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Sali, by the time I wrote that last comment, I had forgotten what your
key example was, but I had detected a kind of insensitivity in it.
Does this use of the word
<br>imply that once the language is gone these indigenous people are also
dead or no longer exist as a group? What about all those Indians
who no longer speak
<br>their forebears' language? Are they no longer indigenous people
even if they have not left their forebears' homeland?
<br>DMLance
<p>At 02:10 PM 12/14/2000 -0600, Donald Lance wrote:
<p>> I think Sali's initial question was asking about recent connotations
that
<br>>reflect a new brand of insensitivity.
<br>>
<br><font size=+1> It was not as much a question of sensitivity
as a question of deviation from traditional usage. In almost all the responses
I have read, "indigenous" (interpreted as "native," with a small "n") has
been used in contexts that lead the reader to say "X is indigenous/ native
to Y" (where X is an individual and Y a part of the world). That is what
I meant by relative use. In some cases, this is made more obvious, as in
the above example, by combining "indigenous" with a preposition phrase
headed by "to." In some other cases, the part of the world has already
been identified. Then a speaker/writer can speak of indigenous people,
plants, languages, etc. without the preposition phrase, while reference
to it is understood from the context. This not the usage in most of the
examples I have posted since yesterday. Take for instance one of those
I posted this morning: "The world's indigenous people and their languages
are dying out." I have to be extremely cooperative in interpreting "indigenous
people and languages" here as intended (if my guess is right), i.e., 'people
and languages in Third World countries' (based on what I have read so far
in Nettle & Romaine). Ignoring the rest of the book (which I
cannot), nothing in the wording prevents thinking that if Martians had
colonized our planet and we were shifting from our languages to theirs,
one of them could make this statement. I hope my daughter or grandchildren
won't live this form of colonization :)</font>
<p><font size=+1>Sali.</font>
<p><font color="#800000">**********************************************************</font>
<br><font color="#800000">Salikoko S. Mufwene
</font><font color="#800080">s-mufwene@uchicago.edu</font>
<br><font color="#800000">University of Chicago
</font><font color="#800080">773-702-8531; FAX 773-834-0924</font>
<br><font color="#800000">Department of Linguistics</font>
<br><font color="#800000">1010 East 59th Street</font>
<br><font color="#800000">Chicago, IL 60637</font>
<br><font color="#000000"><a href="http://humanities.uchicago.edu/humanities/linguistics/faculty/mufwene.html" eudora="autourl">http://humanities.uchicago.edu/humanities/linguistics/faculty/mufwene.html</a></font>
<br><font color="#800000">**********************************************************</font>
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