Language and the prehistory of North America

Kinkade, M. Dale; Powell, J. V.

doi:10.1080/00438243.1976.9979654

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…That is, the same techniques have long been used for hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists (and within the same family) to draw conclusions about directions of spread and original homelands (see for example Diebold 1960). Some examples are the Finno-Ugric dispersal (Campbell 1997); Athapaskan (Kinkade and Powell 1976); Arawakan (Epps 2009); and Pama-Nyungan (Hale 1964). We may find differences in the speed of the spread, the percentage of a group that spreads, or whether there are initial scouting parties and sporadic site use before later occupation, but the principles of determining spread are identical for all groups.…”

Section: Geography and Mobilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Correlates of Language Change in Hunter‐Gatherer and Other ‘Small’ Languages

Bowern

2010

Language and Linguist. Compass

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I review linguistic and interdisciplinary research on the non‐linguistic correlates of language change, particularly as they apply to small populations, highly mobile groups, and hunter‐gatherers. I summarize the areas which have been argued to display differences between hunter‐gatherers and agriculturalists, small and large populations, and sedentary and non‐sedentary ones, although finding that none of this work is conclusive and much is contradictory. Hunter‐gatherer languages in particular have played a prominent role in the development of theories of language change in addition to the comparative method and family trees, but for the wrong reasons, since the comparative method is powerful for diagnosing relationships even in the case of heavy borrowing where tree models are not useful. The field is in great need of systematization, and of incorporating current knowledge about variation and the spread of change with reconstruction over a longer time span.

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Section: Geography and Mobilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Correlates of Language Change in Hunter‐Gatherer and Other ‘Small’ Languages

Bowern

2010

Language and Linguist. Compass

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“…It was perhaps hinted at by Swadesh in his comments on the earlier discussion of the Salishan languages by Boas (Boas and Haeberlin 1927): "Boas' division of Salishan into Coast and Interior dialects was surely never intended to be more than a convenient geographic breakdown with only approximate linguistic implications" (Swadesh 1950:163). In spite of the hint, the authors we have surveyed have retained the strict Coastllnterior division (see Suttles and Elmendorf 1963;Kinkade andPowell 1976:91: Thompson 1979). ' On the other hand, we find (by the diameter method) that at the higher levels of the family tree, and apparently separating out the effects of borrowing, the more southerly coastal Salish languages form a clustering with the languages of the interior separate from the more northerly coastal languages.…”

Section: The Interior Languages (Iv-a and B Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revised Lexicostatistical Classification of Salishan Languages

Kronenfeld

Thomas

1983

American Anthropologist

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“…The unintended effect of this narrow geographical focus, coupled with some researchers' limited exposure to Indigenous peoples and languages, was the "shoehorning" of names into the wrong language or language family, i.e., forcing a morphological analysis to fit a preconceived language family and/or meaning, whether the evidence supported that or not. Many names in New England and other parts of Northeastern North America were assumed to be of Algonquian origin simply because that was the dominant Indigenous language family of the area (Kincade & Powell, 1976 (Beauchamp, 1907, p. 16). Schoolcraft also coined at least one name, which he presented as Indigenous: his name for the headwaters of the Mississippi River, Lake Itasca, is a melding of the -itas of Latin veritas ('truth') and the ca-of Latin caput ('head') (Bright, 2004).…”

Section: Why Do We Not Know What Some Places Mean?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Naming Place in Kanyen’kéha: A Study Using the O’nonna Three-Sided Model

Ingram¹

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Human interactions with place are the stuff of life and aspects of place such as landscape and environment have shaped human activity since activity could be considered "human". Why and how we choose to name place, as well as which places are named or nameless provides insight into many of the different aspects of life, from knowledge of resources of the area, navigational information, and knowledge of significant events in the vicinity (Afable and Beeler, 1996, Stewart, 1975) to the movement of people across a landscape, their value systems, and even spirituality.Furthermore, recent work by Levinson, Burenhult, Mark and others demonstrates that the division of landscape is not universal, but rather is shaped by linguistic and cultural practices. Some place names encode these differing views of the delineation of landscape.This dissertation argues that place names lie at the intersection of landscape, language and culture and outlines a new interdisciplinary philosophical framework and methodology for their study which draws from the fields of linguistics, geography and anthropology for their examination. Together with members of the Kanyen'kehá:ka, this framework and methodology, called the O'nonna Three-Sided Model, are used to explore the relationship of the Kanyen'kehá:ka to their landscape. In analyzing the meaning of the lexical semantics of Kanyen'kéha place names, patterns emerge which provide insight into Kanyen'kehá:ka geography and culture. In the discussion, I demonstrate how these patterns can be viewed in different ways demonstrating why the three components of language, landscape and culture are vital to form a holistic picture of the way that people name place. Patterns also emerge in the grammar of place names and I show how close examination of these patterns, and the linguistic mechanisms used to describe place, may lead to surprising conclusions that may not have been obvious at first glance. Finally, I show how the dual components of meaning and grammar of place names provide insight into cognition, linguistic relativity and the universality of the human experience.

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Language and the prehistory of North America

Cited by 8 publications

References 10 publications

Correlates of Language Change in Hunter‐Gatherer and Other ‘Small’ Languages

Correlates of Language Change in Hunter‐Gatherer and Other ‘Small’ Languages

Revised Lexicostatistical Classification of Salishan Languages

Naming Place in Kanyen’kéha: A Study Using the O’nonna Three-Sided Model

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