A privative derivational source for standard negation in Lokono (Arawakan)

Abstract It has recently been argued that Arawakan languages of South America provide evidence for a novel historical source for standard negation, a privative derivational affix. This hypothesis posits that the prefixal standard negation found in some languages of the family developed from a privative prefix, ma-, present in Proto-Arawakan, that originally derived privative stative verbs from nouns. According to this account, the function of this prefix extended, in many languages of the family, to negating nominalized verbs in subordinate clauses, and then, via insubordination, to standard main clause negation, in a smaller subset of languages. The purpose of this paper is to substantiate this hypothetical trajectory in detail in a particular Arawakan language: Lokono, a highly endangered language of the Guianas. On the basis of modern linguistic fieldwork and colonial-era language materials, we show that 18th-century Lokono exhibited a standard negation construction based on the privative, and that this construction exhibits clear signs of its subordinate clause origin. We show that Lokono also exhibits the full range of functions for the privative ma- that are predicted to be historical precursors to the standard negation function, substantiating the historical trajectory from privative derivation to standard negation. We conclude by observing that the prefixal standard negation strategy has lost ground since the 18th century to a standard negation particle that originally expressed constituent negation, possibly due to contact with colonial languages that employ similar strategies

State-of-the-Art in the Development of the Lokono Language

Lokono is a critically endangered Northern Arawakan language spoken in the peri-coastal areas of the Guianas (Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana). Today, in every Lokono village there remains only a small number of elderly native speakers. However, in spite of the ongoing language loss, across the three Guianas as well as in the Netherlands, where a number of expatriate Lokono live, language awareness is increasing and measures are being taken to develop the language. This paper employs the UNESCO’s language vitality framework to assess the Lokono situation. I give particular attention to the state-of-the-art in language development activities, including language documentation. The aim of this paper is to provide the readers with an updated picture of the Lokono sociolinguistic context in order to facilitate future work between the Lokono and the academic community.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Forests : the cross-linguistic perspective

Do all humans perceive, think and talk about tree cover (‘forests’) in more or less the same way? International forestry programs frequently seem to operate on the assumption that they do. However, recent advances in the language sciences show that languages vary greatly as to how the landscape domain is lexicalized and grammaticalized. Different languages segment and label the large-scale environment and its features according to astonishingly different semantic principles, often in tandem with highly culture-specific practices and ideologies. Presumed basic concepts like mountain, valley and river cannot in fact be straightforwardly translated across languages. In this paper we describe, compare and evaluate some of the semantic diversity observed in relation to forests. We do so on the basis of first-hand linguistic field data from a global sample of indigenous categorization systems as they are manifested in the following languages: Avatime (Ghana), Duna (Papua New Guinea), Jahai (Malay Peninsula), Lokono (the Guianas), Makalero (East Timor), and Umpila/Kuuku Ya’u (Cape York Peninsula). We show that basic linguistic categories relating to tree cover vary considerably in their principles of semantic encoding across languages, and that forest is a challenging category from the point of view of inter-cultural translatability. This has consequences for current global policies and programs aimed at standardizing forest definitions and measurements. It calls for greater attention to categorial diversity in designing and implementing such agendas, and for receptiveness to and understanding of local indigenous classification systems in communicating those agendas on the ground

The Cracks, Bumps, and Dents of ‘Culture Collecting’: Examples from the Study of South American (Fire) Fans

Ethnography, a means of representing the culture of a people graphically and in writing, as well as ethnographic museums, institutions devoted to conserving, contextualizing, and displaying indigenous heritage for wider audiences, strive to portray cultures adequately and on their own terms. However, given that the ethnographic enterprise has virtually always been carried out by and within non-indigenous scientific structures, its products are at a high risk of being tinged by the Western lens, in particular Western scientific theory and practice. This article focuses on the ethnographic record of South American fire fans – defined by ethnographers as tools for fanning cooking fires – to demonstrate how such biases can be removed by taking stock of the entirety of the relevant ethnographic heritage and analyzing it through the prism of the documented practices in which such objects are enmeshed, including the very practice of ethnography. In the light of such practices, the ethnographic record of fire fans deconstructs into a corpus of historical documents revealing the momentary, yet meaningful, technological choices made by the indigenous craftsmen who produced the objects and exposing Western categories, Kulturkreise mentality, and culture-area schemata imposed on them.Ethnography, a means of representing the culture of a people graphically and in writing, as well as ethnographic museums, institutions devoted to conserving, contextualizing, and displaying indigenous heritage for wider audiences, strive to portray cultures adequately and on their own terms. However, given that the ethnographic enterprise has virtually always been carried out by and within non-indigenous scientific structures, its products are at a high risk of being tinged by the Western lens, in particular Western scientific theory and practice. This article focuses on the ethnographic record of South American fire fans – defined by ethnographers as tools for fanning cooking fires – to demonstrate how such biases can be removed by taking stock of the entirety of the relevant ethnographic heritage and analyzing it through the prism of the documented practices in which such objects are enmeshed, including the very practice of ethnography. In the light of such practices, the ethnographic record of fire fans deconstructs into a corpus of historical documents revealing the momentary, yet meaningful, technological choices made by the indigenous craftsmen who produced the objects and exposing Western categories, Kulturkreise mentality, and culture-area schemata imposed on them

