Week 4: Special Language Structures: Place names; Personal Names; Plants and Animals

Feb. 3: Naming Places in Native America
Silver and Miller: 3.2, 3.3
Hinton: Pt. II, section 8
Basso: "Speaking with Names" (e-reserve)
Lecture: on Arapaho place names. (Link to the powerpoint highlights.)

Feb. 5: Naming People and Things in Native America
Silver and Miller: 3.1, 3.6-3.10
Lecture: on Arapaho personal names; plant and animal names (Link to powerpoint highlights)

Week 5: A Closer Look at Language and Culture

Feb. 10: Ways of Speaking
Silver and Miller 4.1-4.3, 6
Hinton13
Lecture: Arapaho Joking

Feb. 12: Ways of Thinking
Hinton 5
Silver and Miller: 4.5
Lecture: Arapaho Ceremonialism and Joking (Link to powerpoint)

Week 6: A Closer Look at Language and Environment

Feb. 17: California
Hinton 4, 11
Lecture: Further details, California (Miwok)

Feb. 19: Basso, "Stalking with Stories" (e-reserve)
Lecture: Arapaho Place Names, Decorative Arts, and Mythology in RMNP

Feb. 20: First 4-page report on your tribe/language due. Topic: personal names, personal relationships, joking, politeness, range of speech types in community, speech and gender; place names, plant and animal names, folk taxonomies, connections of language to landscape (grammar, vocabulary, etc.), stories about landscape or perspectives on landscape. For your report, try to cover some of both main topics (people; landscape and nature) at least some, but the balance is up to you.

Feb. 24 Quiz #2: Language and Culture Study Sheet
Quiz Answers

Week 7: Languages in Contact

Feb. 24: Borrowing and Language Contact
Hinton 7, 9
Silver and Miller 10
Lecture: Native American words in English; Hawaiian Creole English (Link to powerpoint)

Feb. 26: Acculturation in Language
Silver and Miller 11
Lecture: Arapaho Neologisms

Week 8: Beyond the Voice

Mar. 3: Native Writing Systems
Hinton 20
Silver and Miller 8
Lecture: In detail: Mayan Hieroglyphics

Mar. 5: Sign Language
Silver and Miller 7
Lecture: Demonstrating Plains Sign Language

Mar. 6: Part due of report due. Topic: IF your tribe historically used writing or sign language, or if a writing system has been adopted more recently, you can discuss this, including details on how non-English sounds are written, how the writing system came to be adopted, what it's used for, how many people use it, etc. IF relevant, you can also talk about radio, television, movies, internet presence or other newer technologies involved with the language. Another possible topic is new words for new items: how does your language form them, where are they borrowed from, etc. Another topic is slang, pidgins or creoles that may have developed, etc. Finally, if none of these topics seems to be working, you can also write on artistic traditions (i.e. visual language and representations) either traditionally or in modern times.

Mar. 10 Quiz #3: Language Contact, Writing and Signing Study Sheet
Answers

Week 9: Native American Verbal Performance: Music, Dance and Ritual

Mar. 10: Ritual
Silver and Miller 5.5-5.7
Dunsmore, "Transformation" (e-reserve)
Lecture: The Arapaho Sun Dance

Mar. 12: Music: Traditional and Modern
Hinton 2-3,14
Silver and Miller 5.4
Lecture: Brenda Romero, Ethnomusicology, Guest Lecture
Posting of some thoughts on connections between Prof. Romero's presentation and other readings/discussions we've had in class.

Week 10: Native American Verbal Performance: Storytelling

Mar. 17: Introduction
Silver and Miller 5.1-5.3
Kroeber: Introduction to Traditional Literatures of the American Indian (e-reserve)

Mar. 19: No class due to conference.

