Displaying 1 - 100 of 379
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Adam, R., Orfanidou, E., McQueen, J. M., & Morgan, G. (2011). Sign language comprehension: Insights from misperceptions of different phonological parameters. In R. Channon, & H. Van der Hulst (
Eds. ), Formational units in sign languages (pp. 87-106). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter and Ishara Press. -
Allen, G. L., & Haun, D. B. M. (2004). Proximity and precision in spatial memory. In G. Allen (
Ed. ), Human spatial memory: Remembering where (pp. 41-63). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. -
Ameka, F. K. (1995). Body parts in Ewe grammar. In H. Chapell, & W. McGregor (
Eds. ), The grammar of inalienability: A typological perspective on body part terms and the part-whole relation (pp. 783-840). Berlin: De Gruyter. -
Ameka, F. K. (1999). Interjections. In K. Brown, & J. Miller (
Eds. ), Concise encyclopedia of grammatical categories (pp. 213-216). Oxford: Elsevier. -
Ameka, F. K., De Witte, C., & Wilkins, D. (1999). Picture series for positional verbs: Eliciting the verbal component in locative descriptions. In D. Wilkins (
Ed. ), Manual for the 1999 Field Season (pp. 48-54). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.2573831.Abstract
How do different languages encode location and position meanings? In conjunction with the BowPed picture series and Caused Positions task, this elicitation tool is designed to help researchers (i) identify a language’s resources for encoding topological relations; (ii) delimit the pragmatics of use of such resources; and (iii) determine the semantics of select spatial terms. The task focuses on the exploration of the predicative component of topological expressions (e.g., ‘the cassavas are lying in the basket’), especially the contrastive elicitation of positional verbs. The materials consist of a set of photographs of objects (e.g., bottles, cloths, sticks) in specific configurations with various ground items (e.g., basket, table, tree).Additional information
1999_Positional_verbs_stimuli.zip -
Bauer, B. L. M. (2022). Counting systems. In A. Ledgeway, & M. Maiden (
Eds. ), The Cambridge Handbook of Romance Linguistics (pp. 459-488). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Abstract
The Romance counting system is numerical – with residues of earlier systems whereby each commodity had its own unit of quantification – and decimal. Numeral formations beyond ‘10’ are compounds, combining two or more numerals that are in an arithmetical relation, typically that of addition and multiplication. Formal variation across the (standard) Romance languages and dialects and across historical stages involves the relative sequence of the composing elements, absence or presence of connectors, their synthetic vs. analytic nature, and the degree of grammatical marking. A number of ‘deviant’ numeral formations raise the question of borrowing vs independent development, such as vigesimals (featuring a base ‘20’ instead ‘10’) in certain Romance varieties and the teen and decad formations in Romanian. The other types of numeral in Romance, which derive from the unmarked and consistent cardinals, feature a significantly higher degree of formal complexity and variation involving Latin formants and tend toward analyticity. While Latin features prominently in the Romance counting system as a source of numeral formations and suffixes, it is only in Romance that the inherited decimal system reached its full potential, illustrating its increasing prominence, reflected not only in numerals, but also in language acquisition, sign language, and post-Revolution measuring systems. -
Bauer, B. L. M. (1999). Impersonal HABET constructions: At the cross-roads of Indo-European innovation. In E. Polomé, & C. Justus (
Eds. ), Language change and typological variation. Vol II. Grammatical universals and typology (pp. 590-612). Washington: Institute for the study of man.Files private
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Bauer, B. L. M. (1997). Nominal syntax in Italic: A diachronic perspective. In Language change and functional explanations (pp. 273-301). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
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Bauer, B. L. M. (2011). Word formation. In M. Maiden, J. C. Smith, & A. Ledgeway (
Eds. ), The Cambridge history of the Romance languages. Vol. I. structures (pp. 532-563). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Files private
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Bickel, B. (1991). Der Hang zur Exzentrik - Annäherungen an das kognitive Modell der Relativkonstruktion. In W. Bisang, & P. Rinderknecht (
Eds. ), Von Europa bis Ozeanien - von der Antinomie zum Relativsatz (pp. 15-37). Zurich, Switzerland: Seminar für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft der Universität. -
Blythe, J. (2011). Laughter is the best medicine: Roles for prosody in a Murriny Patha conversational narrative. In B. Baker, I. Mushin, M. Harvey, & R. Gardner (
Eds. ), Indigenous Language and Social Identity: Papers in Honour of Michael Walsh (pp. 223-236). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. -
Bohnemeyer, J. (1999). A questionnaire on event integration. In D. Wilkins (
Ed. ), Manual for the 1999 Field Season (pp. 87-95). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3002691.Abstract
How do we decide where events begin and end? Like the ECOM clips, this questionnaire is designed to investigate how a language divides and/or integrates complex scenarios into sub-events and macro-events. The questionnaire focuses on events of motion, caused state change (e.g., breaking), and transfer (e.g., giving). It provides a checklist of scenarios that give insight into where a language “draws the line” in event integration, based on known cross-linguistic differences. -
Bohnemeyer, J., Enfield, N. J., Essegbey, J., Majid, A., & van Staden, M. (2011). Configuraciones temáticas atípicas y el uso de predicados complejos en perspectiva tipológica [Atypical thematic configurations and the use of complex predicates in typological perspective]. In A. L. Munguía (
Ed. ), Colección Estudios Lingüísticos. Vol. I: Fonología, morfología, y tipología semántico-sintáctica [Collection Linguistic Studies. Vol 1: Phonology, morphology, and semantico-syntactic typology] (pp. 173-194). Hermosillo, Mexico: Universidad de Sonora. -
Bohnemeyer, J., Burenhult, N., Enfield, N. J., & Levinson, S. C. (2004). Landscape terms and place names elicitation guide. In A. Majid (
Ed. ), Field Manual Volume 9 (pp. 75-79). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.492904.Abstract
Landscape terms reflect the relationship between geographic reality and human cognition. Are ‘mountains’, ‘rivers, ‘lakes’ and the like universally recognised in languages as naturally salient objects to be named? The landscape subproject is concerned with the interrelation between language, cognition and geography. Specifically, it investigates issues relating to how landforms are categorised cross-linguistically as well as the characteristics of place naming. -
Bohnemeyer, J., Burenhult, N., Enfield, N. J., & Levinson, S. C. (2011). Landscape terms and place names questionnaire. In K. Kendrick, & A. Majid (
Eds. ), Field manual volume 14 (pp. 19-23). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.1005606. -
Bohnemeyer, J. (1999). Event representation and event complexity: General introduction. In D. Wilkins (
