| 1. |
- Mark, David M., et al.
(författare)
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Landscape in language: An introduction
- 2011
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Ingår i: Landscape in language: Transdisciplinary perspectives. - 978 90 272 0286 4 ; , s. 1-24
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Landscape is fundamental to human experience. Yet until recently, the study of landscape has been fragmented among the disciplines. This volume focuses on how landscape is represented in language and thought, and what this reveals about the relationships of people to place and to land. Scientists of various disciplines such as anthropologists, geographers, information scientists, linguists, and philosophers address several questions, including: Are there cross-cultural and cross-linguistic variations in the delimitation, classification, and naming of geographic features? Can alternative world-views and conceptualizations of landscape be used to produce culturally-appropriate Geographic Information Systems (GIS)? Topics included ontology of landscape; landscape terms and concepts; toponyms; spiritual aspects of land and landscape terms; research methods; ethical dimensions of the research; and its potential value to indigenous communities involved in this type of research.
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| 2. |
- Dunn, Michael, et al.
(författare)
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Time and place in the prehistory of the Aslian languages
- 2013
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Ingår i: Human Biology. - 1534-6617. ; 85:1-3, s. 383-399
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Aslian language family, located in the Malay Peninsula and southern Thai Isthmus, consists of four distinct branches comprising some 18 languages. These languages predate the now dominant Malay and Thai. The speakers of Aslian languages exhibit some of the highest degree of phylogenetic and societal diversity present in Mainland Southeast Asia today, among them a foraging tradition particularly associated with locally ancient, Pleistocene genetic lineages. Little advance has been made in our understanding of the linguistic prehistory of this region or how such complexity arose. In this article we present a Bayesian phylogeographic analysis of a large sample of Aslian languages. An explicit geographic model of diffusion is combined with a cognate birth-word death model of lexical evolution to infer the location of the major events of Aslian cladogenesis. The resultant phylogenetic trees are calibrated against dates in the historical and archaeological record to infer a detailed picture of Aslian language history, addressing a number of outstanding questions, including (1) whether the root ancestor of Aslian was spoken in the Malay Peninsula, or whether the family had already divided before entry, and (2) the dynamics of the movement of Aslian languages across the peninsula, with a particular focus on its spread to the indigenous foragers.
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| 3. |
- Burenhult, Niclas
(författare)
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A grammar of Jahai
- 2002
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Jahai, a language belonging to the Aslian branch of the Mon-Khmer language family, is spoken by a group of about 1,000 hunter-gatherers in the montane rainforests of northern Peninsular Malaysia. Drawing on linguistic data collected in the field, the present dissertation is a study of the grammar of Jahai. The work begins with an introduction to Jahai and its speakers, and subsequent chapters chart the fields of phonology, word formation, nominal word classes, verbal word classes, syntax and a phenomenon referred to here as expressive elaboration. It also includes a word-list. Although largely descriptive in character, the study makes use of suitable theoretical models for the analysis of linguistic features. Typological comparisons are made at times, primarily with other Aslian languages. The phonological section comprises an analysis of phonemes, phonotactic properties, prosody and the phonological behaviour of loanwords. Features of special interest include phonemic vowel nasality and peculiar realisations of word-final nasal consonants. Particular emphasis is placed on the morphological system, which involves intricate and diverse processes of affixation, cliticisation and reduplication. Such processes are analysed within the framework of Prosodic and Template Morphology. A fundamental distinction is made between 'inner' and 'outer' affixation. Verbal morphology is particularly complex, involving a range of derivational categories related to e.g. aspect, Aktionsart and nominalisation. Nominal morphology includes a typologically unusual derivational category of unitisation connected to quantification. The section on syntax analyses tentatively the structure of phrases and clauses and addresses problems of agreement and argument structure. The marginal phenomenon of expressive elaboration deviates in several respects from the ordinary linguistic system and therefore receives separate treatment. In several respects, Jahai conforms to the patterns described for most other languages of the Aslian branch of Mon-Khmer. It also exhibits features hitherto undocumented elsewhere among its relatives. A pervasive feature of the Jahai linguistic system is its readiness to incorporate foreign elements, notably from Malay, the Austronesian majority language of the Malay Peninsula.
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| 4. |
- Kruspe, Nicole, et al.
(författare)
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Pronouns in affinal avoidance registers : Evidence from the Aslian languages (Austroasiatic, Malay Peninsula)
- 2019
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Ingår i: The social dynamics of pronominal systems : A comparative approach - A comparative approach. - 0922-842X. - 9789027203168 - 9789027262547 ; 304, s. 289-317
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Affinal avoidance registers are strategies of restrained linguistic conduct in relation to one’s in-laws. Current theories are primarily concerned with two types of strategies: (1) taboos on uttering the proper names of affines, and (2) substitution of everyday words with dedicated parallel lexicon in the presence of affines (so-called “mother-in-law languages”). However, the role of pronouns has received limited attention. Here we explore little-known registers in the Aslian languages (Austroasiatic, Malay Peninsula), where dedicated pronoun paradigms take centre stage in communication with and about in-laws. We characterise and compare these closely related but internally diverse systems, situate them in their cultural contexts, and discuss their status in relation to current theories and typologies of avoidance and honorific registers.
