[X] Anthropological Linguistics

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Vol. 43, no. 1 (Spring 2001)

Contents

Articles

Counting the Family: Family Group Classifiers in Yi (Tibeto-Burman) Languages David Bradley1
Neuter Designations of Humans and Norms of Social Interaction in the Balkans Olga M. Mladenova18
On Social Deixis H. Paul Manning54

In Memoriam

In Appreciation of Charles F. Hockett (1916�2000) Sydney M. Lamb 101

Book Reviews

A Dictionary of Creek/Muskogee, with Notes on the Florida and Oklahoma Seminole Dialects of Creek (Jack B. Martin and Margaret McKane Mauldin) Anthony P. Grant 106
Introduction to Linguistic Field Methods (Bert Vaux and Justin Cooper) Peter Bakker 108
Rongorongo: The Easter Island Script. History, Traditions, Text (Steven Roger Fischer) Miki Makihara 111
Bureaucratic Language in Government and Business (Roger W. Shuy), Just Words: Law, Language, and Power (John M. Conley and William M. O'Barr), and Ideology in the Language of Judges: How Judges Practice Law, Politics, and Courtroom Control (Susan U. Phillips) Regna Darnell 115
Oral Traditions of Anuta: A Polynesian Outlier in the Solomon Islands (Richard Feinberg) Janet Dixon Keller 119
Eloquence in Trouble: The Poetics and Politics of Complaint in Rural Bangladesh (James M. Wilce) Gregory G. Maskarinec 121
The Dong Language in Guizhou Province, China (Long Yaohong and Zheng Guoqiao; D. Norman Geary, translator) Jerold A. Edmondson 123
Indian Semantic Analysis: The �Nirvacana’ Tradition (Eivind Kahrs) Rajendra Singh 127
A Comparative Study of Bantu Noun Classes (Jouni Maho) Ellen Contini-Morava128

Abstracts

Counting the Family: Family Group Classifiers in Yi (Tibeto-Burman) Languages

David Bradley
La Trobe University

Abstract. A number of quite closely related Yi branch Tibeto-Burman languages of southwestern China and adjacent Southeast Asia have specific collective numeral classifiers for family groups. These are morphosyntactically distinct from other classifiers: most of them have two syllables comprising two morphemes, while all other classifiers are monomorphemic, and nearly all others are monosyllabic. Family group classifiers show differing degrees of transparency and paradigmatization in different languages within the group, with the most opaque systems and fullest paradigms in certain Central Yi subbranch languages, such as Lisu.

Neuter Designations of Humans and Norms of Social Interaction in the Balkans

Olga M. Mladenova
University of Calgary

Abstract. This article analyzes the linguistic expression of the classification of humans according to sex and age in the Balkans, and specifically the use of grammatical gender. It focuses on the formation, semantics, and use of neuter designations of humans in Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, and Greek and concludes that the phenomenon is innovative. Prototypically, neuters denote children, but they can be used to refer to adults as well. This latter usage contributed to the creation of the Balkan atmosphere of reciprocal nondeference and led to the development of a type of politeness conducive to social cohesion, which was favored in traditional Balkan societies.

On Social Deixis

H. Paul Manning
International Caucasological Research Institute, Tbilisi, Georgia

Abstract. The phenomenon of deixis has been taken to be the clearest single example of language's embeddedness in context. However, contexts explored in the study of deixis have come to be restricted to those that are phenomenally immediate, rather than to those that represent the broader indexical order of society. Using data from Georgian, Mixtec, Circassian, and Welsh, I argue that there are forms of social deixis indexing perduring social relations rather than emergent situational ones. Existing phenomenological accounts of deixis are extended to provide a unified account of both situational and social deixis.

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