LINGUIST List 8.536

Fri Apr 18 1997

Qs: Repair, Cultural domain, Aymara

Editor for this issue: T. Daniel Seely <seelylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. M. Eleftheriadou, Conversational repair
2. Ruben Z. Martinez, Decoding Cultural Domain
3. Olaf Husby, Aymara

My name is Martha Eleftheriadou and I am a new subscriber to the
LINGUIST list. I come from Greece and I am doing postgraduate studies
at Stirling University in Scotland. I am currently working on my
dissertation on the topic of conversational repair among native and
non-native speakers of English. I would be grateful to any colleague
who could offer any oponions and advice on the designing of tasks
and/or activities that provide opportunities for negotiation of
meaning and conversational repair techniques in the classroom and/or
natural discourse. I thank you in advance. 

ELEFTHERIADOU MARTHA.

Dear Linguist Subscriber:

I'm developing a research on decoding cultural domain with special
focus among the indigenous cultural communities or the so called
fourth world. If I may ask for references, bibliographies or sites in
the web which I could visit which could provide status or result of
work undertaken on the subject.

In addition, the concept itself, "cultural domain" is a very broad
concept and differently defined by various athors I've consulted, I
would be happy if you could contribute to my literature review on the
operational definition of the said concept.

Likewise, I'm a little worried about the operational usage of the term
"decoding process" Your help in defining the concept can help me focus
the research. Thanks.

Ruben
Please contact me at
rzmpworld.net.ph

In Graham Hancock: "Fingerprints of the Gods"(1995) the author writes
in a chapter dealing with old cultures in Latin America (cultures
possibly thousands of years older than those known today):

"Another possile legacy of Tiahuanco, and of the Viracochas, lay
embedded in the language spoken by the local Aymara Indians - a
language regarded by som specialists as the oldest in the world.
 In the 1980s Ivan Guzman de Rojas, a Bolivian computer
scientist, accidentally demonstrated that Aymara might not be only
very ancint but, significantly, that it might be a "made-up" language
- something deliberately and skilfully DESIGNED". Of particular note
was the seemingly artificial character of its syntax, which was
rigidly structured and umambigous to an extent thought inconceivable
in normal "organic" speech. The syntetic and highly organized
structure meant that Aymara could easily be transformed into a
computer algoritm to be used to translate one language into another."

At http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/ the following is found:

"AYMARA, CENTRAL [AYM] 1,785,000 in Bolivia (1987), 23.7% of the
population; 350,320 in Peru (1987 Cerr=F3n-Palomino); 899 in Chile
(1994 Han= s Gundermann K.); 2,200,000 in all countries. Whole
Altiplano west of eastern Andes. Also a few in
Argentina. Aymaran. (...) Dictionary. Grammar."


Are anyone familiar with Aymara, or the ideas presented above?

Olaf Husby

____________________________________________________________________________
Olaf Husby, Assistant Professor olaf.husbyhf.ntnu.no

Department of Applied Linguistics tel : + 73 59 66 34
Norwegian University of Science and Technology fax : + 73 59 81 50
7055 Dragvoll, Norway
____________________________________________________________________________