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REFERENCES Frishberg, Nancy. 1972. Navajo object markers and the Great Chain of Being. Syntax and
Semantics 1, ed. John Kimball, pp. 259–66. New York: York: Seminar Press. Hale, Kenneth L. 1973. A note on subject–object inversion in Navajo. Papers in Honor of Henry and Renee Kahane, ed. Braj Kachru et al., pp. 300–309. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Li, Fang-Kuei . 1946. Chipewyan. Linguistic Structures of Native America, ed. Harry Hoijer et al., pp. 398– 423. New York: York: Viking Fund. Young, Robert W. 2000. The Navajo Verb System: An Overview. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Press. Young, Robert W., and William Morgan, Sr . 1987. The Navajo Language: A Grammar and Colloquial Dictionary. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Young, Robert W.; William Morgan, Sr.; and Sally Midgette . 1992. Analytical Lexicon of Navajo. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Uchumat Uchumataqu, the Lost Language of the Urus of Bolivia: A GrammatGrammatical Description of the Language as Documented between 1894 and 1952. By Katja Hannß. Indigenous Languages of Latin America, vol. 7.
Leiden: CNWS Publications, 2008. Pp. 306. In this book, Katja Hannß (henceforth H) offers a grammatical description of Uchumataqu (or Uru), an extinct language of the Uru-Chipaya family. This family contains two other extinct languages (Ch’imu and Uru Murato) and one that is still spoken (Chipaya). H’s effort at systematizing the available Uchumataqu materials, consisting of language reports and word lists prepared by various scholars between 1894 and 1952, has resulted in a robust and valuable grammatical description. Chapter 1 presents an introduction to the book, a description of the sources used, and the methodology applied. Chapter 2 lists and exemplifies the phonemes, the most important phonological processes, and includes notes on orthography. orthography. Chapter 3 is an introduction to the morphological type of Uchumataqu. Uchumataqu. It also offers interesting interesting analyses of different morphological processes (such as the not quite convincing evidence for the existence of noun incorporation [pp. 142– 43]) and a satisfying analysis of the word-class distinctions found in the corpus. The chapters that follow present the different different morphological subsystems: nominal morphology (chap. 4); verbal morphology (chap. 5); and the morphology of adverbs, postpositions, and other particles (chap. 6). Finally, chapter 7 offers interesting information on different types of sentences, including complex ones. As in any study relying on the analysis of relatively old secondhand materials, philological issues have to be dealt with. One is, of course, the reliability of the sources. In most of the cases (the clearest exception being Vellard), the data were gathered during very short periods of fieldwork fieldwork (only a few hours in some cases) and
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introduced mistakes during the elicitation sessions. H’s solution to this is a sensible one: a requirement that the data included in the description be attested in all or most of the sources. However, this requirement is also problematic, since the data were gathered at different times between 1894 and 1952. Thus, what H describes represents different stages of the Uchumataqu language, which, due to processes of obsolescence, may be significantly different from each other. The stage of the language found by Métraux seems to be particularly different from the others. Therefore, there is always the possibility that the forms described by just one scholar were genuine, even though they were not mentioned by other scholars, who happened to describe a different stage of language. In addition to the problem of diachronic differences, there is the problem of dialectal differences. H points out that the language described was spoken “around Lake Titicaca in the communities of Irohito (northwestern Bolivia), Ch’imu (southeastern Peru), and in the Bay of Puno (Peru)” (p. 1). However, the language of Irohito (Uru or Uchumataqu) is usually distinguished from Peruvian Uru, referred to as Ch’imu. Analyzing these two varieties together, by including Lehman’s (1929) materials1 on Ch’imu, as H has done, is problematic. As H herself explains: “What can be said is that even in those cases where a Ch’imu word is close to its Ancoaqui [i.e., Irohito— RZB] equivalent, we almost always find slight differences” (p. 40 [emphasis mine]). How these