ISBN 9783862889556 (e-book, pdf)

ISBN 9783862889556 (e-book, pdf)

Abkhazian Folktales

(with grammatical introduction, translation, notes, and vocabulary)

George Hewitt
SOAS, London

The inspiration for this introduction to folk-texts in Abkhaz (North West Caucasian) was the late Helma van den Berg's parallel collection of folk-literature for the North East Caucasian Dargi people (Dargi Folktales, CNWS 2001). The small volume entitled 'Oral Tales of the Abkhazians' (in Abkhaz) published in 2000 by the Abkhazian folklorist Zurab Dzhap’ua (Dzhap’wa) provided the source for the selection of the twenty texts which are here presented in original Cyrillic-based script and accompanied by IPA-transcription, morphological analysis, morpheme-glosses, annotation and translation; the volume starts with an extensive grammatical sketch of Abkhaz and ends with a vocabulary. Included myths describe the creation of the world, an Abkhazian version of Noah and the flood, man's relations with the Prince of the Dead, and God's expulsion of the Devil from heaven. The Abkhazian version of the Greek Prometheus is Abrskj’yl, and five stories relate the cycle of his birth, exploissts and death; an appendix presents for comparison a poem by the Georgian Vazha-Pshavela on the fate of the Georgian equivalent to this hero, Amiran. It is hoped that this book will complement the eleven Abkhazian tales gathered from Abkhazians in Turkey and published with French translation by Georges Dumézil in his Etudes Abkhaz (1967) and that it will at the same time contribute to a better understanding in the English-speaking world of Abkhazian society through its legends.

ISBN 9783895867972. Languages of the World/Text Collections 22. 340pp. 2005.

Textos tehuelches

(AONEK'O ?A?JEN)

Homenaje a Jorge Suárez

Ana Fernández Garay (CONICET-UNLPam), & Graciela Hernández (CONICET-UNS)

Este volumen reúne una serie de textos tehuelches (conversaciones, monólogos y narraciones) registrados en su lengua original por Jorge Suárez, entre 1966 y 1968, en la reserva de Camusu Aike, Santa Cruz, Argentina. El tehuelche o aonek'o ?a?jen pertenece a la familia Chon junto con las extintas teushen -lengua hablada en la Patagonia continental-, selknam y haush -habladas en Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia insular-.

El libro consta de dos partes. En la primera, Ana Fernández Garay —lingüista y especialista en lenguas indígenas patagónicas— destaca, en la Introducción, los objetivos del libro, describe aspectos históricos y socioculturales de los tehuelches o aonek'enk, presenta una breve gramática del aonek'o ?a?jen y, finalmente, transcribe, analiza y traduce los textos que fueron desgrabados con la colaboración de los últimos hablantes de esta lengua. En la segunda parte, Graciela Hernández —historiadora y experta en aspectos culturales de las etnias que poblaron y pueblan la Patagonia— describe, compara y desentraña el sentido de los textos tehuelches, sumergiendo al lector en la cosmovisión de este pueblo originario de la Patagonia argentina, cuya lengua y cultura se hallan hoy prácticamente extintas.

La publicación de estos textos amplía el corpus de datos existente sobre esta lengua, con la finalidad de continuar los estudios tanto sincrónicos como diacrónicos que se vienen realizando sobre el aonek'o ?a?jen.

ISBN 9783895864490. Languages of the World/Text Collections 24. 373pp. 2006.

Textes tangoutes I

«Nouveau recueil sur l’amour parental et la piété filiale»

Guillaume Jacques
Université Paris V – René Descartes

Le tangoute est l’une des plus anciennes langues sino-tibétaines a avoir été portée à l’écrit; dans toute la famille, seules les traditions écrites du chinois et du tibétain l’ont précédée. Toutefois, en dépit de son intéret historique considérable et de la quantité importante de textes qui sont parvenus jusqu’à nous, peu de linguistes se sont adonnés à l’étude de cette langue. Son apprentissage est rendu difficile par un système d’écriture excessivement complexe, mais surtout par l’absence d’éditions de textes facilement utilisables.

