Toba

Harriet E. Manelis Klein
State University of New York at Stony Brook

Toba, or Namqom, is a Guaykuruan language spoken by the Toba Indians in Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay. The majority of these speakers (30,000) are found in the northeastern Argentine provinces of Chaco and Formosa. Immigration in the last half of the 20th century has also led to the settlement of speakers in urban centers of the provinces of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe. The Toba are the largest and most widely known indigenous group in the northeastern region of Argentina. The Toba language is closely related to four other languages of the Guaykuruan family: Mocoví, Pilagá, Kadiwéu (Mbaya), and Abipon (extinct).

This work provides a linguistic overview of the fundamental features of the Toba language. The preferred word order for Toba is SVO, but other patterns of word order are possible. A discussion of important syntactic and semantic properties of the language is included, as is a detailed description of the phonology and morphology. Two texts, with interlinear translations, reiterate and further illuminate the grammatical information. Harriet E. Manelis Klein is a Professor Emerita at Montclair State University. She is presently a Visiting Scholar in Linguistics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She has been working in the area of Amerindian languages for the past thirty years.

ISBN 9783895862380. Languages of the World/Materials 179. 60pp. 2001.

ISBN 9783862889594 (e-book, pdf)

Jaqaru

M. J. Hardman
University of Florida

Jaqaru, a member of the Jaqi family of languages (Jaqaru, Kawki, Aymara), is spoken in the Andes Mountains of Perú by a few thousand people resident both in Tupe and nearby villages and as migrants in cities. Children today are all bilingual in Jaqaru and Spanish. Access to Tupe is by a foot and pack animal road.

The phonemic system distinguishes 36 consonants but only 3 vowels. Vowel dropping is significant, complex and pervasive, marking case and phrase structure as well as style.

The language makes extensive use of morphology, with all verbs carrying several suffixes. Syntax is morphologically marked; verbal person suffixes mark simultaneously object/subject; data source is marked at all levels of grammar. Within the nominal system inclusive/exclusive and humanness are marked.

MJ Hardman is Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics at the University of Florida. She began study of Jaqaru in the fifties and has since been continually involved with one or another of the Jaqi languages for which she has written grammars, teaching materials and cultural studies. She founded INEL (Instituto Nacional de Estudios Lingüísticos) in Bolivia and the Aymara Language Materials Program at the University of Florida. Her current research also involves language and gender and the patterning of worldview in language.

ISBN 9783895862434. Languages of the World/Materials 183. 160pp. 2000.

Madurese

William Davies
University of Iowa

With more than 10 million speakers principally on the islands of Madura and Java, Madurese is the fourth most widely spoken language of Indonesia. Like the closely related Indonesian, Malay, and other Western Austronesian languages, Madurese includes as one of its most salient characteristics a verb-marking system that indicates the most prominent argument or "focus" of a clause. This grammatical sketch will detail this system (making possible comparison with closely related languages) and will examine the principle morphological processes of affixation (and the principal affixes used) and reduplication (and the variety of meanings it encodes). The grammatical properties of anaphora, question formation, nominalization, word order, modification, verb serialization, and others will be detailed and illustrated with data from elicitation and connected discourse. .

ISBN 9783895862786. Languages of the World/Materials 184. 60pp. 1999.

Kamass

Ago Künnap
University of Tartu

Kamass is one of the Samoyed languages, extinct to date, relatively little investigated but of considerable interest from the point of view of historical linguistics. The Samoyed and Finno-Ugric languages together form the Uralic family of languages. The Kamass native speakers lived in Siberia, on the northern slopes of the Sayan mountains. Earlier they were reindeer rearers of shamanistic faith. Up to date they have changed to using Russian or some local Turkic language and become agriculturists.

The first written records about the Kamass language date back to the year of 1721. The author of this outline is the last gleaner of the Kamass linguistic facts whose last informant died in 1989. Kamass is supposed to have had the Koibal dialect, the latter, however, has left us nothing more in writing than about 600 words. Likewise, the main Kamass dialect itself was divided into two subdialects.

The number of the native speakers of Kamass was very small years ago already, perhaps a couple of hundreds only. Kamass never had an alphabet of its own, to say nothing about having its own written language or school instruction.

In Kamass a strong phonetical and lexical influence by the neighbouring Turkic languages can be observed. Due to the scarcity of Kamass written records, it is possible to report only an approximate phonological characterization and a few basic features of syntax. On the other hand, a comparatively good picture can be obtained about its morphology and lexicology, there are also a few longer texts available.

