LD&C Special Publication No. 2: Fieldwork and Linguistic Analysis in Indigenous Languages of the Americas
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ItemAcknowledgments(University of Hawai'i Press, 2010-05)
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ItemFront and back cover(University of Hawai'i Press, 2010-05)
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ItemTable of Contents(University of Hawai'i Press, 2010-05)
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ItemContributors(University of Hawai'i Press, 2010-05)
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ItemFront matter(University of Hawai'i Press, 2010-05)
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ItemForeword(University of Hawai'i Press, 2010-05)
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ItemFieldwork and Linguistic Analysis in Indigenous Languages of the Americas(University of Hawai'i Press, 2010-05)
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ItemChapter 10. Revisiting the source: Dependent verbs in Sierra Popoluca (Mixe-Zoquean)(University of Hawai'i Press, 2010-05)Sierra Popoluca (SP) is a Mixe-Zoquean language, spoken by about 28,000 individuals in southern Veracruz, Mexico. The objectives of this paper are (1) to explore the structures of dependent verb constructions in SP and the contexts in which they occur and (2) to highlight the stages in which data is gathered and the interplay between text collection, elicitation, and analysis. SP is an ergative, polysynthetic, head-marking language. It has five dependent verb construction types. Early analyses suggested that dependent verbs were non-finite, nominalized forms. Further research indicated that the verbs are components in complex predicates that share inflection for aspect/mood, person, and number. Implicated in the analysis of these constructions are: the prosodic system; the alignment system, which is hierarchically driven with split ergativity; and the number system, also hierarchically driven. The teasing apart of the various grammatical features led to a multi-step process of analyzing and collecting data. By looking at a complex grammatical structure, this paper highlights the interdependency of corpus building, text analysis, and elicitation and the strategies used to negotiate between naturally occurring speech, in which data may be obscured by phonology, and elicited data, which frequently produces periphrastic constructions or alternative utterance types.
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ItemChapter 9. Be careful what you throw out: Gemination and tonal feet in Weledeh Dogrib(University of Hawai'i Press, 2010-05)The Weledeh dialect of Dogrib (Tłįchǫ Yatiì) is spoken by people of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, in and around Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. Within the formal framework of Lexical Phonology (Kiparsky 1982), this paper argues for an over-arching generalization in the phonology of Weledeh Dogrib: the constraint NoContour-Ft, which prefers (High-High) and (Low-Low) feet, but militates against (High-Low) and (Low-High) feet. NoContour-Ft is satisfied differently in different morphophonological domains: vowel deletion at the Stem Level, gemination at the Word Level, and High to Mid tone lowering at the Postlexical Level. This analysis requires that consonant length be treated as phonological in Dogrib—that is, consonant length contributes to syllable weight and mora count—even though there are no minimal pairs based on consonant length. Similarly, the distinction between High and Middle tone does not distinguish any lexical items, but is nevertheless important for the prosody of the language. Thus the paper makes a methodological point about the importance of allophonic alternations for phonological theory. Our view of what counts as contrastive or allophonic, however, is to a large extent theory-dependent; therefore, the paper also emphasizes the importance of phonetic measurements when doing fieldwork.
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ItemChapter 8. Studying Dena'ina discourse markers: Evidence from elicitation and narrative(University of Hawai'i Press, 2010-05)This paper is concerned with discourse markers in Dena’ina Athabascan. One problem for transcribers and translators of Dena’ina texts is the great number of particles (i.e., words that cannot be inflected) that, according to speaker judgments “have no meaning” or “mean something else in every sentence.” This suggests that these particles are discourse markers, whose function is to relate discourse units to each other and to the discourse as a whole. The paper contrasts two different forms of linguistic inquiry: direct inquiry in the field, by elicitation of meaning and function of the discourse markers, and indirect inquiry, by study of a corpus of Dena’ina narratives. While elicitation is helpful in obtaining an initial gloss for the discourse markers, it is shown that only the study of texts will give us insight into the function of such particles and allows us to understand the important differences between particles that, on first sight, appear to be synonymous.