The Last Language on Earth
The Last Language on Earth
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地球上最后的语言
DOI：
10.1093/oso/9780197509913.001.0001
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发表时间：
2022
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《地球上最后的语言》是有争议的埃斯卡亚语的人种学历史，今天居住在菲律宾南部博霍岛上的一个与世隔绝的高地社区说这种语言。1980年，埃斯卡亚人首次被发现后，游客将他们描述为一个失落的部落，保留着独特的语言和文字系统。其他人则认为，埃斯卡亚人只是一个乌托邦乡村邪教的成员，他们发明了自己的语言和文字。这本书不是评判局外人的争论，而是直接与语言本身接触，以及今天使用这种语言的人的直接观点。通过书面和口头叙述，埃斯卡亚人将他们的语言表现为源于人体的祖先创造。皮尔斯·凯利的语言分析强化了这一传统观点，展示了一个复杂的新语域是如何通过将新词汇融合到修改后的本地语法中而产生的。在语言、人种学和历史证据的综合中，出现了一幅沿海社区的图景，他们逃离了1901年美国入侵该岛的蹂躏，以便在山上建立一个乌托邦社会。在这里，他们预测世界上的语言将会减少，留下埃斯卡亚语成为地球上的最后一种语言。凯利整理了民族主义、真实性和语言意识形态的人类学理论，并与东南亚高原地区的类似事件进行了比较，对这一语言之谜进行了令人信服的描述，并展示了它与语言人类学更广泛的相关性。尽管爱斯卡雅人的情况不同寻常，但它有能力说明语言在追求身份认同和政治抵抗方面发挥的关键作用。
The Last Language on Earth is an ethnographic history of the disputed Eskayan language, spoken today by an isolated upland community living on the island of Bohol in the southern Philippines. After Eskaya people were first'discovered'in 1980, visitors described the group as a lost tribe preserving a unique language and writing system. Others argued that the Eskaya were merely members of a utopian rural cult who had invented their own language and script. Rather than adjudicating outsider polemics, this book engages directly with the language itself as well as the direct perspectives of those who use it today. Through written and oral accounts, Eskaya people have represented their language as an ancestral creation derived from a human body. Reinforcing this traditional view, Piers Kelly's linguistic analysis shows how a complex new register was brought into being by fusing new vocabulary onto a modified local grammar. In a synthesis of linguistic, ethnographic, and historical evidence, a picture emerges of a coastal community that fled the ravages of the US invasion of the island in 1901 in order to build a utopian society in the hills. Here they predicted that the world's languages would decline leaving Eskayan as the last language on earth. Marshalling anthropological theories of nationalism, authenticity, and language ideology, along with comparisons to similar events across highland Southeast Asia, Kelly offers a convincing account of this linguistic mystery and also shows its broader relevance to linguistic anthropology. Although the Eskayan situation is unusual, it has the power to illuminate the pivotal role that language plays in the pursuit of identity-building and political resistance.