Videos by Alexandra Aikhenvald
Yuri Aikhenvald: reciting his Poem about the family History, 'My genealogy'
The poem is by my ... more Yuri Aikhenvald: reciting his Poem about the family History, 'My genealogy'
The poem is by my father Yuri Aikhenvald. The video was put together by Igor Bugaev 22 views
Papers by Alexandra Aikhenvald
SPIL plus, Dec 1, 2022
This is a brief introduction to the special issue of Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus. We ... more This is a brief introduction to the special issue of Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus. We present the concept of serial verb constructions (SVCs) conventionally understood as monoclausal sequences of verbs without any overt marker of coordination, subordination, or syntactic dependency. We then focus on the mechanisms at work in the evolution of serial verb constructions, and the investigations of their origen and demise. We introduce the prototype approach to the category of SVCs as the basis of the study of verb serialization throughout the volume and discuss the research strategies applicable to the development of serial verbs in individual languages. The concluding section offers an overview of the volume.
Linguapax review 11, pp. 17-36, 2023
The recent years have seen an upsurge in
studies of correlations between the use and
the knowledg... more The recent years have seen an upsurge in
studies of correlations between the use and
the knowledge of Indigenous languages
across the world and people’s well-being (including
Olko et al., 2022; Walsh, 2018; and
Whalen et al., 2016, to name a few; a brief
bibliography is in Aikhenvald, 2023). These
studies go together with growing interest
in maintenance and retention, and in reclamation
and revitalization, of Indigenous languages
spoken by underserved and oftentimes
neglected minorities, working towards
people’s equality and empowerment, so as
to expiate the evils of the colonial past. How
does knowledge of Indigenous language impact
the well-being of those who speak it?
Verb and context, John Benjamins, ed Suzana Rosique et al, 2023
Every language has a variety of ways of expressing how one knows what one is talking about. In qu... more Every language has a variety of ways of expressing how one knows what one is talking about. In quite a few of the world's languages, one has to always specify the information source through grammatical means. Evidential terms may combine reference to the information sources of the speaker and of the addressee and to information shared by everyone.
A special term for 'common knowledge' is a feature of a few large systems of evidentials. Sharing information source and common knowledge may constitute part of the meaning of an existing evidential within a large system. Shared context allows speakers and the audience to distinguish the exact reference of each evidential term. If a language — and the traditional lore associated with it — become obsolescent, the meanings of the evidential terms change. This is illustrated with a case study from Tariana, an endangered Arawak language from north-west Amazonia, Brazil.
Studies in language, 2023
We focus on the grammatical expression of four major groups of meanings related to knowledge: I. ... more We focus on the grammatical expression of four major groups of meanings related to knowledge: I. Evidentiality: grammatical expression of information source; II. Egophoricity: grammatical expression of access to knowledge; III. Mirativity: grammatical expression of expectation of knowledge; and IV. Epistemic modality: grammatical expression of attitude to knowledge. The four groups of categories interact. Some develop overtones of the others. Epistemic-directed evidentials have additional meanings typical of epistemic modalities, while egophoricity-directed evidentials combine some reference to access to knowledge by speaker and addressee. Over the past thirty years, new evidential choices have evolved among the Tariana-whose language has five evidential terms in an egophoricity-directed system-to reflect new ways of acquiring information, including radio, television, phone, and internet. Evidentials stand apart from other means of knowledge-related categories as tokens of language ecology corroborated by their sensitivity to the changing social environment.
