An Interdisciplinary Approach to Documenting Knowledge: Plants and Their Uses in Southern Greenland

Local Greenlanders assume that traditional knowledge of plant uses in Greenland has been lost due to extensive Danish contact and modernization. We used an interdisciplinary approach to reconstruct this lost knowledge: the biologist provided botanical identification, plant uses, methods of collection, preparation, and storage, while the linguist provided access to the linguistic identification of the plants, both in Greenland and in a pan-Inuit context, and access to the historical documentation. We conducted open-ended and semi-structured interviews at two sites in South Greenland to document plant names and uses. Our findings indicate that local knowledge of is greater than believed. We documented over 170 uses of plants, mosses, fungi, and seaweeds. Here we consider the meaning and etymologies of Kalaallisut plant names, how they correspond or differ to other Inuit terminology, and compare traditional uses with those from other Arctic peoples to identify traditional Inuit knowledge versus that influenced by Danish contact. Certain medicinal plants appear to be known across the Arctic but differ in preparation between peoples. Some uses are clearly derived from Danish culinary practices. From a linguistic standpoint plant names appear to be derived from the Inuit language family. These data demonstrate the fusion of traditional and colonialist knowledge

An Interdisciplinary Approach to Documenting Knowledge: Plants and Their Uses in Southern Greenland

The native language of west Greenland, Kalaallisut, is robust, with over 50 000 speakers among approximately 56 000 inhabitants. However, many people in Nuuk, the capital and largest city, believe traditional knowledge of plant uses has been lost as a result of extensive Danish contact. Our findings indicate that in southern Greenland local knowledge of plant uses is greater than believed. Interviews conducted with people in two southern communities, Nanortalik and Qassiarsuk, showed that people acquire knowledge about plants through a vast number of resources, not only Inuit knowledge from elders, but also published European sources and experimentation, raising questions about the extent to which such knowledge can be labeled traditional or ancestral. We documented more than 50 taxa and 205 plant uses in seven broad categories: medicine, beverages, food, herbs and spices, fuel, ritual, and material culture, the last category consisting primarily of decorative uses. Although medicinal uses account for the largest amount (~27%), the combination of the food, beverage, and herbs and spices/condiment categories make up nearly half of all uses. Some plants, in particular mushrooms and seaweed, were identified as edible but are not consumed. All consultants are fluent speakers of Kalaallisut, and identified the majority of plants. However, only 12 species were identified by everyone consulted, and some plants were identified by their Danish name. Some plant names and uses have remained consistent along the migration route of Inuit ancestors across the Arctic, while others have been lost or changed over time.La langue autochtone de l’ouest du Groenland, le kalaallisut, est une langue robuste. Elle est parlée par plus de 50 000 personnes relevant d’une population d’environ 56 000 habitants. Cependant, de nombreuses personnes de Nuuk, la capitale et également la plus grande ville du pays, croient que les connaissances traditionnelles des plantes se sont perdues en raison des contacts trop grands avec les Danois. Nos observations indiquent cependant que dans le sud du Groenland, la connaissance des plantes locales est meilleure que ce que les gens croient. Des entrevues réalisées auprès de gens faisant partie de deux collectivités du Sud, Nanortalik et Qassiarsuk, montrent que les gens acquièrent des connaissances au sujet des plantes au moyen de diverses sources, non seulement les aînés inuits, mais aussi à partir de sources européennes publiées et d’expérimentation, ce qui a pour effet de soulever des questions à savoir dans quelle mesure les connaissances peuvent être considérées comme traditionnelles ou ancestrales. Nous avons répertorié plus de 50 taxons et de 205 utilisations de plantes relevant de sept grandes catégories : médecine, boissons, aliments, herbes et épices, carburants, rituels et culture matérielle. Cette dernière catégorie prend principalement la forme d’usages décoratifs. Bien que les utilisations à caractère médicinal représentent la plus grande partie des utilisations (~27 %), l’ensemble des catégories des aliments, des boissons et des herbes et épices-condiments représente près de la moitié de tous les usages. Certaines plantes, plus particulièrement les champignons et les algues, étaient considérées comme comestibles, sans pour autant être consommées. Toutes les personnes consultées parlent le kalaallisut couramment, et elles ont réussi à identifier la majorité des plantes. Toutefois, seulement 12 espèces ont été identifiées par toutes les personnes consultées, et certaines plantes ont été identifiées au moyen de leur nom danois. Le nom et l’utilisation de certaines plantes sont restés les mêmes le long de la route de migration des ancêtres inuits à l’échelle de l’Arctique, tandis que d’autres se sont perdus ou ont été modifiés au fil du temps.Mots clés : Groenland, Arctique, ethnobotanique, linguistique, langue, Inuit, connaissance locale, plante

