Doctoral Dissertation Research: Documenting the endangered Koman languages and their linguistic relationships

博士论文研究：记录濒临灭绝的科曼语言及其语言关系

• 批准号: 1628750
• 负责人: Doris Payne
• 金额: $ 1.89万
• 依托单位: University of Oregon Eugene
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-07-15 至 2019-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1628750&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Documenting; endangered

Just like biologists have methods to investigate the relationships between species, linguists have methods that allow them to determine the relationships between languages. Linguists do this by comparing a set of languages along various dimensions, such as words or language structures that may have a common origin. Documentation of individual languages plays a key role in how scholars reconstruct the family relationships between languages, but with little or no documentation, it is highly challenging to make conclusive determinations of the linguistic relationships. This project will investigate a small set of five endangered languages which are related to each other, according to the existing small sets of data. These languages are poorly documented due to being spoken only in a remote, conflict-ridden area, inaccessible except by footpaths. This project will also research whether these languages are related to others in the neighboring geographic region by documenting the individual languages in this group, and by making comparisons between specific words and other linguistic features of each of the languages. The dissertation will increase the linguistic understanding of the five targeted languages and their relationships with each other and with other languages in the region. This dissertation will also add deeper insight to the less frequent type of patterns ("typology") in the sound systems and in grammar of these languages by collecting and analyzing new documentation. The documentation will serve not only linguists and educators but also anthropologists and historians interested in the inhabitants of a virtually forgotten area. In this dissertation project, doctoral student Manuel Otero will document the endangered languages, including a comparative vocabulary of the Koman peoples. The Koman languages constitute a small group of five languages spoken in the Ethiopia, Sudan and South Sudan borderlands. Aside from Uduk, the Koman languages are only spoken in Africa, so fieldwork will be carried out primarily in Ethiopia for the Komo, Gwama, Opuo and Dana languages. Little is known about the Koman languages and peoples, as the terrain these groups have inhabited for centuries is rugged and primarily communicable by footpaths. Most Koman people continue traditional practices, including hunting and gathering alongside subsistence farming. Impacted by more than a century of strife and conflict, these populations continue to dwindle and some of their languages are on the verge of extinction, in urgent need of documentation. The primary research questions concern developing an understanding of their sound systems and grammar, their interrelationships, and how Koman relates to larger African language families, which is still under debate. Typologically rare grammatical features in Koman include temporal distinctions made by suffixes that primarily indicate direction of movement and track the location of participants. Such systems are important to the study of human language and cognition, as they show how grammatical material can evolve. In Koman languages, the grammar of "tense" is developing out of the human desire to communicate the whereabouts of other animate beings.

就像生物学家有研究物种之间关系的方法一样，语言学家也具有使他们能够确定语言之间关系的方法。语言学家通过比较沿各种维度的一组语言来做到这一点，例如单词或语言结构可能具有共同的起源。单个语言的文档在学者如何重建语言之间的家庭关系方面起着关键作用，但是在很少或没有文档的情况下，确定对语言关系的确定是极具挑战性的。 该项目将根据现有的一小部分数据研究彼此相关的五种濒危语言的一小部分。 这些语言的记录很差，因为仅在遥远的，冲突的地区说话，除了小径以外无法访问。该项目还将通过记录该组中的各个语言，以及在每种语言的特定单词和其他语言特征之间进行比较，研究这些语言是否与相邻地理区域中的其他语言相关。 论文将增加对五种目标语言及其与该地区其他语言的关系的语言理解。本文还将通过收集和分析新文档来增加声音系统和这些语言语法的模式类型（“类型学”）类型的频繁类型（“类型学”）的更深入的见解。该文档不仅将为语言学家和教育者提供服务，还可以为对几乎被遗忘的地区居民感兴趣的人类学家和历史学家提供服务。在该论文项目中，博士生Manuel Otero将记录濒危语言，包括Koman Peoples的比较词汇。科曼语言构成了埃塞俄比亚，苏丹和南苏丹边境地区使用的五种语言的一小部分。除了UDUK，Koman语言仅在非洲使用，因此将主要在埃塞俄比亚对Komo，Gwama，Opuo和Dana语言进行野外工作。对于科曼语言和人民来说，知之甚少，因为这些群体居住了几个世纪的地形是崎and的，主要是通过人行道传教。大多数科曼人继续传统做法，包括与生存耕作一起狩猎和聚会。受到一个多世纪的冲突和冲突的影响，这些人口继续逐渐减少，其中一些语言正处于灭绝的边缘，迫切需要文件。主要的研究问题涉及对他们的音响系统和语法，相互关系以及科曼与较大的非洲语言家庭的关系的理解，这仍在争论中。科曼（Koman）中类型上罕见的语法特征包括后缀作出的时间差异，主要指示运动方向并跟踪参与者的位置。这样的系统对人类语言和认知的研究很重要，因为它们表明了语法材料如何发展。在科曼语言中，“时态”的语法正在人类传达其他动画生物的下落的愿望。