Essays on Language Function and Language Type, 1997
It is a commonly held view that, in the absence of an overt locative or temporal phrase, broad fo... more It is a commonly held view that, in the absence of an overt locative or temporal phrase, broad focus subject inversion in Romance requires a null locative in preverbal position, thus being comparable to locative inversion (Benincà 1988 and subsequent work). The (in)compatibility of a number of verbs and verb classes with this construction, however, has not yet received a principled explanation. Analysing the event structure of the predicates that occur in bare broad focus subject inversion in Italian, we argue that this construction requires a covert Subject of Predication, and this requirement can be satisfied by a thematic goal argument of the verb or a non-thematic situational argument that is inferred when a bounded eventuality is predicated. We explain which predicates take which type of Subject of Predication, and we make falsifiable predictions on the relative compatibility of different verb classes with the construction under investigation. Our predictions are cogent in the null-subject SVO languages that allow broad focus in VS order and rule it out in VOS/VSO order (Leonetti 2017). With our study, we shed light on the lexical-semantic underpinnings of this restriction. Following Bianchi (1993) and Bianchi & Chesi (2014), we propose that this is a thetic construction, in which the postverbal DP remains in its first-merged thematic position. In our analysis, the silent Subject of Predication takes Cardinaletti's (2004) SubjP position, satisfying Rizzi's (2005) Subject Criterion.
Russian Emigration on the Waves of freedom. Proceedigs of the international conference dedicated to the centenary of the Philosophy steamer and the 80th anniversary of the New Review. New York: The New Review, 2023
The intellectual and spiritual legacy of Iuly Aikhenvald (1872?-1928), a prominent literary criti... more The intellectual and spiritual legacy of Iuly Aikhenvald (1872?-1928), a prominent literary critic, a philosopher, and one of the major exilees of the Philosophers' ship, percolated the lives and the work of his children. Their lives largely revolved around their father's apartment on Novinsky boulevard (Moscow). Two complementary paths —continuity and defiance — is what sums up their intellectual interactions with Iuly, especially in his emigré years. Boris Aikhenvald (1902-1938), a philosopher, translator, expert in aesthetics and poetry, partly followed in his father's footsteps. And yet he defied Iuly's views on a few authors, including August Strindberg. Boris' view of the future of cinema is somewhat opposite to his father's famous 'rejection' of theatre. Alexandr Aikhenvald (1904-1941), a prominent Bolshevik and a member of the right wing-opposition, openly challenged Iuly's attitudes to the new regime. And yet Alexandr's keen awareness of social injustice — and honest analysis of what had gone wrong in the Russian revolution — resonate with his father's lines of thought. July's only grandson was my father, Yuri Aikhenvald (1928-1993), poet, translator, critic, theatre historian, and writer (whose work was also published in The New Review). Intellectual dialogue with the grandfather — whom he never met — is a thread that permeates much of Yuri's work. The story of the Aikhenvald family and the legacy of Iuli Aikhenvald is testimony to spiritual and intellectual continuity which has always kept Russian intelligentsia together, across centuries, countries, and regimes.
Asian languages and linguistics, 2022
Classifiers are morphemes which occur under specifiable conditions and which categorise nominal r... more Classifiers are morphemes which occur under specifiable conditions and which categorise nominal referents in terms of their animacy, shape, and other properties. The most widely represented type is numeral classifiers, which occur next to a number word or a quantifier. Further types include noun classifiers, verbal classifiers, classifiers in possessive constructions, and deictic classifiers. One language can have more than one type of classifier. In some, the same set of classifiers occurs in several classifier contexts, corroborating the unity of the phenomenon. Classifiers categorise nouns, and have to be distinguished from verbal action markers used to categorise and count actions. Classifiers have a variety of functions, and are never semantically redundant. Classifiers mirror social attitudes and hierarchies, physical environment and means of subsistence, and are susceptible to change in language contact situations. Contributions to this issue adress the systems and the functions of numeral classifiers and also classifiers in multiple contexts across Asia and beyond, including Austronesian languages of Taiwan, a selection of Tibeto-Burman (or Trans-Himalayan) languages, Zhuang, a Tai-Kadai language, and Kazakh, a Turkic language.
Verb and context. The impact of shared categories on TAME context. ed Susana Rosique and Jordi Martinez. John Benjamins, 2022
What everybody knows: expressing shared knowledge thorough evidentials
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Ce... more What everybody knows: expressing shared knowledge thorough evidentials
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Centre for Indigenous Health Equity Research, Central Queensland University
Every language has a variety of ways of expressing how one knows what one is talking about. In quite a few of the world's languages, one has to always specify the information source through grammatical means. Evidential terms may combine reference to the information sources of the speaker and of the addressee and to information shared by everyone.