The Arctic Indigenous Language Initiative: Assessment, Promotion, and Collaboration

An indigenous-driven project, the Arctic Indigenous Language Initiative (AILI), is working to reverse language shift through activeengagement and collaboration throughout the circumpolar region. The circumpolar Arctic is undergoing radical climate change and equally radical cultural disruption. Language shift is an integral part of cultural disruption in this region: of the 50 or so indigenous languages spoken in the circumpolar Arctic, current assessments indicate that all but Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic; iso-639 kal) are endangered. Arctic indigenous peoples are perhaps uniquely organized within the world today in a way that potentially empowers them to take action. Their position as permanent participants on the Arctic Council gives them a political voice to leverage change. The trans-national status presents opportunities for collaboration and challenges due to the large geographic distances and the implications of working with and across differing demographics, disparate cultures and political systems. The present paper describes the ongoing status of the AILI and the potential models it provides for indigenous-defined and indigenous-driven language initiatives. ----- Le projet Arctic Indigenous Language Initiative (AILI), mené par des peuples autochtones, oeuvre à inverser le changement de langue par l’engagement actif et la collaboration partout dans la région circumpolaire. L’Arctique circumpolaire est en train de subir un changement climatique radical et un bouleversement culturel qui est tout aussi radical. Le changement de langue fait partie intégrante du bouleversement culturel dans cette région: parmi les quelques 50 langues autochtones parlées dans l’Arctique circumpolaire, des évaluations actuelles indiquent que toutes sauf le kalaallisut (groenlandais de l’ouest; iso-639 kal) sont menacées par la disparition. Les peuples autochtones de l’Arctique sont peut-être les seuls à être organisés dans le monde d’aujourd’hui d’une façon qui leur donne le pouvoir de prendre des mesures. Leur position comme participants permanents au Conseil de l’Arctique leur donne une voix politique pour induire le changement. Leur statut transnational présente des opportunités pour la collaboration mais aussi des défis dus aux distances géographiques importantes, aux conséquences d’un travail entre groupes démographiques, cultures et systèmes politiques disparates. Le présent document décrit le statut courant de l’AILI et les modèles potentiels qu’elle fournit aux initiatives qui sont définies et menées par des Autochtones