Typologically, Kamass is an agglutinative language with numerous flective markers. Synthetical features predominate over analytical ones. On the whole, Kamass is a rather typical Uralic language. The parts of speech in Kamass are nouns, adjectives, numerals, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, postpositions, conjunctions, particles and interjections. Grammatical gender is lacking. There are three numbers: singular, dual and plural.

The category of case is predominantly expressed by suffixes, there are seven cases. Nouns can be used with possessive suffixes. The tenses can be used mostly by means of suffixes but, occasionally, may also be expressed by verbal aspects. Transitive and intransitive verbs may have different personal suffixes, in part. There are four modes: indicative, conjunctive, optative and imperative. The space orientation is expressed by a trinominal distribution of locatives: to where? where? from where? In case of verbal negation a separate negative auxiliary verb is used. The typical word order is SVAdO. The definite object is usually expressed by a suffixal accusative, the indefinite one by a 0-suffixal nominative. A compound sentence is not typical of Kamass: gerundial constructions can be found instead of a subordinate clause. About one-third of the word-stock has been borrowed from Turkic languages. The outline is the first extensive modern treatment of the Kamass language.

ISBN 9783895862304. Languages of the World/Materials 185. 62pp. 1999.

Enets

Ago Künnap
University of Tartu

Enets is one of the Samoyed languages, fairly little investigated but of considerable interest from the point of view of historical linguistics. The native speakers of Enets live in Siberia, on the eastern bank of the Yenisey River, close to the estuary of the river.

The written records about Enets were first fixed in the 17th century. Now there are about 200 Enetses, from them nearly 100 can yet speak Enets. All the Enetses can speak Russian and/or Nenets, partly also Nganasan. In the 18th century the number of the Enets population is supposed to have exceeded 3,000. The Enetses have never had their own written language or school instruction in their mother tongue.

From all the other Samoyed languages, Nenets and Nganasan are the closest to Enets. Enets has received most of the outside influence from Nenets, more recently from Russian. Enets has two dialects: Bai (Forest) and Madu (Tundra). The dialects primarily differ phonetically and lexically, partly also morphologically. The present outline has been compiled on the basis of the Bai dialect. In the Enets phonology the opposition of short and long vowels can be observed. Although there is a fairly good survey about the grammar of Enets, very few longer texts have been recorded. Enets is typologically a rather common Uralic language. Agglutination predominates over flection, synthetical features over analytical ones.

The parts of speech in Enets are nouns, adjectives, numerals, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, postpositions, conjunctions, particles and interjections. Grammatical gender is lacking. The category of case is primarily expressed by means of suffixes, there are seven cases. The nouns are used with the possessive suffix. There are also subject and object conjugations with differences in personal suffixes. The nouns may also be conjugated (nominal conjugation). The Enets modes are indicative, exadhortative, conjunctive, debitive, optative, imperative, auditive, interrogative and quotative. The tenses can be expressed by a common verbal aspect but in the preterite and future tenses separate suffixes can also be used.

The separate orientation can be expressed by a trinominal distribution of locatives: to where? where? from where? In case of verbal negation a separate negative auxiliary is used. The verbal forms can indicate the subject person and, in addition to its number, also the number of the object. Enets has no compound sentences: instead of a subordinate clause participial, gerundial and infinitival constructions are used. An attribute precedes its main word. In Enets there are numerous loan words from Nenets, particularly concerning reindeer rearing, Nganasan loans in connection with reindeer hunting and Russian loans related to more modern spheres of activity.

This outline is the first extensive modern survey about Enets.

Ago Künnap is Professor of Uralic Languages of the University of Tartu. He has published numerous papers and a few books on Samoyed languages.

ISBN 9783895862298. Languages of the World/Materials 186. 62pp. 1999.