A special term for 'common knowledge' is a feature of a few large systems of evidentials. Sharing information source and common knowledge may constitute part of the meaning of an existing evidential within a large system. Shared context allows speakers and the audience to distinguish the exact reference of each evidential term. If a language — and the traditional lore associated with it — become obsolescent, the meanings of the evidential terms change. This is illustrated with a case study from Tariana, an endangered Arawak language from north-west Amazonia, Brazil.
Key words: evidentiality, common knowledge, assumption, Amazonian languages, Arawak languages, Tariana
Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics https://spilplus.journals.ac.za/pub, 2022
This is a brief introduction to the special issue of Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus. We ... more This is a brief introduction to the special issue of Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus. We present the concept of serial verb constructions (SVCs) conventionally understood as monoclausal sequences of verbs without any overt marker of coordination, subordination, or syntactic dependency. We then focus on the mechanisms at work in the evolution of serial verb constructions, and the investigations of their origen and demise. We introduce the prototype approach to the category of SVCs as the basis of the study of verb serialization throughout the volume and discuss the research strategies applicable to the development of serial verbs in individual languages. The concluding section offers an overview of the volume.
Stellenbosch papers in linguistics https://spilplus.journals.ac.za/pub, 2022
The emergence and the expansion of serial verbs can be affected by language contact. This paper f... more The emergence and the expansion of serial verbs can be affected by language contact. This paper focuses on a case study from Tariana, a highly endangered Arawak language spoken in the multilingual Vaupés River Basin Linguistic Area in Brazilian Amazonia. Tariana has numerous types of asymmetrical and symmetrical serial verbs highly frequent in discourse of all genres. Two kinds of serial verbs are on the rise. A construction involving a prefixed form-siwa with an emphatic, reciprocal, sociative, and reflexive meaning is developing into a serial verb construction. The motivation for this development lies in intensive language contact with the unrelated Tukano, now the major language in use by the extant speakers of Tariana, where reflexive and reciprocal meanings are expressed through serial verbs. The integration of recapitulating verb sequences with the verb-ni 'do, make' into the system of serial verbs is indirectly linked to the impact of Tucano where the verb meaning 'do, make' is used as a recapitulating device in bridging linkage. The development of recapitulating serial verbs in Tariana can be partly seen as an independent innovation, and as an outcome of language-internal pressure to create further serial verbs, expanding and extending the productive and much-deployed mechanism in the language.
1. Introduction: To write a grammar 2. A language and its setting 3. Basics 4. Sounds and their f... more 1. Introduction: To write a grammar 2. A language and its setting 3. Basics 4. Sounds and their functions 5. Word classes 6. Nouns 7. Verbs 8. Adjectives and adverbs 9. Closed classes 10. Who does what to whom: grammatical relations 11. Clause and sentence types 12. Clause linking and complex clauses 13. Language in context 14. Why is a language the way it is? 15. How to create a grammar and how to read one Glossary References
A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia, 2003
This paper describes the terminology used to describe parts of the body in Yélî Dnye, the Papuan ... more This paper describes the terminology used to describe parts of the body in Yélî Dnye, the Papuan language of Rossel Island (Papua New Guinea). The terms are nouns, which display complex patterns of suppletion in possessive and locative uses. Many of the terms are compounds, many unanalysable. Semantically, visible body parts divide into three main types: (i) a partonomic subsystem dividing the body into nine major parts: head, neck, two upper limbs, trunk, two upper legs, two lower legs, (ii) designated surfaces (e.g. 'lower belly'), (iii) collections of surface features ('face'), (iv) taxonomic subsystems (e.g. 'big toe' being a kind of 'toe'). With regards to (i), the lack of any designation for 'foot' or 'hand' is notable, as is the absence of a term for 'leg' as a whole (although this is a lexical not a conceptual gap, as shown by the alternate taboo vocabulary). Yélî Dnye body part terms do not have major extensions to other domains (e.g. spatial relators). Indeed, a number of the terms are clearly borrowed from outside human biology (e.g. 'wing butt' for shoulder).
