Indigenous Linguistics 1100 Final Exam

Indigenous Linguistics - concepts of Linguistics

what are Semiotics?? (Arbitrary, Motivated, Symbol, Icon, and Index)

A sign in a relationship between a significant (a perceptible form) and a signed (a conceptual form)

Symbol = → Arbitary

Icon = → motivated

index = → motivated

what is Language Sustainability?

Definition: Efforts to preserve and revitalize languages.

Challenges: Language endangerment due to globalization & colonization.

    •    Revitalization:

Documentation (recording words, grammar, oral traditions).

Education programs (teaching younger generations).

Government policies (supporting Indigenous & minority languages).

Why it matters: Preserves culture, identity, and knowledge.

what is Speech surrogates?

A communication system based on language

what is Kinship Analysis in linguistics?

definition: Study of how languages classify family relationships.

Kinship Terminology → Words for family members.

Kinship Systems → Different ways cultures categorize kin.

Linguistic Relativity → Kinship terms shape social worldview.

Purpose: Shows cultural values & social structure through language

what is Non-verbal communication

Definition: Conveying messages without words.

 Channels:

    •    Gestures

    •    Facial expressions

    •    Body posture and movements

    •    Eye contact

 Role:

    •    Complements verbal communication

    •    Can operate independently to convey emotion, intent, or context

what is Writing in linguistics?

Definition: Representing language with visual symbols.

 Writing Systems: Alphabets, logograms, syllabaries, etc.

what is Multilingualism?

definition: using two or more languages in your community other in society

Individual multilingualism: A person who can speak multiple languages (bilingual/trilingual)

societal multilingualism: Societies where several languages are used in daily life, education, or government

what is Language History?

Language history = study of how languages change over time

Language families → English is Germanic.

Sound changes → Knight used to have a “k” sound.

Word changes → Nice meant “foolish” before.

Grammar changes → Sentence structures evolve.

Language contact → English borrows from French.

•  Helps trace language roots and evolution.

What is taxonomy?

• Taxonomy is the science of classification, particularly in biology, where it involves categorizing organisms based on shared characteristics and relationships.

• organizes words and concepts, or sounds into hierarchies

  examples

• animal taxonomy: Animal → dog → Labrador

what is a Prefix in linguistics?

A prefix is an affix added to the beginning of a word to change its meaning.
- prefixes cannot stand alone as words

EXAMPLE

• Un - (not) — unhappy (not happy)

what is Logographic?

A writing system that uses symbols that represent words/morphmes

What is a symbol?

• a symbol is a sign with an arbitrary connection to its meaning

• meaning comes from Convention (agreed upon used)

  Examples

• words → dog, doesn’t look like dog.

• traffic signs → stop signs means “stop” because we agree it does.

• part of semiotics (study of signs)

What is an icon?

• an icon is a sign that resembles what it represents

• the connection is based on similarity (not arbitrary rules)

  EXAMPLES

• Photographs → look like the real thing

• Onomatopoeia → Buzz, meow (sound like what they mean

• emojis (a heart emoji can represent love)

  
  
  

What is an index?

A sign that has direct, casual, or contextual connections to what it represents (linked by association or evidence)

EXAMPLE

Smoke → fire (smoke indicates fire is present)

Pronouns (I, you) (their meaning depends on who is speaking

•contextual relationship •evidence-based connection

CASE STUDY - The Pueblo - Hopi

• lost city, hunter gatherer

• matrilineal - through mother lines

• clan structures - matrilineal

• matrilocal - live with the mothers side of the family

• exogamous

what does Exogamous mean?

can't marry inside your clan - has to marry outside the clan (avoids incest) (forges connections)

what does endogamous mean?

marrying within a specific social group, community, or ethnic group, as opposed to marrying outside of it.

what does Primogeniture mean?

(prai·muh·jeh·nuh·chr)

a system of inheritance in which a person's property passes to their firstborn legitimate child upon their death

why and how is slang used??

• faster to say certain things

• more fun - social persona - don’t talk that way with your parents or grandparents but you do with your friends)

• appropriateness

Dialect Distinctiveness (Nomadic, Sedentary, Stratification)

Nomadic: Fuzzy boundaries

Sedentary: Distinct

Stratification: Distinct + Pritege langauge

Plains sign language - structure

Compunds: “White man” + “Soldier” = Infantry

- Largest record sign lexicon = 3500 signs; comparison to pidgins & creoles

what is Ambilingualism?

Equally proficient in 2 or more languages

what is Functional multilingualism?

Can use two or more languages with decent proficiency

EXAMPLE:

• for trade between 2 Indigenous Groups

what is Incipient Bilingualism?

knowing many words of a language, but can’t put sentences together

What are Orthographies?

set of rules used when writing English

change over time and can be/need to be updated

EXAMPLES:

Neighbour/Nighbor

Colour/Color

Syllable structure example

Syllables are organized around sonorous, sounds, mostly vowels
A syllabi has a nucleus and can have an onset and a coda

What is a syllabic?

a written character that represents a syllable

What is Allophony?

One of multiple spoken sounds

What is Phonotactics ?

Study of how speech sounds combine language

Dialect vs Language

• linguistics value them the same? - in the sense of very system of signs from speech community

• no value difference here ??

• every community has their own language which is referred to as dialects

• retain the word dialect for talking about languages that are closely related (still can understand each-other)

what is a prestige languages?

First language that other languages came from for example Latin is a prestige language because Spanish, French, and Italian come from Latin

what is asymmetric multilingualism?

it is when language (and users) are not treated equally

(basically language racism)

What is linguistic exogamy?

a form of cultural exogamy in which marriage occurs between speakers of different languages

• very multilingual house hold (4-5 languages can be spoken)

• constant renewal of languages

• houses have a dominant father language

• phratry

what is linguistic phylogenetic ?

• language are genetically related if they share a common ancestor (example Latin relates to a lot of languages)

• common ancestors that are reconstructed are known as photo-langauge

• groups that are related are called stocks or phyla

Classifications

1) typology

2) Gramatical

• genetically related

3) geographical

Genetic classification

• comparative methods

• quantitive methods

• basic vocab items

the comparative method

1) sounds change (languages changes over time)

2) language changes can be “turned back” by identifying changes and reversing them

3) cumulative reconstruction of etymologies reveals deep language history

what does historical linguistics do?

• Historical linguistics is the study of how languages evolve over time. It focuses on understanding the development, change, and divergence of languages, as well as their relationships to one another.

what is shared histories/shared innovations ?

• similar sound structure and similar meaning in language

what does cognate mean?

• means derived from the same language

what is lexicon statistics used for?

lexicon statistics is for determine whether something is cognate or not

what is operative semantics

• we in English say beside, on, there,up, down

• in Indigenous languages such as peso America they do body-locatives

• the back of the mountain the mouth/neck of a river, etc