Lexical Acculturation in Native American Languages (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics, 20)

270 Pages·1999·16.61 MB·English

by  Cecil H. Brown

LEXICAL ACCULTURATION
IN NATIVE AMERICAN LANGUAGES
OXFORD STUDIES IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS
William Bright, General Editor
Editorial Board
Wallace Chafe, University of California, Santa Barbara
Regna Darnell, University of Western Ontario
Paul Friedrich, University of Chicago
Dell Hymes, University of Virginia
Jane Hill, University of Arizona
Stephen C. Levinson, Max Planck Institute, The Netherlands
Joel Sherzer, University of Texas, Austin
David J. Parkin, University of London
Andrew Pawley, Australian National University
Jef Verschueren, University of Antwerp
Volumes Published:
1 Guntcr Senft: Classificatory Particles in Kilivila
2 Janis B. Nuckolls: Sounds Like Life: Sound-Symbolic Grammar, Performance, and
Cognition in Pastaza Quechua
3 David B. Kronenfeld: Plastic Glasses and Church Fathers: Semantic Extension from
the Ethnoscience Tradition
4 Lyle Campbell: American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native
America
5 Chase Henscl: Telling Our Selves: Ethnicity and Discourse, in Southwestern Alaska
6 Rosaleen Howard-Malverde (ed.): Creating Context in Andean Cultures
1 Charles L. Briggs (ed.): Disorderly Discourse: Narrative, Conflict, and Inequality
8 Anna Wierzbicka: Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words: English, Russian,
Polish, German, and Japanese
Gerrit J. van Enk and Lourens de Vries: The Korowai of Irian Java: Their Language inE IN
Its Cultural Context
Peter Bakker: A Language of Our Own: The Genesis of Michif, the Mixed Cree-FrenchENC
Language of the Canadian Metis
\ 1 Gunter Senft: Referring to Space: Studies in Austronesian and Papuan Languages
12 David McKnight: People, Countries, and the Rainbow Serpent: Systems of Classifi-
cation Among the Lardil of Mornington Island
13 Andree Tabouret-Keller, Robert B. Le Page, Penelope Gardner-Chloros, and Gabriellc
Varro (eds.): Vernacular Literacy Revisited
14 Steven Roger Fischer: Rongorongo, the Easter Island Script: History, Traditions, Text
\ 5 Richard Feinberg: Oral Traditions of Anuta: A Polynesian Outlier in the Solomon Islands
16 Bambi Schicffelin, Kathryn A. Woolard, and Paul V. Kroskrity (eds.): Language
Ideologies: Practice and Theory
17 Susan U. Philips: Ideology in the. language of Judges: How Judges Practice Law,
Politics, and Courtroom Control
18 Spike Gildea: On Reconstructing Grammar: Comparative Cariban Morphosyntax
19 Laine A. Berman: Speaking through the Silence: Narratives, Social Conventions, and
Power in Java
20 Cecil H. Brown: Lexical Acculturation in Native American Languages
21 James M. Wilce: Eloquence in Trouble: The Poetics and Politics of Complaint in Rural
Bangladesh
22 Peter Seitc): The Powers of Genre: Interpreting flaya Oral Literature
23
23 Kli/abeth Keating: Power Sharing: Language, Rank, Gender, and Social Space in
Polmpei. Micronesia
Lexical Acculturation in
Native American Languages
CECIL H. BROWN
New York Oxford
Oxford University Press
1999
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York
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Copyright © 1999 by Cecil H. Brown
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press-
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brown, Cecil H., 1944-
Lexicai acculturation in Native American languages / Cecil H.
Brown.
p. cm. (Oxford studies in anthropological linguistics: 20)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-512161-9
1. Indians—Languages—Lexicology, Historical. 2. Languages in
contact-—North America—History. 3. Languages, Mixed—North
America—History. 4. Indians — Cultural assimilation. 1. Title, II. Series.
PM220.B76 1999
497 —dc2I 98-13835
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Dedicated to the memory of
Stanley R. Witkowski
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PREFACE
Research on which this book is based began in 1991. Preliminary results were
reported in five articles published in Current Anthropology (Brown 1994), Journal
of Linguistic Anthropology (Brown 1995a), Language in Society (Brown 1996a),
Anthropological Linguistics (Brown 1996b), and International Journal of American
Linguistics (Brown 1998). The present work builds on these publications and offers
further information and observations.
The first draft of this manuscript contained three appendices that reported in
substantial detail the considerable cross-language data on which this work is based.
Because of considerations about length, only one in its original form is presented here
(Appendix B). Appendix A is in a much truncated form that, unfortunately, omits 231
tables on individual items of acculturation. The third appendix, detailing distribution
of similar native terms for acculturated items across the 292 language cases, has been
entirely eliminated. Readers who wish to examine the original appendices are invited
to contact me and make arrangements for doing so.
I am grateful for the support provided for this project by the Center for Latino and
Latin American Studies, the Department of Anthropology, the College of Liberal Arts
and Sciences, and the Graduate School of Northern Illinois University (NIU), and by
the National Science Foundation (through grants BNS-9020699 and SBR-9222311).
A number of individuals contributed to this study by reading and commenting on the
manuscripts, by supplying data, or by assisting in other important ways. For this help
I would like to thank Rani Alexander, Gene Anderson, Peter Bakker, William L.
Ballard, MaryBeth Branigan, William Bright, George Aaron Broadwell, Carolyn R.
Brown, Pamela Brown, Lyle Campbell, Michael Carr, Wallace Chafe, Emanuel J.
Drechsel, David Dwyer, Richard Ford, Kay Fowler, Gayle J. Fritz, Dan Gebo, Michael
Gonzales, Anthony P. Grant, John H. Hann, Don Hardy, Heather Hardy, Eugene Hunn,
George Huttar, Dell Hymes, Frances Karttunen, Geoffrey Kimball, Fred Kitterle, Clark
S. Larsen, Kent Lightfoot, Michael H. Logan, Gary Martin, Jack Martin, Carl Masthay,
Mark Mehrer, Pamela Munro, James Norris, Peter Ohlin, Amadeo M. Rea, Willem J.
de Reuse, Blair A. Rudes, Susan Russell, Janine Scancarelli, Linda Schwarz, Fred H.
Smith, Julie Spangler, Ronald Spores, Brian Stross, William C. Sturtevant, Robert
Suchner, John Swenson, Nancy J. Turner, Jack Weiner, the late Stanley R. Witkowski,
Jerrold Zar, and Robert Zerwekh. I am also indebted to the interlibrary loan team at
Founders Memorial Library (NIU), headed by Tobie Miller, for their tireless effort in
tracking down often elusive lexical sources. Finally, many thanks to my golf buddies,
Mike Gabriel, Jim Nelson, Dan Piazza, and especially, Bob "Bubba" Suchner, who
helped keep me sane while working on this project.
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CONTENTS
ONE: Introduction 3
TWO: Methodology 11
THREE: Nomenclature 19
FOUR: Lexical Universals 42
FIVE: Lexical Borrowability 55
SIX: Regional Patterns and Bilingualism 70
SEVEN: Lexical Replacement 92
EIGHT: Native Term Diffusion 105
NINE: European Loan Diffusion 121
TEN: Loan Shift: A Brief Case Study 137
ELEVEN: Postcontact Linguistic Areas 144
TWELVE: Conclusion 158
APPENDIX A: Statistical Reports on Individual Items of Acculturation 168
APPENDIX B: Lexical Sources and Other Information for 292 Language Cases 182
References 221
Index of Languages, Items of Acculturation, Personal and Geographical Names 239
Subject Index 253