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Exploring between the lines: the role of texts and interlinear representation in the description of Coahuitlán Totonac
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- Author / Creator
- Moore, Devin
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Recording and transcribing textual material is a critical part of documentary and descriptive
linguistics. The advantages of text collection in minority language communities are recognised to
extend beyond linguistics and texts offer a valuable record of the community’s oral history.
Although there is broad agreement to their importance, in practice texts remain underutilised.
This dissertation brings texts to the fore of a documentary and descriptive undertaking, with a
focus on the representational choices underlying their presentation, in particular the use of
interlinear glossing. Interlinear glossing is a ubiquitous strategy used to illustrate the structure of
a language by parsing and glossing meaningful units (morphemes) within a larger string of
speech. It shows how meaning is expressed in the language under study and forms a kind of
bridge to the English translation. Although interlinear glossing is widespread, a generally
accepted standard of representational conventions is lacking, and there is little discussion of the
variation that exists in this kind of representation. In the context of the documentation and
description of Coahuitlán Totonac, this dissertation presents texts in a number of representational
styles, highlighting the value different systems of conventions bring for different levels of
analysis. Each chapter presents one level of grammatical analysis: phonology, prosody,
derivational morphology, and inflectional morphology. Chapters are structured in three parts: a
sketch of the relevant grammatical domain, a discussion of representational choices given the
challenges of that domain, and one or more texts presented with a focus on the particular level of
analysis.The Totonacan (a.k.a. Totonac-Tepehua) language family is spoken by communities in
the Sierra Madre Oriental of Mexico in the states of Puebla, Veracruz, and Hidalgo. Coahuitlán
Totonac belongs to the Northern Totonac branch, and is spoken by around 3000 people in Coahuitlán, Veracruz. Previously undocumented, Coahuitlán Totonac remains the primary
language of speakers in family and community settings, and although it faces the familiar
challenges of minority languages around the world, at present it appears to be sustainable. A
number of features of Coahuitlán Totonac present challenges to representation—for example, it
is highly agglutinative and polysynthetic, the large number of derivational morphological
processes resulting in many complex words. When derivations are not transparent or are non-
compositional, fully-parsed forms can become distracting and add visual clutter. The context in
which the example is used is critical: a discussion of derivation and word-formation requires this
level of detail, but in a discussion of phonology or inflection, the expanded derivation can be
distracting. Extensive inflectional morphology, including polypersonal agreement, poses a
similar challenge where over-glossing can lead to opaque examples. A number of verb forms in
Coahuitlán Totonac are non-compositional or idiomatic: the signifier of these forms consists of
multiple meaningful elements borrowed from other parts of the paradigm. Representation of
these forms is complicated because the elements within the pattern continue to exhibit the same
behaviour they have when used compositionally: so in some contexts it is helpful to identify the
individual elements to explain their morphophonological alternations. In other contexts, we can
safely disregard the origins of the signifier and focus only on the non-compositional form.
Another feature, a system of segmental processes conditioned by prosodic units (“juncture
phenomena”) requires the inclusion of additional information on prosodic boundaries because
without reference to the prosody, it is impossible to describe the distribution of these processes.
Outside of a discussion of prosody, the processes may be minimized or left out of the
representation entirely.To meet these challenges, this dissertation explores the choices made in the interlinear
representation, between the lines of text and translation. These representational choices include
varying the number of lines, introducing new symbols and bracketing, and the inclusion or
exclusion of certain information. The result is a distinct style of textual representation for each
chapter: a practical application of principles underlying interlinear glossing for different levels of
grammatical analysis. Exploring the interlinear lines encourages further research and discussion
into the use of texts in documentation efforts. The grammatical sketch and texts taken together
constitute a beginning to the documentation of Coahuitlán Totonac, providing linguistic and
extra-linguistic information for this community. -
- Graduation date
- Spring 2024
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- Type of Item
- Thesis
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- Degree
- Doctor of Philosophy
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- License
- This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.