Theoretical Perspectives On Native American Languages

American linguistics has a tradition of finding unique and important insights from studies of Native American languages, often leading to innovations in current theories. At the same time, research on Native languages has been enhanced by the perspectives of modern theory. This book extends this tradition by presenting original analyses of aspects of six Native languages of Canada--Algonquin, Athapaskan, Eskimo, Iroquoian, Salishan, and Siouan. Addressing problems relevant to phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics, the authors make both descriptive and theoretical contributions by presenting data that has not been previously published or treated from the viewpoint of contemporary theory.

American linguistics has a tradition of finding unique and important insights from studies of Native American languages, often leading to innovations in current theories. At the same time, research on Native languages has been enhanced by the perspectives of modern theory. This book extends this tradition by presenting original analyses of aspects of six Native languages of Canada—Algonquin, Athapaskan, Eskimo, Iroquoian, Salishan, and Siouan. Addressing problems relevant to phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics, the authors make both descriptive and theoretical contributions by presenting data that has not been previously published or treated from the viewpoint of contemporary theory.

Comprehensive in scope and rich in detail, this book explores language planning, language education, and language policy for diverse Native American peoples across time, space, and place. Based on long-term collaborative and ethnographic work with Native American communities and schools, the book examines the imposition of colonial language policies against the fluorescence of contemporary community-driven efforts to revitalize threatened mother tongues. Here, readers will meet those who are on the frontlines of Native American language revitalization every day. As their efforts show, even languages whose last native speaker is gone can be reclaimed through family-, community-, and school-based language planning. Offering a critical-theory view of language policy, and emphasizing Indigenous sovereignties and the perspectives of revitalizers themselves, the book shows how language regenesis is undertaken in social practice, the role of youth in language reclamation, the challenges posed by dominant language policies, and the prospects for Indigenous language and culture continuance current revitalization efforts hold.

This book presents insights into laryngeal features. Taking diverse theoretical perspectives, it investigates properties such as tone, non-modal phonation, non-pulmonic production mechanisms, stress, and prosody in several indigenous languages of the Americas.

Comprehensive in scope yet full of ethnographic detail, this book examines the history of language policy by and for Native Americans, and contemporary language revitalization initiatives. Offering a critical-theory view and emphasizing the perspectives of revitalizers themselves, the book explores innovative language regenesis projects, the role of Indigenous youth in language reclamation, and prospects for Native American language and culture continuance.

Sean Harvey explores the morally entangled territory of language and race in this intellectual history of encounters between whites and Native Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Misunderstandings about the differences between European and indigenous American languages strongly influenced whites’ beliefs about the descent and capabilities of Native Americans, he shows. These beliefs would play an important role in the subjugation of Native peoples as the United States pursued its “manifest destiny” of westward expansion. Over time, the attempts of whites to communicate with Indians gave rise to theories linking language and race. Scholars maintained that language was a key marker of racial ancestry, inspiring conjectures about the structure of Native American vocal organs and the grammatical organization and inheritability of their languages. A racially inflected discourse of “savage languages” entered the American mainstream and shaped attitudes toward Native Americans, fatefully so when it came to questions of Indian sovereignty and justifications of their forcible removal and confinement to reservations. By the mid-nineteenth century, scientific efforts were under way to record the sounds and translate the concepts of Native American languages and to classify them into families. New discoveries by ethnologists and philologists revealed a degree of cultural divergence among speakers of related languages that was incompatible with prevailing notions of race. It became clear that language and race were not essentially connected. Yet theories of a linguistically shaped “Indian mind” continued to inform the U.S. government’s efforts to extinguish Native languages for years to come.

Theoretical Perspectives on American Indian Education introduces four prominent theoretical perspectives on American Indian education: cultural discontinuity theory, structural inequality, interactionalist theory, and transculturation theory. By including readings that each feature a theoretical perspective, Huffman provides a comparison of each perspective's basic premise, fundamental assumptions regarding American Indian education, implications, and associated criticisms. Bringing together treatments on a variety of theories into one work, this book integrates current scholarship and discussions for researchers, students, and professionals involved in American Indian education.

Focusing on the Americas – home to 40 to 50 million Indigenous people – this book explores the history and current state of Indigenous language revitalization across this vast region. Complementary chapters on the USA and Canada, and Latin America and the Caribbean, offer a panoramic view while tracing nuanced trajectories of "top down" (official) and "bottom up" (grass roots) language planning and policy initiatives. Authored by leading Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, the book is organized around seven overarching themes: Policy and Politics; Processes of Language Shift and Revitalization; The Home-School-Community Interface; Local and Global Perspectives; Linguistic Human Rights; Revitalization Programs and Impacts; New Domains for Indigenous Languages Providing a comprehensive, hemisphere-wide scholarly and practical source, this singular collection simultaneously fills a gap in the language revitalization literature and contributes to Indigenous language revitalization efforts.