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This edited collection presents two sets of interdisciplinary conversations connecting theoretical, methodological, and ideological issues in the study of language. In the first section, Approaches to the study of the indigenous languages of the Americas, the authors connect historical, theoretical, and documentary linguistics to examine the crucial role of endangered language data for the development of biopsychological theory and to highlight how methodological decisions impact language revitalization efforts. Section two, Approaches to the study of voices and ideologies, connects anthropological and documentary linguistics to examine how discourses of language contact, endangerment, linguistic purism and racism shape scholarly practice and language policy and to underscore the need for linguists and laypersons alike to acquire the analytical tools to deconstruct discourses of inequality. Together, these chapters pay homage to the scholarship of Jane H. Hill, demonstrating how a critical, interdisciplinary linguistics narrows the gap between disparate fields of analysis to treat the ecology of language in its entirety.

“Community language workers, speakers, and other members of local groups are both participants and overhearers in a global conversation about language endangerment in which the voices of academics and policymakers are especially prominent. How might this global conversation resonate for members of communities that are custodians of endangered languages – communities that are themselves a diverse audience? Do they find it empowering and encouraging, unintelligible and alienating, or something in between?” (Hill 2002: 119). We discuss ‘grass roots digital archiving’ as a method of addressing Hill’s questions. Specifically, we discuss the Coeur d’Alene Archive and Online Language Resources as a case study of digital archiving undertaken in the spirit of grass roots archiving and digital resource creation.

This paper presents a formal account of lexical affixes in Coeur dÕAlene (Salish/Idaho USA). Lexical Affixes comprise a closed class of bound morphemes which productively add semantic content to the predicate in the Salishan family of languages, among others. It is argued that Lexical Affixes are arguments that incorporate syntactically (Baker 1988) along the lines of Harley (2004) who argues for a Conflation (Hale & Keyser 2002) analysis of compounding in English. Further, it is argued that a Conflation account of incorporation is preferable to that proposed by Baker, Aranovich, and Golluscio (2004), in which a great number of theoretical mechanisms are proposed. The Conflation analysis proposed here accounts for the same phenomena with far fewer theoretical mechanisms.

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