Bare

Alexandra Aikhenvald
Australian National University

Bare is a nearly extinct language, previously spoken by several thousands of people in the Upper Rio Negro region (Brazil, Venezuela). Under pressure of white invaders, speakers of Bare gradually switched to local lingua franca Língua Geral (Nheengatu). Though a considerable number of people in the Upper Rio Negro region of Brazil identify themselves as Bare (cf. barezinho, as a kind of generic term for Amazonians in Brazil), Bare is now extinct in Brazil, and is spoken only by a few old people in Venezuela.

The present grammar is based on the materials collected in 1991 from the last fluent speaker of Bare in Brazil - the late Candelário de Silva. Bare is remarkable for consonant aspiration and vowel nasalization as word and phrase prosodic parameters and the existence of special pausal forms used at the end of sentences. Stress placement and stress shifts depend on the accentual properties of morphemes. Open classes are: nouns, verbs, adjectives (which display a number of specific derivational affixes and traces of gender as a residual agreement category), adverbs. Closed classes are numerals, particles, pronouns. Nouns have the category of possession, with a distinction between alienable and inalienable possession, quite typical for North-Arawak languages. Gender as an agreement category is optional, which may be a language death phenomenon. Number is optional, as is the case in the majority of Arawak languages. Bare has a system of peripheral cases and double case marking. Verbs fall into transitive/active, which have cross-referencing prefixes, and intransitive stative, which do not have any cross-referencing.

ISBN 9783895860508. Languages of the World/Materials 100. 60pp. 1995.

Acadian French

Virginia Motapanyane (with the collaboration of David Jory)
University of New Brunswick

Acadian is a French dialect spoken in the Atlantic province of Canada, by approximately 250,000 speakers. Although French is an offiial language in Canada, and the linguistic rights of the Acadians have constitutional protection, the dialect presents the signs of an endangered language. The denomination 'Acadian French' covers an impressive number of regional varieties, or 'parlers', whose geographical distribution is often described in terms of 'islands', to indicate the immersion of many Acadian communities within English speaking areas. This sketch offeres a survey of the most general properties of Acadian French: (i) in phonology, the description focuses on phenomena such as palatalization of /k/, /g/ before all front vowels; ouisms; strong /r/; (ii) morpho-syntactic pecularities such as the pronominal paradigms, generalization of auxiliary avoir in present past, frequent occurrence of 'passe simple' will be presented in two chapters. It will be shown that some of these properties attest grammatical forms in Old French, others result from local innovations, and from language contact. A special chapter discusses the contribution of extra-linguistic factors to the decline of this dialect, as well as possible means for preventing its extinction.

ISBN 9783895861277. Languages of the World/Materials 101. 56 pp. 1997.

Camling/Chamling

Karen Ebert
University of Zürich

Chamling is a Kiranti language spoken by approximately 10,000 people in a remote area of Eastern Nepali. The number of speakers is rapidly decreasing, as the language is no longer learned by children. Chamling has SOV word order and split ergativity, with 1st and 2nd person construed in an accusative pattern. There is very little evidence for ergative syntax. Higher and lower location plays an important role not only in the lexicon and deictic system, but is also grammaticalized in a series of local case markers. Like all eastern Kiranti languages, Chamling is characterized by a highly complex verb morphology. Eleven persons - with duals, plurals, inclusive, exclusive - are marked on the verb in actor and undergoer function. In the western dialect there are traces of an older inverse system, which the eastern dialect has replaced by 1st person undergoer markers and subject agreement. The complex verb forms are retained before most subordinators and in both members of a compound verb. All Chamling data are from the author's fieldwork in Nepal. There are no previous descriptions of Chamling.

ISBN 9783895860379. Languages of the World/Materials 103. 63 pp. 1997.

