Coyote Papers 13 (2004) consists of seven papers on "The Indigenous Languages of the Americas".

 

 

Granadillo, Tania, Meghan O'Donnell, and Stacey Oberly (eds.). Front matter, table of contents, and introduction. [download]

 

Levin, Erik. A reanalysis of the Aymara verb using prototypes. [download]

 

Up to this point, the Aymara verb has been analyzed as a matrix of tense and evidentiality (i.e. how the speaker came to know of an event). Under this analysis, the morphology is defective in two regards. It collapses the distant past and the present/near past for non-personal knowledge, and there is no evidentiality distinction for the future form. Furthermore, there are significant ‘exceptions’ to the uses of these forms.

A more elegant, non-defective analysis without ‘exceptions’ is possible if we recognize that the previous analyses have imposed Indo-European categories onto a language that does not give precedence to them. Whereas most Indo-European languages are more concerned with locating an event in time, Aymara prioritizes how much responsibility a speaker assumes for the information in a speech act. Even for instances when time is the most salient piece of information, previous studies have neglected to incorporate the Aymara conception of time. In contrast to a Western view, in which the speaker conceptually looks faces forward toward the future, the Aymara place the past in front of the speaker, because it is ‘visible’. The unknown, unseen future lies behind the speaker. This construal of the unknowable future fits into the Aymara focus on evidentiality.

Further investigation shows that Aymara verbs reflect four grades of how sure a speaker is of the information that he or she reports. The passage of time is simply the prototype of any of a number of reasons for which a speaker may choose to accept less responsibility. Other reasons include hearsay, surprise, and intoxication. This study suggests a new approach to analyzing tense, aspect, and modality in languages such as Aymara.

 

Elías-Ulloa, José. Quantity (in)sensitivity and underlying glottal stop deletion in Capanahua. [download]
 

This article accounts for two superficially contradicting phenomena found in Capanahua. In this language, underlying glottal stops are deleted in the coda of even syllables. The account of the distribution of glottal-stop deletion depends on quantity-insensitive footing. Glottal stops cannot occur at the right edge of metrical feet. However, contrary to expectations, Capanahua has a quantity-sensitive stress. Closed syllables attract stress. The account presented solves the puzzle in a straightforward and unified way. While both phenomena rely on disyllabic feet, the quantity of closed syllables contextually varies within disyllabic feet: closed syllables surface as heavy if they are stressed and if they do not form part of an (HL) foot; otherwise, they surface as light.

 

Granadillo, Tania. Nominal possessives in the Ehe dialect of Kurripako: Morphology, phonology and semantics. [download]
 

In this paper I present data from the Ehe dialect of Kurripako on nominal possessives. I explore different possessive paradigms in order to fully explain the phenomena and draw on the fields of morphology, phonology and semantics to understand the data.

 

O’Donnell, Meghan. Inflectional affixes & clitics in Kaska (Northern Athabaskan). [download]

 

This paper argues for a specific hierarchical syntactic structure for Kaska, a Northern Athabaskan language spoken in the southern Yukon Territory and northeastern British Columbia. The arguments herein are grounded in Minimalist Syntax (Chomsky 1995; Collins 1997) and Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1994; Harley & Noyer 1999). Traditionally, Athabaskan morphology has exemplified templatic morphology, which by definition, has no meaningful correspondence between the underlying, morpho-syntactic hierarchy and the surface, morpho-phonological linear form. Using the derivation of transitive sentences, this paper shows that, in Kaska, there is a direct, meaningful correspondence between the hierarchical syntactic structure and the linear order of morphemes within the verb complex at spell-out.

 

Cash Cash, Phillip. ke yóx hitamtáaycaqa ćíiqinpa (that which is reported in talk): Reported speech in Nez Perce. [download]

 

This paper is a study of reported speech in Nez Perce (Sahaptian), an endangered language presently spoken in the southern Columbia Plateau region of western North America. This paper will focus on the use of reported speech in Nez Perce narrative to determine 1) the range and types of reported speech registers, and 2) discern how such reported speech registers might be patterned so as to indicate their cultural functions.

 

Haynes, Erin F. Obstacles facing tribal language programs in Warm Spring, Klamath, and Grand Ronde. [download]
 

The education system in the United States has historically repressed and marginalized Native cultures and languages. This has led to the alarming decline of Native language use, including the extinction of many languages. Current programs to revitalize these languages face a number of obstacles, many stemming from historical precedents of cultural genocide and negative attitudes toward Native cultures. This study examines the external issues that face language revitalization programs of Warm Springs, Grand Ronde, and Klamath in Oregon, and concludes that most originate from a dominant ideology that marginalizes Native histories and cultures by ignoring, patronizing, or actively resisting them.

 

Oberly, Stacey Inez. A preliminary analysis of Southern Ute with a special concentration on noun phrases. [download]

 

This paper is an initial descriptive analysis of noun phrases in Southern Ute. This analysis begins with a brief sociolinguistic introduction to the Southern Ute tribe located in southwestern Colorado. Next Southern Ute phonemes are presented in the current official tribal orthography and the International Phonetic Alphabet. Various verb phrases are presented to develop a basic understanding of word order in Southern Ute. The internal structure of nouns is discussed followed by examples and discussions of various noun phrases. This paper is a springboard for further analysis of the Southern Ute language.