Anthropological Linguistics Vol. 62, no. 1

Contents

Articles
Editor's Note	John A. Erickson	1

Comparing Rural Multilingualism in Lowland South America and Western Africa	Friederike Lüpke, Kristine Stenzel, Flora Dias Cabalzar, Thiago Chacon, Aline da Cruz, Bruna Franchetto, Antonio Guerreiro, Sérgio Meira, Glauber Romling da Silva, Wilson Silva, Gluciana Storto, Leonor Valentino, Hein van der Voort, and Rachel Watson	3

Contemporaneous Comparative Corpora and Historical Linguistic Reconstruction	Johnathan Owens	58

Articles

Editor's Note

John A. Erickson

Comparing Rural Multilingualism in Lowland South America and Western Africa

Friederike Lüpke, Kristine Stenzel, Flora Dias Cabalzar, Thiago Chacon, Aline da Cruz, Bruna Franchetto, Antonio Guerreiro, Sérgio Meira, Glauber Romling da Silva, Wilson Silva, Gluciana Storto, Leonor Valentino, Hein van der Voort, and Rachel Watson

Contemporaneous Comparative Corpora and Historical Linguistic Reconstruction

Johnathan Owens

Abstracts

Friederike Lüpke (University of Helsinki), Kristine Stenzel (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro), Flora Dias Cabalzar (Ethnographer, Independent Researcher), Thiago Chacon (Universidade de Brasília), Aline da Cruz (Universidade Federal de Goiás), Bruna Franchetto (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro), Antonio Guerreiro (Universidade Estadual de Campinas), Sérgio Meira (Independent Researcher), Glauber Romling da Silva (Universidade Federal do Amapá), Wilson Silva (University of Arizona), Luciana Storto (Universidade de São Paulo), Leonor Valentino (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro), Hein van der Voort (Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Belém), Rachel Watson (SOAS, University of London)

Abstract. This article explores and compares multilingualism in small-scale societies of Western Africa and Lowland South America. All are characterized by complex and extensive multilingual practices and regional exchange systems established before the onset of globalization and its varying impacts. Through overviews of the general historical and organizational features of regions, vignette case studies, and a discussion of transformative processes affecting them, we show that small-scale multilingual societies present challenges to existing theorization of language as well as approaches to language description and documentation. We aim to bring these societies and issues to the fore, promoting discussion among a broader audience.

Johnathan Owens
University of Bayreuth

Abstract. A comparison of two large oral corpora, one Nigerian Arabic, one Egyptian, show a massive expansion, both quantitative and structural-functional, of the demonstrative in Nigerian Arabic. Contact with other languages of the Lake Chad area, into which Arabic speakers began to move about 1215 CE, explains the innovations in the use of the Nigerian Arabic demonstrative. Straightforward comparison of corpora offers lucid insights into basic historical linguistic questions such as contact-based vs. internal change, the relation between contact and simplification, and how contact-induced changes integrate into inherited systems. Because of its extensive linguistic history and wide dispersion, Arabic is particularly well suited to such investigations.