PROPOSAL FOR A SHARED CLASSIFICATORY TREE FOR DOBES LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATIONS AND OTHER SOCIO-CULTURAL DATA BASES.

Jorge Gasché,Frank Seifart

doi:10.24841/fa.v19i1-2.347

Abstract

This article proposes a classification for socio-cultural and linguistic data bases, especially those that document society, culture and language of Amazonian indigenous or rural mestizo people. The proposal was elaborated in the context of a DOBES language documentation project about the language use of the “People of the Center” (Bora, Witoto, Ocaina, Nonuya, and Resigaro). The basic principles of this proposal are derived from Bakhtin's/Vološinov's theory of the proposition.

Highlights

The social organization of the People of the Center, a multilingual cultural complex in the North West Amazon, has been analyzed in the framework of the study of forest dweller society (Spanish: sociedad bosquesina; Portuguese: sociedade florestina) (Gasché 2007; Gasché & Echeverri, 2004; Gasché & Vela, 2004; Gasché et al, 2005)
The categories heuristically employed in that analysis give an extensively account of the social and ecological interactions of the People of the Center. These categories underlie the classification of types of speech events, which is used in the People of the Center documentation project to organize the sessions in a hierarchical corpus tree (Seifart et al, 2009)
We hope to have shown how the principles underlying the hierarchical corpus tree allows us to depart from the mere observation of concrete, perceptible facts

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The social organization of the People of the Center, a multilingual cultural complex in the North West Amazon, has been analyzed in the framework of the study of forest dweller society (Spanish: sociedad bosquesina; Portuguese: sociedade florestina) (Gasché 2007; Gasché & Echeverri, 2004; Gasché & Vela, 2004; Gasché et al, 2005). These categories underlie the classification of types of speech events, which is used in the People of the Center documentation project to organize the sessions in a hierarchical corpus tree (Seifart et al, 2009). This classification is at the same time a tool for ensuring completeness of the documentation, in the sense of inclusion of examples of each major event type identified in such a classification (Seifart, 2008) Such a classification underlies and facilitates research in a number of linguistic and cultural aspects, including, for example, comparative rhetorics (Kennedy, 1998). This programmatic paper discusses a number of basic classificatory criteria (which can probably be applied – with certain modifications – to most “tribal” societies) in order to invite a collective reflection on common criteria for setting up classifications of language (and socio-cultural) documentation data, as collected by, e.g., DOBES projects, and to facilitate transparency and comparative research

AIMS OF A GENERAL CLASSIFICATORY TREE

CONCLUSION

LINGUISTIC CLASSIFICATION

SOCIO-CULTURAL CLASSIFICATION