[Lingtyp] Traditional view of language and grammar in indigenous societies

[Egor Kashkin]

Dear Bernat,

I have fieldwork experience with the dialects of some Uralic languages
in Russia. Maybe the following observations are of interest for you:

-- My consultants usually have some knowledge of the standard language
(e.g. they learnt it at school, follow the mass media etc.), and there
may be stereotypes about some structural patterns, e.g. basic word
order. Or as one of my Hill Mari consultants (a school teacher) told
me: "Whatever stands in Russian sits in Hill Mari". She meant that in
Russian the verb 'stand' has a wide range of uses in the posture
domain, whereas in Hill Mari the posture predicate with the widest use
is 'sit'. They are often translational equivalents to each other, but
in fact not in 100% of cases.

-- Of course, consultants often hypothesize about  the difference
between quasi-synonymous forms or structures. Sometimes this gives a
researcher some hints, sometimes not (e.g. stereotypical terms such as
"present tense" or "past tense" can be used as a memory from school,
but this may contradict both the data and the linguistically correct
use of such terms).

-- They often notice some differences between their dialect and the
standard language, or between different dialects, mainly in phonetics
or in the lexicon ("when we pronounce ə, in the standard language
there is i̮"). Probably this can mark whether a speaker is "ours" or
"not ours". At the same time one should be careful with such
statements, as they can be made in order to find a reasonable (albeit
false) explanation for ungrammatical stimuli during elicitation. For
example, speakers of Izhma Komi sometimes comment on ungrammatical
sentences by saying that "it is possible in Standard Komi" (or, as
they say, "Так в Коми АССР говорят" -- "People can say so in the Komi
Soviet Republic"), but in fact it is not.

-- Some consultants have judgements about the contact-induced nature
of some linguistic phenomena. For example, in Udmurt there are complex
predicates which probably replicate a Turkic pattern. One of my
consultants (who works as a dentist) told me that such constructions
copy Tatar structures and gave some parallel examples from Tatar (many
Udmurt speakers in this area speak or at least understand Tatar).

Best,
Egor Kashkin

пт, 27 дек. 2024 г. в 18:09, Bernat Bardagil Mas via Lingtyp
<lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>:
>
> Dear all,
>
> As anyone working closely with indigenous languages and cultures of the Americas, we have seen multiple instances of the awareness that indigenous peoples have of everything that surrounds them, with detailed accounts and explanations ranging from social aspects to natural or supernatural phenomena.
>
> We have come to wonder whether, and how frequently, this type of reflection is attested also for language — not so much the origin of language, but its structure and nature. Have any of you encountered anything similar to this notion among indigenous communities, regarding the structure of their own language? Or, are you aware of any mentions of something that could correspond to traces of this type of indigenous linguistic or grammatical knowledge?
>
> Thank you,
>
> Bernat Bardagil i Mas & Sara Larios i Ongay
>
>
> - -
> Bernat Bardagil
> Postdoctoral researcher
> Department of Linguistics, Ghent University
> research.flw.ugent.be/en/bernat.bardagil
>
>
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