Ed. ), Manual for the 1999 Field Season (pp. 69-73). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3002741.Abstract
How do we decide where events begin and end? In some languages it makes sense to say something like Dan broke the plate, but in other languages it is necessary to treat this action as a complex scenario composed of separate stages (Dan dropped the plate and then the plate broke). This document introduces issues concerning the linguistic and cognitive representations of event complexity and integration, and provides an overview of tasks that are relevant to this topic, including the ECOM clips, the Questionnaire on Event integration, and the Questionnaire on motion lexicalisation and motion description. -
Bohnemeyer, J., & Caelen, M. (1999). The ECOM clips: A stimulus for the linguistic coding of event complexity. In D. Wilkins (
Ed. ), Manual for the 1999 Field Season (pp. 74-86). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.874627.Abstract
How do we decide where events begin and end? In some languages it makes sense to say something like Dan broke the plate, but in other languages it is necessary to treat this action as a complex scenario composed of separate stages (Dan dropped the plate and then the plate broke). The “Event Complexity” (ECOM) clips are designed to explore how languages differ in dividing and/or integrating complex scenarios into sub-events and macro-events. The stimuli consist of animated clips of geometric shapes that participate in different scenarios (e.g., a circle “hits” a triangle and “breaks” it). Consultants are asked to describe the scenes, and then to comment on possible alternative descriptions.Additional information
1999_The_ECOM_clips.zip -
Bohnemeyer, J., Enfield, N. J., Essegbey, J., & Kita, S. (2011). The macro-event property: The segmentation of causal chains. In J. Bohnemeyer, & E. Pederson (
Eds. ), Event representation in language and cognition (pp. 43-67). New York: Cambridge University Press. -
Böttner, M. (1997). Natural Language. In C. Brink, W. Kahl, & G. Schmidt (
Eds. ), Relational Methods in computer science (pp. 229-249). Vienna, Austria: Springer-Verlag. -
Bowden, J. (1997). The meanings of Directionals in Taba. In G. Senft (
Ed. ), Referring to Space: Studies in Austronesian and Papuan Languages (pp. 251-268). New York, NJ: Oxford University Press.Files private
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Bowerman, M. (1985). Beyond communicative adequacy: From piecemeal knowledge to an integrated system in the child's acquisition of language. In K. Nelson (
Ed. ), Children's language (pp. 369-398). Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.Abstract
(From the chapter) the first section considers very briefly the kinds of processes that can be inferred to underlie errors that do not set in until after a period of correct usage acquisition often seems to be a more extended process than we have envisioned summarize a currently influential model of how linguistic forms, meaning, and communication are interrelated in the acquisition of language, point out some challenging problems for this model, and suggest that the notion of "meaning" in language must be reconceptualized before we can hope to solve these problems evidence from several types of late errors is marshalled in support of these arguments (From the preface) provides many examples of new errors that children introduce at relatively advanced stages of mastery of semantics and syntax Bowerman views these seemingly backwards steps as indications of definite steps forward by the child achieving reflective, flexible and integrated systems of semantics and syntax ( -
Bowerman, M. (1986). First steps in acquiring conditionals. In E. C. Traugott, A. G. t. Meulen, J. S. Reilly, & C. A. Ferguson (
Eds. ), On conditionals (pp. 285-308). Cambridge University Press.Abstract
This chapter is about the initial flowering of conditionals, if-(then) constructions, in children's spontaneous speech. It is motivated by two major theoretical interests. The first and most immediate is to understand the acquisition process itself. Conditionals are conceptually, and in many languages morphosyntactically, complex. What aspects of cognitive and grammatical development are implicated in their acquisition? Does learning take place in the context of particular interactions with other speakers? Where do conditionals fit in with the acquisition of other complex sentences? What are the semantic, syntactic and pragmatic properties of the first conditionals? Underlying this first interest is a second, more strictly linguistic one. Research of recent years has found increasing evidence that natural languages are constrained in certain ways. The source of these constraints is not yet clearly understood, but it is widely assumed that some of them derive ultimately from properties of children's capacity for language acquisition.Files private
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Bowerman, M. (2004). From universal to language-specific in early grammatical development [Reprint]. In K. Trott, S. Dobbinson, & P. Griffiths (
Eds. ), The child language reader (pp. 131-146). London: Routledge.Abstract
Attempts to explain children's grammatical development often assume a close initial match between units of meaning and units of form; for example, agents are said to map to sentence-subjects and actions to verbs. The meanings themselves, according to this view, are not influenced by language, but reflect children's universal non-linguistic way of understanding the world. This paper argues that, contrary to this position, meaning as it is expressed in children's early sentences is, from the beginning, organized on the basis of experience with the grammar and lexicon of a particular language. As a case in point, children learning English and Korean are shown to express meanings having to do with directed motion according to language-specific principles of semantic and grammatical structuring from the earliest stages of word combination. -
Bowerman, M. (2011). Linguistic typology and first language acquisition. In J. J. Song (
Ed. ), The Oxford handbook of linguistic typology (pp. 591-617). Oxford: Oxford University Press. -
Bowerman, M., Gullberg, M., Majid, A., & Narasimhan, B. (2004). Put project: The cross-linguistic encoding of placement events. In A. Majid (
Ed. ), Field Manual Volume 9 (pp. 10-24). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.492916.Abstract
How similar are the event concepts encoded by different languages? So far, few event domains have been investigated in any detail. The PUT project extends the systematic cross-linguistic exploration of event categorisation to a new domain, that of placement events (putting things in places and removing them from places). The goal of this task is to explore cross-linguistic universality and variability in the semantic categorisation of placement events (e.g., ‘putting a cup on the table’).Additional information
2004_Put_project_video_stimuli.zip -
Bowerman, M. (1980). The structure and origin of semantic categories in the language learning child. In M. Foster, & S. Brandes (
Eds. ), Symbol as sense (pp. 277-299). New York: Academic Press. -
Bowerman, M. (1985). What shapes children's grammars? In D. Slobin (
Ed. ), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition (pp. 1257-1319). Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum. -
Broeder, D., Sloetjes, H., Trilsbeek, P., Van Uytvanck, D., Windhouwer, M., & Wittenburg, P. (2011). Evolving challenges in archiving and data infrastructures. In G. L. J. Haig, N. Nau, S. Schnell, & C. Wegener (
