environmental, geographical, and sociocultural drivers of linguistic diversification. However, contradictory results and methodological variation make it difficult to draw general conclusions. Second, we outline a program for future research. We suggest that future analyses should account for interactions among causal factors, the lack of spatial and phylogenetic independence of the data, and transitory patterns. Recent analytical advances in biogeography and evolutionary biology, such as simulation modeling of diversity patterns, hold promise for testing four key mechanisms of language diversification proposed here: neutral change, population movement, contact, and selection. Future modeling approaches should also evaluate how the outcomes of these processes are influenced by demography, environmental heterogeneity, and time.
... For the latter, in spite of a growing body of literature (see e.g. Epps 2006, Mithun 2013, 2015 and an overview in Bakker & van der Voort 2017: 423-425), the data is still insufficient and one cannot but agree with Mithun (2013: 268) that "there is also much to discover". Moreover, since the Abaza and Kabardian prefixes involved in the contact scenario are arguably cognate, the case described here shows how functions inherited from the proto-language can be overlaid by those arisen due to language contact. ...
Abaza, a polysynthetic ergative Northwest Caucasian language, shares with its neighbour and distant relative Kabardian a typologically peculiar use of the deictic directional prefixes monitoring the relative ranking of the subject and indirect object on the person hierarchy. In both languages, the cislocative ('hither') prefixes are used if the indirect object outranks the subject on the person hierarchy, and the translocative ('thither') prefixes are used in combinations of first person subjects with second person singular indirect objects. This pattern, reminiscent of the more familiar inverse marking, is observed with ditransitive and bivalent intransitive verbs and is almost fully redundant, since all participants are unequivocally indexed on verbs by pronominal prefixes. I argue that this isogloss, shared by West Circassian (a close relative to Kabardian) but not with Abkhaz, the sister-language of Abaza, is a result of pattern replication under intense language contact , which has led to an increase of both paradigmatic and syntagmatic complexity of Abaza verbal morphology.
... Povos ancestrais habitam a porção noroeste da bacia amazônica conhecida como 'Cabeça do Cachorro', na fronteira do Brasil com a Colômbia e com a Venezuela. Grupos étnicos que constituem a família linguística naduhup (EPPS, 2007;BOLAÑOS, 2017;EPPS, 2018) vivem na região há pelos menos 600 anos, talvez mais (NEVES, 1998). 2 Grupos da família arawak vindos do norte (NIMUENDAJÚ, 1950;NEVES, 1998) população econômica e politicamente dominante pelos grupos de menor poder. Essa apropriação é um dos grandes fatores responsáveis pela emergência de novas variedades de uma língua europeia nas antigas colônias das Américas e pela extinção de várias línguas nativas ancestrais (MUFWENE, 2003;2004;2008). ...
O objetivo deste trabalho é o de discutir o alcance de estudos sobre a vitalidade linguística em regiões multilíngues, feitos no âmbito da teoria da complexidade por meio de modelagens computacionais. Um desses estudos será descrito e comparado com relatos etnográficos que expõem a dinâmica das relações socioeconômicas e políticas que caracterizam algumas ecologias multilíngues, como a do Alto Rio Negro na Amazônia brasileira. Considerando que assumir a língua como um sistema complexo, aberto, dinâmico e auto-organizado é uma avenida promissora para as investigações linguísticas, este trabalho sugere que etnografias e descrições sociolinguísticas parecem capturar mais adequadamente a dinamicidade e complexidade da língua como um fenômeno social do que alguns modelos computacionais que precisam simplificar sobremaneira a caracterização do sistema, e que se baseiam antes em escolhas feitas pelos pesquisadores do que em fatores que, de fato, são definidores do sistema.
... The Hup and Yuhup languages are spoken in the highly multilingual region of Vaupés; their role in a regional network of exchange has led to significant language contact with and the subsequent adoption of some East Tukanoan grammatical structures (e.g. Epps 2007Epps , 2008aEpps , 2008b. However, there has been very little lexical borrowing, similar to the situation that Aikhenvald (1999Aikhenvald ( , 2002 describes for Tariana, an Arawak neighbor. ...
