scholarly journals “Plaza ‘góó and before he can respond…”

Pragmatics ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 511-541 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony K. Webster
Keyword(s):  
Navajo Nation ◽  
Language Community ◽  
Linguistic Ideology ◽  
Navajo Language ◽  
English Dominant ◽  
Linguistic Purism

This article suggests that much of the use of the Navajo language in contemporary Navajo written poetry, especially English dominant poetry, serves as an icon of proper Navajo usage. It is a purist view of the Navajo language. Navajo poetry is implicated, even if tacitly, in a discourse of linguistic purism that is tied to an oppositional linguistic ideology that sees Navajo and English as discrete and distinct “objects.” Navajo poetry erases the contemporary sociolinguistic diversity - including bilingual Navajo - on the Navajo Nation. And in so doing, it closes off parts of Navajo sociolinguistic realities and in its stead creates an imagined Navajo language community.

scholarly journals From Hóyéé to Hajinei

Pragmatics ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-549 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony K. Webster
Keyword(s):  
Code Switching ◽  
Place Names ◽  
Linguistic Ideology ◽  
English Dominant ◽  
General Linguistic ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
General Semantic ◽  
Semantic Domains ◽  
English I

This paper examines the use of co-switching in Navajo written poetry. I look specifically at the use of code-switching from English dominant poems to Navajo. I outline three general semantic domains that are most commonly code-switched from English to Navajo: 1) emotions; 2) mythic characters; and 3) traditional place-names. I suggest that this has to do with a general linguistic ideology that understands these domains as incommensurate with English. I argue that such code-switches are “emblematic identity displays.” I conclude by discussing the relationship between “folk” orthographies and “standard” orthographies. I argue that an over-reliance on “the standard” and a diminishing of “folk” orthographies limits the potential for creativity and subtly undermines notions of incommensurability when Navajo poets are limited to “the standard”, a standard that many Navajos do not know.

Ecologising Seediq: Towards an Ecology of an Endangered Indigenous Language from Taiwan

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Darryl Sterk
Keyword(s):  
Border Crossing ◽  
Indigenous Language ◽  
Language Community ◽  
Language Ecology ◽  
Endangered Language ◽  
Living Species ◽  
Linguistic Purism

An ecolinguistic system, like a biological ecosystem, is self-regulating, yet it cannot be entirely self-contained, because words, like living species and the non-living substrates upon which they depend, are border-crossing. As a result, any ‘language’ is to some extent ‘creolised’, lexically or syntactically. Creolisation, however, may be perceived as a threat to an endangered language. The Seediq language is endangered, and, like any language, to some extent creolised. Though much less creolised than Ilan Creole, Seediq contains numerous Japanese and Chinese loanwords. Yet many of these loanwords have Seediq analogues. It may be that the Seediq language community has responded to the influx of loanwords by coining new terms based on Seediq roots. If so, their response combines linguistic purism with cultural cosmopolitanism: the loanword is a threat, the concept is not. Regardless, the coexistence of indigenous words with loanwords is part of an ongoing linguistic adaptation to modernity. I try to understand this adaptation in terms of ‘language ecology’.

Radmilla’s Voice

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina M. Jacobsen
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Maternal Grandmother ◽  
Singing Voice ◽  
Social Difference ◽  
Navajo Nation ◽  
Meeting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Navajo Language ◽  
Traditional Songs

Chapter Three focuses on the story of the first biracial, Navajo-African American “Miss Navajo Nation,” Radmilla Cody (born to Tp’ááschí’í, or Red Cheek People Clan). Fluent in Navajo and raised by her maternal grandmother on the Navajo Nation, I show how Radmilla’s singing voice, by performing “traditional” songs with melismatic, R & B inflection in the Navajo language, signals both inclusion and exclusion within Navajo communities. Here, sounding other than “Navajo” is a way of refusing to adhere to the ascribed status of Diné identity, including phenotype and what it means to “look Navajo.” Radmilla’s voice is a signifier of the intricacies of Diné social difference and as a meeting point of the singular and the social: as something innate and idiosyncratic to each singer and speaker, Radmilla’s voice is also something that is learned, socially acquired, and culturally inscribed.

Navajo Nation Returners

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven A. Smith ◽  
Aaron P. Jackson ◽  
Robert Yazzi ◽  
Amber Crotty
Keyword(s):  
Navajo Nation

Learning Zulu

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
South African ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
African History ◽  
African Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Correct Form ◽  
Linguistic Purism

When this book's author began studying Zulu, he was often questioned why he was learning it. This book places the author's endeavors within a wider context to uncover how, in the past 150 years of South African history, Zulu became a battleground for issues of property, possession, and deprivation. The book combines elements of analysis and memoir to explore a complex cultural history. Perceiving that colonial learners of Zulu saw themselves as repairing harm done to Africans by Europeans, the book reveals deeper motives at work in the development of Zulu-language learning—from the emergence of the pidgin Fanagalo among missionaries and traders in the nineteenth century to widespread efforts, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, to teach a correct form of Zulu. The book looks at the white appropriation of Zulu language, music, and dance in South African culture, and at the association of Zulu with a martial masculinity. In exploring how Zulu has come to represent what is most properly and powerfully African, the book examines differences in English- and Zulu-language press coverage of an important trial, as well as the role of linguistic purism in xenophobic violence in South Africa. Through one person's efforts to learn the Zulu language, the book explores how a language's history and politics influence all individuals in a multilingual society.

