Doctoral Dissertation Research: Documenting the endangered Koman languages and their linguistic relationships

就像生物学家有研究物种之间关系的方法一样，语言学家也有确定语言之间关系的方法。语言学家通过在不同的维度上比较一组语言来做到这一点，比如单词或语言结构可能有一个共同的起源。个别语言的文献在学者如何重建语言之间的家族关系中起着关键作用，但由于文献很少或没有，对语言关系做出结论性的确定是极具挑战性的。该项目将根据现有的小组数据，调查五种相互关联的濒危语言。由于这些语言只在偏远、冲突频发的地区使用，除非走小路才能进入，因此记录很少。该项目还将研究这些语言是否与邻近地理区域的其他语言有关，通过记录这一群体中的个别语言，并通过比较每种语言的特定单词和其他语言特征。本文将增加对五种目标语言的语言理解，以及它们彼此之间以及与该地区其他语言之间的关系。本论文还将通过收集和分析新的文档，对这些语言的声音系统和语法中不太常见的模式类型（“类型学”）进行更深入的了解。这些文件不仅将为语言学家和教育家，也将为对这个几乎被遗忘地区的居民感兴趣的人类学家和历史学家提供服务。在这个论文项目中，博士生Manuel Otero将记录濒危语言，包括科曼人的比较词汇。科曼语是埃塞俄比亚、苏丹和南苏丹边境地区使用的五种语言中的一小部分。除了乌杜克语外，科曼语只在非洲使用，因此实地考察将主要在埃塞俄比亚进行，考察科莫语、瓜马语、奥普语和达纳语。人们对科曼语言和民族知之甚少，因为这些群体居住了几个世纪的地形崎岖不平，主要通过人行道交流。大多数科曼人继续着传统的习俗，包括狩猎和采集以及自给自足的农业。受一个多世纪的冲突和冲突的影响，这些人口继续减少，他们的一些语言处于灭绝的边缘，迫切需要记录。主要的研究问题是发展对他们的声音系统和语法的理解，他们之间的相互关系，以及科曼语与更大的非洲语系的关系，这仍在争论中。在科曼语中，罕见的语法特征包括由后缀造成的时间区别，这些后缀主要表明运动方向和跟踪参与者的位置。这些系统对人类语言和认知的研究很重要，因为它们显示了语法材料是如何进化的。在科曼语中，“时态”的语法是由人类想要交流其他生物行踪的愿望发展而来的。

Just like biologists have methods to investigate the relationships between species, linguists have methods that allow them to determine the relationships between languages. Linguists do this by comparing a set of languages along various dimensions, such as words or language structures that may have a common origin. Documentation of individual languages plays a key role in how scholars reconstruct the family relationships between languages, but with little or no documentation, it is highly challenging to make conclusive determinations of the linguistic relationships. This project will investigate a small set of five endangered languages which are related to each other, according to the existing small sets of data. These languages are poorly documented due to being spoken only in a remote, conflict-ridden area, inaccessible except by footpaths. This project will also research whether these languages are related to others in the neighboring geographic region by documenting the individual languages in this group, and by making comparisons between specific words and other linguistic features of each of the languages. The dissertation will increase the linguistic understanding of the five targeted languages and their relationships with each other and with other languages in the region. This dissertation will also add deeper insight to the less frequent type of patterns ("typology") in the sound systems and in grammar of these languages by collecting and analyzing new documentation. The documentation will serve not only linguists and educators but also anthropologists and historians interested in the inhabitants of a virtually forgotten area. In this dissertation project, doctoral student Manuel Otero will document the endangered languages, including a comparative vocabulary of the Koman peoples. The Koman languages constitute a small group of five languages spoken in the Ethiopia, Sudan and South Sudan borderlands. Aside from Uduk, the Koman languages are only spoken in Africa, so fieldwork will be carried out primarily in Ethiopia for the Komo, Gwama, Opuo and Dana languages. Little is known about the Koman languages and peoples, as the terrain these groups have inhabited for centuries is rugged and primarily communicable by footpaths. Most Koman people continue traditional practices, including hunting and gathering alongside subsistence farming. Impacted by more than a century of strife and conflict, these populations continue to dwindle and some of their languages are on the verge of extinction, in urgent need of documentation. The primary research questions concern developing an understanding of their sound systems and grammar, their interrelationships, and how Koman relates to larger African language families, which is still under debate. Typologically rare grammatical features in Koman include temporal distinctions made by suffixes that primarily indicate direction of movement and track the location of participants. Such systems are important to the study of human language and cognition, as they show how grammatical material can evolve. In Koman languages, the grammar of "tense" is developing out of the human desire to communicate the whereabouts of other animate beings.