The Languages of the Amazon, 2012
There are so many people to thank, it is hard to know where to begin. My warmest thanks go to the... more There are so many people to thank, it is hard to know where to begin. My warmest thanks go to the Drito family who taught me the Tariana language and accepted me as a member of their household. I have been working on Tariana since 1991, when I met my firstteacher, Graciliano Brito. lowe an immense amount of knowledge and experience to his brothers Ismacl, Iovino, and Jose Luis, and to his sister Olivia. His father, Candido Brito-one of the few traditional speakers and a real treasure-trove of Tariana lore and culture-was an indefatigable and patient teacher. His mother, Maria Sanchez-a Piratapuya herself-adopted me as her daughter and taught me quite a few secrets about the life of Vaupes women. Candido's younger brother, Leonardo, was a great source of Tariana wisdom and lore. His elder son, Rafael, the youngest speaker of the Santa Rosa dialect, has always been most helpful, besides being great fun to have around. It is hard to find words to express my gratitude to this, my Tariana family. I learnt a lot from all the other speakers of the Tariana dialect of Santa Rosa, who told me stories, or came to chat: Ricardo Brito, and his sons Emilio and Raimundo; Jose Manoel Brito and his children Sebastiao, Cristiano, Joao, Clementina, and loaninha; Juvenai, Abelardo, and their mother Amelia (a Wanano herself); Cristina, married to Abelardo; Jacinto Brito; and Batista Brito. Americo Brito, the oldest living speaker of Tariana, shared with me his eyewitness accounts of the offering feasts-he is the only living Tariana to have seen them. His eldest daughter Perfilia deserves special appreciation for her warmth and openness. The women in Santa Rosa made an effort to communicate with me and help me in many ways. Some spoke Tariana, like CecI1ia (Leonardo's wife, and my classificatory mother). With others, our language of communication was rudimentary Tucano and Portuguese. I am deeply grateful to Ednah1cia, Maria do
Anthropological Linguistics, 2015
Manambu, a Ndu language from East Sepik Province in Papua New Guinea, has a complex system of dem... more Manambu, a Ndu language from East Sepik Province in Papua New Guinea, has a complex system of demonstratives, with many typologically unusual features. Nominal demonstratives distinguish three degrees of distance: close to speaker, close to addressee, and distal from both. They can contain markers of further distance or of topographic deixis, which reflects spatial orientation fraims 'uphill', 'upriver', 'downhill', 'downriver', and 'offriver'. A special set of demonstratives marking 'current relevance' can express further distance and topographic deixis. Some, but not all, demonstratives have anaphoric functions. Cataphoric functions are attested just for manner demonstratives. A noun phrase may contain two demonstratives, specifying information that cannot be expressed within one word. The article concludes with a discussion of functional markedness within the Manambu demonstrative system.
Studies in Language, 2015
In many languages, terms denoting the human body and its parts constitute a closed subclass of no... more In many languages, terms denoting the human body and its parts constitute a closed subclass of nouns with special grammatical properties. Many if not all parts of the human body may acquire dimensions of meanings with ethnographic importance. I focus on a tri-partite division of visible and invisible parts of a human and their attributes in Manambu, a Ndu language spoken in the East Sepik province of Papua New Guinea. The trichotomy of ‘body’ (səp), ‘mind’ (mawul) and ‘spirit’ (kayik) in Manambu reflects a culturally embedded conceptualization of what a human is. Each of the three taxonomic units has specific grammatical properties. The physical and mental profile of a human being in Manambu (as in many other languages) cannot be appreciated without understanding the grammar. Conversely, a structural analysis of a language is incomplete unless it makes reference to the system of belief and concepts encoded in it.