Eds. ), Documenting endangered languages: Achievements and perspectives (pp. 33-54). Berlin: De Gruyter.Abstract
Introduction Increasingly often research in the humanities is based on data. This change in attitude and research practice is driven to a large extent by the availability of small and cheap yet high-quality recording equipment (video cameras, audio recorders) as well as advances in information technology (faster networks, larger data storage, larger computation power, suitable software). In some institutes such as the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, already in the 90s a clear trend towards an all-digital domain could be identified, making use of state-of-the-art technology for research purposes. This change of habits was one of the reasons for the Volkswagen Foundation to establish the DoBeS program in 2000 with a clear focus on language documentation based on recordings as primary material. -
Broersma, M. (2011). Triggered code-switching: Evidence from picture naming experiments. In M. S. Schmid, & W. Lowie (
Eds. ), Modeling bilingualism: From structure to chaos. In honor of Kees de Bot (pp. 37-58). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Abstract
This paper presents experimental evidence that cognates can trigger codeswitching. In two picture naming experiments, Dutch-English bilinguals switched between Dutch and English. Crucial words followed either a cognate or a non-cognate. In Experiment 1, response language was indicated by a color cue, and crucial trials always required a switch. Crucial trials had shorter reaction times after a cognate than after a non-cognate. In Experiment 2, response language was not cued and participants switched freely between the languages. Words after cognates were switched more often than words after non-cognates, for switching from L1 to L2 only. Both experiments thus showed that cognates facilitated language switching of the following word. The results extend evidence for triggered codeswitching from natural speech analyses. -
Brown, P. (2004). Position and motion in Tzeltal frog stories: The acquisition of narrative style. In S. Strömqvist, & L. Verhoeven (
Eds. ), Relating events in narrative: Typological and contextual perspectives (pp. 37-57). Mahwah: Erlbaum.Abstract
How are events framed in narrative? Speakers of English (a 'satellite-framed' language), when 'reading' Mercer Mayer's wordless picture book 'Frog, Where Are You?', find the story self-evident: a boy has a dog and a pet frog; the frog escapes and runs away; the boy and dog look for it across hill and dale, through woods and over a cliff, until they find it and return home with a baby frog child of the original pet frog. In Tzeltal, as spoken in a Mayan community in southern Mexico, the story is somewhat different, because the language structures event descriptions differently. Tzeltal is in part a 'verb-framed' language with a set of Path-encoding motion verbs, so that the bare bones of the Frog story can consist of verbs translating as 'go'/'pass by'/'ascend'/ 'descend'/ 'arrive'/'return'. But Tzeltal also has satellite-framing adverbials, grammaticized from the same set of motion verbs, which encode the direction of motion or the orientation of static arrays. Furthermore, motion is not generally encoded barebones, but vivid pictorial detail is provided by positional verbs which can describe the position of the Figure as an outcome of a motion event; motion and stasis are thereby combined in a single event description. (For example: jipot jawal "he has been thrown (by the deer) lying¬_face_upwards_spread-eagled". This paper compares the use of these three linguistic resources in frog narratives from 14 Tzeltal adults and 21 children, looks at their development in the narratives of children between the ages of 4-12, and considers the results in relation to those from Berman and Slobin's (1996) comparative study of adult and child Frog stories. -
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (2004). Frames of spatial reference and their acquisition in Tenejapan Tzeltal. In A. Assmann, U. Gaier, & G. Trommsdorff (
Eds. ), Zwischen Literatur und Anthropologie: Diskurse, Medien, Performanzen (pp. 285-314). Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Abstract
This is a reprint of the Brown and Levinson 2000 article. -
Brown, P., Levinson, S. C., & Senft, G. (2004). Initial references to persons and places. In A. Majid (
Ed. ), Field Manual Volume 9 (pp. 37-44). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.492929.Abstract
This task has two parts: (i) video-taped elicitation of the range of possibilities for referring to persons and places, and (ii) observations of (first) references to persons and places in video-taped natural interaction. The goal of this task is to establish the repertoires of referential terms (and other practices) used for referring to persons and to places in particular languages and cultures, and provide examples of situated use of these kinds of referential practices in natural conversation. This data will form the basis for cross-language comparison, and for formulating hypotheses about general principles underlying the deployment of such referential terms in natural language usage. -
Brown, P., Gaskins, S., Lieven, E., Striano, T., & Liszkowski, U. (2004). Multimodal multiperson interaction with infants aged 9 to 15 months. In A. Majid (
Ed. ), Field Manual Volume 9 (pp. 56-63). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.492925.Abstract
Interaction, for all that it has an ethological base, is culturally constituted, and how new social members are enculturated into the interactional practices of the society is of critical interest to our understanding of interaction – how much is learned, how variable is it across cultures – as well as to our understanding of the role of culture in children’s social-cognitive development. The goal of this task is to document the nature of caregiver infant interaction in different cultures, especially during the critical age of 9-15 months when children come to have an understanding of others’ intentions. This is of interest to all students of interaction; it does not require specialist knowledge of children. -
Brown, P. (2015). Language, culture, and spatial cognition. In F. Sharifian (
Ed. ), Routledge Handbook on Language and Culture (pp. 294-309). London: Routledge. -
Brown, P. (1980). How and why are women more polite: Some evidence from a Mayan community. In S. McConnell-Ginet, R. Borker, & N. Furman (
Eds. ), Women and language in literature and society (pp. 111-136). New York: Praeger. -
Brown, P. (1997). Isolating the CVC root in Tzeltal Mayan: A study of children's first verbs. In E. V. Clark (
Ed. ), Proceedings of the 28th Annual Child Language Research Forum (pp. 41-52). Stanford, CA: CSLI/University of Chicago Press.Abstract
