Salvage Documentation of Yahgan

FAIN: FN-50078-10

Yoram Meroz
Unaffiliated Independent Scholar (San Francisco, CA 94107)

This project aims at providing the first modern and comprehensive documentation of Yahgan, an isolate language of Chilean Tierra de Fuego. The language is nearly extinct, with only one elderly speaker, out of an ethnic population of 100. Yahgan is typologically unusual for South America, with no clear typological affinities to either the Amazonian languages or those of the Pacific coast. Over the past century, the Yahgan language has nearly ceased to be spoken. For much of that period, no research on the language was carried out. The bulk of existing work on Yahgan is formed by the dictionary, the grammatical notes, and the biblical translations of the 19th century missionary Thomas Bridges. During the fellowship year, I will conduct fieldwork in Puerto Williams, Chile, building on my previous fieldwork in 2007-08. I will complete a summary grammar to serve as a base for a later, more comprehensive grammar, re-edit Bridges's dictionary of the language and produce transcribed textual material. These will serve as a basis for learner's materials to be provided for the Yahgan community. (Edited by staff)

Associated Products

Verbal Number in Yahgan (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Verbal Number in Yahgan
Author: Yoram Meroz
Abstract: Yahgan, an isolate language of Tierra del Fuego, has one of the largest known systems of verbal number marking, with some 50 suppletive singular/plural root pairs and hundreds of other roots marked for plurality by a set of productive suffixes. Using published and unpublished materials collected by the 19th century missionary Thomas Bridges, and fieldwork with the one remaining fluent speaker, I will discuss the morphological strategies for marking Yahgan plural verbs. The existence of regular derivational morphology for marking number of the stem argues for interpreting the irregular forms as suppletive, rather than separate lexical items.
Date: 1/8/2012
Primary URL: http://www.lsadc.org/info/documents/2012/annual-meeting/handbook.pdf
Primary URL Description: Abstract in meeting handbook, p. 199
Conference Name: SSILA/LSA annual winter meeting

---