Research Catalog

Title

American Indian languages : cultural and social contexts / Shirley Silver and Wick R. Miller.

Author

Silver, Shirley.

Publication

Tucson : University of Arizona Press, c1997.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Miller, Wick R.

Description

xix, 433 p. : ill., maps; 25 cm.

Summary

This comprehensive survey of indigenous languages of the New World introduces students and general readers to the mosaic of American Indian languages and cultures and offers an approach to grasping their subtleties. Authors Silver and Miller demonstrate the complexity and diversity of these languages while dispelling popular misconceptions. Their text reveals the linguistic richness of languages found throughout the Americas, emphasizing those located in the western United States and Mexico while drawing on a wide range of other examples from Canada to the Andes. It introduces readers to such varied aspects of communicating as directionals and counting systems, storytelling, expressive speech, Mexican Kickapoo whistle speech, and Plains sign language. The authors have included the basics of grammar and historical linguistics while emphasizing such issues as speech genres and other sociolinguistic issues and the relation between language and worldview. American Indian Languages: Cultural and Social Contexts is a comprehensive resource that will serve as a text in undergraduate and lower-level graduate courses on Native American languages and provide a useful reference for students of American Indian literature or general linguistics. It also introduces general readers interested in Native Americans to the amazing diversity and richness of indigenous American languages.

Subject

• Anthropological linguistics > America
• Indians > Grammar, Comparative
• Indians > Social aspects
• Indians > Social life and customs