How do children isolate the semantic package contained in verb roots in the Mayan language Tzeltal? One might imagine that the canonical CVC shape of roots characteristic of Mayan languages would make the job simple, but the root is normally preceded and followed by affixes which mask its identity. Pye (1983) demonstrated that, in Kiche' Mayan, prosodic salience overrides semantic salience, and children's first words in Kiche' are often composed of only the final (stressed) syllable constituted by the final consonant of the CVC root and a 'meaningless' termination suffix. Intonation thus plays a crucial role in early Kiche' morphological development. Tzeltal presents a rather different picture: The first words of children around the age of 1;6 are bare roots, children strip off all prefixes and suffixes which are obligatory in adult speech. They gradually add them, starting with the suffixes (which receive the main stress), but person prefixes are omitted in some contexts past a child's third birthday, and one obligatory aspectual prefix (x-) is systematically omitted by the four children in my longitudinal study even after they are four years old. Tzeltal children's first verbs generally show faultless isolation of the root. An account in terms of intonation or stress cannot explain this ability (the prefixes are not all syllables; the roots are not always stressed). This paper suggests that probable clues include the fact that the CVC root stays constant across contexts (with some exceptions) whereas the affixes vary, that there are some linguistic contexts where the root occurs without any prefixes (relatively frequent in the input), and that the Tzeltal discourse convention of responding by repeating with appropriate deictic alternation (e.g., "I see it." "Oh, you see it.") highlights the root. -
Brown, P. (2011). Everyone has to lie in Tzeltal [Reprint]. In B. B. Schieffelin, & P. B. Garrett (
Eds. ), Anthropological linguistics: Critical concepts in language studies. Volume III Talking about language (pp. 59-87). London: Routledge.Abstract
Reprint of Brown, P. (2002). Everyone has to lie in Tzeltal. In S. Blum-Kulka, & C. E. Snow (Eds.), Talking to adults: The contribution of multiparty discourse to language acquisition (pp. 241-275). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. In a famous paper Harvey Sacks (1974) argued that the sequential properties of greeting conventions, as well as those governing the flow of information, mean that 'everyone has to lie'. In this paper I show this dictum to be equally true in the Tzeltal Mayan community of Tenejapa, in southern Mexico, but for somewhat different reasons. The phenomenon of interest is the practice of routine fearsome threats to small children. Based on a longitudinal corpus of videotaped and tape-recorded naturally-occurring interaction between caregivers and children in five Tzeltal families, the study examines sequences of Tzeltal caregivers' speech aimed at controlling the children's behaviour and analyzes the children's developing pragmatic skills in handling such controlling utterances, from prelinguistic infants to age five and over. Infants in this society are considered to be vulnerable, easily scared or shocked into losing their 'souls', and therefore at all costs to be protected and hidden from outsiders and other dangers. Nonetheless, the chief form of control (aside from physically removing a child from danger) is to threaten, saying things like "Don't do that, or I'll take you to the clinic for an injection," These overt scare-threats - rarely actually realized - lead Tzeltal children by the age of 2;6 to 3;0 to the understanding that speech does not necessarily convey true propositions, and to a sensitivity to the underlying motivations for utterances distinct from their literal meaning. By age 4;0 children perform the same role to their younger siblings;they also begin to use more subtle non-true (e.g. ironic) utterances. The caretaker practice described here is related to adult norms of social lying, to the sociocultural context of constraints on information flow, social control through gossip, and the different notion of 'truth' that arises in the context of non-verifiability characteristic of a small-scale nonliterate society. -
Brown, C. M., & Hagoort, P. (1999). The cognitive neuroscience of language: Challenges and future directions. In C. M. Brown, & P. Hagoort (
Eds. ), The neurocognition of language (pp. 3-14). Oxford: Oxford University Press. -
Brown, P. (2011). The cultural organization of attention. In A. Duranti, E. Ochs, & B. B. Schieffelin (
Eds. ), The handbook of language socialization (pp. 29-55). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Abstract
How new social members are enculturated into the interactional practices of the society they grow up in is crucial to an understanding of social interaction, as well as to an understanding of the role of culture in children's social-cognitive development. Modern theories of infant development (e.g., Bruner 1982, Elman et al 1996, Tomasello 1999, Masataka 2003) emphasize the influence of particular interactional practices in the child's developing communicative skills. But interactional practices with infants - behaviors like prompting, pointing, turn-taking routines, and interacting over objects - are culturally shaped by beliefs about what infants need and what they can understand; these practices therefore vary across cultures in both quantity and quality. What effect does this variation have on children's communicative development? This article focuses on one aspect of cultural practice, the interactional organization of attention and how it is socialized in prelinguistic infants. It surveys the literature on the precursors to attention coordination in infancy, leading up to the crucial development of 'joint attention' and pointing behavior around the age of 12 months, and it reports what is known about cultural differences in related interactional practices of adults. It then considers the implications of such differences for infant-caregiver interaction prior to the period when infants begin to speak. I report on my own work on the integration of gaze and pointing in infant/caregiver interaction in two different cultures. One is a Mayan society in Mexico, where interaction with infants during their first year is relatively minimal; the other is on Rossel Island (Papua New Guinea), where interaction with infants is characterized by intensive face-to-face communicative behaviors from shortly after the child's birth. Examination of videotaped naturally-occurring interactions in both societies for episodes of index finger point following and production, and the integration of gaze and vocalization with pointing, reveals that despite the differences in interactional style with infants, pointing for joint attention emerges in infants in both cultures in the 9 -15 month period. However, a comparative perspective on cultural practices in caregiver-infant interactions allows us to refine our understanding of joint attention and its role in the process of learning to become a communicative partner. -
Brown, P. (1991). Sind Frauen höflicher? Befunde aus einer Maya-Gemeinde. In S. Günther, & H. Kotthoff (
Eds. ), Von fremden Stimmen: Weibliches und männliches Sprechen im Kulturvergleich. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Abstract
This is a German translation of Brown 1980, How and why are women more polite: Some evidence from a Mayan community. -
Brown, P. (2015). Space: Linguistic expression of. In J. D. Wright (
Ed. ), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.) Vol. 23 (pp. 89-93). Amsterdam: Elsevier. doi:10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.57017-2. -
Brown, P. (2011). Politeness. In P. C. Hogan (
Ed. ), The Cambridge encyclopedia of the language sciences (pp. 635-636). New York: Cambridge University Press.Abstract
This is an encyclopedia entry surveying theoretical approaches to politeness phenomena in language usage. -
Brown, P. (2015). Politeness and language. In J. D. Wright (