Complex predication is understood to be a highly productive process in Northwestern Amazonian languages in which complex predicates may be realized as compounds, verb-auxiliary constructions or serial verb constructions depending on language-internal criteria. These constructions play an important role in the organization of discourse and information packaging and can also carry out grammatical functions such as increasing or decreasing valency. In Dâw, a language from the Naduhup family, complex predicates are used to express spatial notions such as directionality and manner in complex motion events or to provide detailed of how complex predicates in Dâw function as semantic and syntactic resources used to express space in discourse in comparison to their expression in simple predicates. I provide a typology of the most frequent patterns and their respective ordering principles found in our corpus in order to understand how fine-grained spatial notions are expressed in Dâw.
... There are additional examples. Epps (2006) reports that Hup (Nadahup) has a passive construction that is structurally similar to the East Tucanoan languages with which Hup has been in contact, but which is not found in other Nadahup languages. Zúñiga (2015Zúñiga ( : 1534 suggests that the extension of the reflexive construction to anticausative in Mapudungun may be due to the influence of Spanish. ...
... Kossman, 2008). 4 5 Note that here we are not dealing with cases of borrowed noun classifiers (which do not involve agreement), for example the development of a classifier system in Hup (Nadahup, Amazon) under the influence of Tacano (Tacanoan, Amazon) (Epps, 2006), borrowed Chinese classifiers in Vietnamese (Alves, 2007) or the impressive wholesale transfer of the full paradigm of noun class suffixes from a Bora (Isolate, Brazil) into Risígaro (Arawakan, Brazil) (Seifart, 2012 Some claims have also been made for the transfer of parts of the agreement system itself. In Tagalog (Austronesian, Philippines), the Spanish agreement system has extended to some Tagalog nouns. ...
This paper explores borrowing of nouns between two unrelated Australian languages with a long history of contact: Mudburra, a language with no grammatical gender, and Jingulu, which has four genders and super-classing. Unusually, this case involves extensive borrowing in both directions, resulting in the languages sharing 65% of their nouns. This bi-directional borrowing of nouns allows us to simultaneously examine the behaviour of gender where (i) nouns from a language with no gender have transferred into a language with a gender system, and (ii) nouns from a language with gender have transferred into a language with no gender system. Previous work in this area has been interested in the how nouns are categorised in scenario (i) (Deuchar et al., 2014; Jake et al., 2002; Liceras et al., 2008; Parafita Couto et al., 2015; Poplack et al., 1982), and whether there is any evidence for the development of a gender system in the recipient language in scenario (ii) (Aikhenvald, 2003; Corbett, 1991; Heath, 1978; Matras & Sakel, 2007; Seifart, 2012; Stolz, 2009; Stolz, 2012). We show that Mudburra nouns borrowed into Jingulu are assigned gender on the basis of their semantics, with gender superclassing effects and morpho-phonological massaging. Some of the borrowings into Mudburra, on the other hand, demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of Jingulu morpho-syntax which speaks to a high degree of bilingualism between Mudburra and Jingulu over an extended period.
... Si bien es frecuente que una persona hable varias lenguas, 1 este individuo se identificará como parte de un solo pueblo indígena. Algunos estudiosos sugieren (Aikhenvald 1996;Epps 2006) que, a pesar de este multilingüismo, los hablantes evitan el cambio de código para mantener el estatus social de la lengua y el grupo humano. Consecuencia de ello, el léxico se mantiene en el tiempo, mientras existen procesos estructurales -semejanzas sintácticas-que se van convergiendo. ...
This work reviews the présence of the double possession in two varieties of Peruvian Amazonian Spanish (ISO 639-3: spq). These varieties are the result of the contact of Spanish with two Amazonian languages of different families and typologies: Bora of the Bora linguistic family and Ashaninka of the Arawak linguistic family. On the one hand, the double possession is present in the variety of Amazonian Spanish with Bora substratum, since this language has a genitive case; on the other hand, the double possessive does not occur in the variety of Amazonian Spanish with Ashaninka substratum, as this language does not present the genitive grammatical case. © 2018 UNIV Pontificia Univ Catolica Peru. All rights reserved.
... This has produced a high degree of bilingualism and has resulted in multilateral diffusion of certain grammatical features/patterns. Epps (2006) describes another language contact situation in the same linguistic area between Hup (Makú) and East Tucanoan languages, and notes unilateral diffusion of grammatical features from the East Tucanoan languages into Hup. One significant factor in the different diffusional patterns between these two language contact situations appears to be the issue of cultural/social dominance. ...
