Search

Following work by Bloomfield (1946; 1958), the primary verb stem in Algonquian is traditionally described in terms of a template of three elements: initial, medial, and final. However, both Bloomfield himself and the subsequent scholarship (e.g., Rhodes 1976, Goddard 1988; 1990, and O'Meara 1990) have also recognized that the structure of the stem is more complex than the simple template might suggest. In this paper, I build on these insights, taking them one step further. Drawing on Oji-Cree, I propose a distinction between two types of stems, based on the complexity of their internal structure. A simple stem is formed by combining a root and a verbal head, while a complex stem involves an intermediate constituent that is salient at the phonological and syntactic level. I adduce phonological and syntactic evidence for the distinction between the two stem types and then focus on the properties of complex stems, arguing that they are subject to predictable syntactic restrictions. The analysis developed in this paper helps situate the Algonquian stem within a broader syntactic theory as well as accounts for a number of puzzling facts about the verb stem. The analysis also provides support for the view (Brittain 2003, Hirose 2003, Piggott and Newell 2006, and Mathieu 2008) that a significant portion of word formation in Algonquian takes place in syntax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses nominal classification in the languages found in the Amazon Region and the history of the description of their existence by scholars. The article also provides brief summaries of the papers in this volume of "International Journal of American Linguistics." The papers describe nominal classification in the Witotoan, Peba-Yaguan, and Eastern Tucanoan languages of Colombia, Peru, and Brazil. Classifiers in the languages are discussed and the papers address questions of how structurally homogeneous patterns across language families came about and how these systems related typologically to other systems throughout the world.

Among the many results Boas envisioned for the documentation of American indigenous languages was a clearer delineation of some fundamental facets of human psychology. This paper examines the subsequent realization of that particular vision, outlining some of the ways in which research with speakers of American languages has helped illuminate human cognition. The focus is on key findings that offer support for linguistic relativity, the influence of linguistic disparities on thought evident in non-linguistic behavior. These findings relate to spatial, temporal, and numerical cognition. The relevant data surveyed offer compelling evidence that some cross-linguistic differences impact cognitive habits. A pivotal point is underscored throughout the paper: Despite the crossfield nature of the findings on this topic, those findings are ultimately contingent on the research of linguistic fieldworkers who have meticulously described typologically distinct languages. Through their research, the Boasian vision for psychological insights via the description of American languages has been realized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the dialect variation across Kumeyaay speech communities, which have long resisted description (Langdon 1991). This paper attempts to bring clarification to the situation, presenting new research findings from an ongoing study of Kumeyaay dialects south of the border, integrating them with the previous literature, and drawing on current linguistic anthropological theory concerning dialect variation and language ideology. It argues that the two indigenous subgroupings of 'Iipay and Tiipay are distinct both linguistically and historically in terms of social organization to some extent. Hill's (2001) anthropological model for dialectology, which includes attention to the relation between human ecology, social organization, and two basic types of stance--"localist" vs. "distributed"--as well as Kroskrity's notion of variationist language ideology, are employed to explain the exuberant lexical variation found between these two dialectal subgroups of the California Yuman language family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phonetic variability--the variability with which we speak--has recently received much attention because of its implications for how sounds are represented lexically. This paper considers phonetic variability in laryngealized resonants, which are rare cross-linguistically but common in the Pacific Northwest languages (Salish and Wakashan). Previous literature on these sounds has focused primarily on variability in timing between the oral and laryngeal gestures. This paper explores instead variability in the realization of the laryngeal gesture, focusing on St'át'imcets (Lillooet Salish). Pitch, amplitude, and duration measurements are taken to characterize the laryngeal gesture of intervocalic laryngealized resonants. Results exhibit a high degree of variability but show that, overall, realization depends primarily on the location of the laryngealized resonant with respect to word stress: the correlates of laryngealization are acoustically stronger in post-stress than in pre-stress position. Results are discussed in terms of their possible causes and in terms of their implications for how sound structure is lexically encoded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a systematic account of the tone system of Peñoles Mixtec (PM). While /H/ and /L/ tones are