[etnolinguistica] MITILI Newsletter

Tue Feb 24 20:14:19 UTC 2004

Oi Pessoal,
Aqui vai uma mensagem que pode ser distribuida pela lista.
um abraco
Amelia

**** MITILI Newsletter ****

February 24, 2004

______________________________________________________________________________
Follow-up on a report of language endangerment
in Brazil:  What has changed in the last 7 years?
______________________________________________________________________________

Luciana Raccanello Storto
Univerisade de São Paulo (USP), Linguistics Department
CNPq PROFIX grantholder, Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia (USP)

Introduction

	This report is intended as a follow up on a paper published by
MITWPL in 1997 which was a report of language endangerment in Brazil. We
will see that, seven years later, although the indigenous population has
grown considerably, the situation of language endangerment is not
different. The numbers are a direct consequence of an improvement in life
quality, as well as a reflex of a conscious effort of population recovery.
In spite of the fact that the population has grown considerably, we will
show that the main reason presented in 1997 to explain language
endangerment is still operative today, that is, a low number of speakers
per language.

Demography

	In 1997 our source was a 1991 publication by Adelaar, which
estimated that the number of indigenous peoples in Brazil was between
155.000 and 270.000. The census of Instituto Socio Ambiental (ISA), a
non-governmental institution based in São Paulo, calculated the population
at 250.000 in 1991. The estimate in 1997 by Fundação Nacional do Índio
(FUNAI, The National Indian Affairs Agency) was 300.000, and today ISA's
estimate is 370.000 people.
	There is no precise information about the number of native
Brazilians for two main reasons. The first has to do with the poor
methodology of research used by the official Instituto Brasileiro de
Geografia e Estatística (IBGE) census. The demographic censi until 1980
(the first was in 1872) have always characterized indians as "pardos",
which is a mixed category applied to indigenous peoples and other people
whose's mixed origins could not be traced. The 1991 census was the first
to include a specific category for native peoples, but the only
populations counted were the ones living in FUNAI outposts or religious
missions, so native Brazilians were underepresented as comprising of
206.245 people. The last official census used that same methodology. All
of the other institutions that provide numbers don't do the count
themselves, but use secondary sources from FUNAI outposts, Fundação
Nacional de Saúde (FNS, The National Health Foundation), Conselho
Indigenista Missionário (CIMI, an indigenist branch of the catholic
church), etc.
	The population growth noted above is indeed impressive, even for
Brazilian standards.  The average annual growth of the national population
from 1996 to 2000 was 1.6%, whereas indigenous peoples have grown 3.5% in
the same period.
	Although the indigenous population has considerably grown, we
should keep in mind that indigenous peoples comprise 0.2% of the total
population in Brazil (IBGE site), and as such are paradigmatic minorities.
The lack of importance given to this kind of minority is reflected, for
instance, in the methodology used by the IBGE census, which does not
research communities outside the influence of FUNAI outposts and religious
missions. The natural question to ask in face of this picture is, if these
minorities are not even taken into account in the official census, will
they be contemplated in public policies?