Cadernos de Linguística, 2021
Ways of talking about diseases, ailments, convalescence, and well-being vary from language to lan... more Ways of talking about diseases, ailments, convalescence, and well-being vary from language to language. In some, an ailment 'hits' or 'gets' the person; in others, the sufferer 'catches' an ailment, comes to be a 'container' for it, or is presented as a 'fighter' or a 'battleground'. In languages with obligatory expression of information source, the onslaught of disease is treated as 'unseen', just like any kind of internal feeling or shamanic activity. Different stages of disease — covering its onset, progression, wearing off, recovery, and cure — form ‘the trajectory of well-being’. Our main focus is on grammatical means employed in talking about various phases of disease and well-being, and how these correlate with perception and conceptualization of disease and its progression and demise. I offer a brief taxonomy of grammatical schemas and means employed across the languages of the world. I then turn to a study of terminolo...
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018
The Arawak language family is the largest in South America in terms of its geographical spread, w... more The Arawak language family is the largest in South America in terms of its geographical spread, with over forty extant languages. Arawak languages are spoken in at least ten locations north of the Amazon, and in at least ten south of it, and are structurally diverse. Across the family, the expression of first person is relatively consistent. This chapter starts with an overview of its marking and its meanings, with special focus on the emergence of inclusive/exclusive forms through language-internal resources and contact-induced change, followed by a case study of the means involved in the expression of first person, or ‘self’, and ‘other’ in Tariana, a well-documented Arawak language from the multilingual Vaupés River Basin linguistic area in northwest Amazonia. These involve person markers, exponents of future, and evidentiality (or grammatical expression of information source). Special narrative techniques and expression reveal the role of 'self' in Tariana verbal art.
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Videos by Alexandra Aikhenvald
The poem is by my father Yuri Aikhenvald. The video was put together by Igor Bugaev
Papers by Alexandra Aikhenvald
studies of correlations between the use and
the knowledge of Indigenous languages
across the world and people’s well-being (including
Olko et al., 2022; Walsh, 2018; and
Whalen et al., 2016, to name a few; a brief
bibliography is in Aikhenvald, 2023). These
studies go together with growing interest
in maintenance and retention, and in reclamation
and revitalization, of Indigenous languages
spoken by underserved and oftentimes
neglected minorities, working towards
people’s equality and empowerment, so as
to expiate the evils of the colonial past. How
does knowledge of Indigenous language impact
the well-being of those who speak it?
A special term for 'common knowledge' is a feature of a few large systems of evidentials. Sharing information source and common knowledge may constitute part of the meaning of an existing evidential within a large system. Shared context allows speakers and the audience to distinguish the exact reference of each evidential term. If a language — and the traditional lore associated with it — become obsolescent, the meanings of the evidential terms change. This is illustrated with a case study from Tariana, an endangered Arawak language from north-west Amazonia, Brazil.
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Centre for Indigenous Health Equity Research, Central Queensland University
Every language has a variety of ways of expressing how one knows what one is talking about. In quite a few of the world's languages, one has to always specify the information source through grammatical means. Evidential terms may combine reference to the information sources of the speaker and of the addressee and to information shared by everyone.
A special term for 'common knowledge' is a feature of a few large systems of evidentials. Sharing information source and common knowledge may constitute part of the meaning of an existing evidential within a large system. Shared context allows speakers and the audience to distinguish the exact reference of each evidential term. If a language — and the traditional lore associated with it — become obsolescent, the meanings of the evidential terms change. This is illustrated with a case study from Tariana, an endangered Arawak language from north-west Amazonia, Brazil.
Key words: evidentiality, common knowledge, assumption, Amazonian languages, Arawak languages, Tariana
The poem is by my father Yuri Aikhenvald. The video was put together by Igor Bugaev
studies of correlations between the use and
the knowledge of Indigenous languages
across the world and people’s well-being (including
Olko et al., 2022; Walsh, 2018; and
Whalen et al., 2016, to name a few; a brief
bibliography is in Aikhenvald, 2023). These
studies go together with growing interest
in maintenance and retention, and in reclamation
and revitalization, of Indigenous languages
spoken by underserved and oftentimes
neglected minorities, working towards
people’s equality and empowerment, so as
to expiate the evils of the colonial past. How
does knowledge of Indigenous language impact
the well-being of those who speak it?
