Subsistence pattern and contact-driven language change

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patience Epps
Keyword(s):  
Amazon Basin ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Strong Predictor ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Lexical Borrowing ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Systematic Assessment ◽  
Hunting And Gathering ◽  
Interactive Networks

While it is well known that processes of contact-driven language change are sensitive to socio-cultural factors, the question of whether these apply differently among hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists has engendered considerable debate. These dynamics have been particularly underexplored in the Amazon basin, where high linguistic diversity has until very recently been coupled with a dearth of quality documentation. This investigation undertakes a systematic assessment of the effects of contact on fourteen languages (representing six distinct language families/isolates), spoken by northern Amazonian peoples whose subsistence practices all involve a relative emphasis on hunting and gathering. The effects of contact are assessed via an extensive survey of lexical and grammatical data from nearly a hundred languages of this region, and take into account lexical borrowing, Wanderwort distributions, and grammatical convergence. This comparative approach indicates that most Amazonian foraging-focused peoples have been heavily involved in regional interactive networks over time, as have their more horticulture-dominant neighbors, but that the linguistic effects of contact are variable across subsistence pattern. While subsistence thus does not appear to be correlated with the degree of contact-driven change experienced by the languages of this region, it is, on the other hand, a strong predictor of the direction of influence, which favors a unidirectional farmer-to-forager linguistic transmission.

Amazonian linguistic diversity and its sociocultural correlates

2020 ◽  
pp. 275-290
Author(s):  
Patience Epps
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Amazon Basin ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Language And Identity ◽  
Lexical Borrowing ◽  
Regional Systems ◽  
Sociocultural Practices ◽  
The One ◽  
Widespread View

Lowland South America’s striking linguistic diversity presents a major puzzle to scholars of language and human prehistory. This chapter proposes that sociocultural practices provide important clues to a solution, and that linguistic differentiation across Amazonian groups is not so much a factor of isolation, but rather of interaction. Evidence includes the recurrence of regional ‘systems’ across the Amazon basin, characterized by similarly essentializing views linking language and identity, and accompanied by restrained lexical borrowing and code-switching on the one hand, but convergence in grammar and discourse on the other. These phenomena may be grounded in the widespread view that social identity depends on the active maintenance of contrasts, including those relating to language.

scholarly journals Are traditional minority languages a bench marking for the rights of migrant languages in the European Union?

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 40-60
Author(s):  
Christopher Houtkamp ◽  
László Marácz
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Minority Languages ◽  
Language Rights ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Member States ◽  
Linguistic Rights ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One

In this paper a normative position will be defended. We will argue that minimal territorial minority language rights formulated in terms of the personality principle referring to traditional minority languages granted in the framework of the European Union (EU) are a benchmark for non-territorial linguistic rights. Although territorial minority languages should be granted collective rights this is in large parts of Europe not the case. Especially in the Central and Eastern European Member States language rights granted to territorial languages are assigned on the basis of personal language rights. Our argumentation will be elaborated on the basis of a comparative approach discussing the status of a traditional territorial language in Romania, more in particular Hungarian spoken in the Szeklerland area with the one of migrant languages in the Netherlands, more in particular Turkish. In accordance with the language hierarchy implying that territorial languages have a higher status than non-territorial languages both in the EUs and Member States’ language regimes nonterritorial linguistic rights will be realized as personal rights in the first place. Hence, the use of non-territorial minority languages is conditioned much as the use of territorial minority languages in the national Member States. So, the best possible scenario for mobile minority languages is to be recognized as a personal right and receive full support from the states where they are spoken. It is true that learning the host language would make inclusion of migrant language speakers into the host society smoother and securing a better position on the labour market. This should however be done without striving for full assimilation of the speakers of migrant languages for this would violate the linguistic rights of migrants to speak and cultivate one’s own heritage language, violate the EUs linguistic diversity policy, and is against the advantages provided by linguistic capital in the sense of BOURDIEU (1991).