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| 5. |
- Burenhult, Niclas
(författare)
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Sustainability and semantic diversity : A view from the Malayan rainforest
- 2023
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Ingår i: Topics in Cognitive Science. - 1756-8765. ; 15:3, s. 546-559
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sustainable development goals assume that basic notions such as health, life and water can be universally and easily expressed and understood across diverse communities and stakeholders. Yet there is growing evidence pointing to considerable semantic diversity in how humans represent the world in language. In this paper I discuss such semantic diversity in the context of key notions of sustainability. Focusing on an environmental term of broad relevance to sustainability goals, forest, I explore how this notion compares with assumed equivalent notions in a non-Western lesser-known speech community. Specifically, I analyze representations of treed environments in the language of the Jahai, a forager community inhabiting the rainforests of the Malay Peninsula. The results show that an understanding of local indigenous systems of representation can be crucial to the communication and implementation of sustainability goals.
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| 6. |
- Arshamian, Artin, et al.
(författare)
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Human sickness detection is not dependent on cultural experience
- 2021
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences. - : The Royal Society. - 0962-8452 .- 1471-2954. ; 288:1954
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Animals across phyla can detect early cues of infection in conspecifics, thereby reducing the risk of contamination. It is unknown, however, if humans can detect cues of sickness in people belonging to communities with whom they have limited or no experience. To test this, we presented Western faces photographed 2 h after the experimental induction of an acute immune response to one Western and five non-Western communities, including small-scale hunter-gatherer and large urban-dwelling communities. All communities could detect sick individuals. There were group differences in performance but Western participants, who observed faces from their own community, were not systematically better than all non-Western participants. At odds with the common belief that sickness detection of an out-group member should be biased to err on the side of caution, the majority of non-Western communities were unbiased. Our results show that subtle cues of a general immune response are recognized across cultures and may aid in detecting infectious threats.
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| 7. |
- Hägerhäll, Caroline, et al.
(författare)
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Do humans really prefer semi-open natural landscapes? A cross-cultural reappraisal
- 2018
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Psychology. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 1664-1078. ; 9, s. 1-14
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- There is an assumption in current landscape preference theory of universal consensus in human preferences for moderate to high openness in a natural landscape. This premise is largely based on empirical studies of urban Western populations. Here we examine for the first time landscape preference across a number of geographically, ecologically and culturally diverse indigenous populations. Included in the study were two urban Western samples of university students (from southern Sweden) and five non-Western, indigenous and primarily rural communities: Jahai (Malay Peninsula), Lokono (Suriname), Makalero (Timor), Makasae (Timor), and Wayuu (Colombia). Preference judgements were obtained using pairwise forced choice assessments of digital visualisations of a natural landscape varied systematically on three different levels of topography and vegetation density. The results show differences between the Western and non-Western samples, with interaction effects between topography and vegetation being present for the two Swedish student samples but not for the other five samples. The theoretical claim of human preferences for half-open landscapes was only significantly confirmed for the student sample comprising landscape architects. The five non Western indigenous groups all preferred the highest level of vegetation density. Results show there are internal similarities between the two Western samples on the one hand, and between the five non-Western samples on the other. To some extent this supports the idea of consensus in preference, not universally but within those categories respectively.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Burenhult, Niclas
(författare)
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A grammar of Jahai
- 2005
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Bok (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This book is a linguistic study of Jahai, a language belonging to the Northern Aslian subgroup of the Aslian branch of the Mon-Khmer language family. The language is spoken by groups of foragers in the mountain rainforests of northern Peninsular Malaysia and southernmost Thailand, its total number of speakers estimated at around 1,000. This study describes the grammar of Jahai, including its phonology, processes of word formation, word classes, and syntax. It also includes a word-list. While primarily aimed at linguistic description, the study makes use of suitable theoretical models for the analysis of linguistic features. In particular, models of Prosodic and Template Morphology are employed to describe the language's intricate processes of affixation. Typological comparisons are made at times, especially with other Aslian languages. The study is intended to expand our knowledge of the understudied Aslian languages. It is also intended to contribute to Mon-Khmer and Southeast Asian language studies in general, and, hopefully, also to a wider linguistic context. Furthermore, it may serve as a practical source of linguistic information for researchers and others working among the Northern Aslian speech communities.
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| 10. |
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