Ed. ), The International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences (IESBS), (2nd ed.) (pp. 326-330). Amsterdam: Elsevier. doi:10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.53072-4. -
Brown, P. (1995). Politeness strategies and the attribution of intentions: The case of Tzeltal irony. In E. Goody (
Ed. ), Social intelligence and interaction (pp. 153-174). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Abstract
In this paper I take up the idea that human thinking is systematically biased in the direction of interactive thinking (E. Goody's anticipatory interactive planning), that is, that humans are peculiarly good at, and inordinately prone to, attributing intentions and goals to one other (as well as to non-humans), and that they routinely orient to presumptions about each other's intentions in what they say and do. I explore the implications of that idea for an understanding of politeness in interaction, taking as a starting point the Brown and Levinson (1987) model of politeness, which assumes interactive thinking, a notion implicit in the formulation of politeness as strategic orientation to face. Drawing on an analysis of the phenomenon of conventionalized ‘irony’ in Tzeltal, I emphasize that politeness does not inhere in linguistic form per se but is a matter of conveying a polite intention, and argue that Tzeltal irony provides a prime example of one way in which humans' highly-developed intellectual machinery for inferring alter's intentions is put to the service of social relationships. -
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1999). Politeness: Some universals in language usage [Reprint]. In A. Jaworski, & N. Coupland (
Eds. ), The discourse reader (pp. 321-335). London: Routledge.Abstract
This article is a reprint of chapter 1, the introduction to Brown and Levinson, 1987, Politeness: Some universals in language usage (Cambridge University Press). -
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (2011). Politeness: Some universals in language use [Reprint]. In D. Archer, & P. Grundy (
Eds. ), The pragmatics reader (pp. 283-304). London: Routledge.Abstract
Reprinted with permission of Cambridge University Press from: Brown, P. and Levinson, S. E. (1987) Politeness, (©) 1978, 1987, CUP. -
Burenhult, N., Kruspe, N., & Dunn, M. (2011). Language history and culture groups among Austroasiatic-speaking foragers of the Malay Peninsula. In N. J. Enfield (
Ed. ), Dynamics of human diversity: The case of mainland Southeast Asia (pp. 257-277). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. -
Burenhult, N. (2011). The coding of reciprocal events in Jahai. In N. Evans, A. Gaby, S. C. Levinson, & A. Majid (
Eds. ), Reciprocals and semantic typology (pp. 163-176). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Abstract
This work explores the linguistic encoding of reciprocal events in Jahai (Aslian, Mon-Khmer, Malay Peninsula) on the basis of linguistic descriptions of the video stimuli of the ‘Reciprocal constructions and situation type’ task (Evans et al. 2004). Reciprocal situation types find expression in three different constructions: distributive verb forms, reciprocal verb forms, and adjunct phrases containing a body part noun. Distributives represent the dominant strategy, reciprocal forms and body part adjuncts being highly restricted across event types and consultants. The distributive and reciprocal morphemes manifest intricate morphological processes typical of Aslian languages. The paper also addresses some analytical problems raised by the data, such as structural ambiguity and restrictions on derivation, as well as individual variation. -
Chen, H.-C., & Cutler, A. (1997). Auditory priming in spoken and printed word recognition. In H.-C. Chen (
Ed. ), Cognitive processing of Chinese and related Asian languages (pp. 77-81). Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. -
Chen, A. (2015). Children’s use of intonation in reference and the role of input. In L. Serratrice, & S. E. M. Allen (
Eds. ), The acquisition of reference (pp. 83-104). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Abstract
Studies on children’s use of intonation in reference are few in number but are diverse in terms of theoretical frameworks and intonational parameters. In the current review, I present a re-analysis of the referents in each study, using a three-dimension approach (i.e. referential givenness-newness, relational givenness-newness, contrast), discuss the use of intonation at two levels (phonetic, phonological), and compare findings from different studies within a single framework. The patterns stemming from these studies may be limited in generalisability but can serve as initial hypotheses for future work. Furthermore, I examine the role of input as available in infant direct speech in the acquisition of intonational encoding of referents. In addition, I discuss how future research can advance our knowledge.Files private
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Chen, A., & Lai, V. T. (2011). Comb or coat: The role of intonation in online reference resolution in a second language. In W. Zonneveld, & H. Quené (
Eds. ), Sound and Sounds. Studies presented to M.E.H. (Bert) Schouten on the occasion of his 65th birthday (pp. 57-68). Utrecht: UiL OTS.Abstract
1 Introduction In spoken sentence processing, listeners do not wait till the end of a sentence to decipher what message is conveyed. Rather, they make predictions on the most plausible interpretation at every possible point in the auditory signal on the basis of all kinds of linguistic information (e.g., Eberhard et al. 1995; Alman and Kamide 1999, 2007). Intonation is one such kind of linguistic information that is efficiently used in spoken sentence processing. The evidence comes primarily from recent work on online reference resolution conducted in the visual-world eyetracking paradigm (e.g., Tanenhaus et al. 1995). In this paradigm, listeners are shown a visual scene containing a number of objects and listen to one or two short sentences about the scene. They are asked to either inspect the visual scene while listening or to carry out the action depicted in the sentence(s) (e.g., 'Touch the blue square'). Listeners' eye movements directed to each object in the scene are monitored and time-locked to pre-defined time points in the auditory stimulus. Their predictions on the upcoming referent and sources for the predictions in the auditory signal are examined by analysing fixations to the relevant objects in the visual scene before the acoustic information on the referent is available -
Chen, A. (2011). The developmental path to phonological focus-marking in Dutch. In S. Frota, E. Gorka, & P. Prieto (
Eds. ), Prosodic categories: Production, perception and comprehension (pp. 93-109). Dordrecht: Springer.Abstract
This paper gives an overview of recent studies on the use of phonological cues (accent placement and choice of accent type) to mark focus in Dutch-speaking children aged between 1;9 and 8;10. It is argued that learning to use phonological cues to mark focus is a gradual process. In the light of the findings in these studies, a first proposal is put forward on the developmental path to adult-like phonological focus-marking in Dutch. -
Cho, T. (2022). The Phonetics-Prosody Interface and Prosodic Strengthening in Korean. In S. Cho, & J. Whitman (
Eds. ), Cambridge handbook of Korean linguistics (pp. 248-293). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. -
Chu, M., & Kita, S. (2011). Microgenesis of gestures during mental rotation tasks recapitulates ontogenesis. In G. Stam, & M. Ishino (
