Lenore A. Grenoble

Discourses of endangerment

lingua franca as well as an international one, both to be effective and to avoid allegations of domination; the comparative strength, popularity or usefulness of one existing official or working language as against another; the status of cross-border language communities, including nomads, who do not fit neatly into national situations; the fate of the languages brought by immigrants; and the issue of comparative levels of minority language recognition should a variety with fewer speakers (like Danish or Maltese) benefit from a more privileged European position than, say, Catalan, with many more speakers? These are new, European issues, and the book is excellent at identifying them.

Deixis and Information Packaging in Russian Discourse

The role deixis plays in structuring language and its relation to the context of utterance provides the focus for an examination of information packaging in Russian discourse. The analysis is based on a model which interprets discourse as constituted by four interrelated frameworks — the linguistic text, the text setting, the text content, and the participant framework. Deixis is divided into three primary dimensions of time, space, and person, which are metaphorically extended to secondary dimensions of information status (knowledge, focus, and theme). The linguistic devices which function in these dimensions encode information status by serving one or more communicative functions, including the presentative, directive, identifying, informing, acknowledging, and expressive functions. Discourse markers and deictics provide links between the content of the message, the linguistic text itself, and the context in which the message is produced. They introduce new participants, signal changes in thematic structure, bracket topical units, and mark the relative status of information. The book is written with both descriptive and theoretical goals. It aims to synthesize and revise current approaches to deixis and information packaging to account for the Russian data. The analysis extends beyond primary deixis to include knowledge structures and sources of knowledge, as well as the metalinguistic devices which signal changes in information flow, and grounding and saliency relations.

REVISITING TUNGUSIC CLASSIFICATION FROM THE BOTTOM UP: A COMPARISON OF EVENKI AND OROQEN

uses a tree model, is even less successful in indicating the relationships among languages at a finer level of detail. This article demonstrates that two Tungusic languages, Evenki and Oroqen, which have long been treated as a single language for classification purposes, are better treated as distinct linguistic varieties. The article raises fundamental questions about the current classification of Tungusic languages and suggests a renewed examination of the role of dialect continua and contact languages in understanding the composition of the family. Finally, we question whether a tree-based model is appropriate for classifying languages that have had a high degree of contact and are found in families or branches of a shallow time depth.*

The role of deictics in discourse coherence: French voici/voilà and Russian vot/von☆

Abstract Both French and Russian utilize a binary system of deictic presentatives, most commonly described on the basis of ±proximal. However, in actual usage, one deictic is systematically favored over the other and can be seen as unmarked. The remaining member of the deictic pair is thus marked and less frequent. However, French and Russian differ in which member of the pair has been marked: in French the +proximal presentative is marked and in Russian the −proximal is marked. In both languages, the choice between the members of the pair is made on the basis of the proximity of the object presented relative to the deictic center. Moreover, these simple presentatives have taken on broader discourse functions which separate their usage from the qualities of the immediate complement and depend instead on the wider context of the discourse. Not only are these elements used to organize and mark the progression of a discourse, but they are used as active interactions between the speaker and the receiver, assuring that both are assisting in building the frame of reference of the discourse and aiding in local cohesion and global coherence of the discourse.

Tense, mood, aspect: The future in Russian

My purpose in this paper is to examine the interaction of the categories of tense, mood and aspect with regard to one particularly problematic category: the future in Russian. Tense locates an event, action or situation in time in relation to the moment of speech or in relation to an established temporal reference point. Aspect characterizes the internal temporal contour or structure of the event. Aspect here is treated not as just a verbal category, but as a feature of the proposition. Mood must be distinguished from modality. Mood is a morphologically marked category which has a modal function. Modality, in contrast to mood, is a semantic category which covers a broad range of nuances such as desiderative, intentive, hypothetical, potential, necessitative and so on (see Fleischman 1982, 13). The indicative is the unmarked mood which is non-modal in that it is factual and declarative (see Lyons 1968, 307). This distinction between mood and modality is crucial to the present discussion. The future tense has been likened to a mood because it differs

An Overview of Russian Sign Language

An overview of current knowledge about Russian Sign Language (RSL) and its use in Russia today notes that linguistic study of RSL is still in its beginning stages, defines issues that need to be studied, and suggests directions for further research. Most researchers of the deaf in the former USSR focused on pedagogy and psychology. An exception is Galina Zaitseva of the Moscow Institute of Defectology, who stands out as a true pioneer in RSL research. Her work, which will be described, supplemented by the author’s observations and fieldwork.

A response to ‘Assessing levels of endangerment in the Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat) using the Language Endangerment Index (LEI)’, by Nala Huiying Lee & John Van Way

The Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat) is one of several similar responses to a perceived need for better data on language vitality. My remarks here are framed as a direct reply to Lee & Van Ways article, but really address larger issues in the ongoing debate about a perceived need to classify, inventory, and enumerate endangered languages. Lee & Van Way focus on one aspect of ELCat, the Language Endangerment Index (LEI), discussing a number of shortcomings in other current models. As an instrument for determining the level of language endangerment, the LEI is presented as a preferable alternative to other metrics, including Fishmans (1991) Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS), or EGIDS, the Expanded scale, based on the work of Lewis & Simons (2010), or UNESCOs (2003) expert scale. Lee & Van Ways discussion presupposes that such metrics are needed, and that it is beneficial to have a method for measuring vitality. Specifically, they argue that ‘for those concerned with preserving the worlds fragile linguistic diversity, it is desirable to be able to quantify language vitality’. This is the underlying assumption of not only ELCat and LEI, but of other language catalogues, such as the Ethnologue (Lewis, Simons, & Fennig 2015), UNESCOs Atlas (Moseley 2010), and other vitality metrics, as discussed in Lee & Van Way.

The imperfective future tense in Russian

AbstractThis paper investigates the use of the imperfective periphrastic future (IPF) in Russian in those cases where it is used to signal single-occurring future events or actions. It is argued that the IPF is a tense despite its morphological distinction of being the sole analytic Russian tense. Syntactically, the IPF differs from other periphrastic verbal constructions in that it cannot occur with double negation. It unequivocally occurs with future deictic reference, firm evidence that it is indeed a tense. Semantically, the distribution of the IPF can best be described in terms of four interrelated scalar parameters: GIVENNESS, IMMINENCE, INTENTION and VOLITION.

Language Education for Endangered Languages

Language endangerment occurs in situations of language shift, where speakers abandon their own language in favor of another, usually more socially and economically dominant, language. Thus language education programs are designed to maintain or to revitalize the endangered language, teaching potential speakers the language and creating places, or domains, for its use. A number of different educational models have been adopted by different language programs, with some focusing on adult learners and others on children. Their appropriateness depends upon a variety of factors such as number and ages of fluent speakers, level of commitment in the community, and available resources.