LINGUIST List 6.496

Mon 03 Apr 1995

Qs: Tarahumara, Whistling lg, Florida lgs, Sturtevant quote

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Directory

1. , Re: Tarahumara
2. Alain Thomas, Whistling language
3. "John Davis, LIB", query: Florida languages
4. Larry Horn, Query on Sturtevant quote

I'm looking for references on any work that has been done on the
language of the Tarahumara Indians of Northern Mexico. I will be
grateful for any information, and will post a summary of all replies.

Thank You.

Sincerely,

Seth Minkoff
sethmit.edu

[Question]
One of my students recently came back from a holiday in La Gomera, Canary
Islands, Spain, where apparently a whistling language, "El Silbo", is
used aside from Spanish. Has anyone heard it or of it? Please send info.
to me directly; I'll gladly post a summary of my findings.

I hope I'm doing this right.
I have a question to be presented to everyone:
There were a variety of languages in Florida when Europeans first
arrived, such as Utina, Potano, Calusa, Timucua, and Tocobaga.
These disappeared and were replaced by Seminole, which does not
interest me at the present time.
Have there been any publications which list the languages and
their linguistic relationship(s) to one another? How about
linguistic relationship(s) beyond Florida? I am interested in
all languages of Florida, not just the ones I mentioned.

-John Davis

On behalf of a non-net-user, I would like help in identifying the source of the
following quote, which appears in a footnote to a discussion of "Newspeak" and
related issues in a chapter on "Logic and Mathematics" within a book by Jagjit
Singh, "Great Ideas of Modern Mathematics". Here's the footnote:

 'Considering this phenomenon [Newspeak, doubletalk, etc.], one might be
 tempted to believe in the linguist E. H. Sturtevant's paradoxical theory
 that language was invented for the purpose of lying and deceiving.'

Can anyone identify the source of this "theory"? I couldn't find it in
Sturtevant's "Linguistic Change" and my distinguished senior Yale colleagues
weren't familiar with it either. Please write to my address and I'll post a
summary of anything I get. --Larry