unambiguously needed in underlying representations, we argue that the third tone is not /M/ but must rather be underspecified as /Ø/. Perhaps the most interesting of the several arguments presented is that strings of /Ø/ tone-bearing units are invisible to a process which deletes the second /L/ of a /L-Ø*-L/ sequence. We propose that all /L/ tones are underlying floating and that /L/ rather than /H/ is the marked tone in this three-value system. The surface mid and low-falling pitches in outputs are shown to derive by a small number of realizational rules, which also are responsible for producing successively upstepped H tones. The PM tone system is unusually interesting both from a general tonological perspective as well as for its relation to Dürr's (1987) Proto-Mixtec tones which have the inverted values in PM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most languages in the world distinguish various content interrogatives, like English who, what, where, when, which, how, and why. However, Givón (1990; 2001) has claimed that in Pichis Ashéninca, an Arawakan language from Peru, there is only one content interrogative, tsica, that covers all possible interrogative meanings. In this article, I argue against this analysis. Based on a corpus of questions in Pichis Ashéninca, extracted from texts, I argue that most content questions do indeed use the word tsica, but the interrogative meaning is further specified by the construction in which it is used. When the different interrogative constructions are properly distinguished, Pichis Ashéninca distinguishes almost all interrogative categories expected from a European perspective. Still, the structure of these interrogative constructions in Pichis Ashéninca is special from a typological viewpoint because of these characteristics: (1) there is no distinction between 'who' and 'what'; (2) all content interrogative constructions are transparently built on the basis of just one root; (3) this basic interrogative root in isolation has the meaning 'where'; and (4) the noninterrogative parts of the interrogative constructions are verbs. Based on a worldwide investigation of content interrogatives, I argue that these four characteristics are rare. However, all these characteristics are relatively widespread in South America, making it less of a surprise that there is a language in this part of the world that combines all of these unusual characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper offers the first (published) linguistic analysis of an aspect of the grammar of Quinault, an extinct Salish language. It is based on a virtually unstudied language corpus, involving field notes made by various authors since the 1850s and audio-recordings made in the 1960s. Quinault has been classified as belonging to the Tsamosan branch, the least studied division of the Salish language family. This paper presents the Quinault pronominal system and compares it to that of Upper Chehalis and Cowlitz, two other Tsamosan languages. The Quinault subject system is found not to share the aspect-determined division into subject enclitics and subject suffixes that distinguishes the Upper Chehalis and Cowlitz system from the rest of the Salish family. Moreover, the use of subject markers indicates a partial merger of the Stative and the Continuative aspects in Quinault. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the syntax and semantics of negation across Salish. Three wide-spread and one geographically restricted pattern are distinguished across the family. Two of the widespread patterns (A and B), as well as the restricted pattern (B'), involve a negative predicate selecting for a clausal complement. in pattern A, the negated clause is nominalized: I analyze this as a case of negative existential quantification over minimal situations. In Patterns B and B', the negated clause takes conjunctive (i.e., subjunctive) morphology: I analyze these patterns as cases of simple (propositional) negation. The development of monoclausal (Pattern C) negation is then examined in several branches of the family. The paper concludes with some remarks about the typological and theoretical status of the various Salish negation patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relations between Arawakan and Guaicuruan groups in the Chaco region of South America have been widely discussed in ethnohistorical and anthropological sources. This paper offers the first systematic investigation of the linguistic effects of these interactions, relying on, and contributing to, the historical study of both language families. I discuss a number of nominal lexemes in Terena, the extant descendant of Guaná, that lack plausible Arawakan etymologies, thus being candidates for items adopted from some non-Arawakan language. I show that the Terena items in question are loans from Northern Guaicuruan languages and can be traced to source forms with established Guaicuruan etymologies. I propose some linguistic markers that characterize the Guaicuruan stratum in the Terena lexicon, particularly well-represented in the domains of zoonyms and phytonyms. Consequences of these findings are discussed, including their relation to the independent claims of the ethnohistorical literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While analyses of numerals typically focus on presenting morphological and phonological data as well as on comparative historical analyses of the numeral systems of related languages, numerals are rarely analyzed as indices of the