[Li-AmInd] Re: Kusunda Language: Is Not An Extinct Lang

[dan everett]

     The problem with the scenario below is that you have very little means
     of confirming or disconfirming hypotheses as to many systematic
     aspects of the grammar. Language revival is of course possible, as
     seen not only in the examples given, but in several North American
     Indian languages as well.

     But when a language has passed from daily use to infrequent use among
     3 people who have a hard time remembering things, you cannot know
     whether you are describing their language or not.

     That is not to say that study of it is completely valueless, not at
     all. Donna Popky, from the University of Pittsburgh, did a solid MA
     thesis on Oro Win, a language with only 3-5 speakers, spoken only
     occasionally, based upon data I collected in the mid-90s. There was a
     comprehensive grammar of Wari (a closely related language of the
     Chapakuran family) (published by Routledge) which served as a basis of
     comparison and this turned out to be an interesting study. Some
     aspects were unclear as to whether they were authentic Oro Win, but
     many other components were usefully comparable with Wari and the
     overall study (available from Pitt linguistics department) is quite
     interesting, if a bit thin (for reasons beyond the control of the
     author).

     Dan Everett
     Research Professor of Phonetics and Phonology
     University of Manchester

     P.S. Why would anyone use a gratuitous remark like 'SIL crusaders'?
     What's the call for that kind of sarcasm, which doesn't fit anyone in
     SIL I know, and I have been a member for 25 years.


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: [Li-AmInd] Re: Kusunda Language: Is  Not An Extinct Langauge
Author:  <Tradux at cherry.com.au> at Internet
Date:    3/27/01 12:39 PM


 >... if you're thinking of a grammar or phonology of the language ...

  A few minutes' recorded speech should be enough to give a trad IPA broad
description, which is of great use for any morphological analysis, and
useful for many syntactic analyses. Detailed phonological description is
then just a matter of motivation and time.

  Samples for syntactic analysis itself have to be much longer, but depend
equally on a variety of contexts of situation. With luck, a sample large
enough for syntactic analysis might be only one hour in length; i.e., both
sides of a C 30 cassette tape.

  Aiming lower, a useful typing of a language should be achievable from
twenty minutes or so, if the contexts of situation are varied enough; SOV
order, left-branching, ergative, agglutinating, &c.

  This is not the most warmly-human fieldwork, and would have an air of
desperation about it, but people have been doing it for quite some time
with languages that they saw dying within the contemporary generation.

  There's a description I read somewhere of a missionary, obviously modeled
on the SIL crusaders, who was busily concluding his translation of the
Bible into a language whose last speakers were gasping their last all
around him.

  Your Kusunda seems to be dying, but you still have time to describe it,
or tune previous descriptions of it, before it is extinct.

  Who knows, if your fieldwork is conspicuous enough, you might get a
change of attitude from the local great and mighty, and bring back the
language, as has happened with Hebrew, Norwegian, is maybe happening with
Welsh and, who knows, Cornish. We need to save all we can.

  All the best

Chester Graham