Kodava

Karen Ebert
Universität Zürich

Kodava is a South Dravidian language spoken by approximately 70,000 people in Coorg, Karnataka. Although some Kodava claim that they speak a dialect of Kannada, their language is closer to Tamil. The Kannada script is used for writing Kodava. Kodava shares all the well-known traits of South Dravidian languages, such as exclusively suffixing morphology, strict SOV word order with modifiers preceding their head, dative subjects, the use of converbs and participles in subordination. Apart from the retroflex consonants Kodava has central vowel phonemes.

Earlier publications on Kodava are a grammar from 1867 and articles on the vowels and on morphophonemic processes in verb stems. This description is based on work with a native speaker.

ISBN 9783895860386. Languages of the World/Materials 104. 57 pp. 1996.

Romanes

Daniel Holzinger
University of Klagenfurt

The language of the Sinte (called Romanes by its speakers) is one of the Romani (Gypsy) languages. It belongs to the Indo­Aryan branch of Indo­European. Romanes (Sinte) is spoken by about 100.000 ­ 200.000 people mainly in W­Europe: Germany, France (Manus), Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, N­Italy and N­Yugoslavia. The Sinte were the first Gypsies to arrive in W­Europe about 500 years ago. Most of them are semi­nomadic travelling around in summer time to earn their living.

Due to the long stay in a German speaking environment, the Sinte language (esp. the syntax) is quite strongly influenced by German. The morphology however ist still intact. Most of the Sinte people use their language. As a minority language it has a strong group defining function. Since it is very hard for gadze (non­gypsies) to gain access to Romanes, the linguistic description at hand is quite a rarity.

The sketch contains a short phonological and syntactic description and concentrates rather on morphology and features of narrative texts (aspects, word order, discourse markers, participant tracking). The grammatical description contains text samples in interlinear and free translation.

ISBN 9783895860171. Languages of the World/Materials 105. 1995.

Sepecides - Romani

Petra Cech and Mozes F. Heinschink


Sepecides is a non-vlah Romani dialect (Romani belonging to the New Indian languages) spoken by several related grand families now living in Izmir/Turkey and Volos/Greece. This formerly united group of basket weavers split up around 1920, when exchanges of Greek/Turkish population took place. One part of the group migrated to Turkey and settled finally in Izmir, the others moved to Volos (Greece) and stayed there. Since then their previously uniform Romani developed under different linguistical conditions. Both variants are endangered in their transmission to the younger generation by the impact of TV and school education. The Izmir variety of Sepecides shows the characteristics of other non-Vlah dialects like unshortened pronominal forms, Greek, Southern-Slavic but no Rumanian lexems etc. under the influence of the agglutinative Turkish language it has preserved a rich derivational morphology absent from corresponding dialects.

As Sepecides has not previously been described, the sketch will present a survey of the entire grammatical system as well as short chapters on phonology and syntax. One chapter will analyze the various influences of the Turkish language on Sepecides and their morphological and idiomatical implications. Investigations are based on approx. 130 hours of recorded talks ranging from tales, songs, and biographical notes to short anecdotes and explanations of phrases and proverbs.

ISBN9783895860362. Languages of the World/Materials 106. 69pp. 1996.

Burgenland-Romani

Dieter W. Halwachs and Michal Wogg
Universitaet Graz

Roman; this is how the Roma living in the southern part of Burgenland (Austria precisely since 1921, formerly Western Hungary) call their non­vlah variety of Romani. The Burgenland­Roma migrated form Eastern Hungary and Croatia in the 15th century.

The close relationship of Roman to two other non vlah groups in Slovenia (Prekmurski­Roma) and in Western Hungary is manifest from identical personal names as well as from various parallel linguistic structures. At present Roman is in danger of extinction since it is used almost exclusively in intimate communicative situations among the minority whose number does not exceed 2000 people.

The sketch will present a description of the phonology, morphology, syntax, and the lexicon including text samples. In addition we shall present research material concerning language use and attitude towards the dialect. The data were collected and interpreted with the assistance of native speakers.

ISBN 9783895860201. Languages of the World/Materials 107. 80pp. 2002.

