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: 1837852
• 负责人: Wilson Silva
• 金额: $ 9.04万
• 依托单位: University of Arizona
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-06-01 至 2020-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1837852&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.

维持语言外婚的实践需要一个微妙平衡的语言生态，以确保不同语言的使用者之间的婚姻。随着使用者过渡到更大的世界语言，这些语言生态和用来维持它们的语言可能开始崩溃。亚马逊东北地区的两种语言——西里亚诺语和德萨诺语，传统上通过语言外源实践得以维持，但现在由于巴西葡萄牙语和西班牙语的影响越来越大，它们正在瓦解。罗切斯特理工学院（Rochester Institute of Technology）的威尔逊·席尔瓦（Wilson Silva）将对西里亚诺（sir）和德萨诺（Desano）进行为期三年的研究，以免语言接触的进一步影响使这项研究变得困难。这些语言在类型学上表现出许多值得注意的特征，具有广泛的学术兴趣，如鼻音和谐（鼻音延伸到几个部分），音调（使用音高进行有意义的对比），名词分类器（根据普遍的语义参数从语法上对名词进行分类）和证据性（表明对给定陈述可用的证据类型）。研究产品将包括一个带有语言注释的数据库、Desano的参考语法、音频和视频文件以及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的vaupsamas语言区语言之间的遗传关系。了解图卡诺语族的东图卡诺语支中这些密切相关的语言的结构，将有助于阐明通过与其他语言接触而发生语言变化的本质。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。这项研究所收集的视听和录音资料的语料库将保存在位于奥斯汀的德克萨斯大学的拉丁美洲土著语言档案馆和位于巴西国家印第安人基金会的印第安人博物馆（Museu do Índio at The funda<s:1> o Nacional do Índio）。