Descriptive Linguistics and Typology

Since its inception in 1978, the Department of Linguistics at the University of Oregon has embraced descriptive linguistic work, coupled with a long-standing commitment to lesser-studied and endangered languages. While not intending to be exclusive, the Department has historically had research strengths in Native American languages (North, Central, and South America), Tibeto-Burman, Southeast Asian, South Asian, African, Austronesian, and Slavic languages. The Oregon program emphasizes language description within typological, functional, and cognitive frameworks.

On the one hand, descriptive research on a wide variety of languages is an essential foundation for attempts to explain why general properties of the human linguistic capacity, and linguistic forms, meaning, and use, are the way they are. That is, sound description is essential to sound theory. On the other hand, descriptive research is an essential part of the documentation of the cultures and cognitive worlds of language communities around the world.

As new descriptive findings have come to light, they have shown time and again that an adequate understanding of human language and its organization ‚ i.e., the development of linguistic theory ‚ simply cannot be elaborated on the basis of just a few languages. Many previously-proposed theoretical universals have had to be discarded because they were made in ignorance of actual language variation. At Oregon, we seek to understand how properties of individual languages compare to those of other languages along multiple parameters (hence, typology), and in this way to further scientific knowledge about the limits of possible human language variation.

The Oregon research program also includes the broad hypothesis that linguistic structures are the way they are for one (or more) of three reasons: because of their function as "tools" for human communication, because of their developmental history, or because of the nature of human cognitive processing. Thus, an understanding of human linguistic structures must be grounded in functional, historical, and cognitive linguistic research.

Traditionally, descriptive research on specific languages has been expressed in book-length grammars, dictionaries, and text collections. Such materials have long-lasting importance both to subsequent scientific studies and to language communities. Thus, the Oregon program places high value on the elaboration of such materials, as well as on the "classic" scientific article which may more pointedly focus on how descriptive facts and patterns bear on theoretical concerns.

Akawaio (Guyana) (Gildea and Fox)

Lowland South America is one of the least studied linguistic areas of the world, and in South America, the indigenous languages of Guyana are among the least known. This three-year project will make it possible to: (1) create--and publish on the web--an annotated, computerized database of Desrey Fox's transcribed and glossed texts; (2) begin co-writing a grammar of Akawaio (partly on the basis of this database) before Fox leaves the U.S. to return to her academic position in Guyana; (3) conduct joint field research in Guyana, checking Fox's linguistic intuitions against those of a range of Akawaio speakers (especially as regards sociolinguistic variation); and (4) work jointly in the U.S. during later stages of the writing, combining the benefits of an academic setting (library, computer support) and native speaker intuition at crucial stages of the work. The grammar of Akawaio offers typologists and theoreticians a previously unattested type of split ergativity, a case of reflexive morphology evolving into a middle voice and then apparently lexicalizing into the majority of intransitive verbs, and interesting morphophonological phenomena at the boundaries between verbs and person-marking morphology. Also, due to the participation of a native speaker, this project will be able to go farther than most in documenting the many varieties of Akawaio speech, from the tremendous sociolinguistic variation associated with the many communities of Akawaio speakers to the more archaic variations seen in ritual speech.

Maa (Kenya and Tanzania) (Payne)

Maa is the language spoken by some 800,000 Maasai, Samburu, Camus, and Okiek peoples, ranging from south of Lake Turkana in Kenya to central Tanzania. Maa is an Eastern Nilotic language. The traditional pastoralist life of most Maa speakers is increasingly impacted by major cities like Nairobi, which are located in what was traditional Maasai grazing land, and by tourists, western education, commerce, modern entertainment, and national land policies. My linguistic work on Maa includes a large lexicography and database project, as well as work on morphosyntax and semantics.

Maa (Maasai) Lexicography and Text Databases (Payne)

The Maa (Maasai) language is currently spoken by some 800,000 Maasai, Samburu, Camus and Okiek peoples in Kenya and Tanzania. In all cultures there is both basic and specialized vocabulary which describes activities, traditions, cosmology, religion, and the myriad ways of life specific to that culture. These features cannot be thoroughly understood without an understanding of the vocabulary that expresses the concepts comprising the traditions of the culture. The extensive lexicographic and text database will be valuable documents for preserving and transmitting the cultural knowledge of the Maa people, who are being impacted by rapid cultural change at the turn of the 21st century. Previously, however, no linguistically accurate set of texts or dictionary of the language has existed.

The current project is producing computerized text and lexicography databases, with a comprehensive set of fields, such that a variety of dictionaries and text materials can eventually be published depending on the needs of various audiences, including linguists, anthropologists, historians, bilingual school teachers, non-governmental organizations, and Maa speakers themselves. The project is also studying Maa tone, vowel harmony, semantic and morphosyntactic properties of verbs, and syntactic constructions.

Maa: Advanced Tongue Root in Maasai (Guion and Payne)

Dr. Guion, Dr. Payne and Mark Post are currently investigating acoustic characteristics of advanced tongue root in Maasai, a Nilotic language spoken in Africa. Formant frequencies as well as overall spectral slope are being analyzed from the vowel productions of several native speakers. In addition, research into the production of the advanced tongue root vowels is planned using electroglottography.

Panare (Venezuela) (Payne and Payne)

The Panare (also known as EÃ’pa, ca. 2,500 speakers) live in the central savanah-area of Venezuela, south of the Orinoco River. For decades, the Panare have traded with Spanish-speaking mestizos, but but appear to be tenaciously hanging on to their heritage language. Panare is one of about 25 Cariban languages. My linguistic work on Panare includes a grammar in-process with Tom Payne, as well as other work on word order and "split" syntactic patterns.

Quichua (Ecuador) (Guion)

Recently, Dr. Guion investigated the effects of perceptual and production constraints on bilingual systems in Quichua-Spanish bilinguals. It was found that native Quichua speakers who had acquired Spanish vowels had significantly different Quichua vowel systems than (near-)monolingual Quichua speakers. The change in the Quichua vowels can be attributed to a reorganization of the combined vowel systems in which the vowels are dispersed in an adaptive process to maintain sufficient perceptual distance between the vowels.

In other work carried out in Otavalo, Ecuador Dr. Guion, in collaboration with Dr. Flege of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Jonathan Loftin of the University of Texas, assessed the effect of first language use on both first and second language production. The results indicated that interaction of the first and second language systems affect the success of second language acquisition.

Yagua (Peru) (Payne and Payne)

The Yagua people (ca. 3,000 speakers) live in the northern Peruvian rainforest, in the vicinity of the Amazon, the Napo, and their tributaries. Paul Rivet left written documentation of an obviously related language Peba, but Yagua is now the only extant langauge of the Peba-Yaguan family. My own research on Yagua, some of it co-authored with Tom Payne, was greatly facilitated by the pioneering work of Paul Powlison. My work on Yagua has focused on word order and morphosyntax.

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