LINGUIST List 7.725

Tue May 21 1996

Qs: Cherokee, Programs,Lg origin,multiling,Unknown lg

Editor for this issue: T. Daniel Seely <dseelyemunix.emich.edu>

Directory

1. MISS KATHERINE E SWINFORD, Cherokee
2. "Anita H. Kulman", Linguistics programs
3. linguismaties.sun.ac.za, origin of language
4. Larry Rosenwald, Looking for transcriptions of multilingual conversations
5. Karl Erland Gadelii, unknown language

I am currently in the process of writing a historiography/linguistic
analysis on the Cherokee people and their language. I have a good
number of sources, however, they all date from the 1960's or earlier.
 Does anyone have any information on this group of people and their
language? I would also love to have an actual recording of the
spoken language. If anyone has any information or knows of someone
with the information, please contact me as soon as possible. Thanks!
 K. Meehan

A friend of mine would like to learn something about linguistics on her
own, and she asked me if I knew of any computer software that covered a
basic introduction to the field. I know of hardcopy linguistics
textbooks, but no software. Is there anything?

Anita Kulman
anitaromulus.ncsc.mil

We are trying to compile a comprehensive list of works relating to the role
of natural selection and/or other biological processes in the
origin/evolution of human language.

If you can help us, please send the references directly to me and I will post
a detailed summary to the list.

Thanks in advance

Christine Smit
Department of General Linguistics
University of Stellenbosch
7600 STELLENBOSCH
SOUTH AFRICA

	I'm studying the ways in which American literature, and in particular
anglophone American literature, depicts contact between dialects and contact
between languages. This query concerns the second sort of contact. I keep
feeling, intuitively, that very little in American literature represents the
sort of linguistic richness or anarchy that you hear 1) in all sorts of
conversations with a lot of code-switching, and 2) in lots of social spaces
like marketplaces, or the Cuban-Chinese restaurants of New York, where you have
Chinese conversations among the staff, English and Spanish conversations among
the customers, and English-Spanish conversations between groups of customers
and between customers and staff. In 2), obviously, the linguistic density has
to do not (or not necessarily) with any individual conversation but with the
aggregate of all the conversations taking place over a stretch of time.
	What I was wondering was, are there extended transcriptions of either
of these sorts of speech? I don't trust my intuitions as much as I used to.
	I'd be grateful for any citations or advice - best, Larry Rosenwald
(lrosenwaldwellesley.edu)

Dear all,
a friend of mine not on the List asked me to identify the language of a
song called Isa Lei, of which I quote the first paragraph below. It looks
like a Polynesian language to me, but I would be very happy to receive more
information about what particular language this could be.

Yours sincerely, Karl E. Gadelii (gadeliiling.gu.se)

ISA LEI
Isa Isa vulagi lasa dina
nomu lako au na rarawa kina
cava beka ko a mai cakava
nomu lako au na sega ni lasa