Related Papers
Cholon Yanesha a case of language contact
Astrid T. Alexander-Bakkerus
Abstract Cholón and Amuesha (Yaneshá), a case of language contact Cholón is a North Peruvian language which is now possibly extinct. It was spoken in the valley of the River Huallaga up to the eastern slopes of the Andes. Cholón has been classified in a small language family, Cholonan, together with Híbito, an extinct neighbouring language. Amuesha, also known as Yaneshá, is a member of the Arawakan language family. It is spoken in Central Peru, south of the Cholón habitat. A comparison between the Cholón and the Amuesha language reveals a number of lexical and remarkable grammatical resemblances. A plausible explanation of the occurrence of these resemblances is language contact by which borrowing took place. A number of the lexical and grammatical correspondences between Cholón and Amuesha appears to come from Quechua, which is not surprising. Quechua was the dominant language during the Inca period and the dominant lingua franca during the missionary period. Now, it is the second official language in Peru. In this paper I first show the similarities between Cholón and Amuesha, and, for the sake of completeness, those between both languages and Quechua. Subsequently, I show the contacts which have occurred between the speakers of Cholón and Amuesha, and the extent of these contacts, as a result of which borrowing could take place. Key words: Cholón, Amuesha/ Yaneshá, language contact, borrowing.
LOT dissertation series; 254
Reconstructive Description of Eighteenth-century Xinka Grammar
2010 •
Frauke Sachse
This dissertation presents a comprehensive description of Xinka based on the missionary grammar "Arte de la lengua szinca" that was written by the priest Manuel Maldonado de Matos around 1773. Xinka is an isolate family of today mostly extinct, closely related languages in southeastern Guatemala. The "Arte de la lengua szinca" is the earliest source on Xinka grammar that is otherwise not well documented or described. The analysis of the late colonial grammar draws on comparative data, including (a) primary data that were documented by the author with the last Xinka-speakers in Guazacapán, Santa Rosa, Guatemala between 2000-03, and (b) further secondary linguistic data of Xinkan languages from the towns of Guazacapán, Chiquimulilla, Yupiltepeque, Jumaytepeque, Sinacantán and Jutiapa. The text addresses the methodological implications of describing colonial Xinka grammar based on such a heterogeneous corpus of diachronic and regionally diverse data. Besides the linguistic description, the dissertation contains information about the cultural context of the language as well as about the colonial document and the corpus of linguistic data. The appendix includes a concordance of the linguistic data from the colonial grammar and a dictionary of the lexical entries.
A grammar of Lewo, Vanuatu
1994 •
Robert Early
article Comparison workshop, 2.pdf
astrid alexander-bakkerus
Prototypical English comparison constructions, such as 'X = ...er'/'X = the...st', cf. 'John is bigger'/'John is the biggest', in which the comparative and superlative degree are formed morphologically, are not applicable in Amuesha, Cholón, Jebero and Quechua. The Amerindian languages use other strategies to express a comparison. The languages are not related to each other, but they do have similar comparison constructions. In this paper, I compare the strategies used by Amuesha, Cholón, Jebero and Quechua to construct a comparison, and I show what these constructions have in common. Since the similarities have to be the result of language contact, I also show how the speakers of these languages came into contact with each other.
Object-conditioned differential marking in Chintang and Nepali
2013 •
Robert Schikowski
This study deals with two syntactic alternation patterns found in two languages of Nepal: differential object marking (DOM) in Nepali (Indo-European > Indo-Aryan) and differential object indexing (DOI) linked to differential agent marking in Chintang (Tibeto-Burman > Kiranti). The aim of the study is to conduct in-depth analyses of these two phenomena based on corpus annotations and including necessary methodological innovations, as well as to compare them in order to reach conclusions about alternations conditioned by properties of objects in general. The investigation of Nepali DOM showed that while this phenomenon is formally simple, it is functionally highly complex. It is conditioned by a plethora of properties of the object, many of which had not been noticed before, such as animacy, specificity, quantifiability, topicality, part of speech, focus, affectedness, and role ambiguity. A rule-based approach can neither cover the full range of variation found in this area in n...
Himalayan Linguistic Journal
Object agreement in Puma_incorporation_antipassivization_optional agreement
2007 •
Narayan Sharma
Clause-combining in cross-linguistic perspective. 105-126. ISBN 978-3-11-028069-2
Morphosyntactic properties and scope behavior of ‘subordinate’ clauses in Puma (Kiranti)
2012 •
Balthasar Bickel
Malchukov, A., M. Haspelmath, & B. Comrie. Studies in ditransitive constructions. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 382–448.
The syntax of three-argument verbs in Chintang and Belhare (Southeastern Kiranti)
2010 •
Sabine Stoll
The acquisition of polysynthetic verb forms in Chintang
Sabine Stoll, Balthasar Bickel, Jekaterina Mazara
Flexible valency in Chintang
2015 •
Robert Schikowski
Chintang [ˈts̻ ̻h iɳʈaŋ] (ISO639.3: ctn) is a Sino-Tibetan language of Nepal. It is named aer the village where it is mainly spoken. e village lies in the hills of Eastern Nepal, bigger cities within day’s reach being Dhankuṭā and Dharān. ere are no official data on the number of speakers, but we estimate there to be around 4,000 5,000 speakers. Most speakers are bior trilingual, with Nepali (the Indo-Aryan lingua franca of Nepal) as one and Bantawa (a related Sino-Tibetan language) as the other additional language. Monolingual speakers are still to be found mainly among elderly women, whereas a considerable portion of the younger generation is rapidly shiing to Nepali. Genealogically, Chintang belongs to the Kiranti group. e Kiranti languages are generally accepted to belong to the large Sino-Tibetan (or Tibeto-Burman) family, although their position within this family is controversial (cf. e.g. urgood 2003, Ebert 2003). Based on phonological evidence, Chintang belongs to the...
