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Amerind Languages
Amerind is a hypothetical higher-level language family proposed by Joseph Greenberg in 1960 and elaborated by his student Merritt Ruhlen. Greenberg proposed that all of the indigenous languages of the Americas belong to one of three language families, the previously established Eskimo–Aleut and Na–Dene, and with everything else—otherwise classified by specialists as belonging to dozens of independent families—as Amerind. Due to a large number of methodological flaws in the 1987 book ''Language in the Americas'', the relationships he proposed between these languages have been rejected by the majority of historical linguists as spurious.Campbell 1997Adelaar 1989Berman 1992Chafe 1987Matisoff 1990Kimball 1992Mithun 1999Poser 1992Rankin 1992 The term ''Amerind'' is also occasionally used to refer broadly to the various indigenous languages of the Americas without necessarily implying that they are a genealogical group. To avoid ambiguity, the term Amerindian is often used for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New World
The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 33: "[16c: from the feminine of ''Americus'', the Latinized first name of the explorer Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512). The name ''America'' first appeared on a map in 1507 by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, referring to the area now called Brazil]. Since the 16c, a name of the western hemisphere, often in the plural ''Americas'' and more or less synonymous with ''the New World''. Since the 18c, a name of the United States of America. The second sense is now primary in English: ... However, the term is open to uncertainties: ..." The term gained prominence in the early 16th century, during Europe's Age of Discovery, shortly after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci concluded that America (now often called ''the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kiliwa Language
Kiliwa, alternate Names: ''Kiliwi, Ko’lew or Quiligua'' (in Kiliwa: Ko'leeu Nyaha) is a Yuman language spoken in Baja California, in the far northwest of Mexico, by the Kiliwa people. 76 people reported their language as Kiliwa in a 2020 census.Lenguas indígenas y hablantes de 3 años y más, 2020 INEGI. Censo de Población y Vivienda 2020. However, a count in 2018 found only 4 speakers remaining. History The Kiliwa language was extensively studied by Mauricio J. Mixco, who published Kiliwa texts as well as a dictionary and studies of syntax. As recently as the mid-1900s, Mixco reported that members of the native community universally spoke Kiliwa as their first language, with many Kiliwas also bilingual in Paipai. At the start of the twenty- ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Morris Swadesh
Morris Swadesh (; January 22, 1909 – July 20, 1967) was an American linguist who specialized in comparative and historical linguistics. Swadesh was born in Massachusetts to Bessarabian Jewish immigrant parents. He completed bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Chicago, studying under Edward Sapir, and then followed Sapir to Yale University where he completed a Ph.D. in 1933. Swadesh taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1937 to 1939, and then during World War II worked on projects with the United States Army and Office of Strategic Services. He became a professor at the City College of New York after the war's end, but was fired in 1949 due to his membership in the Communist Party. He spent most of the rest of his life teaching in Mexico and Canada. Swadesh had a particular interest in the indigenous languages of the Americas, and conducted extensive fieldwork throughout North America. He was one of the pioneers of glottochronology and lexico ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language Contact
Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for their languages to influence each other. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum languages, or as the result of migration, with an intrusive language acting as either a superstratum or a substratum. Language contact occurs in a variety of phenomena, including language convergence, borrowing and relexification. The common products include pidgins, creoles, code-switching, and mixed languages. In many other cases, contact between speakers occurs but the lasting effects on the language are less visible; they may, however, include loan words, calques or other types of borrowed material. Multilingualism has likely been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world are multilingual. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mass Comparison
Mass comparison is a method developed by Joseph Greenberg to determine the level of genetic relatedness between languages. It is now usually called multilateral comparison. The method is rejected by most linguists , though not all. Some of the top-level relationships Greenberg named are now generally accepted, though they had already been posited by others (e.g. Afro-Asiatic and Niger–Congo). Others are accepted by many though disputed by some prominent specialists (e.g. Nilo-Saharan), others are predominantly rejected but have some defenders (e.g. Eurasiatic), while others are almost universally rejected (e.g. Khoisan and Amerind). Methodology The thesis of mass comparison is that a group of languages is related when they show numerous resemblances in vocabulary, including pronouns, and morphemes, forming an interlocking pattern common to the group. Unlike the comparative method, mass comparison does not require any regular or systematic correspondences between the langua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ablaut
