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

就像生物学家有方法来研究物种之间的关系一样，语言学家也有方法来确定语言之间的关系。语言学家通过比较不同维度的一组语言来做到这一点，例如可能有共同起源的单词或语言结构。个别语言的记录在学者如何重建语言之间的家庭关系中起着关键作用，但在很少或没有记录的情况下，对语言关系做出决定性的决定是非常具有挑战性的。根据现有的少量数据，该项目将对五种相互关联的濒危语言进行调查。由于这些语言只在偏远、冲突频发的地区使用，只有通过人行道才能到达，因此这些语言的记录很少。该项目还将通过记录这一组中的个别语言，并通过比较每种语言的特定词汇和其他语言特征，来研究这些语言是否与邻近地理区域的其他语言相关。本文将增进对这五种目标语言的语言理解，以及它们之间的相互关系和与该地区其他语言的关系。本文还将通过收集和分析新的文献资料，对这些语言的语音系统和语法中出现频率较低的句型(类型学)有更深入的了解。这些文件不仅将服务于语言学家和教育家，还将服务于人类学家和历史学家，他们对这个几乎被遗忘的地区的居民感兴趣。在这个论文项目中，博士生曼努埃尔·奥特罗将记录濒危语言，包括科曼人的比较词汇。科曼语构成了埃塞俄比亚、苏丹和南苏丹边境地区使用的五种语言的一小部分。除乌杜克语外，科曼语只在非洲使用，因此将主要在埃塞俄比亚对科莫语、瓜马语、奥普奥语和达纳语进行实地考察。人们对科曼语和科曼人知之甚少，因为这些群体数百年来居住的地形崎岖，主要通过人行道沟通。大多数科曼人继续传统的做法，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，他们的一些语言濒临灭绝，迫切需要文件。主要的研究问题涉及发展对他们的声音系统和语法、他们的相互关系以及科曼语如何与更大的非洲语系相关的理解，这一点仍在辩论中。科曼语类中罕见的语法特征包括由后缀造成的时间差异，这些后缀主要指示移动的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，因为它们展示了语法材料是如何进化的。在科曼语中，“时态”的语法是由于人类想要传达其他生物的下落而发展起来的。

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.