Eds. ), Integrating gestures: The interdisciplinary nature of gesture (pp. 267-276). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Abstract
People spontaneously produce gestures when they solve problems or explain their solutions to a problem. In this chapter, we will review and discuss evidence on the role of representational gestures in problem solving. The focus will be on our recent experiments (Chu & Kita, 2008), in which we used Shepard-Metzler type of mental rotation tasks to investigate how spontaneous gestures revealed the development of problem solving strategy over the course of the experiment and what role gesture played in the development process. We found that when solving novel problems regarding the physical world, adults go through similar symbolic distancing (Werner & Kaplan, 1963) and internalization (Piaget, 1968) processes as those that occur during young children’s cognitive development and gesture facilitates such processes. -
Clark, E. V., & Bowerman, M. (1986). On the acquisition of final voiced stops. In J. A. Fishman (
Ed. ), The Fergusonian impact: in honor of Charles A. Ferguson on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Volume 1: From phonology to society (pp. 51-68). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. -
Cohen, E. (2011). “Out with ‘Religion’: A novel framing of the religion debate”. In W. Williams (
Ed. ), Religion and rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2008. Manchester: Manchester University Press. -
Cohen, E., & Barrett, J. L. (2011). In search of "Folk anthropology": The cognitive anthropology of the person. In J. W. Van Huysteen, & E. Wiebe (
Eds. ), In search of self: Interdisciplinary perspectives on personhood (pp. 104-124). Grand Rapids, CA: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. -
Collins, J. (2015). ‘Give’ and semantic maps. In B. Nolan, G. Rawoens, & E. Diedrichsen (
Eds. ), Causation, permission, and transfer: Argument realisation in GET, TAKE, PUT, GIVE and LET verbs (pp. 129-146). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. -
Collins, L. J., Schönfeld, B., & Chen, X. S. (2011). The epigenetics of non-coding RNA. In T. Tollefsbol (
Ed. ), Handbook of epigenetics: the new molecular and medical genetics (pp. 49-61). London: Academic.Abstract
Summary Non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) have been implicated in the epigenetic marking of many genes. Short regulatory ncRNAs, including miRNAs, siRNAs, piRNAs and snoRNAs as well as long ncRNAs such as Xist and Air are discussed in light of recent research of mechanisms regulating chromatin marking and RNA editing. The topic is expanding rapidly so we will concentrate on examples to highlight the main mechanisms, including simple mechanisms where complementary binding affect methylation or RNA sites. However, other examples especially with the long ncRNAs highlight very complex regulatory systems with multiple layers of ncRNA control. -
Crago, M. B., Allen, S. E. M., & Hough-Eyamie, W. P. (1997). Exploring innateness through cultural and linguistic variation. In M. Gopnik (
Ed. ), The inheritance and innateness of grammars (pp. 70-90). New York City, NY, USA: Oxford University Press, Inc. -
Cristia, A., Seidl, A., & Francis, A. L. (2011). Phonological features in infancy. In G. N. Clements, & R. Ridouane (
Eds. ), Where do phonological contrasts come from? Cognitive, physical and developmental bases of phonological features (pp. 303-326). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Abstract
Features serve two main functions in the phonology of languages: they encode the distinction between pairs of contrastive phonemes (distinctive function); and they delimit sets of sounds that participate in phonological processes and patterns (classificatory function). We summarize evidence from a variety of experimental paradigms bearing on the functional relevance of phonological features. This research shows that while young infants may use abstract phonological features to learn sound patterns, this ability becomes more constrained with development and experience. Furthermore, given the lack of overlap between the ability to learn a pair of words differing in a single feature and the ability to learn sound patterns based on features, we argue for the separation of the distinctive and the classificatory function. -
Cristia, A., & Seidl, A. (2011). Sensitivity to prosody at 6 months predicts vocabulary at 24 months. In N. Danis, K. Mesh, & H. Sung (
Eds. ), BUCLD 35: Proceedings of the 35th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 145-156). Somerville, Mass: Cascadilla Press. -
Cutler, A. (2004). Segmentation of spoken language by normal adult listeners. In R. Kent (
Ed. ), MIT encyclopedia of communication sciences and disorders (pp. 392-395). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. -
Cutler, A., & Henton, C. G. (2004). There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip. In H. Quené, & V. Van Heuven (
Eds. ), On speech and Language: Studies for Sieb G. Nooteboom (pp. 37-45). Utrecht: Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics.Abstract
The retiring academic may look back upon, inter alia, years of conference attendance. Speech error researchers are uniquely fortunate because they can collect data in any situation involving communication; accordingly, the retiring speech error researcher will have collected data at those conferences. We here address the issue of whether error data collected in situations involving conviviality (such as at conferences) is representative of error data in general. Our approach involved a comparison, across three levels of linguistic processing, between a specially constructed Conviviality Sample and the largest existing source of speech error data, the newly available Fromkin Speech Error Database. The results indicate that there are grounds for regarding the data in the Conviviality Sample as a better than average reflection of the true population of all errors committed. These findings encourage us to recommend further data collection in collaboration with like-minded colleagues. -
Cutler, A. (2004). Twee regels voor academische vorming. In H. Procee (
Ed. ), Bij die wereld wil ik horen! Zesendertig columns en drie essays over de vorming tot academicus. (pp. 42-45). Amsterdam: Boom. -
Cutler, A., Ernestus, M., Warner, N., & Weber, A. (2022). Managing speech perception data sets. In B. McDonnell, E. Koller, & L. B. Collister (
Eds. ), The Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management (pp. 565-573). Cambrdige, MA, USA: MIT Press. doi:10.7551/mitpress/12200.003.0055. -
Cutler, A., & Clifton, Jr., C. (1999). Comprehending spoken language: A blueprint of the listener. In C. M. Brown, & P. Hagoort (
Eds. ), The neurocognition of language (pp. 123-166). Oxford University Press. -
Cutler, A. (1980). Errors of stress and intonation. In V. A. Fromkin (
Ed. ), Errors in linguistic performance: Slips of the tongue, ear, pen and hand (pp. 67-80). New York: Academic Press. -
Cutler, A., Mister, E., Norris, D., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2004). La perception de la parole en espagnol: Un cas particulier? In L. Ferrand, & J. Grainger (
Eds. ), Psycholinguistique cognitive: Essais en l'honneur de Juan Segui (pp. 57-74). Brussels: De Boeck. -
Cutler, A. (1999). Foreword. In Slips of the Ear: Errors in the perception of Casual Conversation (pp. xiii-xv). New York City, NY, USA: Academic Press.
