Analyzing Siriano and Desano to Determine Universal Principles of Language Change

需要一个微妙平衡的语言生态，以维持语言外婚制的做法，以确保不同语言使用者之间的婚姻。随着说话者向更大的世界语言过渡，这些语言生态和用来维持它们的语言可能会开始崩溃。西里亚诺语和德萨诺语是亚马孙东北部的两种语言，传统上是通过语言外化做法维持的，现在随着巴西葡萄牙语和西班牙语的影响越来越大，这种做法正在瓦解。罗切斯特理工学院的威尔逊·席尔瓦将对西里亚诺和德萨诺进行为期三年的研究，之后语言接触的进一步影响将使这一研究变得困难。这些语言表现出了一些值得注意的类型学特征，引起了广泛的学术兴趣，如鼻腔和谐(鼻音跨越几个音段)、语气(使用音调进行有意义的对比)、名词量词(根据普遍语义参数对名词进行语法分类)和证据性(表明某一陈述可以获得何种证据)。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对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沃佩·S语言区域的语言之间的遗传关系。了解图卡诺语族东图卡诺语分支的这些密切相关语言的结构，将有助于通过与其他语言的接触来揭示语言变化的本质。该项目得到了社区及其领导人的大力支持，并涉及哥伦比亚和巴西的研究人员和使用这些语言的社区成员之间的密切合作。这项研究收集的视听和录音资料将保存在得克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的拉丁美洲土著语言档案馆和巴西国家印第安人基金会的印第安人博物馆(巴西国家博物馆)。

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.