Indigenous languages of the Americas and their structures

Overview & Synopsis

What do people mean when they talk about the sound pattern of a language—what linguists call phonology? This book explores that question in a hands-on way, with a focus on applying the knowledge in language revitalization and community language work. The book introduces basic ideas and analytic strategies using examples from Indigenous languages across North and South America. Short comprehension checks invite you to test your understanding, and language explorations encourage you to apply what you’ve learned to build your own description of the sound pattern of your language. Throughout, the book takes a practical approach to phonological analysis, not a theoretical approach. The book is designed to be accessible to community members and others without formal linguistic training who are engaged in or preparing for community language work. It is also appropriate for linguistics students and researchers in the early stages of their education about phonology or needing a quick refresher or reference on basic phonological analysis. Each chapter looks at one key concept, starting with language sounds and how they are made, how words are built, and how communities vary in their use of language. Other topics include the sounds specific to a language and how they are put together into words of that language, both in terms of sequences and in terms of syllables. The culmination is an exploration of how sound sequences and word building interact so that the words follow the general sound patterns of the language. Each chapter ends with some ideas about how to incorporate the topic of the chapter in community language work. The goal with each discussion is to help you both to understand each idea and to learn how to use it to describe or analyze a the way sounds work in a language. Importantly, the book also includes suggestions on tailoring your reading to your own goals, offering pointers on which sections you might skip and which ones could be especially useful for you.