Collaborative Research: Kokama-Kokamilla (cod) and Omagua (omg): Documentation, Description, and (Non-)Genetic Relationships

这个合作项目将完成对两种高度濒危和密切相关的亚马逊语言——奥马瓜语和科科马-科科米拉语的记录和描述，并试图确定这两种历史上重要语言的起源。当欧洲人到达美洲时，奥马瓜语是亚马逊流域最大的语言之一。然而，奥马瓜人在欧洲人入侵期间遭受了巨大的损失，现在说奥马瓜语的人不到10人，最年轻的也有80岁了。尽管这门语言具有重要的历史意义，但没有关于奥马瓜语的语法描述，也没有任何殖民时代词汇表以外的词汇资源。Kokama-Kokamilla的地区和情况也类似。研究人员将与这些濒危语言的剩余使用者密切合作，开发词典，收集口头和书面文本，以及语言的语法描述。Michael博士将专注于Omagua的文献，Vallejos博士将专注于Kokama-Kokamilla的文献，以创建一个永久的语言记录，供民族社区、语言学家、人类学家和历史学家使用。除了语言文献的基本科学任务之外，该项目旨在确定奥马瓜语和Kokama-Kokamilla语与其他亚马逊语言的关系，并在此过程中深入了解前哥伦比亚文化历史。虽然长期以来被认为是横跨大陆Tupí-Guaraní家族的成员，但最近的研究表明，Omagua和Kokama-Kokamilla是通过Tupí-Guaraní语言的使用者和另一种未知语言的使用者之间的接触而产生的。结果产生了一种语言，它将Tupí-Guaraní的词汇和语法与那些未知的接触语言混合在一起。通过系统地比较Omagua和Kokama-Kokamilla的词汇和语法特征与亚马逊地区其他语系的词汇和语法特征，以及与这两种语言使用地区的特定语言，Michael博士和Vallejos博士将澄清涉及它们起源的语言过程，从而深入了解它们产生的文化环境。

This collaborative project will complete the documentation and description of two highly endangered and closely-related Amazonian languages, Omagua and Kokama-Kokamilla, and seek to determine the origin of these two historically important languages. When Europeans arrived in the Americas, Omagua was one the largest languages of the Amazon basin. The Omaguas suffered tremendously during the European invasion, however, and Omagua now has fewer than ten speakers, the youngest being 80 years old. Despite the historical importance of the language, there are no grammatical descriptions of Omagua, nor any lexical resources beyond colonial era wordlists. The area and situation is similar for Kokama-Kokamilla. The researchers will work closely with the remaining speakers of these endangered languages to develop dictionaries, a collection of oral and written texts, and grammatical descriptions of the languages. Dr. Michael will focus on the documentation of Omagua and Dr. Vallejos on the documentation of Kokama-Kokamilla to create a permanent record of the languages for use by the ethnic communities, linguists, anthropologists, and historians. Beyond the basic scientific task of language documentation, this project aims at determining the relationship of Omagua and Kokama-Kokamilla to other Amazonian languages, and in doing so, gain insights into Pre-Columbian cultural history. Although long thought to be members of the continent-spanning Tupí-Guaraní family, recent work has demonstrated that Omagua and Kokama-Kokamilla arose through contact between speakers of a Tupí-Guaraní language and speakers of another unknown language. The result was a language that mixes aspects of the Tupí-Guaraní lexicon and grammar with those from the unknown contact language. By systematically comparing the lexicon and grammatical features of Omagua and Kokama-Kokamilla with those of other language families across Amazonia, and with specific languages in the area in which these two languages are spoken, Dr. Michael and Dr. Vallejos will clarify the linguistic processes involved in their genesis, thereby gaining insights into the cultural circumstances in which they arose.