kinds of cultural information seen in such semantic fields as, e.g., kinship terminology. On the contrary, an examination of the two counting systems of Elem Pomo reveals a network of sociocultural connections. This paper presents an analysis of these two systems and suggests that locating the data gained through an in-depth linguistic analysis within their proper sociocultural context can both clarify an understanding of these two counting systems and inform language planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes a typological contribution by describing a stress system that uses syllabic trochees while also displaying characteristics more typically associated with a quantity-sensitive language. The description comes from Tohono O'odham. The rhythm of this language is quantity-insensitive and trochaic, although the language also displays characteristics often associated with quantity-sensitivity (i.e., long vowels, gemination). Examined together, the facts illustrated here demonstrate the prosodic inconsistency of Tohono O'odham: that rhythm and prosodic morphology offer different perspectives on the role played by quantity, and that Tohono O'odham is the first language documented to split its rhythm and prosodic morphology along quantitative lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an account of the expression of information structure in general, as well as of the information-structure category of givenness in particular, in Buglere, a Chibchan language of Costa Rica and Panama. Previous accounts of the existing morphosyntactic strategies to encode information-structure categories in Buglere are examined on the basis of a typical Buglere narrative, Additionally, the information-structure category of givenness is briefly inspected by means of two production experiments; the idea is to ascertain whether the tendencies found in natural speech remain in controlled, artificial environments. The analysis of the spontaneous narrative tends to confirm previous accounts of the information-structure patterns in Buglere, while the results of the experiments only partially confirm previous accounts. The emerging discrepancies are explained as being caused by the environment of the experiments, which speakers might have found slightly unnatural. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented to articles published in the October 2010 issue of "International Journal of American Linguistics," including "Evolution of Alignment in Timbira," by Flávia de Castro Alves, "On the Origin of Ablaut in the Cariban Family," by Sérgio Meira, Spike Gildea, and B. J. Hoff, and "A Reconstruction of Nasal Harmony in Proto-Mundurukú (Tupi)," by Gessiane Picanço.

In Chimila, nasal consonants contrast with voiced stops al the same point of articulation and no surface phonetic contrast occurs between nasalized and oral vowels in core lexemes. Nevertheless, several lines of evidence indicate that the Chimila lexicon includes nasal morphemes in contrast with oral morphemes. Evidence for this contrast includes morphophonemic alternations of stem-forming verb suffixes, appearance of a glottal glide following intransitive verb roots that have been transitivized, allomorphs of the intransitive imperative, and a restricted alternation between word-initial voiced stops and nasal consonants in roots and some suffixes. A constraint requiring lexical nasality to attach to consonants in core lexemes and the interaction of this constraint with the prosodic system, lexical tone, syllable structure, and the morphology account for the varied manifestations of lexical nasality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to clarify the difference between two markers of future time reference in the Cree language. The preverbal particles ta- (∼ ka-) and wî- have both generally been treated as future tense markers. While future tense is found to be sufficient characterization for ta-, wî- requires further consideration, resulting in the conclusion that, rather than simple tense, it marks prospective aspect. The characterization of wi in this way ties together a number of alternate interpretations as secondary semantic and/or pragmatic offshoots of the basic category of the prospective. Though data are presented in the Plains Cree dialect, native-speaker judgments confirm the arguments for all the major western dialects, Plains, Woods, and Swampy Cree, as spoken in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

/ð/ appears in only a handful of the world's languages (Maddieson 1984 and Ruhlen 1975). In most of these, /ð/is classified as an obstruent; however, in Woods Cree this segment exhibits a range of characteristics typical of a sonorant. This paper provides a detailed account of the evidence for /ð/'s status in Woods Cree based on its phonetic realizations, the structure of the phonological inventory, voicing patterns, register variation, and phonetic variability in loans from English. While these factors provide strong support that this segment is classified as a sonorant, internal evidence based on obstruent realizations of /ð/--the conflicting patterning of consonant clusters and voicing patterns in word-final position--point to the ambiguous nature of this segment. Given this internal ambiguity and external factors, such as prolonged contact with English and language shift in the community, we raise the possibility that this Woods Cree segment is being reclassified phonologically from one structural category to another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For