Makary Kotoko, a Chadic language spoken in the flood plain directly south of Lake Chad in Cameroon, has an estimated 16,000 speakers. An analysis of a lexical database for the language shows that of the 3000 or so distinct lexical entries in the database, almost 1/3 (916 items) have been identified as borrowed from other languages in the region. The majority of the borrowings come from Kanuri, a Nilo-Saharan language of Nigeria, with an estimated number of speakers ranging from 1 to 4 million. In this article I first present the number of borrowings specifically from Kanuri relative to the total number of borrowed items in Makary Kotoko, and the lexical/grammatical categories in Makary Kotoko that have incorporated Kanuri borrowings. I follow this by presenting the linguistic evidence which not only suggests a possible time frame for when the borrowings from Kanuri came into Makary Kotoko, but also supports the idea that this is essentially a case of completed language contact. After discussing the lexical and grammatical borrowings from Kanuri into Makary Kotoko in detail, I explore the limited evidence in Makary Kotoko for lexical and grammatical 'calquing' from Kanuri, resulting in almost no structural diffusion from Kanuri into Makary Kotoko. I finish with a few proposals as to why this is the case in this instance of language contact in the Lake Chad basin.
... However, in recent years, Tukano, Nheengatú, and to a lesser extent Portuguese and Spanish, have come to serve as lingua francas in the Rio Negro region, particularly in towns and cities (Shulist 2016). Since the maintenance of linguistic boundaries is crucial to this social structure, the mixing of codes is studiously avoided; as a result, the languages here have remained lexically distinct while undergoing profound structural convergence (Aikhenvald 1996(Aikhenvald , 2002Epps 2006). 6 European colonial languages such as Spanish and Portuguese are usually regarded as incidental to the social organizational logic of these systems, but some studies of Amazonian multilingualism discuss them. ...
Resumen
Muchos pueblos indígenas de Sudamérica son actualmente multilingües. Además, se puede identificar en idiomas sudamericanos la presencia de efectos de contacto histórico que demuestran que el multilingüismo ha sido una parte importante de las sociedades del continente desde hace mucho tiempo. Sin embargo, el multilingüismo y el contacto lingüístico en los Andes y la Amazonía se han tratado mayormente por separado en la literatura académica. Este artículo examina dos aspectos de multilingüismo identificado por los especialistas de cada región—acerca del rol de formaciones políticas jerárquicas y la importancia de los idiomas coloniales. Los analiza en relación a un caso contemporáneo de multilingüismo entre el quechua, el matsigenka, y el castellano en una zona de transición andina–amazónica en el sur del Perú. Este caso se puede describir como una red multilingüe que integra ambas regiones. De esta forma podemos demostrar que las situaciones andinas y amazónicas son más similares de lo que se ha considerado hasta ahora. Al poner atención a tales vínculos andino–amazónicos, proponemos ampliar nuestro conocimiento de la riqueza y la variabilidad del multilingüismo en Sudamérica.
... This situation of the Awá-Guajá parallels some of the social and linguistic dynamics encountered in the Rio Negro region among the Maku and Tukanoan groups (Epps 2007). The Maku are primarily hunter-gatherers and eschew sustained contact with the more settled Tukanoan groups (Pozzobon 1991;Jackson 1983). ...
Post-colonial interactions between indigenous groups in Amazonia have intrigued observers since contact was established between non-indigenous Brazilians and first-nation peoples. Exchanges between different ethnic groups were largely referred to en passant or in an anecdotal manner. Yet an expanding literature dealing with the dynamics of interethnic contact can now help assess the historical precedents and sociolinguistic features between different indigenous communities. In this article we explore the contact history of the Awá-Guajá of eastern Amazonia, and the sociolinguistic variation that developed between their different communities and neighboring indigenous groups. The Awá-Guajá came into permanent contact with Brazilian mainstream society in 1973 and were settled into four communities by Brazil’s Indian Service. They are Tupí-Guaraní speakers and can converse with other members of this language family, namely, the Ka’apor and Tenetehara. This interaction reveals linguistic affinities and a distinct historical engagement between these groups. Loan words and dialects developed from these relationships, and each group was also influenced by the enveloping machinations of mainstream society. The Awá-Guajá defer to the Ka’apor and Tenetehara yet keep a guarded distance from them, exposing an interesting dynamic that remits us to power relations, historical ecology, and the looming influence of the Brazilian state.
