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Full-Text Articles in Latin American Languages and Societies

Governance And The Revitalisation Of The Guaraní Language In Paraguay, Robert Andrew Nickson Jan 2009

Governance And The Revitalisation Of The Guaraní Language In Paraguay, Robert Andrew Nickson

Robert Andrew Nickson

This article takes a governance perspective to examine the contemporary revitalization of Guaraní, a “repressed” language that is spoken by a majority of the population in Paraguay. A historical overview highlights the striking endurance of the language in spite of two centuries of official subjugation. The article traces the positive impact of political democratization since 1989 on the revitalization of Guaraní by examining four interrelated areas that are closely linked to the governance agenda: the education system, the media, the political system, and popular culture. However, the absence of a comprehensive language policy continues to limit progress in improving governance, …


Reduplication, Ideophones, And Onomatoepoeic Repetition In The Yanomami Languages, Gale Goodwin Gomez Dec 2008

Reduplication, Ideophones, And Onomatoepoeic Repetition In The Yanomami Languages, Gale Goodwin Gomez

Gale Goodwin Gomez

The morphological process of reduplication occurs throughout the Yanomami languages of northern Amazonia. Onomatopoeia and the repetition of morphemes of apparent ideophonic origin are also common in the four major subgroups of the Yanomami language family: Yanomami, Yanomae, Sanuma, and Yanam. Reduplication has been specifically mentioned in grammatical descriptions of Yanomami (Ramirez 1994), Sanuma (Borgman 1990) and Yanam (Gómez 1990). Documentation of the Yanomami languages is ongoing, and grammatical descriptions are incomplete. Nevertheless, data from a thematic lexicon of Yanomae (Albert and Gómez, in prep.) highlights the frequent repetition of onomatopoeic forms, especially in relation to body movements, bodily functions, …