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Cutler, A. (2015). Lexical stress in English pronunciation. In M. Reed, & J. M. Levis (
Eds. ), The Handbook of English Pronunciation (pp. 106-124). Chichester: Wiley. -
Cutler, A. (1991). Linguistic rhythm and speech segmentation. In J. Sundberg, L. Nord, & R. Carlson (
Eds. ), Music, language, speech and brain (pp. 157-166). London: Macmillan. -
Cutler, A., & Pearson, M. (1985). On the analysis of prosodic turn-taking cues. In C. Johns-Lewis (
Ed. ), Intonation in discourse (pp. 139-155). London: Croom Helm. -
Cutler, A. (1985). Performance measures of lexical complexity. In G. Hoppenbrouwers, P. A. Seuren, & A. Weijters (
Eds. ), Meaning and the lexicon (pp. 75). Dordrecht: Foris. -
Cutler, A. (1999). Prosodische Struktur und Worterkennung bei gesprochener Sprache. In A. D. Friedrici (
Ed. ), Enzyklopädie der Psychologie: Sprachrezeption (pp. 49-83). Göttingen: Hogrefe. -
Cutler, A. (1999). Prosody and intonation, processing issues. In R. A. Wilson, & F. C. Keil (
Eds. ), MIT encyclopedia of the cognitive sciences (pp. 682-683). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. -
Cutler, A. (1997). Prosody and the structure of the message. In Y. Sagisaka, N. Campbell, & N. Higuchi (
Eds. ), Computing prosody: Computational models for processing spontaneous speech (pp. 63-66). Heidelberg: Springer. -
Cutler, A. (1995). Spoken word recognition and production. In J. L. Miller, & P. D. Eimas (
Eds. ), Speech, language and communication (pp. 97-136). New York: Academic Press.Abstract
This chapter highlights that most language behavior consists of speaking and listening. The chapter also reveals differences and similarities between speaking and listening. The laboratory study of word production raises formidable problems; ensuring that a particular word is produced may subvert the spontaneous production process. Word production is investigated via slips and tip-of-the-tongue (TOT), primarily via instances of processing failure and via the technique of via the picture-naming task. The methodology of word production is explained in the chapter. The chapter also explains the phenomenon of interaction between various stages of word production and the process of speech recognition. In this context, it explores the difference between sound and meaning and examines whether or not the comparisons are appropriate between the processes of recognition and production of spoken words. It also describes the similarities and differences in the structure of the recognition and production systems. Finally, the chapter highlights the common issues in recognition and production research, which include the nuances of frequency of occurrence, morphological structure, and phonological structure. -
Cutler, A. (1999). Spoken-word recognition. In R. A. Wilson, & F. C. Keil (
Eds. ), MIT encyclopedia of the cognitive sciences (pp. 796-798). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. -
Cutler, A. (1995). Spoken-word recognition. In G. Bloothooft, V. Hazan, D. Hubert, & J. Llisterri (
Eds. ), European studies in phonetics and speech communication (pp. 66-71). Utrecht: OTS. -
Cutler, A. (1980). Syllable omission errors and isochrony. In H. W. Dechet, & M. Raupach (
Eds. ), Temporal variables in speech: studies in honour of Frieda Goldman-Eisler (pp. 183-190). The Hague: Mouton. -
Cutler, A. (1995). The perception of rhythm in spoken and written language. In J. Mehler, & S. Franck (
Eds. ), Cognition on cognition (pp. 283-288). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. -
Cutler, A., & Isard, S. D. (1980). The production of prosody. In B. Butterworth (
Ed. ), Language production (pp. 245-269). London: Academic Press. -
Cutler, A., & McQueen, J. M. (1995). The recognition of lexical units in speech. In B. De Gelder, & J. Morais (
Eds. ), Speech and reading: A comparative approach (pp. 33-47). Hove, UK: Erlbaum. -
Daly, T., Chen, X. S., & Penny, D. (2011). How old are RNA networks? In L. J. Collins (
Ed. ), RNA infrastructure and networks (pp. 255-273). New York: Springer Science + Business Media and Landes Bioscience.Abstract
Some major classes of RNAs (such as mRNA, rRNA, tRNA and RNase P) are ubiquitous in all living systems so are inferred to have arisen early during the origin of life. However, the situation is not so clear for the system of RNA regulatory networks that continue to be uncovered, especially in eukaryotes. It is increasingly being recognised that networks of small RNAs are important for regulation in all cells, but it is not certain whether the origin of these networks are as old as rRNAs and tRNA. Another group of ncRNAs, including snoRNAs, occurs mainly in archaea and eukaryotes and their ultimate origin is less certain, although perhaps the simplest hypothesis is that they were present in earlier stages of life and were lost from bacteria. Some RNA networks may trace back to an early stage when there was just RNA and proteins, the RNP‑world; before DNA. -
Danielsen, S., Dunn, M., & Muysken, P. (2011). The spread of the Arawakan languages: A view from structural phylogenetics. In A. Hornborg, & J. D. Hill (
Eds. ), Ethnicity in ancient Amazonia: Reconstructing past identities from archaeology, linguistics, and ethnohistory (pp. 173-196). Boulder: University Press of Colorado. -
Danziger, E. (1995). Intransitive predicate form class survey. In D. Wilkins (
Ed. ), Extensions of space and beyond: manual for field elicitation for the 1995 field season (pp. 46-53). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3004298.Abstract
Different linguistic structures allow us to highlight distinct aspects of a situation. The aim of this survey is to investigate similarities and differences in the expression of situations or events as “stative” (maintaining a state), “inchoative” (adopting a state) and “agentive” (causing something to be in a state). The questionnaire focuses on the encoding of stative, inchoative and agentive possibilities for the translation equivalents of a set of English verbs. -
Danziger, E. (1995). Posture verb survey. In D. Wilkins (
Ed. ), Extensions of space and beyond: manual for field elicitation for the 1995 field season (pp. 33-34). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3004235.Abstract
Expressions of human activities and states are a rich area for cross-linguistic comparison. Some languages of the world treat human posture verbs (e.g., sit, lie, kneel) as a special class of predicates, with distinct formal properties. This survey examines lexical, semantic and grammatical patterns for posture verbs, with special reference to contrasts between “stative” (maintaining a posture), “inchoative” (adopting a posture), and “agentive” (causing something to adopt a posture) constructions. The enquiry is thematically linked to the more general questionnaire 'Intransitive Predicate Form Class Survey'. -
Den Os, E., & Boves, L. (2004). Natural multimodal interaction for design applications. In P. Cunningham (
Ed. ), Adoption and the knowledge economy (pp. 1403-1410). Amsterdam: IOS Press. -
Dietrich, W., & Drude, S. (
Eds. ). (2015). Variation in Tupi languages: Genealogy, language change, and typology [Special Issue]. Boletim do Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi:Ciencias Humanas, 10(2). -
Dijkstra, T., & Kempen, G. (1997). Het taalgebruikersmodel. In H. Hulshof, & T. Hendrix (
Eds. ), De taalcentrale. Amsterdam: Bulkboek. -
Dingemanse, M., Van Leeuwen, T., & Majid, A. (2011). Mapping across senses: Two cross-modal association tasks. In K. Kendrick, & A. Majid (
Eds. ), Field manual volume 14 (pp. 11-15). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.1005579. -
Dingemanse, M. (2011). Ezra Pound among the Mawu: Ideophones and iconicity in Siwu. In P. Michelucci, O. Fischer, & C. Ljungberg (
Eds. ), Semblance and Signification (pp. 39-54). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Abstract