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

• pt. I. Overview -- 1. Languages and their status -- "Primitive" languages -- Speech, writing, and nonliterate societies -- Population and language diversity -- Language vitality -- Language and government policy -- Literacy and language maintenance -- pt. II. Languages and structures -- 2. Languages and structures -- Sound systems -- Grammatical systems -- Possession (Acoma) -- Gender (Plains Cree) -- Number (Shasta) -- Person reference Aztec and Shoshoni) -- Classifying verbs (Apachean languages) -- Evidentials (Andes) -- Sound symbolism in California languages -- Fundamentals of language expression -- Common grammatical features -- Tense and aspect marking -- Case marking -- Inclusive-exclusive distinction -- Number -- Reduplication -- Suppletion -- Location-direction affixation -- Instrumental prefixes -- Noun-object incorporation -- pt. III. Languages and cultural domains -- 3. Languages and cultural domains -- Cultural domain and plant taxonomy (Kashaya Pomo) -- Cultural domain and geographic orientation -- Guarijío directionals -- Other directional systems -- Chumash placenames -- Other placenames -- Languages and social space (Shoshoni Deixis) -- Language and counting systems -- The Aztec vigesimal system -- Other counting systems -- California counting systems -- Counting systems in the Americas -- Classificatory systems and world view -- Numerical classifiers in Northwest California languages -- Worldview and the Hopi -- Worldview, classificatory systems and Navajo -- The cultural uses of taxonomies : (The Slave classification of Ice) -- Language, cognition, and culture.
• pt. IV. Languages and social domains -- 4. Languages and social organization -- Language communities in the Great Basin -- Social groupings -- Linguistic enculturation -- Fashions of speaking and cultural focus -- Fashions of speaking and social category -- Multilingualism and multidialectalism -- Linguistic awareness and attitudes -- Language communities in the Pueblos -- Social groupings -- Linguistic enculturation -- Fashions of speaking and cultural focus -- Fashions of speaking and social category -- Multilingualism and multidialectalism -- Linguistic awareness and attitudes -- Language communities of the Creek Confederacy -- Bilingualism -- Fashions of speaking -- Linguistic awareness and attitudes -- Language communities of the Aztec Empire -- Social groupings -- Education and the verbal arts -- Fashions speaking and the verbal arts -- Oratory and moral instruction -- Poetry -- Historical chronicles -- Doublets and metaphors -- The place of writing --^
• The place of Nahuatl in Mesoamerica -- Markets, traders, and artisans -- Speech community, the social group, and culture -- Society, language boundaries, and linguistic diversity -- Culture, belief systems, and language -- Limiting factors -- American Indian speech communities today -- 5. Performers and performances -- California storytellers and storytelling -- A conversation with a California storyteller -- Bungling host. Benevolent host : a Chinook narrative -- An old lady's lament : a Havasupai song -- Male shooting chant evil-chasing : a Navajo prayer -- The language of three Kuna performance types -- Performances and cross-cultural comparison -- Prose, poetry, and playwriting -- 6. Fashions of speaking -- Speech and social category : respect speech among the Aztec and Guarijío -- Aztec reverential -- guarijío for two 00 Respect speech -- Speech and social category : men's and women's speech in Yana -- Baby talk in Cocopa --^
• Expressive speech : swearing, speech play, and word taboo -- Diminutive, augmentative, and expressive speech in the Northwest Coast -- Form and function -- 7. Nonverbal communication -- Silence : the Western Apache -- Kickapoo and Mazatec whistle speech -- Plains sign language -- The system -- Origin, use, and function -- Direct-signaling systems and their communicative purposes -- Long distance systems -- Picture "writing" -- Wampum -- Totem carvings -- Quipus -- 8. The written word -- Mesoamerican writing -- The Mayan hieroglyphic system -- Aztec writing -- The use of writing in Mesoamerica -- The Cherokee syllabary -- The Cree syllabary -- Other post-Columbian writing traditions -- Writing and its uses.
• pt. V. Languages in contact -- 9. Multilingualism -- The Vaupés -- California -- Marriage -- Ritual alliances -- Trade -- The Inca Empire -- Paraguay -- Navajo Code Talkers -- 10. Lingua francas -- Pidgins and Creoles -- Chinook jargon -- Other American Indian pidgins -- Mobilian -- The Vaupés : lingua francas -- 11. Language contact -- Loanwords in Huasteca Nahuatl -- Lake Miwok : a case of borrowing and structural change -- Lexical acculturation in a colonial setting -- Mountain Pima -- Comanche -- Semantic extension in Western Apache -- A shift to the colonial languages -- Mitchif : a special case -- Changes in the Americas' colonial languages -- American English -- Mexican Spanish -- Andean Spanish -- Language contact and bilingualism -- pt. VI. Languages in time and space -- 12. Languages and shared histories -- The Cree dialects -- The Uto-Aztecan family -- Cognates and regular sound correspondences -- Loanwords -- Internal classification --^
• Time depth, dating, and glottochronology -- The possession of "pet" : an areal trait in the Southwest -- A linguistic area : Mesoamerica -- Sound symbolism : a diffusional trait of the Pacific Coast -- California : language families and diffusional area -- Genetic units -- Hokan -- Penutian -- Other genetic units -- Diffusion of linguistic traits -- Front and back [t], a diffused phonetic trait -- Other diffused phonetic traits -- Number systems -- discovering remote relationships -- Algic -- Macro-Siouan -- History of classification -- 13. The use of language as a tool for prehistory -- Navajo etymologies, and reconstructed vocabulary -- The Algonquian homeland -- The Numic homeland -- Early Spanish and Aztec loans in Northwest Mexico -- Nonlinguistic information gleaned from linguistic evidence -- Establishing the direction of borrowing -- California revisited -- Distribution and diversity -- "The case of the broken bottle" -- 14. Spread and distribution of language families --^
• Eastern North America -- Western North America -- Middle America -- South America -- The highlands -- The lowlands -- The Souther cone -- Appendix 1. Phonetic symbols and their meaning -- Consonants -- Voicing -- Place of articulation -- Other consonantal distinction : glottalization, aspiration and length -- Vowels -- Appendix 2. A list of language families of North America.

ISBN

0816518025 (cloth)

LCCN

^^^97004817^

OCLC

36746321

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library