Abstract Linguistics holds rich potential to inform our understanding of South American prehistory. We set out the various dimensions of the linguistic panorama: patterns in language diversity, the expansions and divergence of great language families, and contact and convergence between languages of independent origins. We survey the methodological toolkit by which language comparisons on each level can shed light on their speakers’ pasts. We assess also how best to link up this linguistic record with archaeology and genetics, through correlations in the where, when, and why of prehistory. We look at geographical distributions and seek the homelands out of which each major language family began its expansion. We look at chronology and the different time-depths of those families. And we look at what causation might best explain how each great family came to exist at all, and spread so spectacularly, while other regions harbor acute language diversity. We assess big-picture patterns and contrasts between the Andean highlands and the eastern lowlands, particularly Amazonia. Amid a host of smaller families and unique language isolates, we briefly survey the origins and prehistories of the main individual language families within each macroregion: Quechua, Aymara, Chibchan, and Mapudungun; Arawak, Tupí, Carib, and Jê. Separately, we consider the various forms, intensities, and outcomes of contact and convergence among the speakers of these languages over time. Throughout, we assess what all this means for prehistory: how to read these linguistic signals in concert with archaeology and genetics for a more holistic prehistory of Indigenous South America.

While much work on language variation and change has stressed the role of social context, relatively little attention has been paid to the ways in which particular socio-cultural practices may guide processes of language change in locally or regionally variable ways. This paper explores the role of specialized discourse forms - such as shamanic incantation, ceremonial dialog, and other forms of verbal art - as loci for the emergence and propagation of linguistic innovations in the Amazon basin, particularly those associated with language contact. Specialized discourse in this region arguably enables a potent recipe for language change, via an emphasis on extensive circulation across speakers, communities, and languages; a particular value ascribed to dispersed and linguistically distinct forms; discursive norms that favor close replication while also licensing creative manipulation; and the social position of specialists themselves, who tend to bring together both diffuse social networks and relative status. Various examples of lexical and grammatical change in Amazonian languages are identified that have plausible ties to specialized discourse.

Language isolates have long presented puzzles to historical linguists. With no identifiable sister‐languages, isolates are effectively single‐language linguistic lineages; however, probably all isolates have in fact had relatives in the past – whether they represent the last surviving member of a family that has otherwise disappeared, or they diverged from a known language family long ago. Isolates thus challenge the limits of existing historical methodologies to reliably demonstrate their relationships to other languages, and the many spurious attempts to classify them underscore the dangers of overreaching our methodological capacities. Nevertheless, we have many possibilities to explore the history of isolates, via internal reconstruction, dialect comparison, philological work with older attestations, and the identification of contact‐driven change. The resulting reconstructions can in turn feed comparative research that, in some cases, may shed new light on ancient relationships between a putative isolate and other attested language families. Isolates also offer significant challenges to our understanding of global patterns of language change and distribution: They make up more than a third of the world's genealogical linguistic lineages, despite representing less than 2 percent of the total number of languages; yet they are unevenly distributed around the world. Moreover, they appear to represent relatively extreme examples of both language maintenance and resistance to divergence over time, processes which must themselves make reference at least in part to sociocultural factors. This chapter deals with the phenomenon of language isolates, the challenges they present to efforts to establish language relationships, and their relevance for the study of language history, change, and maintenance.

While tone is widely encountered among Amazonian languages, Amazonia has generally been underrepresented in wider studies of tone and tonal diachrony. This paper offers a case study of tonogenesis within the small Naduhup language family of western Amazonia. We propose that Naduhup tonogenesis was grounded in a prior contrast involving vowel length and was linked to coda voicing. Contact with neighboring languages in which tone was already present was also a likely catalyst. In addition to contributing to our understanding of tonogenesis in a part of the world where these processes are not well known, the Naduhup case provides an illustration of how vowel length, coda voicing, and intonation may all play a role in the emergence of tone.

Colli-Silva et al.1 recently proposed that cupuaçu (Theobroma grandiflorum) was domesticated in northwestern Amazonia as a selection from its sister species, cupuí (T. subincanum). This proposal ignores long-term research in taxonomy, botany, biogeography, and genetics about Theobroma, including cupuaçu. Our review of the research that was ignored and of Colli-Silva et al.’s results demonstrates that cupuaçu is a valid species, as they now agree2, but cupuí may be paraphyletic, the distribution of wild cupuaçu was not included in their samples so the origin of domestication continues unknown, precolonial archaeology lacks remains that can be attributed to either species, historical linguistics indicates that the term cupuaçu references the species’ wild distribution and is a recent introduction in northwestern Amazonia, history suggests that cupuaçu started to be domesticated during the last 100-200 years, and the genomics results are not about the domestication of cupuaçu because it is a valid species and its wild distribution was not sampled.