Documenting linguistic practices for navigating space and place in Greenland

Language provides a unique window into the ways that a community conceptualizes and relates to its spatial environment. Calling attention to both similarities and differences in the cross-linguistic structuring of space, investigations into the linguistic encoding of space and place yield much insight into the interactions between language, cognition, and the external environment (Levinson & Wilkins 2003). Insofar as language documentation is concerned with “provid[ing] a comprehensive record of the linguistic practices characteristic of a given speech community” (Himmelmann 1998:166), it is important to document how people use language to interact with and navigate their spatial environment and create a sense of place, especially in communities where such practices reflect a fundamental way of life. This is clearly illustrated by our work with Kalaallisut (Greenlandic) speakers in Greenland. Our research works to elucidate the frameworks of knowledge embedded within Kalaallisut speech for referencing the Arctic environment, illustrating variation among speakers in the use of speech and kinds of knowledge embedded in place names and landscape terminology. Across the Inuit-Yupik languages of the Arctic, we find a rich framework of spatial understanding embedded with environmental and sociocultural knowledge within speech patterns, paralleling a deep connection between the Inuit and their physical environment. Studies of Inuit place names and landscape (e.g. Alia 2006; Collignon 2006 for Canadian Inuit; Holton 2011 for Alaskan Inuit; Nuttall 1991 for NW Greenland) emphasize the multidimensional nature of these place names as well as the culturally specific conceptual ontologies encoded in landscape terms. In Greenland, we find sociolinguistic variation across such spatial reference that correlates not only with age and gender but primarily with overall engagement with the land and hunting. However, large-scale changes in the Arctic environment associated with climate change and economic development are rapidly altering the relationship between Inuit and their environment. The documentation of place and space in this context is of particular importance as Greenland undergoes massive political and economic change. Using an ethno-linguistic approach to documentation and analysis, we show that Kalaallisut toponyms and landscape terms exist within a complex domain of spatial language, coming together with an extensive demonstrative system, relational nouns signifying intrinsic topological relations, a coastal (and, more recently, cardinal) based orientation system (Fortescue 1988), slope terms, spatial locating verbs, and local case morphology. These numerous linguistic patterns together form an organized framework of knowledge through which Kalaallisut speakers have navigated their Arctic environment for hundreds of years. References Alia, Valerie. 2006. Names and Nunavut. Culture and identity in the Inuit homeland. Oxford/New York: Berghahn Books. Collignon, Béatrice. 2006. Inuit place names and sense of place. In Pamela Stern & Lisa Stevenson, eds., Critical Inuit Studies. An Anthology of Contemporary Arctic Ethnography , 187-205. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Fortescue, Michael. 1988. Eskimo orientation systems. Meddelelser om Grønland 11. Holton, Gary. 2011. Differing conceptualizations of the same landscape. The Athabaskan and Eskimo language boundary in Alaska. In D.M. Mark, A.G. Turk, N. Burenhult & D. Stea, eds., Landscape in language, 225-37. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 1998. Documentary and descriptive linguistics. Linguistics 36:161-95. Levinson, Stephen C., & Wilkins, David P. (Eds.). 2006. Grammars of space: Explorations in cognitive diversity (No. 6). Cambridge University Press. Nuttall, Mark. 1991. Memoryscape: a sense of locality in northwest Greenland. North Atlantic Studies 1(2): 39-50

Reconstructing sociolinguistic variation

In this paper we illustrate a methodology for reconstructing language in interaction from literary texts, demonstrating how they can serve as documentation of speech when primary linguistic material is unavailable. A careful incorporation of facts from literary dialect not only informs grammatical reconstruction in situations with little to no documentation, but also allows for the reconstruction of the sociolinguistic use of a language, an oft-overlooked aspect of linguistic reconstruction. Literary dialogue is often one of the only attestations of regional varieties of a language with a very salient standard dialect, where no primary sources are available. Odessan Russian (OdR), a moribund dialect of Russian, serves as a case study. OdR grew out of intensive language contact and differs from most other varieties of Russian, with substrate influences from Yiddish, Ukrainian, and Polish, and lexical borrowing from other languages. The only records of "spoken" OdR are found in fctional narrative. An analysis of works from several prominent Odessan writers, including Isaak Babel and Ze'ev Jabotinsky, reveals considerable variation among speakers of OdR; careful tracking of this variation shows how it was distributed among different social groups, and suggests how it may have been deployed to index and acknowledge different social roles

Utvrđivanje sintaktičke konvergencije u dvojezičnih govornika ruskoga jezika i jezika sakha

This paper illustrates the implementation of two basic experiments to test word order changes in Russian and Sakha, languages in long–standing contact. We hypothesize that changes in word order may correlate with deeper structural changes and la nguage shift. The experiments show that some speakers are shifting from Sakha to Russian: 4 from a sample of 30 speakers could not produce texts in Sakha, and one third of the sample produced sentences with some errors. At the same time, there were a significant number of mistakes in the Russian production experiments, indicating interference from Sakha and/or imperfect learning. A sociolinguistic questionnaire showed a high level of accuracy between speakers’ self–assessment of their proficiency in each of the target languages as measured by the experiments shown here. Moreover, the simple experiments themselves revealed a number of other production errors and proved to be a reasonable indicator of less than fluent proficiency and of at least the initial stages of language shift.Članak pokazuje primjenu dvaju osnovnih testova za provjeru promjena u poretku riječi u dvama jezicima u dugogodišnjemu kontaktu: u ruskome jeziku i u jeziku sakha (ili jakutskom). Pretpostavka je da promjene u poretku riječi mogu biti povezane s dubljim strukturnim promjenama i gubitkom jezika. Istraživanja pokazuju da neki govornici prestaju rabiti jezik sakha jer govore ruski: u skupini od 30 govornika četvero ih ne može proizvesti tekst na jeziku sakha, dok je trećina ispitanika proizvela rečenice s pogreškama. Istodobno, u proizvodnji tekstova na ruskome također je zabilježen znatan broj pogrešaka koje su odražavale interferencije s drugim jezikom (sakha) ili su posljedica loše usvojenoga jezika. Sociolingvistički je upitnik pokazao visoku razinu podudarnosti između samoprocjene jezične kompetencije govornika u svakome od proučavanih jezika i rezultata naših mjerenja. Štoviše, i vrlo jednostavne provjere kompetencije pokazale su stanovit broj ostalih vrsta pogrešaka te dokazale da su pouzdan pokazatelj sve slabije tečnosti u govoru kao i neupitno početne faze gubitka jezika