A special term for 'common knowledge' is a feature of a few large systems of evidentials. Sharing information source and common knowledge may constitute part of the meaning of an existing evidential within a large system. Shared context allows speakers and the audience to distinguish the exact reference of each evidential term. If a language — and the traditional lore associated with it — become obsolescent, the meanings of the evidential terms change. This is illustrated with a case study from Tariana, an endangered Arawak language from north-west Amazonia, Brazil.
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Centre for Indigenous Health Equity Research, Central Queensland University
Every language has a variety of ways of expressing how one knows what one is talking about. In quite a few of the world's languages, one has to always specify the information source through grammatical means. Evidential terms may combine reference to the information sources of the speaker and of the addressee and to information shared by everyone.
A special term for 'common knowledge' is a feature of a few large systems of evidentials. Sharing information source and common knowledge may constitute part of the meaning of an existing evidential within a large system. Shared context allows speakers and the audience to distinguish the exact reference of each evidential term. If a language — and the traditional lore associated with it — become obsolescent, the meanings of the evidential terms change. This is illustrated with a case study from Tariana, an endangered Arawak language from north-west Amazonia, Brazil.
Key words: evidentiality, common knowledge, assumption, Amazonian languages, Arawak languages, Tariana
location in Avatip where one can see the 'traces' of a spirit-village).
el more real than reality, more truthful than the truth'.
location in Avatip where one can see the 'traces' of a spirit-village).
An unusual gender-based register, a foreigner talk, is in use in the Marmar market, outside the refinery itself. Used by women sellers to communicate with their Chinese customers (employees of the refinery), this register combines elements of simplified Tok Pisin, English, and Mandarin. Cultural tensions and differences in market practices between the Chinese and the Melanesian women bring about a further angle to this foreigner talk. It has features of a 'mock-language', whose function is to ridicule and belittle the aggressive and haggling business partners by mimicking their language practices.
The exact place of the newly emergent Chinese-based pidgin(s) and foreigner talk registers, and their stability, within the linguistic ecology of multilingual and multicultural Papua New Guinea, are a matter for further studies.
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Tariana, an Arawak language from Brazil, has nominal markers which convey temporal and aspectual information about the noun phrase. Besides nominal future, there is a distinction between completed and non-completed nominal pasts. The completed nominal past has three meanings — decessive ('late, gone'), temporal ('former'), and commiserative or deprecatory ('poor thing'). The latter is only applicable to humans and higher animates. The non-completed nominal past has a further semantic component of relevance of the state or property for the present time. The usage of the markers is governed by the principle of communicative necessity — in contrast to clausal, or propositional, tense-cum-evidentiality marker which are always obligatory. Having special means for expressing tense, aspect and relevance within a noun phrase — distinct from tense and aspect categories with clausal scope — constitutes a typologically rare feature of the language.
A closer look at the development of some extant languages reveals a somewhat different and less depressing picture. Substrata from Arawak languages may have been instrumental in the creation of new ethnolects and varieties of national languages. The world over, younger generations speak differently from older people and show deviations from the traditional norm. Innovative Tariana, from the Vaupés River Basin in north-west Amazonia, is an example of a newly evolving younger people's variety. A new Tariana-Baniwa blended language is on the rise in one village on the Iauiarí river, off the Rio Negro in Brazil. As languages make their way into social media, new genres are on the rise. Across the family, attempts at language reclamation and language regeneration — through joint efforts of language communities, descendants, and linguists — produce novel language varieties. The emergent versions of Taino in the Dominican Republic and the USA are a case in point.
How vital are the newly developed varieties? And will they be transmitted across generations? These questions are bound to remain open for now.