sentences where the object is coreferent with the subject of the clause (i.e., reflexive sentences), Upriver Halkomelem uses either a special reflexive suffix or the regular object suffix. Given what we know about the distribution of dedicated reflexive forms, the Upriver Halkomelem pattern is unexpected. In this paper, I argue that the special reflexive forms of Upriver Halkomelem are lexicalized and, as a consequence, they cannot block the occurrence of regular object suffixes in a reflexive environment. With this analysis, many of the special properties of Upriver Halkomelem reflexives fall out without further stipulation. Finally, I argue that the apparent "reflexive" use of the "intransitive" suffix (-em) in Upriver Halkomelem derives from the syntax of inalienable possession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the distribution of Halkomelem -exw, which occurs on certain transitive suffixes in certain environments (i.e., with third-person objects). Two analyses are compared: (i) -exw can be analyzed as being part of some transitive suffixes (lexw and stexw) or (ii) -exw can be analyzed as a third-person object agreement suffix. On the basis of empirical evidence having to do with passive and reflexive morphology, I argue that we should analyze -exw as a third-person object agreement suffix. This analysis implies that Halkomelem should not be analyzed as a split ergative language, given that third-person intransitive subject agreement does not pattern with third-person object agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A long-standing debate in the literature on endangered languages concerns the nature of linguistic variation among bilingual speakers in generations leading up to full-scale obsolescence: whether such variation is pathological and a result of factors such as imperfect learning and social fragmentation, or is instead a normal part of the sociolinguistic landscape even where shift is imminent. This paper considers this issue in light of data from Hupa, an Athabaskan (Dene) language of northwestern California. When colonial expansion in the mid-nineteenth century brought novel material culture items to the region, speakers of Hupa dealt with the linguistic problem of referring to them primarily by coining words using productive morphological resources. However, the documentary record is rife with variation in this regard, and many of these innovations appear not to have diffused widely throughout the Hupa-speaking community, at least not to the exclusion of other innovations. Both the avoidance of lexical borrowing and the existence of a high degree of variation are here interpreted as continuations of earlier Hupa linguistic practice, and hence as points of stability rather than discontinuity in the pre-contact and post-contact worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a resultative construction in Q'anjob'al that has not been previously described in Mayan. It occurs in languages of the Q'anjob'al group and Chuj. This construction encodes a resultative semantics through two verbs, where the first verb causes the change of state denoted by the second verb. It resembles serial verbs, because the result is a verb and not a stative word. I propose a complex predicate analysis of this resultative; it has the morphosyntax and structure of simple clauses, the verbs map into a single cause--change-of-state event (where the first verb denotes the cause and manner and the second verb the change of state), and the argument structure involves argument fusion. It follows transitivity and lexical-semantic restrictions; the first verb is transitive and denotes a process and the second verb is a lexical intransitive and denotes a change of state. I argue that the lexical-semantic restrictions are predictable from event structure and the transitivity restrictions from the argument realization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is the first comprehensive historical and comparative treatment of *tty, *ty, *ttz, and *tz in all known subgroups of Zapotec. The study identifies the main changes affecting these consonants and proposes a subgrouping of the Zapotec language family on the basis of the findings. Among the major results of the study are the proposal that Northern, Central, and Southern Zapotec share a node in the Zapotec family tree, labeled Core Zapotec here, and that the Coatec and Quiegolani varieties fall outside Core and Southern Zapotec, respectively. This paper also proposes refinements to several Proto-Zapotec reconstructions and suggests that *tty/*ty and *ttz/*tz may be identified, respectively, with palatal stops and affricates. The study also makes available to researchers painstakingly collected data, most of which have not been available in printed form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While recent studies have attempted to find a unified motivation for the Athabaskan middle voice, middle marking in iterative verbs, which are sometimes middles, is generally less well understood than in other middle constructions. Scholars have cited syntactic intransitivity, semantics, or some combination thereof as motivation for when iteratives are marked as middles. In this paper, we present a quantitative analysis of iteratives from traditional Dena'ina [Athabaskan, Alaska) narratives. This analysis strongly suggests that while grammatical transitivity plays a role in the triggering of overt morphological marking of middies, verb meaning plays an