In this project, we contributed data on the Yurakaré language (isolate, Boliva) to three Glottobank databases: Grambank, Lexibank, and Numeralbank. We drew on our rich experience in working as a team of two people who have been collaborating in the documentation and description of the Yurakaré language for more than 15 years: Jeremías Ballivián Torrico, a speaker of Yurakaré with abundant experience in data collection and processing, and Sonja Gipper, a linguist specialized in the Yurakaré language with a strong expertise in discourse-based linguistic analysis. This exceptional combination allowed us to bring together two different perspectives on the language, that of a speaker who grew up as a member of the Yurakaré community, and that of a linguist and expert on the language, in order to produce the best possible set of entries in the Glottbank databases. We gratefully acknowledge funding from ELDP and DLCE (Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany). The data collected in the project can be accessed via the ELAR archive.

Supported by Excellent Research Support Programme (University of Cologne), FORUM

(01.01.21 - 31.12.22)

This project deals with language change, in particular with change in grammar. Its focus is on the question as to how grammatical innovations spread in the community of speakers, ultimately becoming a new grammatical norm. The main objective is to explore the explanatory potential of the concept of conversational priming through conventionalized repeating responses to polar questions, in which we see a major factor facilitating this spread. As a starting point, the project focuses on grammatical changes but it may also be possible that lexical or phonological changes are facilitated in this manner. Repetitional responses (repeats) are found instead of or in addition to particles like yes and no in many languages (cf. Holmberg 2016; Enfield et al. 2019; Gipper 2020). In these languages, one interlocutor repeats (a part of) the polar question of the other interlocutor in order to answer it. Hence, if speaker A uses an innovative form in a question, speaker B will probably repeat it. The fact that speaker B actively uses the innovative form  facilitates the integration of the innovative form into her own grammar after several iterations. Under the assumption that grammatical innovations spread in this manner, one may expect certain asymmetries to arise regarding the speed in which innovations spread. For instance, in languages which mark person on the verb, innovative verb forms should spread faster in the 3rd person singular than in the 1st and 2nd person singular. For in a question-answer sequence, a verb in the 3rd person has to be repeated exactly whereas one in the 1st/2nd person does not. Consider the following examples from Russian, where the finite verb has to be repeated in order to answer a polar question:

(1) Ty letiš’ v Pariž? – Leču. / Ne leču.
‘Will you fly to Paris?’ – ‘Yes.’ / ‘No.’
(2) Ja leču v Pariž? – Letiš’. / Ne letiš’.
‘Will I fly to Paris?’ – ‘Yes.’ / ‘No.’
(3) Masha letit v Pariž? – Letit. / Ne letit.
‘Will Masha fly to Paris?’ – ‘Yes.’ / ‘No.’

If it can be demonstrated that such synchronic asymmetries are also reflected in the diachronic development of certain grammatical forms, this will provide strong evidence in favor of the hypothesis that conversational priming is a major factor in the spread of innovative grammatical forms.
The working hypothesis is situated at the core of the UoC-Key Profile Area VI Skills and Structure in Language and Cognition, which investigates “the tension between the behaviour of individuals and the structures resulting from their interaction”. Its success would be a step toward the main objective of the Key Profile Area VI, i.e. “a framework that accounts for individual behaviour, its crystallisation in diverse linguistic structures across time and space, and the underlying cognitive mechanisms”.

References

Enfield, Nick J., Tanya Stivers, Penelope Brown, Christina Englert, Katarina Harjunpää, Makoto Hayashi, Trine Heinemann, Gertie Howmann, Tiina Keisanen, Mirka Rauniomaa, Chase W. Raymond, Federico Rossano,Kyung-Eun Yoon, Inge Zwisterlood & Stephen C. Levinson. 2019. Polar Answers. Journal of Linguistics 55(2). 277–304.

Gipper, Sonja. 2020. Repeating Responses as a Conversational Affordance for Linguistic Transmission: Evidence from Yurakaré Conversations. Studies in Language 44(2). 281–326.

Holmberg, Anders. 2016. The Syntax of Yes and No. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Project Leader: Eugen Hill, Sonja Gipper & Martin Becker

Research Assistant: Pascal Coenen, M.A.

This project investigates linguistic variation and its relation to language attitudes in Yurakaré, a language isolate spoken in the Amazonian lowlands of central Bolivia by an estimated number of 2,000 speakers. Patterns of linguistic variation have been shown to systematically interact with social factors like age, sex, social group, region, and speech style. However, most of these insights are based on studies of English and a few other large-scale Western languages. In contrast, our knowledge about linguistic variation and language attitudes in small-scale, non-Western languages is relatively small, even though the few pioneering studies show that such languages can differ from large Western languages with respect to the variation patterns they exhibit. Therefore, to arrive at a more comprehensive picture of variation in the languages of the world, more case studies of variation and language attitudes in small-scale non-Western languages are needed. One such case study will be provided by the proposed project. It pursues three main objectives: First, it aims at detecting and describing patterns of linguistic variation in Yurakaré. For this purpose, a corpus study will be carried out using the DobeS-Yurakaré corpus. To corroborate the findings, a questionnaire survey will be conducted in two Yurakaré villages, collecting systematic speech data from speakers representing all relevant social groups. The second objective of the project is to examine the relation between variation and language attitudes. For this purpose, the questionnaire study will collect data on the consultants’ perception of different variants, on their language socialization, and on their attitudes toward different variants. The third objective of the project is to embed the findings in a broader cross-linguistic and theoretical context by investigating the relation of variation within particular languages to linguistic diversity. To achieve this, the applicant will cooperate with Nicholas Evans from the Australian National University in Canberra. In his project The Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity Evans and his colleagues investigate this question on the basis of a number of case studies. The comparative analysis will reveal which social factors promote and suppress variation, and how language attitudes work as amplifiers of this process. The proposed project will constitute one of the case studies, representing the diversity hotspot of Amazonia.

Contact: Dr. Sonja Gipper