An etymology for Galiyao

Argues for an alternate etymology for the name Galiyao, referring to Pantar Island, originating in the term Gale Awa, from the Western Pantar language

Report on Recent Linguistic Fieldwork on Pantar Island, Eastern Indonesia

Report to the National Science FoundationThis paper describes linguistic fieldwork on the Nedebang and Western Pantar (Lamma) languages undertaken June-August, 2004 under the auspices of NSF grant #0404884 SGER: Exploratory Fieldwork with the Nedebang Language of Eastern Indonesia. As such it is not intended as a linguistic description of the language s of themselves. See my reports Preliminary Notes on the Nedebang Language and Preliminary Notes on the Western Pantar Language for more information on the languages themselves.National Science Foundation grant #040488

Preliminary notes on the Nedebang language

Preliminary report on the Nedebang language (ISO 639-3 code: nec), based on 65 pages of field notes collected by the author on Pantar Island July 27-30, 2004.1 Nedebang is one of four non-Austronesian languages spoken on the island of Pantar in the Indonesian province of Nusa Tenggara Timur, in the region of 8.275 S latitude, 124.202 E longitude. To my knowledge the only previously published data from Nedebang are to be found in a 117 word basic vocabulary (Stokhof 1975), recently re-elicited by Pampus (2006). The present paper will attempt to provide a more current picture of the Nedebang language situation with an eye toward preparation for more comprehensive language documentation project. The content is necessarily limited by the short duration of the fieldwork.Fieldwork was supported by U.S. National Science Foundation Small Grant for Exploratory Research, #040488

Aspects of number in the Papuan outliers of East Nusantara

Handout from a paper presented at the International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics, Bali, July 2-6, 2012.The East Nusantara region is home to two distinct groups of Papuan languages spoken far from the New Guinea mainland and surrounded by genetically unrelated Austronesian languages. While some have proposed a genetic relationship between the North Halmaheran (NH) languages and the Alor-Pantar (AP) languages (Capell 1944, Cowan 1957), most of the apparent similarities between these groups can be seen to be general typological features of the area (cf. Holton 2012). In this paper I compare the treatment of number in NH and AP languages. Examples are drawn primarily from my own field work with Tobelo (NH) and Western Pantar (AP), though related languages are cited where those two languages do not well-represent their respective families. Some aspects of number are indeed treated similarly in the two groups. For example, both NH and AP languages make extensive use of numeral classifiers, though the number of semantic categories delineated by these classifiers is much more restricted in AP languages. However, the two families carve up semantic space quite differently. WP bina (from a verb meaning ‘detached’) is used to classify fish, animals, and other non-human living things; while in Tobelo fish are counted with ngai and non-fish animals are counted with gahumu, a generic numeral classifier for three-dimensional objects (living and non-living). Other aspects of number are quite different in the two families. In AP languages number can be indicated on nouns with a plural word following the noun. The plural word designates a multitude, more than a few, rather than a non-singular referent. In WP plural words may co-occur with a co-referential pronoun indexing the number of the referent aname marung ging gateranang dia wang pidding gallang person people 3PL:AGT all go exist sebar look_for ‘all the people spread out to look for them’ In contrast, in NH languages nominal plural is not indicated except via pronominal indexing on the verb

Evidentiality in Dena'ina Athabaskan

Dena'ina evidentials are enclitics with a complex paradigmatic morphology. Their first component varies with person, while the second com- ponent varies with animacy and number, thus marking source and nature of knowledge. Although evidentiality in Dena'ina is not coded as an obligatory inflectional category on the verb, it is also not scattered throughout the gram- mar. The existence of an incipient inflectional evidential system demonstrates the ability of Athabaskan languages to innovate morphological structures outside the verb. The uniqueness of the Dena'ina system demonstrates the heterogeneity of Athabaskan grammar beyond the verb word

Findings from the Workshop on User-Centered Design of Language Archives

This white paper describes findings from the workshop on User-Centered Design of Language Archives organized in February 2016 by Christina Wasson (University of North Texas) and Gary Holton (University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa). It reviews relevant aspects of language archiving and user-centered design to construct the rationale for the workshop, relates key insights produced during the workshop, and outlines next steps in the larger research trajectory initiated by this workshop. The purpose of this white paper is to make all of the findings from the workshop publicly available in a short time frame, and without the constraints of a journal article concerning length, audience, format, and so forth. Selections from this white paper will be used in subsequent journal articles. So much was learned during the workshop; we wanted to provide a thorough documentation to ensure that none of the key insights would be lost. We consider this document a white paper because it provides the foundational insights and initial conceptual frameworks that will guide us in our further research on the user-centered design of language archives. We hope this report will be useful to members of all stakeholder groups seeking to develop user-centered designs for language archives.U.S. National Science Foundation Documenting Endangered Languages Program grants BCS-1543763 and BCS-1543828

Initial thoughts on developing a registration authority for Alaska Native place names

National Science Foundatio

A comparison of landscape categorization in Inuit-Yupik and Dene languages in Alaska

Slides from a paper presented at the 18th Inuit Studies Conference, Washington, DC, October 24-28, 2012.The landscape domain poses a significant challenge for linguistic categorization, since unlike more discrete domains such as zoology and botany, the landscape domain lacks an etic grid on which to base linguistic categories (Turk et al. 2012). Thus, it is not surprising that there is significant cross-linguistic variation in the way landscape terms are ontologized (Burenhult and Levinson 2008). While Alaska itself exhibits great diversity in landforms, a large swath of country extending from the Bering coast to the Canadian border is shared two very different language families: Inuit-Yupik and Dene. Preliminary studies of landscape terminology in these two language families suggest that Dene languages emphasize vertical features and mountain valleys, while Inuit-Yupik languages are less concerned with vertical scale and the notion of valley (Holton 2011). The current paper compares the semantics of landscape terms in Inupiaq, Yup’ik, Dena’ina, and Koyukon, four languages which are spoken along the boundary between Inuit-Yupik and Dene. In addition, the structures of Inuit-Yupik and Dene spatial orientation systems are compared