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

就像生物学家有方法研究物种之间的关系一样，语言学家也有方法确定语言之间的关系。语言学家通过比较一组语言沿着不同的维度来做到这一点，比如可能有共同起源的单词或语言结构。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文献，要对语言关系做出结论性的确定是非常具有挑战性的。 该项目将根据现有的少量数据，调查一小部分相互关联的五种濒危语言。 由于这些语言只在一个偏远的、冲突不断的地区使用，除了人行道之外，无法进入这些地区，因此这些语言的记录很少。该项目还将通过记录该组中的各个语言，并通过比较每个语言的特定单词和其他语言特征，研究这些语言是否与邻近地理区域的其他语言相关。 论文将增加对五种目标语言及其相互关系以及与该地区其他语言的语言理解。本文还将通过收集和分析新的文献，对这些语言的语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。这些文献不仅将为语言学家和教育工作者服务，也将为对这一几乎被遗忘的地区的居民感兴趣的人类学家和历史学家服务。在本论文项目中，博士生曼努埃尔·奥威尔将记录濒危语言，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之一。除了Uduk之外，科曼语只在非洲使用，因此实地工作将主要在埃塞俄比亚进行，以了解Komo、Gwama、Opuo和Dana语言。人们对科曼语和科曼人知之甚少，因为这些群体居住了几个世纪的地形崎岖不平，主要通过人行道进行交流。大多数科曼人继续传统习俗，包括狩猎和采集以及自给农业。受世纪多的冲突和纷争的影响，这些人口继续减少，他们的一些语言濒临灭绝，迫切需要文献记录。主要的研究问题涉及发展他们的语音系统和语法的理解，他们的相互关系，以及如何科曼涉及到更大的非洲语系，这仍在辩论中。在科曼语中，类型学上罕见的语法特征包括后缀所做的时间区分，这些后缀主要表示运动的方向和跟踪参与者的位置。这样的系统对人类语言和认知的研究很重要，因为它们展示了语法材料是如何进化的。在科曼语中，“时态”的语法是出于人类交流其他生物下落的愿望而发展起来的。

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.