Documenting linguistic and epistemological structure of ecotopes for pedagogical purposes

Language documentation theory stresses the relation between language and the knowledge systems inextricably linked to it (Thieberger, 2011, p. 1). Consequently, language documentation projects often focus on specific domains in order to document both the linguistic and epistemological structures used by Indigenous groups. The former often depart from familiar Indo-European patterns, while the latter defy Western scientific paradigms, and are usually not acquired through formal schooling. In the face of worldwide linguistic and cultural erosion and as documentation projects bring their results to the table, a pedagogical question arises: Are we developing pedagogical materials that reflect not only Indigenous linguistic practices but also Indigenous knowledge systems and Indigenous ways of acquiring them? In this paper, I use first-hand ethnoecological data from Lokono, a critically endangered North Arawakan language spoken in the Guianas, to problematize this question. The Lokono distinguish a set of (generic) ecotopes (Hunn and Meilleur, 2012), whose names are derived with suffixes –wkaro ‘swampy area’ or –wkili ‘dry area’ from a nominal base encoding a botanical resource (e.g. mokorowkaro ‘a swampy area of the mokoro reed (Ischnosiphon arouma)’ and awarhawkili ‘a dry area of the awarha palm (Astrocaryum vulgare)’). Careful analysis of the knowledge encoded in the ecotope vocabulary reveals a network of related bits of information: botanical (knowledge of other plants that grow there), zoological (knowledge of animals that feed there), edaphic (knowledge of the soil type), hydrological (knowledge of water resources) and utilitarian (knowledge of the uses of the resource). Interestingly, the utilitarian component of the set covers the core of Lokono culture. Lokono ecotopes are hence an example of linguistic structures that merge information from different domains. Such ethnoecological knowledge is normally acquired through “first-hand experience immersed in a particular landscape” (Zarger, 2011, p. 372). For the linguistic and cultural survival of an Indigenous group, it may be of utmost importance to pass the linguistic and epistemological content of such ecotopes as one “package” rooted in the local landscape, instead of disintegrating them into familiar semantic domains (and corollary chapter divisions) such as Animals, Plants, Weather, Home abstracted from this “package”. I demonstrate how these considerations help us shape a future Lokono revitalization program—a course book (formal schooling) that takes the students on a physical journey through the village and its surroundings (immersed experience). I use the ecotope example to show how the documented linguistic and epistemological structures can help us organize the curriculum. Hunn, E.S., Meilleur, B.A., 2012. Toward a Theory of Landscape Ethnoecological Classification, in: Johnson, L.M., Hunn, E.S. (Eds.), Landscape Ethnoecology: Concepts of Biotic and Physical Space. Berghahn Books, pp. 15–26. Thieberger, N., 2011. Introduction, in: Thieberger, N. (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Fieldwork, Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics. Oxford University Press, Oxford ; New York, pp. 1–12. Zarger, R.K., 2011. Learning Ethnobiology: Creating Knowledge and Skills about the Living World, in: Anderson, E.N., Pearsall, D., Hunn, E., Turner, N. (Eds.), Ethnobiology. Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken, N.J., pp. 371–389

Integrated measurement systems for electronic devices operating in radiation environment

Electronic systems in High Energy Physics experiments are exposed to radiation. Such hard environment provokes damages and errors in electronic devices. This M.Sc. thesis describes the radiation effects on different types of electronic components. Three measurement systems arc presented, for irradiation experiments on Light Emitting Diodes, semiconductor memories (SDRAM and FLASH) and FPGA chips. Results of several tests that have been done are included and discussed