The unembodied metaphor: comprehension and production of tactile metaphors without somatosensation

IntroductionProposals for embodied metaphor and embodied cognition have suggested abstract concepts are understood indirectly through the simulation of previous sensory experiences in a different domain. While exceptions have been observed for sensory deficits and impairments that are common, such as vision and audition, it is commonly assumed that somatosensation (proprioception, haptic touch, pain, pressure, temperature, etc.) is fundamental for the comprehension of production of sensory metaphors and much abstract thought in general. In this way, our past sensory experiences are critical to our understanding not just of the world around us but also of our sense of selves. This would suggest that Kim, who was born without somatosensation, would have difficulty understanding, using, or even thinking about many abstract concepts typically linked to different sensory experiences through metaphor, including a creation of a sense of self.MethodsTo examine her comprehension of sensory metaphors, Kim was asked to select the best sensory idiomatic expression given its context. Her friends and family as well as a representative sample of individuals online were recruited to complete the survey as controls. Additionally, we transcribed and analyzed six hours of unprompted speech to determine if Kim spontaneously uses somatosensory metaphors appropriately.ResultsResults from the idiomatic expression survey indicate that Kim performs as well as controls despite lacking any previous direct sensory experiences of these concepts. Analysis of the spontaneous speech highlights that Kim appropriately uses tactile expressions in both their concrete sensory and abstract metaphorical meanings.DiscussionTaken together, these two studies demonstrate that what is lost in sensory experiences can be made up in linguistic experiences, as Kim's understanding of tactile words was acquired in the complete absence of somatosensory experiences. This study demonstrates that individuals can comprehend and use tactile language and metaphor without recruiting past somatosensory experiences, and thus challenges a strong definition of embodied cognition which requires sensory simulations in language comprehension and abstract thought

The Prospect of the Russian Language in Georgia. Insights from the Educated Youth

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the status of the Russian language in the new-born Republics became a central issue. In the Southern Caucasus, all the Constitutions promulgated by the three Republics opted for ethnocentric language policies that accepted the titular language as the only State Language. However, the role of the Russian language as a lingua franca remained crucial for international communication and everyday interaction. It followed that it continued to play an important role also in education. The present study focuses on Georgia, where a strong derussification policy has taken place in the last decades and aims at understanding to what extent the use of Russian among the young generations has contracted. In particular, we present an analysis conducted on data collected via (i) a survey for young people consisting of questions on their sociolinguistic background and a proficiency test in Russian, and (ii) semi-structured interviews for teachers of Russian and English as Foreign Languages on the research topics

Negative Concord in Russian. An Overview

In this article I will describe the general properties of Negative Concord in Russian, which is a strict Negative Concord language, where all negative indefinites must co-occur with sentential negation. However, there are several cases where the negation marker can be absent (like in fragment answers) or can appear in a non-standard position (like at the left of an embedded infinitival). I will take into consideration all these specific cases described by the literature on the negation system of Russian and analyse them according to current approaches to Negative Concord

Theory and description in African Linguistics: Selected papers from the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

The papers in this volume were presented at the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics at UC Berkeley in 2016. The papers offer new descriptions of African languages and propose novel theoretical analyses of them. The contributions span topics in phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and reflect the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa. Four papers in the volume examine Areal Features and Linguistic Reconstruction in Africa, and were presented at a special workshop on this topic held alongside the general session of ACAL