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Anthropology
Location:
Academic Resources Center
- ARC
NHB, Main Building, Ground Floor, Room 60A
Host:
Maureen
Hoffmann
Speaker:
Ives Goddard
Topic:
Endangered Languages:
What's really at Stake?
The
world's languages are rapidly disappearing, Native
North American languages being a representative
example. This loss will mean not only the end
of any possibility of studying these languages
with native speakers, but also the end of any
possibility of knowing many basic facts about
how the structures of these languages function
to convey meaning and express human thought. In
some languages the structure of words and sentences
appears fundamentally different from what is found
in better known languages, raising the basic question
of whether (as some claim) the same theory of
language that works for English and Japanese will
work for them. Evidence against this claim will
be presented. Some of the best evidence comes
from the Museum's unique collection of manuscripts
written by native speakers in the Meskwaki language
of Iowa. The size and diversity of this collection
permits inferences with a degree of reliability
comparable to that of data derived in the usual
way by elicitaion from speakers.
Learn more:
Ives
Goddard
Endangered
Knowledge: What Can We Learn from Native American
Languages
