Indigenous Languages and Cultures of the Americas

Catalog description

This course introduces the study of indigenous languages and cultures of the Americas: North, Centro and South America. It looks at the study of languages closely tied to their cultural knowledge. Students will learn about the major language families and isolate languages that are spoken in this part of the world. Similarly, students will learn about unique areal features expressed through morphology of these languages, particularly studying grammatical morphemes that are associated with motion and direction and posture. The minority languages in this part of the continent stand out by prominently exhibiting these types of grammatical information morphologically. The main goal of this course is to teach the students awareness of the linguistic diversity of the Americas stressing language and cultural endangerment. In this sense, the course will also emphasize topics such as language documentation, language preservation, language activism and development of educational materials to revitalize and maintain endangered languages for future generations.