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Vol. 49, no. 2 (Summer 2007)

Contents

Abstracts

The Northern Athabaskan Survey of Edward Sapir and James A. Teit

Robert G. Adlam
Mount Allison University

Abstract. This article investigates the collaboration of Edward Sapir and James A. Teit in a project sponsored by the Geological Survey of Canada and focusing on the northern Athabaskans in the period from 1910, when Sapir first came to head the newly created Division of Anthropology, until the time of Teit’s death in 1922. Despite the project’s ambitious objectives, it progressed little further than the Tahltan of the Stikine River and their eastern Kaska neighbors. Although the reasons for this are complex, it is suggestive of an anthropology taking shape well beyond the strict dictates of the Boasian text tradition. For Sapir, this would see the development of a comparative hypothesis regarding a six-unit classification of North American Indian languages, while for Teit, it would lead to an advocacy on behalf of aboriginal peoples in pursuit of their land rights.

How Do You Write Yourself? How Do You Call Yourself?: Official and Unofficial Naming Practices in a Transcarpathian Ukrainian Village

Jennifer A. Dickinson
University of Vermont

Abstract. This article considers the intersection of official and unofficial naming systems in a village of the Zakarpattja region of southwestern Ukraine. While official names reference interactions with the state and state structures, local unofficial naming practices emphasize regional variants and context-dependent deployment of complex names including the extensive use of kin terms and identifying features, thus focusing attention on interpersonal connections in everyday discourse. In this way, official names support state control over names (and their owners) in the public realm, while unofficial naming practices support the maintenance of local identities dependent on shared experiences, knowledge and frames of reference.

Angloromani: A Different Kind of Language?

Yaron Matras, Hazel Gardner, Charlotte Jones, and Veronica Schulman
University of Manchester

Abstract. Angloromani is the mixed Romani-English speech of Gypsies in Britain. Ours is the first modern attempt at a corpus-based, fieldwork investigation of Angloromani. Its emergence and functions, as well as its position within the typology of mixed languages, have been controversial. We consider the history of Angloromani and its present structures and conversational functions, and conclude that it is a speech variety that differs in various ways from the prototypical notion of a “language.”

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