This paper presents the trajectory of Jean E. Jackson's principal contributions to South American anthropology within the scope of the dossier "Femmes pionnieres de l'anthropologie sud-americaniste." While we focus on her pioneering ethnographic work with the Indigenous peoples of the Colombian Vaupes, we also consider how her ethnographic perspective connects to her other lines of research on identity, indigenous movements and chronic pain patients. Our discussion draws on Jackson's many publications and on our conversations with her in the context of several interviews. Finally, we emphasize the relevance of gender as a consistent thread throughout Jackson's research trajectory-both as a topic of attention in her research, and as a pivot point in her own positioning as a female ethnographer.

As more and more of the world's languages become endangered, their documentation provides key resources for linguists and communities. Documentary linguists look to digital archives as an essential resource for ensuring the preservation, conservation, and access of the outcomes of their work. In this article, we consider the benefits and challenges associated with archiving in language documentation, relating to issues of preservation, conservation, access, ownership, and use of materials. We draw on our accumulated knowledge as scholars who are deeply involved in administering, contributing to, and using language archives, particularly relating to the indigenous languages of Latin America. We focus in particular on the relevance of language archiving in Brazil, and its significance for scholars, community members, and other stakeholders. Our discussion considers the steps that are needed to ensure the quality and longevity of resources; the principles and strategies by which archived materials may be made available; and ways in which language archives can inform ongoing work with indigenous languages. As we lay out here, language archives provide key resources for scholars and for communities who wish to revitalize, maintain, or simply remember their linguistic and cultural heritage.

This essay celebrates the work of Jean E. Jackson, a pioneering female ethnographer who devoted most of her fifty-year career to the Indigenous peoples of Colombia. Her research, represented in an extensive set of publications from the early 1970s to the present, engages with themes of identity, stigma, and social inequality, manifested across a range of contexts. Jackson’s ethnographic contributions include her ground-breaking early work on Indigenous Tukanoan society in the Colombian Vaupés, focusing on the practice of linguistic exogamy (obligatory marriage across language groups) among the Bará people. Later, she expanded her focus to address Indigenous experiences in the context of rapid cultural change in Colombia, relating to evolving conceptions of indigeneity and its relationship to the national society, and how these transitions bear on processes and practices associated with identity, multiculturalism, and neoliberalism. A further thread of Jackson’s research, based in the United States, dealt with anthropological perspectives on chronic pain. In this essay, we focus primarily on her pioneering work with Colombian Indigenous peoples, while also considering how this work connects to her other lines of research, and how her explorations of these themes shaped her significant contributions to ethnographic methodology. We also emphasize the relevance of gender as a consistent thread throughout Jackson’s research trajectory—both as a topic of attention in her research and as a pivot point in her own approach as a female ethnographer.

Enquanto que mais e mais línguas do mundo se tornam ameaçadas, sua documentação fornece recursos importantes para linguistas e comunidades. Os linguistas olham para os acervos digitais como um recurso essencial para garantir a preservação, conservação e acesso dos resultados de seu trabalho. Neste artigo, consideramos os benefícios e desafios associados ao arquivamento na documentação linguística, relacionados a questões de preservação, conservação, acesso, propriedade e uso de materiais. Baseamo-nos em nosso conhecimento acumulado como acadêmicos profundamente envolvidos na administração, contribuição e uso de acervos linguísticos, particularmente relacionados às línguas indígenas da América Latina. Nós nos concentramos em particular na relevância dos acervos linguísticos no Brasil e sua importância para acadêmicos, membros da comunidade e outras partes interessadas. Nossa discussão considera os passos necessários para garantir a qualidade e longevidade dos recursos; os princípios e estratégias pelos quais os materiais arquivados podem ser disponibilizados; e maneiras pelas quais os acervos linguísticos podem informar o trabalho em andamento com as línguas indígenas. Conforme apresentamos aqui, os acervos linguísticos fornecem recursos importantes para acadêmicos e comunidades que desejam revitalizar, manter ou simplesmente lembrar sua herança linguística e cultural.

In the context of communities undergoing radical language shift, speech play and verbal art are often the focus of feelings of linguistic and cultural uniqueness, value, and untranslatability. We define our topic broadly, as any speech activity where linguistic signs themselves gain special salience in the production and interpretation of discourse, and where language is stretched and put on display, whether in highly-valued genres or in everyday talk. Here we offer a tutorial setting out principles and methods for the recording and analysis of speech play and verbal art in the framework of community-based language documentation, integrating ethnographic and linguistic approaches to heightened language use in all its forms. We first elaborate our approach to speech play and verbal art and the theoretical and general questions it raises. We then turn to documentation: what to record and how to record it in light of how it is understood and valued, and how it may be perceived as linguistically special. From there, we move into the philological and analytical aspects of the work, covering specifics of transcription, annotation, analysis, translation, exegesis, and presentation of language records. We conclude with a prospectus on further directions for documentary work on speech play and verbal art.

