This book provides an authoritative survey of the several hundred languages indigenous to North America. These languages show tremendous genetic and typological diversity, and offer numerous challenges to current linguistic theory. Part I of the book provides an overview of structural features of particular interest, concentrating on those that are cross-linguistically unusual or unusually well developed. These include syllable structure, vowel and consonant harmony, tone, and sound symbolism; polysynthesis, the nature of roots and affixes, incorporation, and morpheme order; case; grammatical distinctions of number, gender, shape, control, location, means, manner, time, empathy, and evidence; and distinctions between nouns and verbs, predicates and arguments, and simple and complex sentences; and special speech styles. Part II catalogues the languages by family, listing the location of each language, its genetic affiliation, number of speakers, major published literature, and structural highlights. Finally, there is a catalogue of languages that have evolved in contact situations.
Native American languages are spoken from Siberia to Greenland. Campbell's project is to take stock of what is known about the history of Native American languages and in the process examine the state of American Indian historical linguistics.
Comprehensive in scope and rich in detail, this book explores language planning, language education, and language policy for diverse Native American peoples across time, space, and place. Based on long-term collaborative and ethnographic work with Native American communities and schools, the book examines the imposition of colonial language policies against the fluorescence of contemporary community-driven efforts to revitalize threatened mother tongues. Here, readers will meet those who are on the frontlines of Native American language revitalization every day. As their efforts show, even languages whose last native speaker is gone can be reclaimed through family-, community-, and school-based language planning. Offering a critical-theory view of language policy, and emphasizing Indigenous sovereignties and the perspectives of revitalizers themselves, the book shows how language regenesis is undertaken in social practice, the role of youth in language reclamation, the challenges posed by dominant language policies, and the prospects for Indigenous language and culture continuance current revitalization efforts hold.
Beliefs and feelings about language vary dramatically within and across Native American cultural groups and are an acknowledged part of the processes of language shift and language death. This volume samples the language ideologies of a wide range of Native American communities--from the Canadian Yukon to Guatemala--to show their role in sociocultural transformation. These studies take up such active issues as "insiderness" in Cherokee language ideologies, contradictions of space-time for the Northern Arapaho, language socialization and Paiute identity, and orthography choices and language renewal among the Kiowa. The authors--including members of indigenous speech communities who participate in language renewal efforts--discuss not only Native Americans' conscious language ideologies but also the often-revealing relationship between these beliefs and other more implicit realizations of language use as embedded in community practice. The chapters discuss the impact of contemporary language issues related to grammar, language use, the relation between language and social identity, and emergent language ideologies themselves in Native American speech communities. And although they portray obvious variation in attitudes toward language across communities, they also reveal commonalities--notably the emergent ideological process of iconization between a language and various national, ethnic, and tribal identities. As fewer Native Americans continue to speak their own language, this timely volume provides valuable grounded studies of language ideologies in action--those indigenous to Native communities as well as those imposed by outside institutions or language researchers. It considers the emergent interaction of indigenous and imported ideologies and the resulting effect on language beliefs, practices, and struggles in today's Indian Country as it demonstrates the practical implications of recognizing a multiplicity of indigenous language ideologies and their impact on heritage language maintenance and renewal.
These essays were drawn from the papers presented at the Linguistic Society of America's Summer Institute at the State University of New York at Oswego in 1976. The contents are as follows: Lyle Campbell and Marianne Mithun, "Introduction: North American Indian Historical Linguistics in Current Perspective" Ives Goddard, "Comparative Algonquian" Marianne Mithun, "Iroquoian" Wallace L. Chafe, "Caddoan" David S. Rood, "Siouan" Mary R. Haas, "Southeastern Languages" James M. Crawford, "Timucua and Yuchi: Two Language Isolates of the Southeast" Ives Goddard, "The Languages of South Texas and the Lower Rio Grande" Irvine Davis, "The Kiowa-Tanoan, Keresan, and Zuni Languages" Susan Steele, "Uto-Aztecan: An Assessment for Historical and Comparative Linguistics" William H. Jacobsen, Jr., "Hokan lnter-Branch Comparisons" Margaret Langdon, "Some Thoughts on Hokan with Particular Reference to Pomoan and Yuman" Michael Silverstein, ''Penutian: An Assessment" Laurence C. Thompson, "Salishan and the Northwest" William H. Jacobsen, Jr., "Wakashan Comparative Studies" William H. Jacobsen, Jr., "Chimakuan Comparative Studies" Michael E. Krauss, "Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut" Lyle CampbelI, "Middle American Languages" Eric S. Hamp, "A Glance from Now On."
