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At 02:10 PM 12/14/2000 -0600, Donald Lance wrote:<br>
<br>
> I think Sali's initial question was asking about recent connotations
that<br>
>reflect a new brand of insensitivity.<br>
> <br>
<font size=4> 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 moring: "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 :)<br>
<br>
Sali.<br>
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Salikoko S.
Mufwene
</font><font color="#800080">s-mufwene@uchicago.edu<br>
</font><font color="#800000">University of
Chicago
</font><font color="#800080">773-702-8531; FAX 773-834-0924<br>
</font><font color="#800000">Department of Linguistics<br>
1010 East 59th Street<br>
Chicago, IL 60637<br>
</font><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><br>
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