... The same holds for the postulated linguistic area of the Vaupés, where speakers of Arawakan (Aikhenvald 2002), Tucanoan, and Nadahup (Epps 2007) languages have interacted for a long time. All three groups have maintained their languages as separate entities, at least as far as the lexical shapes are concerned, as well as almost all morphemes; there has been little lexical borrowing. ...
Este trabalho investiga caminhos alternativos para um entendimento de fenômenos linguísticos do tukano mais próximo à perspectiva ontológica dos falantes e, portanto, mais distante da epistemologia ocidental Moderna que subjaz os estudos linguísticos. Para tanto, realizo primeiramente uma revisão das bases sobre a qual a linguística hegemônica se ancora, mostrando as suas relações com Modernidade (Toulmin, 1990) e com a colonialidade (Mignolo, 1996, 2000, 2002, 2007). Em seguida, mostro como também a antropologia se constituiu através das dicotomias que caracterizam a epistemologia ocidental, mas buscou se distanciar de tal visão a partir de movimentos realizados desde a década de 1980. Opto por destacar os avanços realizados através do perspectivismo ameríndio (Viveiros de Castro, 1996, 2002, 2018), que, ao propor um movimento de descolonização permanente do pensamento, pode ser utilizado para pensar o desenvolvimento de uma linguística descolonial. Mostro também como o conceito perspectivista de “equívoco” se aplica à noção de “língua”, evidenciando que o que é língua se define através de uma perspectiva ontológica. Portanto, língua para os Tukano não é o mesmo que língua para não-indígenas ocidentais. Essa proposta é corroborada através de uma analogia entre as diferenças estruturais entre o sistema de classificação ictiológico ocidental e o sistema de classificação ictiológico tukano, tal qual mapeadas por J. P. Barreto (2013), e as diferenças entre o sistema linguístico ocidental e uma forma possível de conceber um sistema linguístico tukano, aqui sugerida. Finalmente, parto para as implicações dessa outra concepção de língua para a análise de três dados de eventos linguísticos em tukano coletados em campo. Proponho uma discussão sobre o sentido dos morfemas de evidencialidade que ocorrem nos dados discutidos, mostrando como a sua análise pode se beneficiar de uma perspectiva que não se atenha ao sentido estritamente linguístico de tais morfemas (tal qual proposto por Ramirez, 1997a), tampouco exclusivamente ao sentido do morfema em relação ao seu contexto imediato (como faz Aikhenvald, 2004, 2018), mas que procure entender a língua como parte integrante e constituinte de uma perspectiva ontológica distinta, tukano, na qual o processo de significação difere do ocidental.
Studies on individual Amazonian languages have shown that these languages can contribute to informing and refining our theories of counterfactual conditional constructions. Still missing, however, is an attempt at exploring this complex sentence construction across different genetic units of the Amazonia in a single study. The paper explores counterfactual conditionals in a sample of 24 Amazonian languages. Special attention is paid to the range of TAM markers and clause-linking devices used in counterfactual conditionals in the Amazonian languages in the sample. As for TAM markers, it is shown that protases tend to be unmarked (they do not occur with any TAM values), and apodoses tend to occur with irrealis or frustrative marking. As for clause-linking devices, it is shown that most Amazonian languages in the sample contain counterfactual conditionals occurring with non-specialized clause-linking devices. This means that the distinction between counterfactual conditionals and other types of conditionals (e.g., real/generic) is not grammaticalized in clause-linking devices. Instead, the counterfactual conditional meaning resides in the combination of specific TAM markers. The paper also pays close attention to the distribution of TAM markers and clause-linking devices in counterfactual conditional constructions in the Vaupés. In particular, special attention is paid to how Tariana counterfactual conditional construction have been shaped by Tucanoan languages through language contact.
This book aims at investigating discourse phenomena (i.e., linguistic elements and constructions that help to manage the organization, flow, and outcome of communication) from a typological and cross-linguistic perspective. Although it is a well-established idea in functional-typological approaches that grammar is shaped by discourse use, systematic typological cross-linguistic investigations on discourse phenomena are relatively rare. This volume aims at bridging this gap, by integrating different linguistic subfields, such as discourse analysis, pragmatics, and typology. The contributions, both theoretically and empirically oriented, focus on a broad variety of discourse phenomena (ranging from discourse markers to discourse function of grammatical markers, to strategies that manage the discourse and information flow) while adopting a typological perspective and considering typologically distant languages.