O legado de Boas tem sido retomado na área de documentação e descrição das línguas indígenas. Um dos seus pontos centrais é deixar a língua contar a sua própria história, ou seja, permitir aos falantes falarem por si mesmos, criando um registro de fala espontânea em situações de comunicação naturais. Isso, segundo Boas, facilitaria a descoberta de estruturas e categorias gramaticais, lexicais e culturais que permaneceriam obscuras para o pesquisador caso não permita o surgimento de pontos de vistas indígenas. Tomando essa perspectiva como fio condutor para o trabalho de campo, apresentamos aqui dois estudos de casos com os povos Dâw e Hupd’äh (Naduhup), mostrando como a escolha de registros pelos próprios indígenas e o método de observação participativa apresentaram-nos categorias gramáticas e lexicais, como por exemplo um inventário de verbos de movimento estruturado na base de traços topográficos e afixos, indicando tipos de interações sociais muito inesperadas.

Recent decades have seen an exponential growth in our understanding of the indigenous languages of lowland South America – from their structures and interrelationships to the dynamics of their day-to-day use and the ways they are conceptualized by their speakers. These advances highlight not only the diversity of languages in lowland South America, but also the complexity of the dynamics of interaction among speakers in multilingual settings. The region is home to a range of interactive indigenous ‘regional systems’, such as the Vaupés, Upper Xingu, and other areas, where multiple languages have thrived alongside each other for generations, and interaction has been shaped by practices such as linguistic exogamy, multilingual song repertoires and ceremonial registers, and exchange networks. However, our understanding of these dynamics remains limited, even as they are eroded by new linguistic ecologies imposed by the national society. This special issue brings together a set of articles by scholars working in historically multilingual areas of lowland South America, whose collective experience and scope of interest spans temporal, geographic, and disciplinary perspectives. In the face of the accelerating loss of both linguistic and biological diversity today in the Amazon basin and beyond, the multilingual experiences of indigenous South Americans may have much to teach us about how language, society, and engagement with a range of others may be mutually constitutive and even mutually sustainable.

This paper presents the trajectory of Jean E. Jackson’s principal contributions to South American anthropology within the scope of the dossier “Femmes pionnières de l’anthropologie sud-américaniste.” While we focus on her pioneering ethnographic work with the Indigenous peoples of the Colombian Vaupés, we also consider how her ethnographic perspective connects to her other lines of research on identity, indigenous movements and chronic pain patients. Our discussion draws on Jackson’s many publications and on our conversations with her in the context of several interviews. Finally, we emphasize the relevance of gender as a consistent thread throughout Jackson’s research trajectory—both as a topic of attention in her research, and as a pivot point in her own positioning as a female ethnographer.

While global patterns of human genetic diversity are increasingly well characterized, the diversity of human languages remains less systematically described. Here, we outline the Grambank database. With over 400,000 data points and 2400 languages, Grambank is the largest comparative grammatical database available. The comprehensiveness of Grambank allows us to quantify the relative effects of genealogical inheritance and geographic proximity on the structural diversity of the world's languages, evaluate constraints on linguistic diversity, and identify the world's most unusual languages. An analysis of the consequences of language loss reveals that the reduction in diversity will be strikingly uneven across the major linguistic regions of the world. Without sustained efforts to document and revitalize endangered languages, our linguistic window into human history, cognition, and culture will be seriously fragmented.

This article is derived from a conference at the ABRALIN ao vivo, held online, in 2020. The goal is to discuss the benefits and challenges associated with archiving in language documentation considering our accumulated knowledge as scholars who are deeply involved in administering, contributing to, and drawing on language archives, with an emphasis on the indigenous languages of Latin America. We focus in particular on the relevance of language archiving in Brazil, and its significance for scholars, community members, and other stakeholders.

While grammaticalization is often conceptualized as a tidy process by which lexical elements develop into bound morphology, this chapter emphasizes that the relationship between the lexical-functional distinction and the syntax-morphology distinction is typologically and regionally variable. In languages of western Amazonia, the prevalence of verb serialization and noun incorporation may contribute to blurring the distinction between syntax and morphology, which can itself be understood to both feed and be fed by processes of grammaticalization. This situation may foster two outcomes that challenge our assumptions of 'normal' diachronic processes: on one hand, the relative stability of elements whose behavior can be understood as in some sense indeterminate between morphology and syntax; on the other, a relatively fast turnover in grammatical morphology. This idea is explored via a comparative case-study of grammaticalization processes facilitated by serial verb constructions in two sister languages of the northwest Amazon, Hup and Dâw (Naduhupan family).

Abstract: In Amazonia, interfluvial groups such as the Naduhup (Makú) peoples of the northwest Amazon have tended to be less visible than riverine peoples in the historical record, but are also more likely to maintain their cultural and linguistic identity over time. Hence the languages of these groups may offer insights into Indigenous histories that have otherwise been largely overlooked or obliterated. Lexicon, grammar, and discourse indicate that the Naduhup peoples have long been deeply integrated within multilingual, interactive regional networks—some still extant, but others long obscured by their disruption centuries ago through the colonial onslaught.