The Mawu people of eastern Ghana make common use of ideophones: marked words that depict sensory imagery. Ideophones have been described as “poetry in ordinary language,” yet the shadow of Lévy-Bruhl, who assigned such words to the realm of primitivity, has loomed large over linguistics and literary theory alike. The poet Ezra Pound is a case in point: while his fascination with Chinese characters spawned the ideogrammic method, the mimicry and gestures of the “primitive languages in Africa” were never more than a mere curiosity to him. This paper imagines Pound transposed into the linguaculture of the Mawu. What would have struck him about their ways of ‘charging language’ with imagery? I juxtapose Pound’s views of the poetic image with an analysis of how different layers of iconicity in ideophones combine to depict sensory imagery. This exercise illuminates aspects of what one might call ‘the ideophonic -
Dingemanse, M. (2015). Folk definitions in linguistic fieldwork. In J. Essegbey, B. Henderson, & F. Mc Laughlin (
Eds. ), Language documentation and endangerment in Africa (pp. 215-238). Amsterdam: Benjamins. doi:10.1075/clu.17.09din.Abstract
Informal paraphrases by native speaker consultants are crucial tools in linguistic fieldwork. When recorded, archived, and analysed, they offer rich data that can be mined for many purposes, from lexicography to semantic typology and from ethnography to the investigation of gesture and speech. This paper describes a procedure for the collection and analysis of folk definitions that are native (in the language under study rather than the language of analysis), informal (spoken rather than written), and multi-modal (preserving the integrity of gesture-speech composite utterances). The value of folk definitions is demonstrated using the case of ideophones, words that are notoriously hard to study using traditional elicitation methods. Three explanatory strategies used in a set of folk definitions of ideophones are examined: the offering of everyday contexts of use, the use of depictive gestures, and the use of sense relations as semantic anchoring points. Folk definitions help elucidate word meanings that are hard to capture, bring to light cultural background knowledge that often remains implicit, and take seriously the crucial involvement of native speaker consultants in linguistic fieldwork. They provide useful data for language documentation and are an essential element of any toolkit for linguistic and ethnographic field research. -
Doherty, M., & Klein, W. (
Eds. ). (1991). Übersetzung [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (84). -
Drude, S. (2011). Awetí in relation with Kamayurá: The two Tupian languages of the Upper Xingu. In B. Franchetto (
Ed. ), Alto Xingu. Uma sociedade multilíngüe (pp. 155-192). Rio de Janeiro: Museu do Indio - FUNAI.Abstract
The article analyzes the relation between Aweti and Kamayurá on different levels. Both languages belong to different branches of the subfamily “Maweti-Guarani” within the large Tupi ‘stock’. Both peoples have arrived rather late to the complex Upper Xinguan society, but probably independently and from different directions. Both resulted from mergers of different groups and suffered a dramatic demographic decline in the first half of last century. There is no concrete evidence that these groups spoke varieties of more than 2 different languages (Pre-Aweti and Pre-Kamayurá). Today, many Aweti are at least passive bilinguals with Kamayurá, their most important allies, but the opposite does not hold. The article also discusses the relations between the languages on the main structural levels. In phonology, the phoneme inventories are compared and the sound changes are listed that occurred from the hypothetical proto-language “Proto-Maweti-Guarani” to Aweti, on the one hand, and to Proto-Tupi-Guarani and further to Kamayurá, on the other. In morpho-syntax, the article offers a comparison of the person systems and of affixes in general, treating in particular the so-called ‘relational prefixes’, which do not exist in Aweti. The most important syntactic shared properties are also listed. There seem to be very little mutual lexical borrowing. In the appendix, a list of more than 60 cognates with reconstructed proto-forms is given. Key-words: Aweti; Kamayurá; Sociolinguistics; History; Phonology. -
Drude, S. (2011). Comparando línguas alto‐xinguanas: Metodologia e bases de dados comparativos. In B. Franchetto (
Ed. ), Alto Xingu. Uma sociedade multilíngüe (pp. 39-56). Rio de Janeiro: Museu do Indio - FUNAI.Abstract
A key for understanding the Upper Xingu system is the comparison of the different languages which are part of that multilingual society. This article discusses the notion ‘comparing languages’ and delineates a research program in accordance to which a fruitful comparison can be done on four levels: 1) structural (phonological and morphosyntactic), 2) lexical (semantic structure of the lexica and individual lexical items), 3) discourse (figures of speech and thought), 4) content (in particular, narratives). The language data of the project gathered so far (focusing on level 2 and 4) is described in detail: 10 comparative word lists from different semantic domains, and a core of 5 analogous texts of different genera. Finally, some general considerations are offered about how to analyze both similarities and divergence found among the compared material. -
Drude, S. (2011). 'Derivational verbs' and other multi-verb constructions in Aweti and Tupi-Guarani. In A. Y. Aikhenvald, & P. C. Muysken (
Eds. ), Multi-verb constructions: A view from the Americas (pp. 213-254). Leiden: Brill. -
Dunn, M., & Terrill, A. (2004). Lexical comparison between Papuan languages: Inland bird and tree species. In A. Majid (
Ed. ), Field Manual Volume 9 (pp. 65-69). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.492942.Abstract
The Pioneers project seeks to uncover relationships between the Papuan languages of Island Melanesia. One basic way to uncover linguistic relationships, either contact or genetic, is through lexical comparison. We have seen very few shared words between our Papuan languages and any other languages, either Oceanic or Papuan, but most of the words which are shared are shared because they are commonly borrowed from Oceanic languages. This task is aimed at enabling fieldworkers to collect terms for inland bird and tree species. In the past it is has proved very difficult for non-experts to identify plant and bird species, so the task consists of a booklet of colour pictures of some of the more common species, with information on the range and habits of each species, as well as some information on their cultural uses, which should enable better identification. It is intended that fieldworkers will show this book to consultants and use it as an elicitation aid. -
Eisenbeiss, S., McGregor, B., & Schmidt, C. M. (1999). Story book stimulus for the elicitation of external possessor constructions and dative constructions ('the circle of dirt'). In D. Wilkins (
Ed. ), Manual for the 1999 Field Season (pp. 140-144). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. doi:10.17617/2.3002750.Abstract
How involved in an event is a person that possesses one of the event participants? Some languages can treat such “external possessors” as very closely involved, even marking them on the verb along with core roles such as subject and object. Other languages only allow possessors to be expressed as non-core participants. This task explores possibilities for the encoding of possessors and other related roles such as beneficiaries. The materials consist of a sequence of thirty drawings designed to elicit target construction types.Additional information
1999_Story_book_booklet.pdf
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