Health Literacy in Dentistry and Navajo Nation Community Health Representatives

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven P. Geiermann ◽  
◽  
Mae-Gilene Begay ◽  
Lindsey Robinson ◽  
Sharon Clough ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Health Literacy ◽  
Community Health ◽  
Navajo Nation ◽  
Community Health Representatives

scholarly journals Quantification of Elemental Contaminants in Unregulated Water across Western Navajo Nation

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (15) ◽  
pp. 2727 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Credo ◽  
Jaclyn Torkelson ◽  
Tommy Rock ◽  
Jani C. Ingram
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
New Mexico ◽  
Hard Rock ◽  
Water Systems ◽  
American Southwest ◽  
Western United States ◽  
Navajo Nation ◽  
Hard Rock Mining ◽  
Rock Mining ◽  
American Nation

The geologic profile of the western United States lends itself to naturally elevated levels of arsenic and uranium in groundwater and can be exacerbated by mining enterprises. The Navajo Nation, located in the American Southwest, is the largest contiguous Native American Nation and has over a 100-year legacy of hard rock mining. This study has two objectives, quantify the arsenic and uranium concentrations in water systems in the Arizona and Utah side of the Navajo Nation compared to the New Mexico side and to determine if there are other elements of concern. Between 2014 and 2017, 294 water samples were collected across the Arizona and Utah side of the Navajo Nation and analyzed for 21 elements. Of these, 14 elements had at least one instance of a concentration greater than a national regulatory limit, and six of these (V, Ca, As, Mn, Li, and U) had the highest incidence of exceedances and were of concern to various communities on the Navajo Nation. Our findings are similar to other studies conducted in Arizona and on the Navajo Nation and demonstrate that other elements may be a concern for public health beyond arsenic and uranium.

Assamese vowels and vowel harmony

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-183
Author(s):  
Diana B. Archangeli ◽  
Jonathan Yip
Keyword(s):  
Physical Properties ◽  
Principal Components Analysis ◽  
Principal Components ◽  
Vowel Harmony ◽  
Language Community ◽  
Acoustic Data ◽  
Apparent Loss ◽  
Root Position ◽  
Components Analysis ◽  
Open Question

AbstractBased on impressionistic and acoustic data, Assamese is described as having a phonological tongue root harmony system, with blocking by certain phonological configurations and over-application in certain morphological contexts. This study explores physical properties of the patterns using ultrasonic imaging to determine whether the impressionistic descriptions match what speakers actually do. Principal components analysis (PCA) determines that most participants produce a contrast in tongue root position in the appropriate contexts, though there is less of an impact on tongue root with greater distance from the triggering vowel. Analysis uses the root mean squared distance (RMSD) calculation to determine whether both blocking and over-application take effect. The blocking results conform to the impressionistic descriptions. With over-application, [e] and [o] are expected; while some speakers clearly produce these vowels, others articulate a vowel that is indeterminant between the expected [e]/[o] and an unexpected [ɛ]/[ɔ]. No speaker consistently showed the expected tongue root position in all contexts, and some speakers appeared to have lost the contrast entirely, yet all are considered to be speakers of the same dialect of Assamese. Whether this (apparent) loss is a consequence of crude research methodologies or accurately reflects what is happening within the language community remains an open question.

The speakers of minority languages are more multilingual

2021 ◽  
pp. 136700692110231
Author(s):  
Nina Dobrushina ◽  
George Moroz
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Data ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
First Language ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Mixed Effects ◽  
Minority Languages ◽  
Language Community ◽  
Second Languages ◽  
Research Questions

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: The paper tests the hypothesis that the larger the population of language speakers, the smaller the number of second languages mastered by these speakers. Design/methodology/approach: We match the size of the population of 29 Dagestanian languages and the number of second languages spoken by the speakers of these languages from 54 villages, and run a Poisson mixed effects regression model that predicts the average number of second languages spoken by speakers from first-language communities of different size. Data and analysis: Data for this study comes from two sources. The information on the population of Dagestanian languages is based on the digitalized census of 1926. The information on the number of second languages in which the residents of Dagestan are proficient is taken from the database on multilingualism in Dagestan (4032 people). Findings/conclusions: The study supports the hypothesis that the size of language population is negatively correlated with the multilingualism of the language community. Originality: The paper is the first to test the correlation between the size of language population and the level of multilingualism of its speakers using statistical methods and a large body of empirical data. Significance and implications: Population size is a factor that could have influenced patterns of language evolution. The population is interrelated with other factors, one of which is long-standing multilingualism. The methodological lesson of this research is that there is a difference in the level of multilingualism within a range of populations where the largest was about 120,000 people. Limitations: The data is limited to one multilingual region. The revealed correlation probably does not hold for areas where language communities do not interact with their neighbors and even speakers of minority languages can be monolingual, or for the territories where many people migrated and the area where a language is spoken was discontinuous.

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