Washo is a Native American language spoken in the Lake Tahoe area of California and Nevada. It is highly endangered, with only a handful of elderly native speakers left. Washo makes use of two strategies for expressing comparison of objects (cf. English: John is taller than Mary): conjoined comparison, where two independent clauses containing antonyms are juxtaposed; and locative comparison, where the standard of comparison is marked with a locative postposition or suffix. While both strategies for comparison are typologically quite common in the world's languages, these constructions remain under-studied in formal linguistics.
Under the direction of Dr. Christopher Kennedy, Mr. Ryan Bochnak will conduct primary fieldwork in the Washo community with some of the remaining speakers to investigate the semantic properties of the two comparison constructions in the language. Data will be collected through elicitation sessions where Mr. Bochnak will collect translations, narratives, and judgements on constructed examples to arrive at a more complete picture of comparisons and degree-related constructions in Washo. Of particular interest is the interpretation of scalar properties in comparison constructions, as well as their (un)acceptability with modifiers and measure terms. All data collected will be digitally recorded and transcribed by Mr. Bochnak. The analysis of the Washo data will inform the question of to what extent there exists a common semantics for comparison across languages, despite divergences in morphology and syntax.
This research follows a recent and growing trend of using data from under-studied languages to test semantic theories against a broader range of languages. In addition, this project will make a significant contribution to the permanent record of a highly endangered language, with the materials collected being made available to the Washo community in the form of annotated recordings of elicitation sessions in an online database.
Washo is a Native American language spoken in the Lake Tahoe area of California and Nevada. It is highly endangered, with only a handful of elderly native speakers left. Washo makes use of two strategies for expressing comparison of objects (cf. English: "Kim is taller than Lee"): conjoined comparison, where two independent clauses containing antonyms are juxtaposed (e.g., "Kim is tall, Lee is short"); and locative comparison, where the standard of comparison is marked with a locative postposition or suffix (e.g. "Kim is tall next to Lee"). While both strategies for comparison are typologically quite common in the world's languages, these constructions have remained under-studied in formal linguistics. Under the direction of Dr. Christopher Kennedy, Mr. Ryan Bochnak conducted primary fieldwork in the Washo community with some of the remaining speakers to investigate the semantic properties of the two comparison constructions in the language. Data was collected through elicitation sessions where Mr. Bochnak collect translations, narratives, and judgments on constructed examples to arrive at a more complete picture of comparisons and degree-related constructions in Washo. Of particular interest was the interpretation of scalar properties in comparison constructions, as well as their (un)acceptability with modifiers and measure terms. The results of this research provided striking evidence that languages vary considerably in the way gradability is expressed and encoded. The grammatical properties of conjoined and locative comparisons in Washo were shown to be quite different from English "-er... than" comparatives. In particular, the relevant constructions in Washo are not suited to making precise comparisons between individuals. We hypothesize that Washo lacks a grammatical counterpart to English "-er... than", and that correspondingly gradable predicates like "tall" have a different lexical representation in Washo. The analysis of the Washo data informs the question of to what extent there exists a common semantics for comparison across languages, despite divergences in morphology and syntax. Washo lacks the sort of morphological resources that allow speakers to make precise comparisons; nevertheless, speakers may get around this restriction by making use of more complex paraphrases that approximate the meanings that are grammatically encoded in comparative constructions in English. This research highlights the extent to which languages can lack certain grammatical properties without hindering efficient communication. In addition, this project makes a significant contribution to the permanent record of a highly endangered language. The data collected was digitally recorded and transcribed by Mr. Bochnak. These materials have been made available to the Washo community in the form of annotated recordings of elicitation sessions in an online database in order to further the cause of language teaching and revitalization efforts.
