Dissertation Research: Pilaga Grammar and Texts

目前的项目是完成编写阿根廷瓜库鲁语皮拉加语语法所需的研究。瓜库鲁语代表了我们目前对世界语言知识的一个重大差距。目前，这个语系的任何一种语言都没有完整的语法。此外，语言学家也不清楚Guaykuruan家族与其他家族的基因关系。皮拉加语语法有多种用途。一种是记录一种信息极其稀少的语言。皮拉加的参考语法将解决一般语言学家当前感兴趣的主题，如语法关系，词序，词汇化模式和类别的句法再分析。该语法将伴随着一系列文本，这些文本将捕捉皮拉加文化的一部分，并说明该语言在各种话语类型中的使用，包括叙事和会话话语。所采用的方法是结合传统的现场技术，即记录、转录和翻译文本；现代数据处理；以及近年来一些话语分析方法的应用。这个项目的时间紧迫。皮拉加语有2500人使用，受到来自西班牙语的强烈社会语言学压力。年轻一代的语言表现出高度的借用，在特定的语言交流中，西班牙语和皮拉加语之间的转换是显而易见的。

The current project is to complete the research necessary for writing a grammar of Pilaga, a Guaykuruan language of Argentina. The Guaykuruan languages represent a significant gap in our current knowledge of languages of the world. At present, no comprehensive grammar exists for any language of this family. Furthermore, linguists have no clear sense of how the Guaykuruan family is genetically related to any other family. A grammar of Pilaga will serve various purposes. One is to document a language about which information is extremely scarce. A reference grammar of Pilaga will address topics of current interest among general linguists, such as grammatical relations, word order, lexicalization patterns and syntactic reanalysis of categories. The grammar will be accompanied by a collection of texts that will capture part of the Pilaga culture, and illustrate the use of the language in various discourse genres, including narrative and conversational discourse. Methods to be employed are a combination of traditional field techniques, i.e., recording, transcribing and translating texts; modern data processing; and the application of some recent methodologies in discourse analysis. The timing is urgent for this project. Pilaga is spoken by 2500 people and is under intense sociolinguistic pressure from Spanish. The language of the youngest generations shows a high level of borrowings and switching between Spanish and Pilaga during particular linguistic exchanges is evident.