Asian Studies

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    A model and typology of reduplication in Sora
    (2013) Phillips, Jacob B.; Harrison, K. David
    Reduplication is found in an unparalleled thirteen percent of the lexicon in Sora, a Munda language of eastern India with 310,000 speakers. Most cross-linguistically attested forms of reduplication are present in Sora, from full to partial, faithful to unfaithful, fixed segmentism, triplication and ordered reduplication. Reduplication in Sora is often onomatopoeic and occurs at higher rates in children's language. However, reduplication is not productive; many of the base forms are not distinct lexemes in Sora. Previous models like the morphological doubling model (Inkelas & Zoll 2005) cannot successfully derive reduplication that is not semantically-driven. Other models, like Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolenksy 1993; McCarthy 2006) cannot successfully account for all forms of reduplication with a single set of constraints. However, the precedence relations model (Raimy 2000) is a loop-based model which accounts for all forms of reduplication in Sora, regardless of their semantics. Full reduplication, like [baIJ' baIJ] 'to be strong', is derived from a precedence loop placed at the coda IIJI that leads to the onset /b/, repeating the entire base. Partial reduplication, like [d3U-'d3Ud] 'to lull to sleep', requires that the beginning or the end of the loop be altered to encompass a portion of the base. Triplication, like [ke-ke-'ke] 'the scream of the peafowl', requires repetition of the loop and ordered reduplication, like [da-'daIJ-da-'daIJ] 'the sound of cutting wood', requires the interaction of distinct precedence loops. My intent is to provide a typology of reduplication in Sora and show that a single model can account for all forms.
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    Heritage Language Loss in the Chinese Community in Argentina
    (2011) Ho, Calvin; Harrison, K. David
    A rapid linguistic shift is happening in the Chinese community in Argentina, one of the newest immigrant groups in the country. Second- and third-generation Chinese-Argentines are quickly abandoning their home language variety (e.g. Taiwanese or Fujianese) for Spanish. At the same time, their parents are sending them to weekend language schools to acquire Standard Mandarin, a variety distinct from the language of the home. Through an ethnographic study of a weekend language school in Buenos Aires Chinatown, I seek to explore the phenomenon of language loss in the Chinese-Argentine community. In order to provide sufficient background to explain the linguistic and sociological phenomena observed, this paper will begin by providing a description of the Chinese community in Argentina, outlining theories of language loss in minority communities, and reviewing historical language shifts in China and Argentina. After laying out this framework, I will then describe the ethnographic project and analyze the observations I gathered in the field. I find that the Chinese community in Argentina is generally following the Fishman (1965) model of language shift, in which the Argentine-born second-generation is dominant in Spanish and chooses to raise children in that language, meaning that subsequent generations are monolingual in Spanish. However, weekend language schools complicate this shift by teaching Standard Mandarin to the youth of the community. Because second- and thirdgeneration children are still acquiring Standard Mandarin in these schools, Chinese language and culture are being maintained at some level; however, it is still unclear how stable this maintenance is. What is clear is that because there is little to no reinforcement outside of the home, non-standard varieties of Chinese will not survive past the second generation. I hope that this paper will spur further research on the Chinese-Argentine community, on which there is very little social science literature.