This book provides an authoritative survey of the several hundred languages indigenous to North America. These languages show tremendous genetic and typological diversity, and offer numerous challenges to current linguistic theory. Part I of the book provides an overview of structural features of particular interest, concentrating on those that are cross-linguistically unusual or unusually well developed. These include syllable structure, vowel and consonant harmony, tone, and sound symbolism; polysynthesis, the nature of roots and affixes, incorporation, and morpheme order; case; grammatical distinctions of number, gender, shape, control, location, means, manner, time, empathy, and evidence; and distinctions between nouns and verbs, predicates and arguments, and simple and complex sentences; and special speech styles. Part II catalogues the languages by family, listing the location of each language, its genetic affiliation, number of speakers, major published literature, and structural highlights. Finally, there is a catalogue of languages that have evolved in contact situations.
This comprehensive survey of indigenous languages of the New World introduces students and general readers to the mosaic of American Indian languages and cultures and offers an approach to grasping their subtleties. Authors Silver and Miller demonstrate the complexity and diversity of these languages while dispelling popular misconceptions. Their text reveals the linguistic richness of languages found throughout the Americas, emphasizing those located in the western United States and Mexico, while drawing on a wide range of other examples found from Canada to the Andes. It introduces readers to such varied aspects of communicating as directionals and counting systems, storytelling, expressive speech, Mexican Kickapoo whistle speech, and Plains sign language. The authors have included basics of grammar and historical linguistics, while emphasizing such issues as speech genres and other sociolinguistic issues and the relation between language and worldview. They have incorporated a variety of data that have rarely or never received attention in nontechnical literature in order to underscore the linguistic diversity of the Americas, and have provided more extensive language classification lists than are found in most other texts. American Indian Languages: Cultural and Social Contexts is a comprehensive resource that will serve as a text in undergraduate and lower-level graduate courses on Native American languages and provide a useful reference for students of American Indian literature or general linguistics. It also introduces general readers interested in Native Americans to the amazing diversity and richness of indigenous American languages. Coverage includes: Achumawi, Acoma, Algonquin, Apache, Araucanian, Arawakan, Athapascan, Atsugewi, Ayamara, Bacairi, Bella Coola, Beothuk, Biloxi, Blackfoot, Caddoan, Cahto, Cahuilla, Cakchiquel, Carib, Cayuga, Chemehuevi, Cherokee, Chibchan, Chichimec, Chimakuan, Chimariko, Chinook, Chipewyan, Choctaw-Chickasaw, Chol, Cocopa, Coeur d'Alene, Comanche, Coos, Cora, Cree, Creek, Crow, Cubeo, Cupeño, Dakota, Delaware, Diegueño, Eskimo-Aleut, Esselen, Eyak, Fox, Gros Ventre, Guaraní, Guarijío, Haida, Havasupai, Hill Patwin, Hopi, Huastec, Huave, Hupa, Inuit-Inupiaq, Iroquois, Jaqaru, Je, Jicaque, Kalapuyan, Kamia, Karankawas, Karuk, Kashaya, Keres, Kickapoo, Kiliwa, Kiowa-Tanoan, Koasati, Konkow, Kuna, Kwakiutl, Kwalhioqua-Tlatskanai, Lakota, Lenca, Luiseño, Maidu, Mapuche, Markoosie, Mayan, Mazahua, Mazatec, Métis, Mexica, Micmac, Misumalpan, Mitchif, Miwok, Mixe-Zoquean, Mixtec, Mobilian, Mohave, Mohawk, Muskogean, Nahuatl, Natchez, Navajo, Nez Perce, Nheengatú, Nicola, Nomlaki, Nootka, Ojibwa, Oneida, O'odham, Otomí, Paiute, Palaihnihan, Panamint, Panoan, Paya, Pima, Pipil, Pomo, Poplocan, Pueblo, Puquina, Purpecha, Quechua, Quiché, Quileute, Sahaptian, Salish, Seneca, Sequoyah, Seri, Serrano, Shasta, Shoshoni, Sioux, Sirenikski, Slavey, Subtiaba-Tlapanec, Taíno, Takelma, Tanaina, Tarahumara, Tequistlatecan, Tewa, Tlingit, Toba, Toltec, Totonac, Tsimshian, Tubatulabal, Tukano, Tunica, Tupí, Ute, Uto-Aztecan, Vaupés, Venture¤o, Wakashan, Walapai, Wappo, Washo, Wintu, Wiyot, Xinca, Yahi, Yana, Yokuts, Yucatec, Yuchi, Yuki, Yuma, Yurok, Zapotec, Zoquean, and Zuni.
This handbook provides broad coverage of the languages indigenous to North America, with special focus on typologically interesting features and areal characteristics, surveys of current work, and topics of particular importance to communities. The volume is divided into two major parts: subfields of linguistics and family sketches. The subfields include those that are customarily addressed in discussions of North American languages (sounds and sound structure, words, sentences), as well as many that have received somewhat less attention until recently (tone, prosody, sociolinguistic variation, directives, information structure, discourse, meaning, language over space and time, conversation structure, evidentiality, pragmatics, verbal art, first and second language acquisition, archives, evolving notions of fieldwork). Family sketches cover major language families and isolates and highlight topics of special value to communities engaged in work on language maintenance, documentation, and revitalization.