Le présent ouvrage répond à un double but : offrir aux spécialistes du tangoute un corpus de texte analysé pour contribuer à une meilleure connaissance de la morphologie et de la syntaxe de cette langue, et fournir aux étudiants désireux d’apprendre le tangoute un manuel de base pour leur travail.

Le choix du nouveau recueil sur l’amour parental et la piété filiale pour le présent travail est motivé par le fait que ce texte a un contenu varié et est traduit moins servilement du chinois que beaucoup d’autres ouvrages tangoutes, en particuliers les sutras bouddhiques.

Le texte tangoute est constitué de 44 textes courts traduits du chinois. Pour chacun de ces textes, nous fournissons l’original chinois, le texte tangoute organisé ligne par ligne, le numéro du caractère dans le dictionnaire de Li (1998), la reconstruction de Gong Hwangcherng, le numéro de la rime ainsi qu’une glose en chinois.

Par ailleurs, nous proposons un index complet dans lequel est donnée une définition en chinois et en français du sens de chaque mot.

ISBN 9783895867668. Languages of the World/Text Collections 25. 172pp. 2007.

Bukharan Tajik

Shinji Ido
University of Sydney

Some Iranian languages have been in intensive contact with Turkic languages for many centuries. Tajik and Uzbek are representative of the languages that have co-existed in the Iranian-Turkic language contact in Central Asia. Uzbek is a Turkic language that has Chaghatay as its literary predecessor and is the 'state language' of the republic of Uzbekistan. Tajik, on the other hand, is a South-West Iranian language which is genetically closely related to such Iranian languages as Persian and Dari. Most Tajik speakers are in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan; within the latter Samarkand and Bukhara are particularly densely populated by Tajik speakers. The cohabitation of Tajik speakers with Uzbek speakers has made Tajik-Uzbek bilingualism the norm in much of this area. Bukhara is one of the cities where Tajik-Uzbek bilingualism is most pronounced; virtually all Tajik speakers in Bukhara are bilingual in Tajik and Uzbek.

This book contains transcriptions of recordings of the Tajik language used by Bukharans who have had no formal education in/of Tajik. A large number of linguistic features of Bukharan Tajik are considered to have emerged or have been retained under the influence of Uzbek.

ISBN 9783895865060. Languages of the World/Text Collections 26. 136pp. 2007.

Man-Bear Travels to Hell

Aspects of the Phonological Description of a Cahuilla Narrative

Ingo Mamet
University of Bonn

Cahuilla is a critically moribund Native American language spoken in Inland Southern California. It is a member of the Uto-Aztecan language phylum, widespread in Western North and Central America. Within Uto-Aztecan, Cahuilla is classified as a part of the Takic language family, limited to Southern California. Today, it is the only Takic language still spoken as a mother tongue. Cahuilla is generally considered to have three dialectal variants (Desert, Mountain, and Pass). While the Desert variant has been the subject of some scientific consideration in the past, the other dialects have received less attention.

«Man-Bear Travels to Hell» serves as the presentation of a morphologically analyzed Mountain Cahuilla narrative about the ‘Were-Bear’, an intriguing motive in Native North American mythology. The text was originally elicited in the 1930s by the renowned field linguist John Peabody Harrington (1884-1961). With the presentation of «Man-Bear Travels to Hell», an extensive linguistically annotated Cahuilla text is published for the first time. It is also the first time that materials taken from the substantial corpus of Harrington’s Cahuilla notes are opened to public. In this connection, basic issues in the phonological description of the language are discussed using data from the text. Addressed are problems concerning the principles of Cahuilla word stress assignment, the interdependency of word stress and vowel allophony, the status of ’thematic’ vowels (to a certain extent reflecting the stress patterns of Proto-Uto-Aztecan), the contrastive status of vowel length, the origin of Cahuilla palatoalveolar resonants, ʎ, ɲ, a form of compensatory CV prefixing reduplication, as well as the interpretive treatment of glottal stop infixation, operative in defined morphological contexts and partially serving mora augmentation. Besides, further selected issues of Cahuilla phonology and morphophonology are outlined. A simple descriptive approach is utilized, supplemented by comments on the interpretation of specific processes in a rule-based derivational framework or a constraint-based parallel framework.

