Variation and language attitudes in Yurakaré: Setting out for a cross-linguistic perspective

• Applicant: Dr. Sonja Gipper
• Subject Area: Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics
• Term: from 2015 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 275274422

The proposed project investigates linguistic variation and its relation to language attitudes in Yurakaré, a language isolate spoken in the Amazonian lowlands of central Bolivia by an estimated number of 2,000 speakers. Patterns of linguistic variation have been shown to systematically interact with social factors like age, sex, social group, region, and speech style. However, most of these insights are based on studies of English and a few other large-scale Western languages. In contrast, our knowledge about linguistic variation and language attitudes in small-scale, non-Western languages is relatively small, even though the few pioneering studies show that such languages can differ from large Western languages with respect to the variation patterns they exhibit. Therefore, to arrive at a more comprehensive picture of variation in the languages of the world, more case studies of variation and language attitudes in small-scale non-Western languages are needed. One such case study will be provided by the proposed project. It pursues three main objectives: First, it aims at detecting and describing patterns of linguistic variation in Yurakaré. For this purpose, a corpus study will be carried out using a corpus that has already been compiled by the applicant. To corroborate the findings, a questionnaire survey will be conducted in two Yurakaré villages, collecting systematic speech data from speakers representing all relevant social groups. The second objective of the project is to examine the relation between variation and language attitudes. For this purpose, the questionnaire survey will collect data on the consultants' perception of different variants, on their language socialization, and on their attitudes toward different variants. The third objective of the project is to embed the findings in a broader cross-linguistic and theoretical context by investigating the relation of variation within particular languages to linguistic diversity. To achieve this, the applicant will cooperate with Nicholas Evans from the Australian National University in Canberra. In his project "The Wellsprings of Linguistic Diversity" Evans and his colleagues investigate this question on the basis of a number of case studies. The comparative analysis will reveal which social factors promote and suppress variation, and how language attitudes work as amplifiers of this process. The proposed project will constitute one of the case studies, representing the diversity hotspot of Amazonia. In sum, the proposed project contributes to the description and documentation of the Yurakaré language, thus augmenting our knowledge of the world's languages. Moreover, it enhances our understanding of the relation between linguistic variation and language attitudes in small-scale languages. Further, it contributes to a newly emerging field of scientific investigation, pioneering in revealing the mechanisms of linguistic diversification.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants