Ikíitu language revitalization and (re)valorization, from 2001 to 2016, and beyond (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Ikíitu language revitalization and (re)valorization, from 2001 to 2016, and beyond
Author: Christine M Beier
Abstract: This talk explores the complex, winding, and fascinating trajectory of revitalization and (re)valorization of the Ikíitu language (a.k.a. Iquito; Zaparoan; ~15 elderly speakers) within the Ikíitu heritage community, as seen from my perspective as a participant in the ongoing Iquito Language Documentation Project (ILDP). Initiated in 2001, and designed with a core revitalization component, the ILDP provides a useful temporal frame within which to examine key changes and developments in the community-internal status of the Ikíitu language, anchored to a broader context of historical, social, economic, and political facts and factors. In this talk, I will discuss how various attitudes toward the language, both positive and negative, have been expressed in the Ikíitu community of San Antonio de Pintuyacu, Loreto, Peru, over the years, not only through overt discourse — ranging from informal conversation to reported speech to political rhetoric — but also more subtly through community members’ and leaders’ actions and inactions; and I will describe how these attitudes are fundamentally implicated in shaping the future of the language.
Date: 02/17/2016
Primary URL: http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~survey/activities/events.php
Primary URL Description: Group in American Indian Languages (GAIL) at the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages
Secondary URL: http://lx.berkeley.edu/christine-beier
Secondary URL Description: Author's website at UC Berkeley Department of Linguistics.
Conference Name: Group in American Indian Languages (GAIL), Berkeley
A telling of a humorous tale, or a humorous telling of a tale? Structure, structuring, and ethnopoetics in don Hermico's Aniita asáana (Ikíitu/Iquito, Peruvian Amazonia) (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: A telling of a humorous tale, or a humorous telling of a tale? Structure, structuring, and ethnopoetics in don Hermico's Aniita asáana (Ikíitu/Iquito, Peruvian Amazonia)
Author: Christine M Beier
Abstract: Aniita asáana (The glutton) is, in many ways, one of the most prototypically ‘Ikíitu’ narratives in the extensive text corpus of the Iquito Language Documentation Project. When narrated by Hermenegildo (Hermico) Díaz Cuyasa and audio-recorded on July 4, 2002, the content is at once mundane, morally-charged, and outlandish; and his telling of the tale is both unapologetic and funny, both deadpan and slapstick. Three fundamental themes of this narrative -- social isolation, theft, and gluttony -- are typically of great local social consequence, and not inherently humorous at all by Ikíitu norms. What, then, are the structures and structuring devices, revealed through an ethnopoetic analysis of this telling of this narrative, that distinguish a humorous telling from a humorous tale?
Date: 01/04/2017
Primary URL: http://www.cabeceras.org/aniita_asaana.htm
Primary URL Description: "Aniita asáana" webpage at Cabeceras Aid Project website.
Secondary URL: http://lx.berkeley.edu/christine-beier
Secondary URL Description: Author's website at UC Berkeley Department of Linguistics.
Conference Name: Rethinking Native American Discourse: Rhetoric and Poetics 30 years later (UT-Austin)
General number exponence and concord in the Iquito noun phrase (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: General number exponence and concord in the Iquito noun phrase
Author: Christine M Beier
Abstract: This paper describes the expression of number in Iquito [iqu], (Zaparoan; Peruvian Amazonia) focusing on the morphological exponence of Iquito's general number system within noun/determiner phases (Nps/DPs), and on the principles that permit facultative concord between NPs/DPs and their real-world referents. The Iquito number system demonstrates a contrast between plural and general (non-number), and while number morphology is obligatory in many environments, concord is not strict in the context of connected discourse in parsed texts. I argue that in Iquito, reference to number is governed by pragmatic principles of relevance and sufficiency, not by grammatical principles of exhaustive concord.
Date: 01/09/2017
Primary URL: www.ssila.org
Primary URL Description: Website of The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas.
Secondary URL: http://lx.berkeley.edu/christine-beier
Secondary URL Description: Author's website at UC Berkeley Department of Linguistics.
Conference Name: The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas Annual Meeting, 2017