Janis Nuckolls | |
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Nationality | American |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
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Institutions | Brigham Young University |
Janis Nuckolls is an American anthropological linguist and professor of linguistics and English language at Brigham Young University in Provo,Utah. She has spent many years doing field research,with a primary focus on the Amazonian Quichua (Kichwa) people in Ecuador and their endangered language.
Nuckolls earned her BA from the University of Wisconsin and her AM and PhD from the University of Chicago. After first visiting the Amazon in graduate school,Nuckolls has been returning for field research for more than thirty years. [1]
Quechua,considered an endangered language,is spoken by between 10,000 and 40,000 people. [2] Nuckolls has published extensively on the sound-symbolic grammar,performance,and cognition in Pastaza Quechua. [3] Her interest includes studying the functions of ideophones,which are words that offer a vivid sensory impression through sound,movement,shape,or action. Nuckolls described it "as painting a word picture–even though they are words,they function as images which communicate not only with sounds but with gestures as well". [4] She has published,among other places,in the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology , Language in Society , Semiotica ,the Annual Review of Anthropology ,Latin American Indian Literatures,the Journal of Latin American Lore,Anthropological Linguistics, American Anthropologist ,and Philosophical Psychology .
Believing ideophones to be best recorded in video format,to capture their performative multi-modal nature,she set up the Quechua Real Words 'audio-visual dictionary' of Amazonian Quichua (formerly also written as Quechua,but now written as Quichua and Kichwa in Ecuador) ideophones,largely from Pastaza Quichua:https://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/
As Professor Nuckolls herself put it on the website:"Quechua Real Words is a site dedicated to an appreciation and study of real words that,by their nature,are difficult to define within a traditional dictionary format. Such words,called ‘ideophones,’‘mimetics,' ‘expressives,’and ‘onomatopoeias’by linguists,present many problems for analysis because of their melodic and gestural dimensions. They are not designed to be abstracted onto a two-dimensional page and are therefore presented here with audiovisual clips of their use."
She has one son and two daughters. She is married to Steve Zuckerman since April,2024. She is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. [5]
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing. Human language is characterized by its cultural and historical diversity, with significant variations observed between cultures and across time. Human languages possess the properties of productivity and displacement, which enable the creation of an infinite number of sentences, and the ability to refer to objects, events, and ideas that are not immediately present in the discourse. The use of human language relies on social convention and is acquired through learning.
Quechua, also called Runa simi in Southern Quechua, is an indigenous language family that originated in central Peru and thereafter spread to other countries of the Andes. Derived from a common ancestral "Proto-Quechua" language, it is today the most widely spoken pre-Columbian language family of the Americas, with the number of speakers estimated at 8–10 million speakers in 2004, and just under 7 million from the most recent census data available up to 2011. Approximately 13.9% of Peruvians speak a Quechua language.
In functional-cognitive linguistics, as well as in semiotics, iconicity is the conceived similarity or analogy between the form of a sign and its meaning, as opposed to arbitrariness. The principle of iconicity is also shared by the approach of linguistic typology.
The Japanese language has a large inventory of sound symbolic or mimetic words, known in linguistics as ideophones. Such words are found in written as well as spoken Japanese. Known popularly as onomatopoeia, these words do not just imitate sounds but also cover a much wider range of meanings; indeed, many sound-symbolic words in Japanese are for things that make no noise originally, most clearly demonstrated by 'silently', not to be confused with the religion Shintō.
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Quechua people, Quichua people or Kichwa people may refer to any of the indigenous peoples of South America who speak the Quechua languages, which originated among the Indigenous people of Peru. Although most Quechua speakers are native to Peru, there are some significant populations in Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, and Argentina.
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Záparo is a nearly dead language spoken by the Sápara, or Záparo, people of Ecuador. As of 2000, it was spoken by only one person out of a total population of 170 in Pastaza Province, between the Curaray and Bobonaza rivers. Záparo is also known as Zápara and Kayapwe. The members of the Záparo ethnic group now speak Quichua, though there is a language revival effort beginning. Záparo is sometimes confused with Andoa, though the two languages are distinct. Záparo has a subject–verb–object word order.
Kichwa is a Quechuan language that includes all Quechua varieties of Ecuador and Colombia (Inga), as well as extensions into Peru. It has an estimated half million speakers.
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Amazonian Kichwas are a grouping of indigenous Kichwa peoples in the Ecuadorian Amazon, with minor groups across the borders of Colombia and Peru. Amazonian Kichwas consists of different ethnic peoples, including Napo Kichwa and Canelos Kichwa. There are approximately 419 organized communities of the Amazonian Kichwas. The basic socio-political unit is the ayllu. The ayllus in turn constitute territorial clans, based on common ancestry. Unlike other subgroups, the Napo Kichwa maintain less ethnic duality of acculturated natives or Christians.
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