differences are dealt with is not clear. Remarkably, despite H’s inclusion of Ch’imu data in her description, H almost completely ignores Chipaya (Sabaya, Oruro, Bolivia), the one language of the Uru-Chipaya family which is still spoken and the one for which a vocabulary (Olson 1963) and an excellent reference grammar (CerrónPalomino 2006) are available. Chipaya is an invaluable source of comparative data to help to interpret and analyze the Uchumataqu sources, as I show in the remainder of this review. Let us first consider the fact that the sources used by H are not consistent internally nor in relation to each other. Using the example of the Uchumataqu word for ‘water’, which was written by Uhle (1894), by Polo (1901) and Bacarreza (1910), by Lehmann (1929b), by Lehmann (1929d ), by Métraux (1935), and by Vellard (1949–67), H claims that it is almost impossible to determine the quality of the initial stop (pp. 58–59). However, this word is still attested in Chipaya, where we find the form /qhwa v / alternating with [qha v] and, assuming that Chipaya and Uchumataqu are phonologically almost identical (p. 6), we may postulate that the form had an aspirated labialized postvelar initial consonant. However, as Chipaya data also indicate, labialized postvelar stops tend to alternate with nonlabialized ones, a fact that also helps to understand the different orthographic representations found in the sources. Of course, this claim needs additional support; but, if correct, it might have changed the postulated phoneme inventory, which does not include a complete set of labialized sounds. Another area which may have benefited from comparisons with Chipaya data is the analysis of glottal and aspirated plosives. As is usually the case, “the sources are not ! *
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Sources such as these, cited by H, are not listed in the references given at the end of this
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entirely clear about these phenomena” (p. 64) and, therefore, the Chipaya data are all the more valuable. For example, for ‘sweat’, Métraux (1935) provides phalñi while Vellard (1950) provides pálne, making it difficult to ascertain what the quality of the initial sound of that word was. Now, Chipaya shows a cognate form with an aspirated initial consonant /phalan-/, and this fact can be used as evidence that the form given by Métraux was more accurate or that when Vellard described the language, the aspiration had been dropped. Another problematic analysis is H’s interpretation of , , or in Lehmann and Métraux as voiced fricatives. Voiced fricatives are not a typical feature of Andean languages, and a comparison with the Chipaya cognates will demonstrate a correlation between those symbols and the phonemic apicodental and retroflex fricatives of Chipaya. Therefore, the data suggest that, like Chipaya, Uchumataqu had one of those fricatives as a phoneme. Analyzing the use of in materials from 1929 or 1935 according to what it means in the IPA (p. 72) is inappropriate. Similarly, the distinction between a velar and a postvelar fricative, which is suggested by the sources and is not considered phonemic by H, might have been analyzed as phonemic after comparison with Chipaya data.2 Another example is H’s interpretation of the symbol
as a cluster and not as a representation of a retroflex affricate, a more likely analysis. In conclusion, while this painstaking work is a most welcome contribution to Andean linguistics, it is my hope that in future studies of Uchumataqu, there will be more emphasis on the use of Chipaya to help in the interpretation of Uchumataqu data.
Roberto Zariquiey Biondi , La Trobe University REFERENCES Cerrón-Palomino, Rodolfo . 2006. El chipaya o la lengua de los hombres del agua. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. . 2007. Reconstrucción del proto-uro: Fonología. Lexis 31, nos. 1/2:47 –104. Olson, Ronald D. 1963. Vocabulario chipaya. Informe de campo no. 92. Ms., SIL Library, Dallas.
A Grammar of Crow (Apsáalooke Aliláau) . By Randolph Graczyk. Studies in the Native Languages of the Americas. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. Pp. 448. Randolph Graczyk’s A Grammar of Crow is a valuable addition to the growing body of research on the Siouan languages. The intended audience is linguists, but the writing is clear enough that students with a course or two of linguistics might follow 2
Many of those topics were discussed in detail in the phonological reconstruction of
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