The Grammar of Esperanto

Christopher Gledhill
University of St. Andrews

This book provides a detailed description of Esperanto for linguists who are not familiar with the language. Its main aim is to demonstrate that Esperanto not only has complex system of etymology and word formation, but also of syntax and phraseology. Another aim is to determine to what extent the language has extended beyond its original conception in 1887. This work presents for the first time statistical and contextual analysis from a representative computer-based text archive using the latest techniques of corpus linguistics.
Esperanto is an ideal object of study for linguists since it is the most widespread and best known example of an artificial language. In theory, Esperanto represents a regular, easily assimilated language designed for international use. Yet the language also came to be used socially among fellow enthusiasts, intellectually as a literary forum and politically for propaganda, especially in the communist era. Conservative estimates indicate 50,000 speakers, which is large by minority language standards. Yet Esperanto's status as a second language and ideological project has only recently attracted socio-linguistic fieldwork (Stocker 1995) and the language has undergone almost no critical linguistic analysis.
Traditional descriptions point out that some syntactic elements of Esperanto are a priori rational systems which resemble few other languages, while most morpho-lexical elements are a posteriori and resemble donor languages such as Latin. Popular accounts of Esperanto rely on the '16 rules' which have led to the misconception that Esperanto has a minimal grammar. However, in the natural development of the language some original creole-like characteristics have emerged beyond Zamenhof's original design. For example, the uncertainty over aspect or tense in verbs, the increasing use of adverbs and prepositional-adverbs, or variable theme orientation in compound nouns. These processes are evidence of evolution in the language, although some have led to conflicts within the movement. There is particular debate about the degree to which it is possibile to control the language of what is essentially a discourse-community as well as a speech community (Swales 1990). All these factors make the language difficult to categorize according to traditional formulae.
This volume outlines a linguistic description of the particularities of the language, from the morphosyntax to elements of phraseolgy. The description is based on a computational analysis of a written text archive (a corpus of 350 000 words). The corpus analysis reveals consistent patterns of phraseology which point to linguistic richness and dynamism. These patterns belie the receivced wisdom that artificial languages cannot really display natural complexity.
Contents: 0 Historical and social background. 1 Phonology 2 Morphology 3 Syntax 4 Phraseology 5 Interlinear transcription Appendices: corpus statistics and word lists.

ISBN 9783895869617. Languages of the World/Materials 190. 150pp. 2000.

Maipure

Raoul Zamponi
Università degli Studi di Siena

Before the arrival of European missionaries in the Orinoco basin region, the Maipure constituted a small ethnic entity in the area of the upper course of the Orinoco River (Amazonas State, Venezuela), yet their speech—from the Maipuran or Arawakan stock—was also probably employed in this zone as a medium of communication among individuals of different languages. But beginning in the second half of the eighteenth century—when most of the Maipure were already brought together by Jesuits into two missions along the middle course of the Orinoco, together with members of other ethnic groups in order to facilitate conversion—the use of Spanish became predominant among this people and their own language ceased to be spoken.

The author’s intention with this contribution is to present all the knowledge that he has been able to gather from all the surviving material on this little known, extinct language of South America. The present sketch, therefore, contains chapters on phonology and morphosyntax, as well as the two available Maipure texts (with a morpheme-by-morpheme analysis) and also, in the form of an appendix, a word list. The introductory subsections deal with the socio- and geolinguistic situations, the genetic affinities, and issues of languages contact (with neighbouring languages and Spanish). In these subsections, one can also find a discussion on Avane, a closely related language (or, perhaps, a co-dialect) spoken along the banks of the Autana and Sipapo Rivers that went out of use in the same period, and for the same reasons, as Maipure.

ISBN 9783895862328. Languages of the World/Materials 192. 60pp. 2003.

Kiliwa

Mauricio J. Mixco
University of Utah

Kiliwa, sole member of one of the four branches of Yuman (within Cochimæi-Yuman), has under 8 fluent speakers, among some 35 members of its comunidad indígena. Poverty and the strictures of the kinship system have reduced the Kiliwa, from some 2,000 in the 1790s to their present numbers. They occupy a fragment of their aboriginal territory in the municipalidad de Ensenada, Baja California Norte, Mexico. Kiliwa has vocalic epenthesis, a rich consonant system with many clusters, 3 vowels (plus length). It is a verb-final, head-marking language, with positional auxiliary verbs (sit, stand, lie) and classificatory verbs (be, do, say) marking tense-aspect-modality along with benefactives, causatives, etc. The verb has subject-object nominative-accusative prefixation with root ablaut and affixation for subject-object number agreement. Coordinate clauses suffix a three-way realis/irrealis distinction subject-continuity/switch-reference; this combines with a system for tracking predicate-continuity with fronted classificatory auxiliaries. Relative clauses distinguish subject from non-subject heads.

ISBN 9783895862335. Languages of the World/Materials 193. 60pp. 2000.