Analyzing Siriano and Desano to Determine Universal Principles of Language Change

分析 Siriano 和 Desano 以确定语言变化的普遍原则

• 批准号: 1500755
• 负责人: Wilson Silva
• 金额: $ 16.06万
• 依托单位: Rochester Institute of Tech
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-07-01 至 2018-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1500755&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Analyzing; Siriano; Desano; Determine; Universal

A finely balanced linguistic ecology is needed to sustain the practice of linguistic exogamy which ensures that marriage occurs between speakers of different languages. These linguistic ecologies and the languages used to sustain them can begin to breakdown as speakers transition to larger world languages. Siriano and Desano, two languages of Northeastern Amazonia, have traditionally been maintained through linguistic exogamic practices which are now breaking down with the increasing influence of Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish. Wilson Silva of the Rochester Institute of Technology will undertake a three-year study of Siriano [sir] and Desano [des] before further influence of language contact makes this difficult. These languages exhibit a number of typologically noteworthy features of broad scholarly interest such nasal harmony (where nasality extends over several segments), tone (the use of pitch for meaningful contrasts), noun classifiers (classifying nouns grammatically in terms of universal semantic parameters), and evidentiality (indicating what kinds of evidence are available for a given statement). Research products will include a linguistically annotated database, a reference grammar for Desano, audio and video documentation and preliminary description of Siriano. Silva's research will be useful in reconstructing the genetic relationship among languages of the Vaupés Linguistic Area to which Desano and Siriano belong. Understanding the structures of these closely related languages of the Eastern Tukanoan branch of the Tukanoan family will shed light on the nature of language change through contact with other languages.This project has strong support from the communities and their leaders, and involves close collaboration between researchers and community members in Colombia and Brazil where these languages are spoken. The corpus of audiovisual and audio recordings collected as a result of this research will be archived at the Archive of the Indigenous Language of Latin America at the University of Texas at Austin and at the Museum of the Indian at National Foundation of the Indian (Museu do Índio at the Fundação Nacional do Índio), Brazil.

需要一种精细平衡的语言生态来维持语言异族通婚的实践，从而确保不同语言的使用者之间发生婚姻。随着说话者转向更广泛的世界语言，这些语言生态和用于维持它们的语言可能会开始崩溃。西里亚诺语和德萨诺语是亚马逊流域东北部的两种语言，传统上是通过语言外婚实践来维持的，但随着巴西葡萄牙语和西班牙语影响力的不断增强，这种做法现在正在崩溃。罗切斯特理工学院的威尔逊·席尔瓦 (Wilson Silva) 将对 Siriano [sir] 和 Desano [des] 进行为期三年的研究，之后语言接触的进一步影响会使研究变得困难。这些语言表现出许多具有广泛学术兴趣的类型学上值得注意的特征，例如鼻音和谐（鼻音延伸到多个片段）、语气（使用音高进行有意义的对比）、名词分类器（根据通用语义参数对名词进行语法分类）和证据性（表明给定陈述有哪些类型的证据可用）。研究产品将包括语言注释数据库、Desano 参考语法、音频和视频文档以及 Siriano 的初步描述。席尔瓦的研究将有助于重建德萨诺和西里亚诺所属沃佩斯语言区的语言之间的亲缘关系。了解图卡诺语系东图卡诺语支这些密切相关的语言的结构，将有助于揭示通过与其他语言接触而发生的语言变化的本质。该项目得到了社区及其领导人的大力支持，并涉及使用这些语言的哥伦比亚和巴西的研究人员和社区成员之间的密切合作。本研究收集的视听和录音资料库将存档于德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的拉丁美洲土著语言档案馆和巴西国家印第安人基金会的印第安人博物馆（Museu do Índio at the Fundação Nacional do Índio）。