Time, diversification, and dispersal on the Australian continent

2020 ◽  
pp. 116-141
Author(s):  
Nicholas Evans
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Human Occupation ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Australian Family ◽  
Australian Continent ◽  
Time Diversification ◽  
Colonial Contact

Sahul, the ancient continent uniting Australia and New Guinea, is the only inhabited continent uniquely occupied by small-scale societies until colonial contact. And Australia (only separated from New Guinea for 10,000 years) is the only continent exclusively occupied by hunter-gatherers. This makes Sahul, and Australia, crucial for understanding how language has evolved through our deep human past. This chapter addresses three enigmas: first the discrepancy in deep linguistic diversity and typological disparity between the Australian and New Guinea hemi-continents (1 maximal clade in Australia, over 50 in New Guinea), second the apparent relatedness of all Australian indigenous languages despite continuous human occupation for 60,000 years with no external intrusions, and third the recent spread of the Pama-Nyungan branch of the Australian family over seven-eighths of the continent, most likely in the mid-Holocene?

scholarly journals Social Trust in the Middle East and North Africa: The Context-Dependent Impact of Citizens’ Socio-Economic and Religious Characteristics

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (6) ◽  
pp. 894-911 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niels Spierings
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Social Trust ◽  
Context Dependency ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Mena Countries ◽  
Systematic Assessment ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Our knowledge of social trust's drivers in the MENA region is limited and there are good reasons to expect that theories based on Western countries cannot be copied to the MENA one-to-one. Arguing for a broader and at the same time context-sensitive comparative approach, I translate the ‘societal winners’, social capital, and religious beliefs mechanisms explaining trust to the MENA context. Moreover, I acknowledge intraregional diversity and test how the impact of these factors also differs among MENA countries. Empirically, I synchronize 47 surveys from 15 MENA countries, which provides the broadest and most systematic assessment of trust in the MENA to date. The results show that the societal-winner mechanism does not hold: employed, higher education and wealthier citizens are not more trusting. However, higher-educated citizens distrust other citizens more, particularly in the strongest autocracies. Religiosity seems pivotal too. Among others, service-attending citizens are more trusting, mainly where regimes regulate religious affairs. Overall, this study provides insight into what shapes generalized social trust in the Middle East and North Africa and it underscores that at a comparative level we need to consider inter-regional and intra-regional forms of context-dependency were we to formulate a broadly applicable theoretical framework of trust's drivers.

Hunter-gatherers on the best-seller list: Steven Pinker and the “Bellicose School's” treatment of forager violence

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 216-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Lethal Violence ◽  
Use Of Data ◽  
Hunting And Gathering ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Farmers ◽  
Philosophical Debates

Purpose – The question of violence in hunter-gatherer society has animated philosophical debates since at least the seventeenth century. Steven Pinker has sought to affirm that civilization, is superior to the state of humanity during its long history of hunting and gathering. The purpose of this paper is to draw upon a series of recent studies that assert a baseline of primordial violence by hunters and gatherers. In challenging this position the author draws on four decades of ethnographic and historical research on hunting and gathering peoples. Design/methodology/approach – At the empirical heart of this question is the evidence pro- and con- for high rates of violent death in pre-farming human populations. The author evaluates the ethnographic and historical evidence for warfare in recorded hunting and gathering societies, and the archaeological evidence for warfare in pre-history prior to the advent of agriculture. Findings – The view of Steven Pinker and others of high rates of lethal violence in hunters and gatherers is not sustained. In contrast to early farmers, their foraging precursors lived more lightly on the land and had other ways of resolving conflict. With little or no fixed property they could easily disperse to diffuse conflict. The evidence points to markedly lower levels of violence for foragers compared to post-Neolithic societies. Research limitations/implications – This conclusion raises serious caveats about the grand evolutionary theory asserted by Steven Pinker, Richard Wrangham and others. Instead of being “killer apes” in the Pleistocene and Holocene, the evidence indicates that early humans lived as relatively peaceful hunter-gathers for some 7,000 generations, from the emergence of Homo sapiens up until the invention of agriculture. Therefore there is a major gap between the purported violence of the chimp-like ancestors and the documented violence of post-Neolithic humanity. Originality/value – This is a critical analysis of published claims by authors who contend that ancient and recent hunter-gatherers typically committed high levels of violent acts. It reveals a number of serious flaws in their arguments and use of data.

The Development of World-Systems

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Chase-Dunn ◽  
Hiroko Inoue ◽  
Teresa Neal ◽  
Evan Heimlich
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Theoretical Research ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Systems Perspective ◽  
Units Of Analysis ◽  
Hierarchical Relations ◽  
The Comparative Study

This essay discusses conceptual issues that arise from the study of human social change. The comparative and evolutionary world-systems perspective is explained as a theoretical research program for studying long-term social change. This approach employs an anthropological framework of comparison for studying world-systems, including those of hunter-gatherers. Problems of spatially bounding whole human interaction networks are addressed, and the utility of a comparative approach to the study of hierarchical relations among human polities (core/periphery relations) is examined. The hypothesis of semiperipheral development is explained, and criteria for empirically identifying semiperipheral regions are specified. World history and global history are the most important evidential bases, along with prehistoric archaeology, for the comparative study of world-systems. Getting the grounds of comparison right by correctly conceptualizing the spatial units of analysis and paying careful attention to core/periphery relations are crucial issues in the effort to comprehend and explain the development of world-systems.