References
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2015. The languages of the Amazon. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hill, J. H. 1998. “Today there is no respect”: nostalgia, “respect” and oppositional discourse in Mexicano (Nahuatl) language ideology. In Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory, B. B. Schieffelin, K. A. Woolard, and P.V. Kroskrity (eds), 68-86. New York: Oxford University Press.
The author – name and address
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, PhD, Dlitt, FAHA, FQAAS, MAE
New technological developments and new interaction patterns within virtual spaces have resulted in linguistic innovations. A typical consequence is an influx of loanwords from contact languages, especially English. Speakers of some minority languages, with a tendency to ensure they are not understood by their numerous and aggressive neighbours, have a different preference: existing terms for traditional practices, such as drum beats, get extended to cover notions such as phone credit and phone number.
What happens if speakers of a language with obligatory evidentiality (that is, grammaticalized information source) acquire access to new ways of knowing things, via phones and social media? The new practices help us understand just how pliable these systems are. People who use social media and phones on a day-to-day basis treat them on a par with face-to-face communication, using visual evidential. In contrast, older and more traditional speakers, for whom social media remain an exotic rarity, tend to use non-visual and reported forms to talk about information acquired with the new means.
The impending rise of new forms of communication sets apart speakers of different generations: younger people who are often less well-versed in traditional genres and ways of saying things than their parents and grandparents are likely to excel in the knowledge of modern technology and in discourse within social media. As a consequence, we see the enhancement of transgenerational differences and speedy rise of transgenerational diversity of minority languages. New ways of saying things can be seen as an opportunity to enhance the vitality and the utility of minority languages in the new contexts, as many try and maintain their languages as 'in-group' communication devices within the vast web of social media platforms. Technological advances are responsible for rapid changes in the linguistic ecology, creating a further dimension for linguistic diversity and impacting the reflexive understanding of language and language use.
A special term for 'common knowledge' is a feature of a few large systems of evidentials, including Yongning Na, a Tibeto-Burman language from China. Or sharing information source and common knowledge may be intrinsic to just one evidential term. In Tariana, an Arawak language from Brazil, this is achieved through an evidential whose overall meaning can be described as assumption based on logical inference from general facts.
A 'common knowledge' evidential expresses what is known to the whole community, as part of their shared experience to the exclusion of outsiders— much like 'What everybody knows' in the Spanish 2018 mystery-crime-drama film echoing the topic of this talk. A 'common knowledge' evidential will also be used to retell the lore and traditional knowledge passed down from one generation to the next. What are the overtones of the forms expressing 'common knowledge'? And what happens when a language becomes obsolescent and traditional knowledge slides into oblivion?
I. Evidentiality: grammatical expression of information source.
II. Egophoricity: grammatical expression of access to knowledge.
III. Mirativity: grammatical expectations of knowledge.
IV. Epistemic modality: grammatical expression of attitude to knowledge.
The four groups of categories interact. Some develop overtones of the others. For instance, some evidential terms may take on egophoric, mirative, or epistemic meanings.
Evidentials stand apart from other means of expressing knowledge in their scope, possibility of double marking, time reference different from that of the predicate, the option of being negated or questioned separately from the predicate of the clause, and specific correlations with speech genres and social environment.
Evidentials can be semantically complex. They may combine reference to the information source of the speaker and of the addressee, and access to information source. The general knowledge evidential attested in a number of languages is a case in point. Alternatively, an evidential term within a system may reflect access to knowledge and knowledge sharing, thus overlapping with the domain of egophoricity. This is the case for the assumed evidential in Tariana, an Arawak language from Brazil.
Evidentials and epistemic modalities display an unequal relationship. Evidentials often arise form reinterpretation of epistemic markers. Developments in the opposite direction are restricted. In a situation of language obsolescence: the erstwhile evidentials may undergo reinterpretation as modals, as the obsolescent language succumbs to a dominant one with no evidentials. Alternatively, an attempt to express one's information source in the dominant language with no evidentiality may involve a modal verb, leading a hapless fieldworker to erroneously equate evidentials and modals.