Mar. 31: Traditional Modes of Interpretation
Toelken "Poetic Retranslation" (e-reserve)

Week 11: Storytelling Continued

April 2: Arapaho Narrative
"The Eagles"; "The Scouts"

Apr. 6: Section 3 of report due: on performance traditions. You can choose to cover ONE narrative, musical text, ritual or prayer; ideally you should use a text for which you have the original language as well as a translation, and you should cover both organization/poetic elements and the idea of a text as performance, opening up possibilities of cultural reflection and critique. Your ideal model for this kind of thing would be the article by Toelken and Scott (e-reserve).

Apr. 7 Quiz #4: Verbal Performance Study Sheet

Week 12: Language Loss : Historical causes and conditions

Apr. 7: The Colonial Condition
Hinton 1,17
Silver and Miller 1

Apr. 9: The World-wide Context
Annual Review of Anthropology 2005: "Will Indigenous Languages Survive?" by M. Walsh. Online at: http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/loi/anthro?cookieSet=1

Week 13: Language Loss : Current causes, and attempts at remediation

Apr. 14: Tribal Responses
Hinton18-22
Video: 'Auhea 'oe e ke kumu
Lecture: Hawaiian revitalization efforts

Apr. 16: Ongoing Issues
House: "Narratives of Navajo-ness" from Language Shift among the Navajos (e-reserve)
Meek: "Respecting the Language of Elders" Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 17,1 (2007) 23-43:
On-line at: http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?RQT=318&pmid=67100&cfc=1
Lecture: Arapaho revitalization efforts

Apr. 17: Section 4 of report due: You can cover EITHER the history of language loss and language revitalization efforts for your tribal language, OR the socio-political history of your tribe since traditional times (since this history is intimately, if indirectly linked to shifts in language). You may also choose to try and do both of these, depending on how much information you find for each topic.

Apr. 21 Quiz #5: Language loss Study Sheet Answers

Week 14: Native America Today: Language, Culture and Identity

Apr. 21: Rountree, "The Middle Centuries" from The Powhatan (e-reserve)
Apr. 23: Leap, American Indian English, chps. 1, 6 (e-reserve)
Lecture: Eastern Tribes: Beyond Language

Thursday, April 23, 8:30am: student/faculty breakfast with David Treuer (Ojibwe). UMC Rm 245. RSVP to me if you would like to attend.

Thursday, April 23, 7pm, Eaton Humanities Rm 150: David Treuer (Ojibwe) on modern tribal identities. Extra credit for a one-page write-up/response to this talk.

Week 15: Review and discussion

Apr. 28: Traditions: Language, Culture, Identity and Place
Apr. 30: Evolving Patterns: Patterns of Language Today

Final Exam - May 2, 7:30-10pm

Sunday Morning Ethnobotany Walk: Learn about Native Plants and Stories, May 3
(This is completely optional, and just for fun.) Meet at Devil's Thumb trailhead, in south Boulder. Off Broadway, go west on Table Mesa. Turn left/south on Lehigh, then right on Bear Mountain Drive. Park along the road -- the trailhead starts where open space reaches all the way down to the street. 9am-noon. No restrooms at the trailhead, so stop at King Soopers (on Table Mesa) on the way up. Trail is a wide, flat road, basically.

Final Reports - due May 5

Final report section: EITHER a description of the basic grammar features of your language OR (for the more linguistically inclined) a description of some particular area of the language that is especially interesting or different from English

Class Requirements:

Attendance and Participation in Class Discussions = 10%
Quizzes (5 total) - 20 minutes each/and or take-home = 25%
Final Exam = 35%
Final Report - on one Native American language = 30%

For the Final Report, you must choose one particular language to investigate throughout the semester. You should choose by Feb. 6. The report will cover the same questions as those treated in the course. You should turn in the appropriate sections on the friday before each quiz. For example, when the quiz on verbal performance traditions is given, you should turn in your draft on verbal performance traditions in your chosen language at the class meeting preceding the quiz or the friday after (by e-mail). The five sections of the report should be 4 pages each.