scholarly journals Papiamento/Dutch code-switching in bilingual parent–child reading

1996 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 485-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter Muysken ◽  
Hetty Kook ◽  
Paul Vedder
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Structural Properties ◽  
Picture Books ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
Lexical Borrowing ◽  
Dominant Language ◽  
Migrant Families ◽  
Parent Child

ABSTRACTCode-switching between Papiamento and Dutch was studied in bilingual parent–child reading sessions in Antillian migrant families (who were to some extent bilingual in Papiamento and Dutch) in the Netherlands. Mothers were asked to read three picture books to their child: one in Dutch, one in Papiamento, and one without text. The code-switching in the data is studied from three perspectives: its relation to bilingual competence, its structural properties, and the implications for language change through lexical borrowing. Our data confirmed the results of earlier studies, which found that intimate code-switching within the clause is characteristic of fluent bilinguals. In our study, this held in particular for knowledge of Papiamento. Structurally, the type of code-switching encountered was predominantly insertional (with Papiamento as the dominant language), thus conforming to the constraints proposed for this type of switching. The single Dutch words that were frequently inserted into Papiamento utterances by the mothers could easily be interpreted by the child as Papiarnento and are likely to become borrowings in the next generation. We conclude with some remarks about the functions of code-switching in our data.

Human Information Processing Shapes Language Change

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryia Fedzechkina ◽  
Becky Chu ◽  
T. Florian Jaeger
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
Human Information Processing ◽  
Artificial Languages ◽  
Universal Principles ◽  
Central Interest ◽  
Grammatical Dependencies

Human languages exhibit both striking diversity and abstract commonalities. Whether these commonalities are shaped by potentially universal principles of human information processing has been of central interest in the language and psychological sciences. Research has identified one such abstract property in the domain of word order: Although sentence word-order preferences vary across languages, the superficially different orders result in short grammatical dependencies between words. Because dependencies are easier to process when they are short rather than long, these findings raise the possibility that languages are shaped by biases of human information processing. In the current study, we directly tested the hypothesized causal link. We found that learners exposed to novel miniature artificial languages that had unnecessarily long dependencies did not follow the surface preference of their native language but rather systematically restructured the input to reduce dependency lengths. These results provide direct evidence for a causal link between processing preferences in individual speakers and patterns in linguistic diversity.

scholarly journals Who changes language? Bilingualism and structural change in Burma and the Reef Islands

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Åshild Næss ◽  
Mathias Jenny
Keyword(s):  
Structural Change ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Language Shift ◽  
The Other ◽  
Lexical Borrowing ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Contact Language ◽  
Reef Islands ◽  
Contact Situation

AbstractIn this paper we discuss two cases of contact-induced language change where lexical and grammatical borrowing appear to have gone in opposite directions: one language has borrowed large amounts of vocabulary from another while at the same time being the source of structural borrowings into the other language. Furthermore, it appears in both cases that the structural borrowing has come about through bilingualism in L1 speakers of the source language, while L1 speakers of the language undergoing the structural change are largely monolingual. We propose that these two unusual factors are not unrelated, but that the latter is the cause of the former: Under circumstances where the numerically much smaller language in a contact situation is the contact language, the L2 speakers' variety, influenced by their L1, may spread into the monolingual community. e lexical borrowing naturally happens from the bilingual speakers' L2 into their L1, resulting in opposite directions of lexical and structural borrowing. Similar processes have been described in cases of language shift, but we show that it may take place even in situations where shift does not occur.

Mirror in the Forest: the Dorobo hunter-gatherers as an image of the other

Africa ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 477-495 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael G. Kenny
Keyword(s):  
World Order ◽  
The Other ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Hunting And Gathering ◽  
Ethnic Category ◽  
Temporal Dimensions ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Social Marginality ◽  
Present World ◽  
Local Farmers

Opening ParagraphThe term ‘Dorobo’ denotes an ethnic category embracing small hunting-and-gathering groups residing on the fringes of various agricultural and pastoral peoples in East Africa. The essence of the Dorobo's position is that they engage in economically symbiotic activities with regard to local farmers and herders, while retaining their social marginality as people of the bush. Much is known of them through the constructs of their neighbours, who assign them attributes commensurate with their marginal social position; the Dorobo are amalgamated with wild amoral creatures, and their ancestors are thought to have been in attendance at the birth of the present world-order. Their marginality therefore has economic, spatial, and temporal dimensions.

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