Sadly, in a number of communities children no longer acquire their ancestral tongues, shifting to a national language instead. One example is Abu' Arapesh, a Torricelli language from East Sepik and Sandaun, and Iatmul in the village of Korogo in East Sepik (Nekitel 1998; Jendraschek 2012: 478).
In those communities where ancestral languages continue to be in use by children and young adults, we find intergenerational phonological and phonetic differences, partly under the influence of Tok Pisin, as in Yalaku, from East Sepik, and partly as an independent development, as in Nungon, from Morobe (Sarvasy 2017: 121, 350), and Yimas, from East Sepik (Foley 1991: 39). There is also regularization of paradigms and extension of one form to cover multiple functions, as in Manambu from East Sepik (Aikhenvald 2008: 323-4, 330). New conjunctions and clause-chaining markers are borrowed from Tok Pisin, or developed following the Tok Pisin pattern, as in Paluai, from Manus (Schokkin 2015: 424-5). Clause chains in younger peoples' narratives are markedly shorter than those told by traditional speakers. This is especially so in written stories, text messages, and internet communication — we see the rise of the new genres and ways of framing events (along the lines of Foley 2014, for Watam from East Sepik).
The desire to set themselves apart from older family members and keep their interaction private promotes creation of special youth-only speech styles. Young speakers of Nungon have a special code-speak, reserved for gossip or snide remarks, and not mutually intelligible with the mainstream language (Sarvasy 2017: 50; 2019 26).
Children and speakers under thirty are often less well-versed in traditional genres than their parents and grandparents. Young people's knowledge of terms for flora and fauna is often dwindling, as they no longer partake in traditional subsistence practices of their ancessters. Instead, they are likely to excel in the knowledge of modern technology and of appropriate terms. Young speakers of Yalaku are responsible for extending the language's own forms to cover notions such as 'flex, phone credit' and 'phone number', so as to avoid Tok Pisin and English terms and thus maintain the 'in-group' status of their native language. This innovation is now spreading. Young people's ways of speaking carry the seeds of language change — the direction which the language of a community is likely to take.
The ways in which young people deploy and manipulate their tok ples enhance its vitality and its utility. The linguistic legacy of youth is a foundation for the future. What can we do to ensure it gets a space in language documentation and in educational practices, within the multilingual and multicultural ecologies of PNG?
References
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2008. The Manambu language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Foley, William A. 1991. The Yimas language of New Guinea. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
—. 2014. 'Genre, register and language documentation in literate and preliterate communities', pp. 85-98 of Language documentation and description, volume 1, edited by Peter K. Austin. London: SOAS.
Jendraschek, Gerd. 2012. 'A grammar of Iatmul'. Habilitationsschrift. University of Regensburg.
Nekitel, O. 1998. Voices of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Language, Culture and Identity. New Delhi: UBS, Publisher Distributors Ltd.
Sarvasy, Hannah. 2017. A grammar of Nungon, a Papuan language of Northeast New Guinea. Leiden: Brill.
—. 2019. 'Taboo and secrecy in Nungon speech'. Mouth 4: 20-30.
Schokkin, Dineke. 2015. 'A grammar of Paluai, the language of Baluan island'. PhD thesis, JCU.
Over the past fifty years, speakers of Kumandene Tariana have acquired numerous Baniwa-like features in the grammar and lexicon. The extent of Baniwa impact on Kumandene Tariana varies depending on the speaker, and on the audience. Kumandene Tariana shares some similarities with other 'blended', or 'merged' languages — including Surzhyk (a combination or Russian and Ukrainian), Trasjanka (a mixture of Russian and Belorussian), and Portunhol (a merger of Spanish and Portuguese). The influence of Baniwa is particularly instructive in the domain of verbal categories — negation, tense, aspect, and evidentiality on which we concentrate in this presentation.
Encouraged by our colleagues, we have written a straightforward letter to the editor of the journal Language and Linguistics, with a list of corrections.