Folkbiology in Endangered Languages: The Cultural Classification of Living Kinds Abstract: In this paper, I contrast universalist and relativist approaches to the folk classification of living kinds (e.g., mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, plants, etc.) from a linguistic perspective, with a focus on endangered languages in endangered ecosystems. Predominant theories of folkbiology emphasize universal aspects of...
Abstract: The transmission of Traditional Ecological Knowledge to new generations of Indigenous youth is a matter of urgency for many communities, especially when it bears on issues of sustenance, medicine, or spiritual relations with other species. While the revitalization of traditional calendars is considered as high priority by ethnobiologists and Indigenous scholars in recent cultural...
“Languages without tone occur widely distributed throughout the world with the notable exception of sub-Saharan Africa, whereas languages with tone are concentrated in regions relatively close to the equator where generally warm and humid conditions prevail, apart from (primarily western) North America and some marginal cases in Europe. Everett et al (2015, 2016) suggest that...
The Soundsslike project aims to protect urban sounds as intangible cultural heritage elements and turn the action of protecting sounds into a collaborative work. Sounds are of great significance in daily urban life and in culture as they carry emotions and awaken cultural memories. Thus, they deserve to be protected and transferred to next generations....
Speaker: Dr Gerald Roche is a senior lecturer in politics at La Trobe University, on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people. Abstract: In this presentation I will introduce the concept of the necropolitics of language, which seeks to examine the connections between linguistic discrimination and physical, bodily death. The empirical impetus for thinking about...
Professor Janet Watson and British Council International Research Fellow, Saeed Al-Qumairi, will present their current research on children's rhymes and ecopoetry in Mehri, an endangered non-scripted Semitic language. They will discuss how children's rhymes appear to be disappearing in many parts of the world, but that these rhymes contain vocabulary about the natural world that...
This presentation will provide an overview of Quechua language rights and cultural heritage through a case study of Amantani’s youth development programmes in Cusco, Peru. Amantani is a UK-registered, Peruvian non-profit that works to defend the rights of indigenous young people in the Andes and Amazon regions of Peru. Through participatory visual media, intercultural academic...
Convivencia across linguistic and disciplinary borders: the case of Al-Andalus and the contemporary Maghreb.Sarali Ginsburg, University of NavarraMike Baynham, University of LeedsWe start our presentation by reviewing the implications of Heath’s recent argument concerning the romance origin of the analytic genitive exponent de in Moroccan darija, which raises the issues we have explored in recent work concerning Moroccan...
