Collaborative Research: Kokama-Kokamilla (cod) and Omagua (omg): Documentation, Description, and (Non-)Genetic Relationships

这一合作项目将完成对两种高度濒危和密切相关的亚马逊语言Omagua和Kokama-Kokamilla的记录和描述，并寻求确定这两种具有重要历史意义的语言的起源。当欧洲人到达美洲时，奥马瓜语是亚马逊盆地最大的语言之一。然而，奥马瓜人在欧洲入侵期间遭受了巨大的痛苦，奥马瓜现在只有不到十个人说，最年轻的已经80岁了。尽管该语言的历史重要性，但没有对奥马瓜语的语法描述，也没有任何殖民时代词汇表以外的词汇资源。Kokama-Kokamilla的地区和情况类似。研究人员将与这些濒危语言的剩余使用者密切合作，开发字典，收集口头和书面文本，以及语言的语法描述。Michael博士将专注于Omagua的文献，Vallejos博士将专注于Kokama-Kokamilla的文献，以创建一个永久的语言记录，供民族社区，语言学家，人类学家和历史学家使用。除了语言文献的基本科学任务之外，该项目旨在确定Omagua和Kokama-Kokamilla与其他亚马逊语言的关系，并在此过程中深入了解前哥伦布文化历史。虽然长期以来被认为是横跨大陆的图皮-瓜拉尼家族的成员，但最近的研究表明，奥马瓜和科卡马-科卡米拉是通过图皮-瓜拉尼语的使用者和另一种未知语言的使用者之间的接触而产生的。其结果是一种混合了图皮-瓜拉尼语词汇和语法与未知接触语言的语言。通过系统地比较Omagua和Kokama-Kokamilla的词汇和语法特征与亚马逊地区其他语系的词汇和语法特征，以及使用这两种语言的地区的特定语言，Michael博士和Vallejos博士将阐明其起源所涉及的语言过程，从而深入了解它们产生的文化环境。

This collaborative project will complete the documentation and description of two highly endangered and closely-related Amazonian languages, Omagua and Kokama-Kokamilla, and seek to determine the origin of these two historically important languages. When Europeans arrived in the Americas, Omagua was one the largest languages of the Amazon basin. The Omaguas suffered tremendously during the European invasion, however, and Omagua now has fewer than ten speakers, the youngest being 80 years old. Despite the historical importance of the language, there are no grammatical descriptions of Omagua, nor any lexical resources beyond colonial era wordlists. The area and situation is similar for Kokama-Kokamilla. The researchers will work closely with the remaining speakers of these endangered languages to develop dictionaries, a collection of oral and written texts, and grammatical descriptions of the languages. Dr. Michael will focus on the documentation of Omagua and Dr. Vallejos on the documentation of Kokama-Kokamilla to create a permanent record of the languages for use by the ethnic communities, linguists, anthropologists, and historians. Beyond the basic scientific task of language documentation, this project aims at determining the relationship of Omagua and Kokama-Kokamilla to other Amazonian languages, and in doing so, gain insights into Pre-Columbian cultural history. Although long thought to be members of the continent-spanning Tupí-Guaraní family, recent work has demonstrated that Omagua and Kokama-Kokamilla arose through contact between speakers of a Tupí-Guaraní language and speakers of another unknown language. The result was a language that mixes aspects of the Tupí-Guaraní lexicon and grammar with those from the unknown contact language. By systematically comparing the lexicon and grammatical features of Omagua and Kokama-Kokamilla with those of other language families across Amazonia, and with specific languages in the area in which these two languages are spoken, Dr. Michael and Dr. Vallejos will clarify the linguistic processes involved in their genesis, thereby gaining insights into the cultural circumstances in which they arose.