Kalderaš Romani

Astrid Sabaini / Mozes F. Heinschink / Dieter W. Halwachs
University of Graz

Kalderaš Romani is one of the most prominent Romani varieties: Most probably it is the geographically most widespread variety, spoken all over Europe, in the Americas, in Australia, etc. Furthermore, due to the strong commitment of Kalderaš Roma in the ongoing emancipation process, it plays an important role as the basis of a developing international Romani variety used in formal domains on the international level. Kalderaš Romani is assigned to the northern sub-branch of the Vlax group of Romani, which subsumes varieties strongly influenced by Romanian; an influence which results from the long period of time Kalderaš Roma suffered in bondage and slavery in Wallachia ("Vlax") and Moldavia – from their arrival in these regions in the 14th century until the second half of the 19th century.

Kalderaš Romani is probably the best documented Romani variety so far: grammars and dictionaries on dialects spoken in Columbia, France, Poland, Romania, Russia, Sweden, etc. published during the last 50 years show both the variation and homogeneity of this widespread variety. The present description concentrates on the Serbian dialect of Kalderaš Romani, which spread all over Europe during the second half of the 20th century – in the course of the working migration from the 1960s onwards and as a result of the recent developments in the western Balkans. The grammar sketch provides an overview of Kalderaš Romani, describing both the core features of this variety as well as special features of the Serbian variety used in the greater Vienna area.

ISBN 9783895860195. Languages of the World/Materials 108. 66pp. EUR 50.80. 2015.

Karachay

Steve Seegmiller
Montclair State University

Karachay­Balkar is a Turkic language spoken in the North Caucasus by approximately 200,000 speakers and by approximately 30,000 more speakers living in Turkey, Western Europe, and the United States. This work provides a linguistic overview of the Karachay dialect of Karachay­Balkar. It consists of a detailed description of the phonological system and the inflectional morphology as well as a necessarily briefer description of the main syntactic features of the language. Also included are several short texts with interlinear translations and a glossary. This is the first description of Karachay to appear in English.

ISBN 9783895860218. Languages of the World/Materials 109. 60pp. 1996.

Nivkh

Ekaterina Gruzdeva
Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg

Nivkh (otherwise known as Gilyak) is considered genetically isolated, though is traditionally classified as Paleasiberian. Typologically, Nivkh is an agglutinative synthetic nominative language with elements of morphological fusion and some analytical features.

It is the language of a small nationality (4,700 people) presently residing mainly at the lower reaches of the Amur River in the far east on the Asian continent and on Sakhalin Island (Russia). Four dialects of Nivkh are distinguished: Amur, East-Sakhalin, North-Sakhalin and South-Sakhalin. The description is based primarily on the materials of Amur and East-Sakhalin diaelcts of Nivkh, the last not well described yet. The sketch contains five sections, two folklore texts (in both examined dialects of Nivkh) with interlinear translation and an ample bibliography.

The first section describes socio- and geolinguistic data, different hypothesis of Nivkh genesis and principal stages of its studying. The phonology and morphology section deals with the phoneme inventory, prosody, syllable structure and morphological alternations. It pays particlar attention to the system of initial consonant alternations in noun and verb phrases. Principal models of word-formation are discussed in the third section. The fourth section is devoted to the analysis of nominal and verbal morphology, pronominal system, numerals, adverbs, graphic words, connective words and interjections. Special emphasis is laid to the unique system of cardinals consisting of 26 sub-systems, each of those is used for counting objects of special types. The section also focuses on finite verbal forms and their categories, as well as on non-finite verbal forms. Nivkh is well-known for its numerous converbs, which number is about 30. The last section examines syntax of noun and verb phrases, word order, clause structure and clause chaining with special reference to a polypredicative construction. The last is usually represented as a predicate complex whose verbal forms are interlinked by different semantic relations, namely tense, cause, condition, concession, etc.

ISBN 9783895860393. Languages of the World/Materials 111. 60 pp. 1998.