Language Diversity and Endangerment

	The number of languages said to be spoken in the country today is
lower than in 1997. Then the estimate made by Aryon Rodrigues was between
170 and 180, and today it is 160. The main reason for this is a change in
the criteria used to define languages as opposed to dialects.  Moore &
Gabas's analysis (to appear) of these facts is that the real number of
languages must be even lower than 160, since the corrections made did not
take into acount cases the authors know well, in which the intelligible
dialects of Gavião, Cinta Larga and Zoró have been classified as three
different languages. On the other hand, they point out that in the new
list of languages there are still confusions with respect to names of
languages and autodenomination of groups (where, for instance, Mekéns and
Sakyrabiat should be classified as the same language), and the
non-acknowledgement of newly found (Akuntsu and Arara do Beiradão, both in
Rondônia) or dying languages (Xipaya still has 2 speakers). Considering
all of these problems, it is still possible that 160 is an accurate number
for the languages spoken in Brazil today. The number of ethnic groups is
220.
	The main point to be made with respect of the number of languages
and speakers of indigenous languages is that although Brazil has a
respectable diversity of languages, the number of speakers for each of
them is alarmingly low.  Moore & Gabas cite a few examples well known to
them: the Anambé, for instance, comprise 87 people, of whom only 7 speak
the language;  another case is the Trumái, with 121 people and 49
speakers; there are 22 speakers of Mekéns, in a population of 67. Even for
the groups in which everybody speaks the mother language the situation is
alarming. Moore (to appear)  estimates that only 15% of the country's
languages are spoken in communities with a population higher than 1000.
In his estimate, 24% of the languages are spoken by groups with fewer than
50 people, 8% by groups which have between 51 and 100 members, 25% by
groups with 105-250 people, 18% by groups with 251-500 people, and 10% by
groups with a population between 501 and 1000.
	To sum up, the situation of language endangerment in Brazil
continues to be critical seven years after our initial report because, in
spite of the population growth, most indigenous groups still have a very
low number of speakers.

References

Moore, Denny.  (to appear).  The Languages of Lowland South America.
Language Diversity Endangered. Matthias Brezinger (ed.). Mouton de
Gruyter.

Moore, Denny & Gabas Jr., Nilson. (to appear). O Futuro das Línguas
Indígenas Brasileiras. In Amazônia 500 anos. Louis Fortini, Ima Vieira &
Rui Murrieta (eds.). Museu Emílio Goeldi, Belém, Brazil.

__________________________________________________________________
First South American Summer School in Formal Linguistics
Andres Pablo Salanova
__________________________________________________________________

	The first South American Summer School in Formal Linguistics
(affectionately dubbed Evelin, from its initials in Spanish or Portuguese)
happened during the week of January 12th, 2004 at the State University of
Campinas, Brazil. The initiative, which counted with the financial support
of the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT, developed quickly
from an modest idea to promote the interchange between students there and
here (especially those of us planning to return to live and work in South
America) into a full-fledged week-long linguistic institute, with
introductory and advanced courses in all the core areas of formal
linguistics.
	In coming up with a final program, we endeavored to find topics
that would be directly relevant to people working with the indigenous
languages of lowland South America or that were otherwise in high demand
among the graduate students in Brazil and Argentina that we could poll. We
thus arrived at a program that included introductory courses in formal
semantics, neurolinguistics and distributed morphology, and courses
dealing with aspect, agreement, and the interfaces between phonology,
morphology and syntax, as well as a field methods course that involved
informant-work with a native speaker of Kadiweu, a Guaykuruan language
from south-western Brazil. The large number of participants in the summer
school (around 140, exceeding our expectations) attests to the interest
raised by the topics chosen and the faculty invited to participate. We
have put in place a mechanism to hear from prospective students the topics
of interest for future editions of the summer school.
	Though the formal linguistics community is quite active in Brazil
and in Campinas in particular, certain characteristics of the summer
school made it unique among recent linguistics events there. Among these
are the fact that it was entirely organized by students;  that costs for
students were kept as low as possible (aside from providing cheap lodging
and meals to all who requested them, almost 40 students benefited from
small grants to cover part of their expenses); that there was significant
participation of students from other South American countries
(approximately 10% of the total), and that participants had ample
opportunities for informal interaction with faculty. Last, but of utmost
importance, was the willingness of the invited faculty to teach on a
volunteer basis, in most cases getting funding for travel from their home
institutions, which highlights a level of commitment that was evident in
other spheres as well.
	Despite the sociological divide that still exists between
theoretical and descriptive linguists in Brazil, the school had wide
appeal among both groups, and seems to have encouraged many
theoretically-minded students to begin work in the description of
indigenous languages of Brazil, as well as bringing formalist linguistic
theory down to earth to the descriptively-minded ones. In future editions
of the Summer School, we plan to continue emphasizing the link between
both aspects of linguistic work, and, in particular, to continue offering
students the opportunity to work directly with speakers of South American
languages.
	Plans for next year's summer school are already under way. Stay
posted by visiting http://mit.edu/kaitire/www/evelin.

