The Persistence of Language

Abstract

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.

Noun Incorporation

“…The goal in spec APPL is not allowed to lower to the verb, thus ruling out an alternative interpretation for the example in (9a), where the incorporated waka 'cow' is the goal (and therefore would have originated in spec ApplP). Haugen and Harley (2013) utilize head movement in their analysis of noun incorporation in Hiaki, but augment it with post-syntactic operations from Distributed Morphology (DM) (Halle and Marantz 1993;Harley and Noyer 1999;Embick and Noyer 2007). One such DM operation is Local Dislocation (Embick and Noyer 2007), which rearranges the linear order of morphemes after syntactic merger.…”

“…We see a Hiaki example in (10a), where the RED is reduplicating the verb root (√). (10) Haugen and Harley (2013) assume that Hiaki is strictly right headed, as in (10b) where the higher heads are on the right, including the RED morpheme. Semantically, the RED aspect has scope over the entire vP (including the object).…”