«Man-Bear Travels to Hell» was developed within a research project for the documentation of Cahuilla, domiciled at the University of Bonn, Germany. In this context, selected excerpts of the narrative were subject to an intensive rehearing with Mountain Cahuilla informants. The study contains a renarration of the text including an outline of its ethnographic background, an index of the grammatical morphemes appearing in the text, as well as a full word index.

ISBN 9783895867866. Languages of the Word/Text Collections 27. 142pp. 2008.

Texts For Linguistic Analysis: Glossed Narratives in Tarifit Berber

Clive W. McClelland
Liberty University

The value of "raw data" is an essential one: to provide students and professors linguistic data that can be examined and analyzed in context, whether the study is phonological or grammatical. This value is profound in the context of current linguistics where "contrived" data devoid of context is de rigueur. As much as is possible, analyses ought to be "data-led" where conclusions are suggested after careful and methodical investigation. Then one may properly posit well-grounded linguistic theory.

Toward furthering these aims, stories from Tarifit Berber native speakers were collected over a ten year period. They represent a couple of dialects within the Tarifit-speaking region in northeastern Morocco. They are transcribed phonetically, with morpheme-by-morpheme glosses, syllable divisions, and a free translation. Along with the printed versions, the sound files of each of these stories are provided on an enclosed compact disk. It is hoped that this compilation will provide a "target-rich" environment for practical linguistic research for students as well as teachers, and that this manner of glossing will help set a better standard for presenting linguistic data.

ISBN 9783895861253 (+CD). Languages of the World/Text Collections 28. 186pp. incl. CD-ROM. 2008.

Coyote Ovepowers Sun (Securing Sun Disk)

Dorothy Nicodemus' Coeur d'Alene Narrative as Recorded by Gladys Reichard

Shannon T. Bischoff
University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez

This work presents an interlinear analysis of the Coeur d'Alene narrative Coyote Overpowers Sun (Securing Sun Disk). The narrative was told by Dorothy Nicodemus and recorded by Gladys Reichard in the summer of 1929. It is part of some forty narratives recorded by Reichard but never published in Coeur d'Alene. Further, an analysis has never been published. As Coeur d'Alene is a language no longer learned by children, with fewer than three speakers, it is imperative that these narratives become accessible to the Coeur d'Alene community for their revitalization efforts. Further, that they be made available to the wider linguistic community.

What follows is Reichard's 1947 English translation of the narrative, the narrative recorded in the orthography of the Coeur d'Alene tribe, and the interlinearized text. If a best practices is to be followed, as Simon and Bird (2008) suggest, such works must be made available to community members in their chosen orthographies. The interlinearization follows best practices in that an additional line of analysis is provided under the morpheme by morpheme gloss. As Coeur d'Alene is a polysynthetic language, it is not always transparent, nor necessarily clear, how the English gloss of a word corresponds to the morpheme by morpheme gloss. The hope is that this work will be used in the communities revitalization efforts, and that this format will prove advantages to the learner of Coeur d'Alene.

ISBN 9783895863448. Languages of the World/Text Collections 29.166 pp. 2009.

The Origin of the Sun and Moon

A Copala Triqui Legend
Narrated by Román Vidal López

Transcribed, edited, and analysed by
George Aaron Broadwell, Kosuke Matsukawa, Edgar Martín del Campo, Ruth Scipione, Susan Perdomo with the assistance of José Fuentes

Copala Triqui is an indigenous language of Oaxaca, Mexico. It belongs to the Mixtecan branch of the Otomanguean family. This work gives an analysis of a long Copala Triqui legend which explains the origin of the sun and the moon as twin brothers who are raised by Ca'aj, the grandmother of the the Triqui people. After a number of trickster-like episodes, the twin rise into the sky and become the sun and the moon.

Versions of this story are found among many indigenous groups in Oaxaca. This version of The Origin of the Sun and the Moon was narrated in 2003 by Román Vidal López, originally from San Miguel Copala, Oaxaca, Mexico. This text is the longest version of the Sun and Moon legend so far recorded and it is notable for its use of traditional Triqui ethnopoetic style and for episodes not found in other stories. This work is also the longest analyzed text in the Copala Triqui language

ISBN 9783895864599. Languages of the World/Text Collections 30. 100 S. 2009.