________________________________
MITILI Advisory Conference
____________________________

	On September 6, 2003, the MIT Indigenous Language Initiative held
its first advisory conference.  Over 20 people, including representatives
from nine different tribes, were present at the conference to share their
experience and advice on the field of indigenous language revitalization.
	The advisory conference began with an opening prayer said in
Wampanoag by Jessie Little Doe Fermino (Wampanoag).  Following that, the
President of MIT, Charles Vest, welcomed the group to MIT.  Vest stressed
that the program is important not only for the Department of Linguistics
at MIT, but for the Institute as a whole, saying "In so many ways we're at
a university that prides itself in being connected to the world and not
just being an inward-looking so-called ivy-tower institution.  We like
being engaged with the people, with the things, with the events that
really make the world what it is.  And I can think of no more marvelous
example of doing that than the Indigenous Language Initiative."
	After the opening, conference participants discussed the different
tribal language programs of their communities.  One theme that emerged
from the discussions was the importance of concentrating on the language
of children by working on immersion programs, classes in and out of the
schools, pre-school programs, and teacher-training.  Daryl Baldwin, of the
Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, especially stressed the need to teach the
language to children, as they are the teachers of tomorrow and will be the
future stewards of the language.  He compared the language to a garden and
the children to caretakers who will carry on the work of tending the
garden.
	A second major issue that came up during the day was the
importance of individuals in the struggle for language maintenance and
revitalization.  Several of the people present at the conference were
their tribe's only linguists or language teachers and were called upon to
"wear many different hats" in satisfying the need for language expertise.
Not only are individuals called upon to teach the language, they are also
doing linguistic and archival research on it, working on dictionaries,
training other teachers, conducting sociolinguistic studies of who is
still speaking it, managing tribal language programs, and conducting
outreach to the community.  This can be an enormous responsibility for
just one person.
	Finally, the group discussed what the MITILI can offer to
indigenous language communities, apart from the Master's degree program in
linguistics.  One thing is that MIT as an institution can offer strong
connections to other academic and governmental organizations.  The
linguistics department can also offer advice on where to look for
information and specialists in certain areas of linguistics, helping
tribes in the search to hire linguists, or with specific linguistic
problems
	The first MITILI Advisory Conference was a great day of
collaboration and interaction.  The stimulating and encouraging
discussions helped to re-energize everyone at the conference and it also
helped to renew peoples' hope that by working together we can both
revitalize and maintain indigenous languages.  For more information on the
MIT Indigenous Language Initiative, please contact Dr. Andrea Rackowski at
asrackow at mit.edu or 202-249-1572.

____________________________________________________
About the MIT Indigenous Language Initiative
_____________________________________________

	The MIT Indigenous Language Initiative is a program that addresses
the issue of endangered and indigenous languages.  The MITILI consists of
a Master's degree program for indigenous scholars and a language resource
center that serves as a clearinghouse of information on current research
and a facilitator of connections among those working on language
revitalization projects.
	The MIT Indigenous Language Initiative was approved as a Master's
degree program by MIT in December 2003.  We are going to be working hard
over the next few months putting the program together and refining the
courses for it.  We will begin the Master's program in September 2005,
pending securement of funding for the program.

_____________________
Donate to the MITILI!
_____________________

All donations go directly to support our programs. Checks should be
payable to MIT, with a note designating them for the MITILI Fund.

_________________________________________________
MIT, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue, 32-D808
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307

PHONE:
617-253-4453

FAX:
617-253-5017

E-MAIL:
mitili at mit.edu

http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/mitili

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