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Vol. 39, no. 1 (Spring 1997)

Contents

Abstracts

Resurrecting Wampano (Quiripi) from the Dead: Phonological Preliminaries

Blair A. Rudes
Development Associates, Inc.

Abstract. Wampano, the r-dialect Algonquian language spoken by the indigenous inhabitants of western Connecticut and central Long Island, has been extinct since the early twentieth century. It is known today through short vocabularies recorded over the centuries and one long text dating from the mid-seventeenth century. This language, variously known by local designations (e.g., Naugatuck, Quiripi, and Unquachog), exhibits the typical characteristics of southern New England Algonquian languages, including the Eastern Algonquian intrusive nasal (i.e., a nasal vowel reflex of Proto-Algonquian *a·). However, it also shares certain features with northern New England Algonquian languages such as a distinctive syncope of short vowels before inherited consonant clusters. The extant data permit a fairly complete reconstitution of the phonology of the language, which is a necessary preliminary to morphological analysis.

Rafinesque's Linguistic Activity

Vilen V. Belyi
State Technical University of Vinnitsa, Ukraine

Abstract. Constantine Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz is one of the founders of the scientific study of American Indian languages. His natural-history approach to language study and his attempts to use lexicostatistics to discover language affinity, as well as his research on the Maya language, his synthetical classification scheme for New World languages, and his call for a universal phonology and orthography, make him a forerunner of modern linguistic methodologists.

A Preliminary Analysis of Yukian Root Structure

William W. Elmendorf
University of Wisconsin, Madison and University of California, Davis

Abstract. This paper is a preliminary typological comparison of nominal and verbal roots in the two Yukian branches, Wappo and Northern Yukian. Par-ticular attention is given to fossilized morphological processes, which are parallel and may provide an explanation for the seeming irregularity of some phonetic relationships that, according to Sawyer (1980), point to language contact rather than to genetic relationship. I argue that these morphological fossils amount to shared irregularities and are relics of an ancient parent language. Support for this thesis is drawn from Wintu, where similar processes exist.

Classificatory Verbs in Cherokee

Barbara Blankenship
University of California, Los Angeles

Abstract. In about forty Cherokee verbs, the stem contains a morpheme indicating some quality of the verb's patient. There are five classes of patients: LIVING, FLEXIBLE, LONG, LIQUID, and COMPACT. A set of five morphemes is associated with each classificatory verb. There are several such sets. One set is used in verbs of dropping or falling; another appears in verbs associated with containers, e.g., 'put in', 'take out', and 'hide'. I discuss six morpheme sets, relating them to Mithun's (1984) theory of noun incorporation.

Honorification and Projection on Saint Barthélemy

Jon F. Pressman
University of Iowa

Abstract. Interference phenomena deriving from "imperfect group learning during a process of language shift " (Thomason and Kaufman 1988:38) fail to adequately describe how native speakers deal with and pragmatically exploit honorific resources in the target language. This paper presents data regarding language shift on the French Antillean island of Saint Barthélemy, where older speakers of the indigenous francophonic vernaculars are speaking as their second language standard French, while younger speakers are acquiring French as their first language and the indigenous languages as second languages. In each case, speakers replicate the honorific or equality register formations of their first languages in their second languages, thus breaching the first language pragmatic rules of use. An investigation of the processes involved in this phenomenon demonstrates that speakers have recourse to metapragmatic projection of the nonreferential function (Silverstein 1976) of second person pronouns from first language to second language in ideologically rationalizing and enacting their honorific/nonhonorific option.

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