Yurakaré

FGW – Publications without University Leiden contrac

Word accent and mapping rules in Yurakaré

This paper looks in detail at stress assignment in the Bolivian isolate language Yurakaré, one of the few processes in the language that require the phonological-word (p-word) as its domain of application. In terms of stress assignment, the p-word in Yurakaré interacts not only with the morphological component, but also with the syntactic component. Moreover, morphological interference with the prosodic component seems to start below the level of the p-word. I argue that these complex, conditional mappings can be thought of as either structurally conditioned diachronic remnants of grammaticalized items or as functionally motivated peculiarities

Word accent and mapping rules in Yurakaré

This paper looks in detail at stress assignment in the Bolivian isolate language Yurakaré, one of the few processes in the language that require the phonological-word (p-word) as its domain of application. In terms of stress assignment, the p-word in Yurakaré interacts not only with the morphological component, but also with the syntactic component. Moreover, morphological interference with the prosodic component seems to start below the level of the p-word. I argue that these complex, conditional mappings can be thought of as either structurally conditioned diachronic remnants of grammaticalized items or as functionally motivated peculiarities

Introduction: Bridging the gap between individual interactions and areal patterns

Contact linguistics is the overarching term for a highly diversified field with branches that connect to such widely divergent areas as historical linguistics, typology, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and grammatical theory. Because of this diversification, there is a risk of fragmentation and lack of interaction between the different subbranches of contact linguistics. Nevertheless, the different approaches share the general goal of accounting for the results of interacting linguistic systems. This common goal opens up possibilities for active communication, cooperation, and coordination between the different branches of contact linguistics. This book, therefore, explores the extent to which contact linguistics can be viewed as a coherent field, and whether the advances achieved in a particular subfield can be translated to others. In this way our aim is to encourage a boundary-free discussion between different types of specialists of contact linguistics, and to stimulate cross-pollination between them

Word and the Americanist perspective

Even though recently appeared reference grammars of lesser-known languages usually do pay attention to issues to do with wordhood, studies of the theoretical and typological import of wordhood-related questions in indigenous languages of the Americas are not numerous. This publication aims to address the challenges posed by individual phenomena found in the Americas to the received views of wordhood

Glottospace: R package for language mapping and geospatial analysis of linguistic and cultural data

The glottospace R package facilitates the geospatial analysis of linguistic and cultural data. The aim of the package is to provide a streamlined workflow for geolinguistic analysis, including data entry, data import, cleaning, exploration, language mapping and visualisation, and export. Glottospace is also intended as an R interface to global linguistic and cultural databases such as Glottolog, WALS, and D-PLACE, contributing to improved reproducibility of data analysis

The social lives of isolates (and small language families):The case of the Northwest Amazon

The Americas are home to patches of extraordinary linguistic (genealogical) diversity. These high-diversity areas are particularly unexpected given the recent population of the Americas. In this paper, we zoom in on one such area, the Northwest Amazon, and address the question of how the diversity in this area has persisted to the present. We contrast two hypotheses that claim opposite mechanisms for the maintenance of diversity: the isolation hypothesis suggests that isolation facilitates the preservation of diversity, while the integration hypothesis proposes that conscious identity preservation in combination with contact drives diversity maintenance. We test predictions for both hypotheses across four disciplines: biogeography, cultural anthropology, population genetics and linguistics. Our results show signs of both isolation and integration, but they mainly suggest considerable diversity in how groups of speakers have interacted with their surroundings

Interpreting mismatches between linguistic and genetic patterns among speakers of Tanimuka (Eastern Tukanoan) and Yukuna (Arawakan)

Northwestern Amazonia is home to a great degree of linguistic diversity, and the human societies in that region are part of complex networks of interaction that predate the arrival of Europeans. This study investigates the population and language contact dynamics between two languages found within this region, Yukuna and Tanimuka, which belong to the Arawakan and Tukanoan language families, respectively. We use evidence from linguistics, ethnohistory, ethnography and population genetics to provide new insights into the contact dynamics between these and other human groups in NWA. Our results show that the interaction between these groups intensified in the last 500 years, to the point that it is difficult to differentiate between them genetically. However, this close interaction has led to more substantial contact-induced language changes in Tanimuka than in Yukuna, consistent with a scenario of language shift and asymmetrical power relations