The chapter focuses on area diffusion and linguistic areas in the Amazon Basin, one of the linguistically most diverse regions in the world. The long-term history of language interaction in the linguistically highly diverse basin of the Amazon Basin has been marred by a large scale language extinction and obliteration of contact patterns. At present, the Vaupés River Basin area is the best established linguistic area. Linguistic and cultural features of neighbouring languages in the Upper Rio Negro region, and in the basin of neighbouring Caquetá and Putumayo, point towards possible areal diffusion in the past. The Upper Xingu region is a well-established cultural area; however, given its relatively shallow time depth, its status as a linguistic area is questionable. A number of other regions within Amazonia show traces of possible language contact with inconclusive evidence in favour of long-standing areal diffusion. A number of pan-Amazonian features are shared by genetically unrelated, and often geographically remote, languages. These may well reflect traces of linguistic contact that can no longer be recovered.
Language contact - the linguistic and social outcomes of two or more languages coming into contact with each other - has been pervasive in human history. However, where histories of language contact are comparable, experiences of migrant populations have been only similar, not identical. Given this, how does language contact work? With contributions from an international team of scholars, this Handbook - the first in a two-volume set - delves into this question from multiple perspectives and provides state-of-the-art research on population movement and language contact and change. It begins with an overview of how language contact as a research area has evolved since the late 19th century. The chapters then cover various processes and theoretical issues associated with population movement and language contact worldwide. It is essential reading for anybody interested in the dynamics of social interactions in diverse contact settings and how the changing ecologies influence the linguistic outcomes.
Apresentamos os resultados iniciais de uma investigação preliminar de um cenário menos conhecido de contato linguístico do Alto Rio Negro: o Nheengatu (Ramo Tupi-Guarani, Família Tupi) falada como segunda língua pelos anciões da etnia Dâw (família Nadahup) da comunidade Waruá (T.I. Alto Rio Negro). A variedade está gravemente ameaçada, pois não está sendo transmitida; as gerações mais novas falam apenas Dâw e português. Nosso objetivo é de criar um acervo de material audiovisual para registrar o uso do Nheengatu entre os Dâw como documento histórico para a comunidade e para estudar as particularidades linguísticas dessa variedade no contexto de uma investigação maior da variação linguística no Nheengatu. Os dados analisados em nossa investigação foram extraídos de narrativas pessoais gravadas com seis informantes da comunidade Waruá em julho de 2017 e em julho de 2018. Os fenômenos detectados entre o Nheengatu Dâw até o momento abrangem à fonética e fonologia, p. ex., apócope vocálica, para alinhá-la à estrutura silábica CVC do Dâw, e à morfossintaxe, p. ex., nivelamento de paradigmas número-pessoais e introdução de marcação diferencial de objeto. Em geral, parecem ser influências da língua Dâw sobre o Nheengatu do falante. Além disso, o estatuto de segunda língua entre os Dâw da língua Nheengatu pode ser instrutivo a respeito dos tipos de influência sobre uma língua franca, como a Língua Geral Amazônica, quando não é a primeira língua de uma comunidade.
Demography and socio-economic stratification are two crucial factors that determine language contact outcomes in social formations ranging from small-scale societies to nation states. Creoles, koines, lingua francas, and urban sociolects are sites of particularly intense contact and change, especially in the Global South. Next to core linguistics, the study of social factors in language contact draws on methods of historical research, political economic analysis, and linguistic data sciences. Dramatic socio-economic and demographic transformations in the next decades will significantly alter our yet limited understanding of how social factors shape the processes and outcomes of language contact and change.
Issues in multilingualism and its implications for communities and society at large, language acquisition and use, language diversification, and creative language use associated with new linguistic identities have become hot topics in both scientific and popular debates. A ubiquitous aspect of multilingualism is language contact. This book contains twelve articles that discuss specific aspects of Contact Linguistics. These articles cover a wide range of topics in the field, including creoles, areal linguistics, language mixing, and the sociolinguistic aspects of interactions with audiences. The book is dedicated to Pieter Muysken whose work on pidgin and creole languages, mixed languages, code-switching, bilingualism, and areal linguistics has been ground-breaking and inspirational for the authors in this book, as well as numerous other scholars working on the various facets of this rapidly expanding field.
