English
 
Help Privacy Policy Disclaimer
  Advanced SearchBrowse

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Released

Book Chapter

Semantic transparency and cultural calquing in the Northwest Amazon

MPS-Authors
/persons/resource/persons4352

Floyd,  Simeon
Human Sociality and Systems of Language Use, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;
Language and Cognition Department, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;
Categories across Language and Cognition, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;
Interactional Foundations of Language, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;
Language documentation and data mining;

External Resource
No external resources are shared
Fulltext (restricted access)
There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.
Fulltext (public)

Flloyd_2013.pdf
(Publisher version), 2MB

Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

Floyd, S. (2013). Semantic transparency and cultural calquing in the Northwest Amazon. In P. Epps, & K. Stenzel (Eds.), Upper Rio Negro: Cultural and linguistic interaction in northwestern Amazonia (pp. 271-308). Rio de Janiero: Museu do Indio. Retrieved from http://www.museunacional.ufrj.br/ppgas/livros_ele.html.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0012-3333-2
Abstract
The ethnographic literature has sometimes described parts of the northwest Amazon as areas of shared culture across linguistic groups. This paper illustrates how a principle of semantic transparency across languages is a key means of establishing elements of a common regional culture through practices like the calquing of ethnonyms and toponyms so that they are semantically, but not phonologically, equivalent across languages. It places the upper Rio Negro area of the northwest Amazon in a general discussion of cross-linguistic naming practices in South America and considers the extent to which a preference for semantic transparency can be linked to cases of widespread cultural ‘calquing’, in which culturally-important meanings are kept similar across different linguistic systems. It also addresses the principle of semantic transparency beyond specific referential phrases and into larger discourse structures. It concludes that an attention to semiotic practices in multilingual settings can provide new and more complex ways of thinking about the idea of shared culture.