even more important overall role. and thus supports the assumption of a semantically unified class of middle verbs. More specifically, we show that in Dena'ina iterative verbs, middle marking is more likely to occur when the spatial starting and ending points of the action of the verb are undifferentiated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creek (or Muskogee) is among a small number of languages around the world that distinguish multiple tenses based on degrees of remoteness from the time of speaking. Those working on Creek have rarely agreed on the number of tenses or on their meanings, however, and have rarely examined the seemingly intricate ways that speakers use tenses in texts, This paper argues that Creek has one future tense and five past tenses. It finds, however, that speakers may cast events within a single time frame in several different tenses based on immediacy. That is, just as English speakers will sometimes use present tense in describing past events, Creek speakers will sometimes allow tenses to creep forward from past 5 (remote past) to past 4 or even past 3 as events become more vivid. The Creek data thus provide especially clear support for observations that temporal distance in language may be extended metaphorically to express subjective distance (Dahl 1984, Fleischman 1989, and Hintz 2007). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a detailed description and analysis of Ulwa (Misumalpan; Nicara- gua) verb class morphology. Taking as a point of departure the previous literature on the topic (Hale and Salamanca 2002, Hale and Keyser 2002, and Juarros 2003), I show that the facts are more complicated than has been appreciated, and that previous theoretical claims based on facts from the language are not justi?ed. The verb class markers -ta- and -pa-, I argue, are verbalizers of precategorial roots, while -da- and -wa- are shown to serve, among other functions, as anticausativizers. The contrast in the two broad classes of verb class marker is shown to have significant consequences for the lexical semantics, syntax, and morphology of verbs in the language, leading to an understanding of a range of previously poorly understood and undocumented facts of the language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the discussion of Amazonian systems of nominal classification by providing the first description of the system of Uitoto, spoken in the Colombian Amazon. Two gender markers and a set of more than 100 classifiers, most of them denoting physical properties, are described with respect to their distribution and eventual patterns of agreement, their degree of grammaticalization, and their discursive function. Special attention is given to the relation between classifiers and nouns and to the formation of pro-forms with classifiers, stressing the importance of classifiers in the lexical genesis of the language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the historical development of nominal classification systems in Witotoan languages, using mainly systematic comparison of morphosyntactic structures and classifier forms. These comparisons show that nominal classification systems can be reconstructed for the two main branches of Witotoan but not for the common protolanguage proposed by Aschmann (1993). Examination of data from surrounding languages shows that the systems in the two main branches are as similar to those of neighboring languages as they are to each other. This suggests that areal diffusion of nominal classification probably took place at an early stage in the history of Witotoan languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cavineña, an ergative language spoken in Amazonian Bolivia, has a very intriguing pronominal system where, notably, a pronoun coding a transitive subject can either have a full ‘ergative’ form or a reduced form that makes it look like an ‘absolutive’ pronoun (used to code an intransitive subject or a transitive object). Camp (1985) describes the system as an instance of ‘split ergativity’ conditioned by the difference between main and subordinate clause, the mood/polarity of the clause, the constituent order, and a person hierarchy. The phenomenon of split ergative systems was first discussed in the 1970s (by Dixon 1972; 1979, Silverstein 1976, and Comrie 1978, among others) and this certainly influenced Camp's ‘split ergative’ analysis. The goal of this paper is to reevaluate Camp's analysis in the light of new findings about the coding of grammatical functions in this language. It is shown that the peculiarities of the Cavineña pronominal system can be accounted for in a more elegant explanatory and typologically plausible way by recognizing a distinction between independent pronouns and bound pronouns and the application of a simple morphophonological rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The eighteenth century has become known for its decreasing interest in and even its intentions to restrict the use of the Amerindian languages by the authorities in the Americas. However, overseas there was interest in indigenous languages, directed toward the multiplicity of human languages and their comparison more than toward the description of individual languages. Thus, in Russia, Catherine II founded an initiative to find universals in the world's languages. The Quechua vocabulary presented here was composed because of this and is one of only a few eighteenth-century manuscripts on Southern Peruvian Quechua which can be dated (1788); it is