Chapter 3. Endangered Languages of Lowland Tropical South America

Moore, Denny

doi:10.1515/9783110905694-005

Cited by 18 publications

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“…The intervening 10 to 15 years have seen numerous advances in both descriptive and historical studies; yet given the scale of the task, few today would argue with Rodrigues’ observation (2000b: 23) that ‘historical‐comparative studies of Amazonian languages are in a very incipient stage, and will only progress more decidedly when descriptive studies are intensified and cover the great majority of the region's languages.’ 3 The most recent comprehensive surveys of Amazonian languages and their classification may be found in Dixon and Aikhenvald (1999a), Queixalós and Renault‐Lescure (2000); further surveys by country are Rodrigues (2000b, 2006; cf. Rodrigues 1986) and Moore (2006, 2007) for Brazil, Solís Fonseca (2003) for Peru, and Gonzalez de Perez and Rodriguez de Montes (2000) for Colombia.…”

Section: Relationships Due To Common Descentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language Classification, Language Contact, and Amazonian Prehistory

Epps

2009

Language and Linguist. Compass

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The linguistic map of Amazonia presents a startling jumble of languages and language families. While some families – most notably Carib, Arawak, Macro‐Jê, and Tupí– are distributed widely throughout the region, their spread is interspersed with many dozens of tiny, localized families and language isolates, particularly in the Amazonian periphery. At the same time, distributions of lexical, grammatical, and phonological features suggest that this linguistic patchwork is overlaid in places by contact regions, where multilingualism has fostered lexical and/or structural resemblances among languages. This complex distribution of languages and linguistic features presents many challenges to our understanding of Amazonian prehistory. How did Amazonia's language families arrive at their present distribution? Why did some families spread over huge distances, while others came to occupy only tiny geographical pockets or are limited to a single language? What kinds of interactions among peoples led to the formation of contact zones, and how are these regions defined? Complicating these questions further is the fact that very little is known about many Amazonian languages, and relationships among them are in many cases a matter of conjecture. This article surveys our current understanding of language classification and language contact in Amazonia, and addresses various perspectives concerning the implications of these relationships for Amazonian prehistory.

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Section: Relationships Due To Common Descentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language Classification, Language Contact, and Amazonian Prehistory

Epps

2009

Language and Linguist. Compass

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“…She also surveys five languages from four small families (Tacanan [2], Arawán, Katukinan, and Yanomam), all of which might once have had many more members, and one isolate (Trumai). Moore (2007) estimates that as of 2000, less than 60% of the languages of Brazilian Amazonia had received even minimal descriptive attention; we confidently assert that the percentage is even lower in the Amazonian regions of neighboring countries. Given what we already know about these families, we conservatively estimate that we could double the number of languages in Monros' survey, and as more languages are described, it is safe to assume that the number of clearly attested cases of ergativity will continue to increase.…”

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confidence: 58%

Manifestations of ergativity in Amazonia

Queixalós

Gildea

2010

Ergativity in Amazonia

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as part of a programme of joint projects called Programmes internationaux de coopération scientifique (PICS). The Ergativity project was hosted at the Laboratório de Línguas Indígenas (LALI) of the University of Brazilia, directed by Prof. Aryon Rodrigues. The French collaborator was Francesc Queixalós, Centre d'Etudes des Langues Indigènes d'Amérique. The three annual workshops held during the project gathered colleagues from several countries, including Brazil, France, Peru, the United States, Australia, the Netherlands, and Spain, all but one working on first hand data from living Amazonian languages. The working papers of the project can be accessed at: 1

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“…However, as Derbyshire and Pullum (1998) note, the heightened interest in Amazonian languages in the 1990s was also due in large part to several Amazonian specialists who advised numerous graduate students during the decade and ⁄ or encouraged other linguists to work in the region. According to Derbyshire and Pullum, three of the most influential Amazonianists were Spike Gildea (1992), Denny Moore (1984)), Daniel Everett (1991), (Everett and Kern 1997). Gildea served on the PhD committees of several Amazonian linguists at Rice University.…”

Section: The Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Amazonian linguists, as with linguists of so many other regions, are acutely aware of this endangerment and recent studies, e.g. Franchetto (2006), Wetzels (2007) and Moore (2007), have specifically addressed the topic of language documentation among endangered Amazonian languages. Seifart et al (2008) contains a discussion of the ethical and technical challenges faced by linguists interested in such documentation.…”

Section: Trends and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Survey of Contemporary Research on Amazonian Languages

Everett

2010

Language and Linguist. Compass

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Amazonian languages have long confounded linguists. The languages represent a large number of linguistic families, including Tupí, Jê, Carib and Arawak, and the languages exhibit a wide variety of typologically‐remarkable structural characteristics. Since the inception of the European colonization of Amazonia over four hundred years ago, missionary linguists have attempted to document the languages of the region. It is only relatively recently, however, that a large number of linguists at academic institutions have undertaken in‐depth field research in the region. The author examines the current state of Amazonian linguistics. The history of language research in the region is first outlined, though the majority of attention is devoted to surveying significant field research that has been undertaken in the last decade. Some recent studies on morphology, syntax, phonetics, and psycholinguistics are highlighted. The reader’s attention is drawn to trends, related to both the methodology and content of the research. Despite some possible areas for improvement, it is suggested that much of the recent work is of excellent quality, as evidenced by the fact that much of the research in question has drawn attention within linguistics and the cognitive sciences more generally.

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Chapter 3. Endangered Languages of Lowland Tropical South America

Cited by 18 publications

References 0 publications

Language Classification, Language Contact, and Amazonian Prehistory

Language Classification, Language Contact, and Amazonian Prehistory

Manifestations of ergativity in Amazonia

A Survey of Contemporary Research on Amazonian Languages

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