Doctoral Dissertation Research: A Reference Grammar of Wanano

University Of Colorado At Boulder, Boulder CO

Investigators

Abstract

This research is partially supported by the Office of International Science and Engineering of NSF. Under the direction of Dr. Barbara Fox and Dr. Jule Gomez de Garcia, Ms. Kristine Stenzel will collect data for her doctoral dissertation. She will conduct linguistic research on Wanano, a language of the Tucano language family spoken by approximately 1600 people living in the northwest region of the Amazon rainforest. Wanano is an endangered language that has yet to be fully described. Ms. Stenzel's fieldwork with the Wanano will involve direct elicitation of linguistic data, transcriptions of oral histories and folktales, as well as the recording of everyday conversations. She will produce a reference grammar of Wanano including features of Wanano phonology, morphology, and syntax. The grammar will take into account recent research in each of these areas and place Wanano in a cross-linguistic context. It will also overview the current sociolinguistic situation of the Wanano people. The grammar will be written within the framework of Basic Linguistic Theory with the overall goal of providing accurate information about the language so that researchers working within a variety of theoretical frameworks may find it accessible. This research is significant to three inter-related areas of linguistics: language description, linguistic theory, and language preservation. First, Ms. Stenzel's research will provide a detailed description of an endangered and underdescribed language. As the language family to which Wanano belongs is also underdescribed, this research will shed light on some of the poorly understood structures of the family, including tone, evidential marking, and word order. Second, Ms. Stenzel's analyses of textual and conversational data will be of use to linguists working on cross-linguistic comparisons. It is especially significant that most of the analyses will be based on conversational data, since some current grammatical theory suggests that conversational syntax provides a new window on the organization of grammar. Finally, this project will provide the community of Wanano speakers with a version of the grammar translated into Portuguese and modified for non-linguists. This grammar will enhance the Wananos' efforts to preserve their language and cultural heritage.