kept in the Archivo General de Indias, Seville. This paper presents a transcription of and a short analytic comment on this Quechua vocabulary, which is an important document because it gives us information about how an eighteenth-century Peruvian Quechuist saw the linguistic situation in the Andes and because through the lexical entries it offers phonological material which can help us gain more knowledge of a linguistically rather scarcely documented period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes middle voice expressions in Pima Bajo, a Uto-Aztecan language spoken in northwest Mexico. The analysis shows that the reflexives and middies differ in that in the latter there is no coreferential relation among the participants. It also shows that middles differ from reflexives in the semantic role of the subject participant: agent in reflexives and executor or patient in middles. Pragmatic factors condition the semantic role of executor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

in this paper I detail relationships between verb stems and the conjugation classes to which they belong in Yurok, an Algic language of northwest California. Yurok has four major conjugation classes, with one class, the oo-class, containing three subclasses defined by distinct third-person singular forms. I describe two regularities which have not been noted before. First, within the oo-class, distinct subclasses differing in third singular inflection are associated with distinctions in argument structure. Second, in one intransitive subclass of oo-class verbs, third-person singular inflections have the form and meaning of two Ritwan locative markers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central topic of this study is to investigate three- and four-place predicate in Yaqui, which are characterized by having multiple object arguments. As with other Southern Uto-Aztecan languages, it has been said that Yaqui follows the Primary/Secondary Object pattern (Dryer 1986). Actually, Yaqui presents three patterns: verbs like nenka `sell' follow the direct-indirect object pattern, verbs like miika `give' follow the primary object pattern, and verbs like chijakta `sprinkle' follow the locative alternation pattern; the primary object pattern is the exclusive one found with derived verbs. This paper shows that the contrast between direct object and primary object languages is not absolute but rather one of degree, and hence two "object" selection principles are needed to explain this mixed system. The two principles are not limited to Yaqui but are found in other languages as well, including English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper documents a recent sound change in Klamath of ss > s which took place sometime between the late 1800s and the mid 1900s. A phonetic basis for this sound change is proposed, based on the intrinsic duration of short sibilants. This sound change not only explains the absence of geminate sibilants in modern Klamath but also the lack of derived distributive forms which, historically, differed only from nondistributives in the presence of a geminate sibilant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents results of a phonological and phonetic study of stress in Chickasaw, a Muskogean language spoken in south central Oklahoma. Three degrees of stress are differentiated acoustically, with primary stressed vowels having the highest f0 and greatest duration and intensity, unstressed vowels having the lowest f0 and shortest duration and intensity, and secondary stressed vowels displaying intermediate f0, duration, and intensity values. Vowel quality differences and segmental lenition processes also are diagnostic for stress. The location of stress is phonologically predictable, falling on word-final syllables, heavy (CVC and CVV) syllables, and on the second in a sequence of light (CV) syllables. Short vowels in nonfinal open syllables are made heavy through a process of rhythmic vowel lengthening. Primary stress is sensitive to a further weight distinction, which treats CVV as heavier than both CV and CVC. In words lacking a CVV syllable, stress falls on the final syllable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines syllable weight in Yurok, a highly endangered Algic language of northwestern California. A productive truncation process has only a two-way weight contrast between light and heavy syllables, shortening nouns to a bimoraic word minimum, CVV or CVC. Within the prominence system, however, CVV and CVC syllables must be distinguished. Syllables with long vowels in Yurok always attract stress and are realized with a steady high pitch on the stressed syllable, while CVC syllables do not attract stress. Additional issues addressed include the syllabification of preglottalized sonorants and laryngeal codas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the languages of the Americas has flourished over the past century, even while most of them have diminished in numbers of speakers. With the recognition of the importance of language and identity to health and well-being, many communities are implementing strategies to restore and revitalize their languages. Linguistics provides useful tools for documenting and revitalizing languages and many indigenous language specialists are becoming linguists in order to serve their communities better. This essay conveys some observations from several indigenous scholars about their career paths in linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]