The effects of contact in Mayan languages run the gamut from run‐of‐the‐mill lexical borrowing to the direct borrowing of inflectional morphemes, copying of grammatical categories, and diffusion of phonological innovations. This chapter attempts to characterize the nature of language contact effects in Mayan languages. In many cases, it is not clear exactly when these patterns first emerged. In some cases, we can see ongoing areal innovations that may well have been initiated by upheavals following European contact. In other cases, colonial and hieroglyphic linguistic evidence confirms that interactions preceded European contact and can be understood in the context of the complex and multilingual pre‐Columbian Mayasociety. The long history of multilingualism among Mayan languages is logically likely to have led to both dialect and language mixing. Contact between Mayan and non‐Mayan languages also involves neighboring indigenous Mesoamerican languages, particularly the Mixe‐Zoquean language family.
This chapter provides an overview of language contact involving indigenous languages in South America, emphasizing cases that may have broader implications. It examines the loanwords in SA indigenous languages, and surveys the several linguistic areas which have been proposed in South America. The chapter also surveys the contact languages, lingua francas, and mixed languages involving indigenous languages of South America. Work on language contact in South America has shown how social, political, and economic factors affect the diffusion of linguistic traits among languages. The chapter focuses on one factor, linguistic exogamy. The causes of language endangerment and in many cases of extinction in SA vary from region to region, and have varied over time, although some recurring factors are clear.
This paper explores the genre of incantation as it is practiced by the Hup (Makú) people of the northwest Amazon, and considers the challenges it brings to our conceptions of verbal art and its documentation. Hup incantation is fundamentally multifaceted, bringing to bear multiple performative events, voices, and audiences across ritual and social contexts. It is also both highly artistic and maximally enactive, such that its aesthetic and utilitarian features not only coexist, but also co‐engender, each promoting the elaboration of the other. As we argue here, the incantation invites us to reexamine our understanding of poetics, and epitomizes the paradox of commensurability that challenges any documentation of language and culture.
The Language of Hunter-Gatherers - edited by Tom Güldemann February 2020
Despite its alleged relative stability, grammatical gender has nevertheless been completely lost in a number of languages. Through the analysis of three case studies (Afrikaans, Ossetic, and Cappadocian Greek) and a brief survey of similar developments in other languages, this article investigates the link between the loss of gender and language contact, which appears to be a key factor in the decline of gender systems. Drawing on recent research within the framework of sociolinguistic typology, I focus on the specific influence that a particular type of language contact (namely, non-native or imperfect learning) usually exerts on the grammar of the languages being acquired. I also discuss the diachronic asymmetry between the loss and the development of gender in language contact settings: while gender loss seems to be contact-related in quite a number of cases, replication or borrowing of gender turns out to be a rather restricted or even rare phenomenon.
Basic Facts about Sprachbunds, in the Balkans and Elsewhere It is almost impossible to talk about the Balkans from a linguistic standpoint and not utter the term ‘sprachbund’ or one of the variously used English counterparts, such as ‘linguistic area’, ‘linguistic union’, ‘convergence area’ or ‘linguistic league’. Indeed, among linguists, one of the things that the Balkans are best known for is being a sprachbund, that is to say, a zone – a geographic grouping – of languages with similarities, especially of a structural nature, that are the result of language contact rather than descent from a common ancestor or typological universals. The Balkan sprachbund, taking in Albanian, Greek, the South Slavic languages Bulgarian, Macedonian, and some dialects of the Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian-Montenegrin (BCSM) complex, the Eastern Romance languages Aromanian, Romanian and Meglenoromanian, the co-territorial dialects of the Indic language Romani, and to some extent the co-territorial dialects of Judezmo (brought to the Ottoman Balkans by Jews expelled from the Iberian peninsula) and Turkic (especially West Rumelian and Gagauz), is noted for a large number of ‘areal features’ – first called ‘Balkanisms’ by Seliščev (1925) – covering aspects of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and lexicon. For concise overviews of these Balkan features, one can consult Friedman (2006a, 2006b, 2011a), Joseph (2003) or Joseph (2010), with more details to be found in handbook-like presentations such as Sandfeld (1930), Schaller (1975), Feuillet (2012), Asenova (2002), Demiraj (2004) and in the compendious Friedman and Joseph (in press b). The result of this linguistic convergence is that, in many instances, one can map between Balkan languages simply by taking note of relevant vocabulary differences.