In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut (, from German '' Ablaut'' ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and its related noun ''song'', a paradigm inherited directly from the Proto-Indo-European stage of the language. Traces of ablaut are found in all modern Indo-European languages, though its prevalence varies greatly. History of the concept The phenomenon of Indo-European ablaut was first recorded by Sanskrit grammarians in the later Vedic period (roughly 8th century BCE), and was codified by Pāṇini in his ''Aṣṭādhyāyī'' (4th century BCE), where the terms ' and '' '' were used to describe the phenomena now known respectively as the ''full grade'' and ''lengthened grade''.Burrow, §2.1. In the context of European languages, the phenomenon was first described in the early 18th century by the Dutch linguist Lambert ten Kate, in his boo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alfredo Trombetti
Alfredo Trombetti (16 January 1866, in Bologna – 5 July 1929, in Venice), was an Italian linguist active in the early 20th century. Career overview Trombetti was a professor at the University of Bologna. He was a member of the Italian Academy. He is best known as an advocate of the doctrine of monogenesis, according to which all of the world's languages go back to a single common ancestral language. His arguments for monogenesis were first presented in his book ''L'unità d'origine del linguaggio,'' published in 1905. This doctrine is still extremely controversial. Proposed etymologies A selection of Trombetti's proposed global etymologies:Trombetti, Alfredo. 1905. L'unità d'origine del linguaggio'' Bologna: Luigi Beltrami. : Selected works * 1902-1903. "Delle relazioni delle lingue caucasiche con le lingue camitosemitiche e con altri gruppi linguistichi. Lettera al professore H. Schuchardt." In ''Giornale della Società asiatica italiana,'' T. 15, pp. 177–201 and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mapudungun Language
Mapuche (, Mapuche & Spanish: , or Mapudungun; from ' 'land' and ' 'speak, speech') is an Araucanian language related to Huilliche spoken in south-central Chile and west-central Argentina by the Mapuche people (from ''mapu'' 'land' and ''che'' 'people'). It is also spelled Mapuzugun and Mapudungu. It was formerly known as Araucanian, the name given to the Mapuche by the Spaniards; the Mapuche avoid it as a remnant of Spanish colonialism. Mapudungun is not an official language of the countries Chile and Argentina, receiving virtually no government support throughout its history. However, since 2013, Mapuche, along with Spanish, has been granted the status of an official language by the local government of Galvarino, one of the many Communes of Chile. It is not used as a language of instruction in either country's educational system despite the Chilean government's commitment to provide full access to education in Mapuche areas in southern Chile. There is an ongoing political ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aymaran Languages
Aymaran (also Jaqi or Aru) is one of the two dominant language families in the central Andes alongside Quechuan. The family consists of Aymara, widely spoken in Bolivia, and the endangered Jaqaru and Kawki languages of Peru. Hardman (1978) proposed the name ''Jaqi'' for the family of languages (1978), Alfredo Torero ''Aru'' 'to speak', and Rodolfo Cerrón Palomino ''Aymaran'', with two branches, Southern (or Altiplano) Aymaran and Central Aymaran (Jaqaru and Kawki). Other names for the family are Jaqui (also spelled Haki) and Aimara. Quechuan languages, especially those of the south, share a large amount of vocabulary with Aymara, and the languages have often been grouped together as Quechumaran. This proposal is controversial, however; the shared vocabulary may be better explained as intensive borrowing due to long-term contact. Language contact Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Kechua, Kunza, Leko, Uru-Chipaya, Arawak, and Pukina language ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aymara Language
Aymara (; also ) is an Aymaran language spoken by the Aymara people of the Bolivian Andes. It is one of only a handful of Native American languages with over one million speakers.The other native American languages with more than one million speakers are Nahuatl, Quechua languages, and Guaraní. Aymara, along with Spanish and Quechua, is an official language in Bolivia and Peru. It is also spoken, to a much lesser extent, by some communities in northern Chile, where it is a recognized minority language. Some linguists have claimed that Aymara is related to its more widely spoken neighbor, Quechua. That claim, however, is disputed. Although there are indeed similarities, like the nearly identical phonologies, the majority position among linguists today is that the similarities are better explained as areal features rising from prolonged cohabitation, rather than natural genealogical changes that would stem from a common protolanguage. Aymara is an agglutinating an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chibchan Languages
The Chibchan languages (also Chibchan, Chibchano) make up a language family indigenous to the Isthmo-Colombian Area, which extends from eastern Honduras to northern Colombia and includes populations of these countries as well as Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. The name is derived from the name of an extinct language called ''Chibcha'' or ''Muysccubun'', once spoken by the people who lived on the Altiplano Cundiboyacense of which the city of Bogotá was the southern capital at the time of the Spanish Conquista. However, genetic and linguistic data now indicate that the original heart of Chibchan languages and Chibchan-speaking peoples might not have been in Colombia, but in the area of the Costa Rica-Panama border, where the greatest variety of Chibchan languages has been identified. External relations A larger family called '' Macro-Chibchan'', which would contain the Misumalpan languages, Xinca, and Lenca, was found convincing by Kaufman (1990). Pache (2018) suggests a d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arhuaco Language
Arhuaco, commonly known as Ikʉ, ( arh, Ikʉ, link=no) is an Indigenous American language of the Chibchan language family, spoken in South America by the Arhuaco people.Arhuaco by Arango and Sánchez, Ethnologue, 1998, access date There are 8000 speakers, all in the region of Colombia
Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered ...
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