NILA – Native Indigenous Languages of the Americas
A Linguistics and English Language Reading Group at School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences
The first NILA session of this term 2025-2026 will be held on the 23th of September. We will be discussing:
Claire Bowern, 2022. "Managing Historical Data in the Chirila Database", The Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management, Andrea L. Berez-Kroeker, Bradley McDonnell, Eve Koller, Lauren B. Collister
Date: 23th September - 3pm
Venue: F29/30, 7 George Square
Mora-Marín, D. F. (2008). Full phonetic complementation, semantic classifiers, and semantic determinatives in ancient Mayan hieroglyphic writing. Ancient Mesoamerica, 19(2), 195–213. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956536108000345
We will be discussing:
Palakurthy, K. (2022). New speakers and language change in Diné Bizaad (Navajo). International Journal of Bilingualism, 26(5), 601-619. https://doi.org/10.1177/13670069221110400
| Please note change of venue for next NILA session! F29/30 in 7GS 👀 |
Date: 27 March, 2pm
Venue: F29/30 in 7GS (2pm-3pm)
Next NILA session we will be reading about possible worlds semantics for Cuzco Quechua Evidentials (Faller, 2011).
Faller, M. (2011). A possible worlds semantics for Cuzco Quechua evidentials. In N. Li & D. Lutz (Eds.), Proceedings of SALT 20 (pp. 660–683). https://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/SALT/article/view/2586
Date: 13 March 2025
Venue: S38, 7GS
In our next NILA meeting, we will be reading about contact in Western South America, mainly between Arawakan languages and Andean Languages (25 pages) on Thursday 27th February:
Pache, M. (2023). Traces of Contact in Western South America: Arawakan and Andean Languages. INDIANA - Anthropological Studies on Latin America and the Caribbean, 97-130 pages. https://doi.org/10.18441/IND.V40I1.97-130
Next week we will be discussing productivity and polysynthesis with Mazzoli (2023).
Mazzoli, M. (2023). Productivity, Polysynthesis, and the Algonquian Verb. In M. Macaulay & M. Noodin (Eds.), Papers of the Fifty-Second Algonquian Conference (pp. 161–184). Michigan State University Press. https://doi.org/10.14321/j.ctv32r03jv
After our session, you're kindly invited to Maria's talk for the Linguistic Circle at 15:10, also in 7GS.
Date: 13th February, 2pm
Room: G38, 7GS
In this NILA meeting, we will be discussing "noun bias" in language acquisition —proposed as a universal feature of early language development—, in Tseltal (Mayan) (Casillas et al. 2024).
Casillas, M., Foushee, R., Méndez Girón, J., Polian, G., & Brown, P. (2024). Little evidence for a noun bias in Tseltal spontaneous speech. First Language, _44_(6), 600–628. https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237231216571
Date: Thursday 30th January, 2p.m.
Venue: Room S38 (7GS)
This week we will be discussing historical comparisons within the Mixtecan Language Family. Auderset et al. (2023) presents the “first Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of the Mixtecan language family of southern Mexico”.
Auderset, S., Greenhill, S. J., DiCanio, C. T., & Campbell, E. W. (2023). Subgrouping in a ‘dialect continuum’: A Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of the Mixtecan language family. Journal of Language Evolution, 8(1), 33–63. https://doi.org/10.1093/jole/lzad004
Date: Thursday 16th January, 2p.m.
Venue: Room S38 (7GS)
NILA will have a recess during the rest of December as the end of the semester approaches. We will continue reading and discussing native/indigenous languages of America next term from mid-January. Please remain attentive to our announcements by signing in to our mailing list:
nila@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk
NILA Organisers
In this session, we will be discussing Khipu Codes, with Medrano & Khosla (2024).
Medrano, M., & Khosla, A. (2024). How Can Data Science Contribute to Understanding the Khipu Code? Latin American Antiquity, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1017/laq.2024.5
Date: Thursday 5th December, 2p.m.
Venue: Room S38 (7GS)