Providing a contemporary and comprehensive look at the topical area of areal linguistics, this book looks systematically at different regions of the world whilst presenting a focussed and informed overview of the theory behind research into areal linguistics and language contact. The topicality of areal linguistics is thoroughly documented by a wealth of case studies from all major regions of the world and, with chapters from scholars with a broad spectrum of language expertise, it offers insights into the mechanisms of external language change. With no book currently like this on the market, The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics will be welcomed by students and scholars working on the history of language families, documentation and classification, and will help readers to understand the key area of areal linguistics within a broader linguistic context.
This paper investigates the dynamics of multilingualism and the linguistic outcomes of contact involving indigenous languages in the northwest Amazonian Vaupés region. Despite points of continuity, a significant contrast exists between the processes and products of multilingual interaction among indigenous groups and that involving colonial entities. While indigenous interactions have tended to involve language maintenance, grammatical diffusion, and limited lexical borrowing, contact between indigenous and European languages has tended toward more code-switching, lexical borrowing, and large-scale language shift. These findings illustrate that attention to differing linguistic ecologies, with their associated social and cultural dynamics, is crucial to understanding the mechanisms and outcomes of language contact, and that we must be cautious in projecting the patterns of one context upon another.
Speakers of Eastern Tukanoan languages in Brazil and Colombia construe linguistic differences as indices of group identity, intrinsic to a complex ontology in which language is a consubstantial, metaphysical product—a ‘substance’ in the development of the person. Through speech, speakers of the same language signal a corporality based in theories of shared ancestry and mutual belonging while speakers of different languages signal difference. For Tukanoans, then, one creates one's self in the act of speaking. These ontological beliefs underlie speech practices, influencing language maintenance and contributing to one of the most extreme examples of multilingualism reported in the literature.
In this paper I present the types of nominalization in Kakua, a language spoken by a group of hunter-gatherer peoples from the small Kakua-Nukakan family, inhabitants of the Vaupés area in eastern Colombia. I argue that the nominalization strategies in Kakua have developed from a traceable typical Kakua-Nukakan strategy, into a more Vaupés-like profile of expressing nominalizations, where Kakua had added more nominalization strategies in order for the language to adapt to the types of nominalizations found in many of Kakua’s neighboring languages in the Vaupés area. For this, I will first give a description of the nominalization strategies in Kakua, to later compare them to the nominalization strategies in Nukak, Kakua’s sister language spoken outside of the Vaupés area. The paper concludes with a comparison of nominalization in Kakua and the nominalization strategies found in the surrounding languages.
The present study is an in-depth investigation of the Greek language spoken by immigrants in Far North Queensland, Australia. The study focuses on contact-induced changes in the language, such as borrowing of lexemes and discourse patterns, and on code switching. The data analyzed derive from participant observation and some 23 hours of audio and video-recorded conversations with first-and second-generation Greek immigrants that were collected during fieldwork in 2013 in Far North Queens-land. The study contributes to the investigation of the structure and use of Greek in the diaspora by integrating perspectives from contact linguistics and interactional approaches to code switching.
The so-called 'Makú' or 'Makú-Puinavean' language family of the northwest Amazon has long been assumed to include the languages Hup, Yuhup, Dâw, and Nadëb (the 'Nadahupan' group), the sisters Kakua and Nukak, and the language Puinave (or Wã́nsöjöt). Here we evaluate these putative relationships, drawing on a range of newly available lexical and grammatical data. We argue that, while there is solid linguistic evidence of genetic relationship among the four Nadahupan languages, as between Kakua and Nukak, the association between these two groups is unfounded. A distant relationship between Kakua-Nukak and Puinave is slightly more plausible, but also cannot be concluded from the data at hand. The shared lexical and grammatical features that do exist are more easily attributed to contact than genetic inheritance. We conclude with a discussion regarding the choice of names for the distinct family groupings established here, and urge the abandonment of the name 'Makú'.
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