Analyzing Siriano and Desano to Determine Universal Principles of Language Change

需要一个微妙平衡的语言生态来维持语言异族通婚的做法，确保不同语言的使用者之间的婚姻。这些语言生态和用来维持它们的语言可能开始崩溃，因为说话者过渡到更大的世界语言。亚马逊东北部的两种语言--布拉卡诺语和德萨诺语，传统上是通过语言外婚习俗来维持的，但随着巴西葡萄牙语和西班牙语的影响力越来越大，这种习俗正在瓦解。罗切斯特理工学院的威尔逊·席尔瓦（Wilson Silva）将在语言接触的进一步影响使这一研究变得困难之前，对德萨诺和德萨诺进行为期三年的研究。这些语言表现出许多类型学上值得注意的特征，如鼻音和谐（鼻音扩展到几个部分），音调（使用音高进行有意义的对比），名词分类器（根据通用语义参数对名词进行语法分类）和证据（指示给定陈述的证据类型）。研究产品将包括一个语言注释数据库、Desano参考语法、音频和视频文件以及对Desano的初步描述。席尔瓦的研究将有助于重建德萨诺和塞卡诺所属的沃佩斯语言区语言之间的遗传关系。了解这些密切相关的语言的结构的东图卡诺语分支的图卡诺语系将揭示语言变化的性质，通过与其他语言的接触。该项目得到了社区及其领导人的大力支持，并涉及研究人员和社区成员之间的密切合作，在哥伦比亚和巴西，这些语言的使用。作为这项研究的结果收集的视听和录音资料将在奥斯汀得克萨斯大学拉丁美洲土著语言档案馆和巴西国家印第安人基金会印第安人博物馆存档。

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.