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Vol. 60, no. 1 (Spring 2018)

Contents

Abstracts

More than Mistakes: Grammatical Errors and Sociolinguistic Identity in a Colonial-Era K’iche’ Maya Manuscript

Mallory E. Matsumoto
Brown University

Abstract. Research on documents composed by Maya communities during the mid-sixteenth to seventeenth centuries has been largely limited to basic transcriptions, translations, and ethnohistorical analysis, particularly for those whose textual contents are political in nature. This analysis focuses instead on grammatical errors in a Spanish-language título from the K’iche’ Maya region of the western Guatemalan Highlands. I argue that the patterned gender and number disagreement indicates that the scribe was a native K’iche’ speaker who was not fully bilingual in Spanish. This case study illustrates the sociolinguistic potential of colonial-era indigenous sources when examined from a paleographic and linguistic perspective.

Reduplication in Menominee

Monica Macaulay
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Abstract. This article revisits Bloomfield’s 1962 description of reduplication in Menominee, drawing examples from his work and from original fieldwork. Reduplication of verb stems is shown to mark repetition or continuation of action, habitual action, intensification, and plurality. The forms of reduplication—regular and irregular—are discussed, as is Bloomfield’s claim that irregular forms have a connotation of violence. I argue that Menominee reduplication is stem reduplication, not root reduplication, and propose an analysis of regular reduplication, drawing on synchronic and diachronic facts about the language.

Language Contact in the Northernmost Regions of the Pacific Northwest: Tlingit Elements in Tahltan

Hank Nater
Conklin, Alberta

Abstract. The Tahltan lexicon has been noticeably affected by Tlingit. This article presents that portion of Tahltan lexicon that is rooted in Tlingit, and describes semantic and morphological properties of, and phonemic changes undergone by, Tlingit-derived vocabulary. Historical sources indicate that the principal forces driving transfer of vocabulary from Tlingit to Tahltan are trade- and culture-related contact, migrations, remigrations, and intermarriage.

Arabic Dialect Contact and Change in Casablanca: The Role of Simplification and Salience in the Adoption of a Morphosyntactic Variable

Atiqa Hachimi
University of Toronto, Scarborough

Abstract. The sociolinguistic outcomes of migration in Morocco’s largest city, Casablanca, are examined through analysis of the adoption of the second person gender-marking norms of Casablanca Arabic by three groups whose heritage varieties have a corresponding merger or distinction of gender. Ethnographic interviews and interactions with multigenerational families show that convergence to the dominant Casablanca norm is not uniform across the three different groups. While linguistic simplification is important, differences in referential and nonreferential indexical meanings of each group’s linguistic variant vis-à-vis that of Casablanca play a critical role in the different outcomes of this morphosyntactic contact.

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