Resurrecting the linguistic past: what we can learn from Akabea (Andaman Islands) ; Ressuscitando o passado linguístico: o que podemos aprender com a língua Akabea (Ilhas Andamão)

Akabea belongs to the Great Andamanese family, one of the two indigenous language families of the Andaman Islands. All that remains today of this family is a handful of “rememberers” of so-called Present-day Great Andamanese, based on the language furthest removed from Akabea. None of the traditional languages was the subject of professional linguistic documentation or analysis. However, two government officials collected extensive material, with Akabea being the language most thoroughly treated. Neither was a trained linguist, and one might wonder whether anything reliable can be derived from their documentation. We have worked in detail with the Akabea material, and conclude that while there are obvious gaps (e.g. in the phonetics), the overall picture is that of a very consistent and elaborate grammatical and lexical structure. We present two typologically unusual features of Akabea. One relates to the conceptual basis of the language’s lexicon, which makes extensive use of somatic (body-part) prefixes, e.g. Akabea aka- ‘mouth’. These are sometimes used literally (as in the word for ‘mouth’), sometimes by semantic extension (e.g. in words relating to food and speech). The other concerns an unusual grammatical feature of the language, namely verb root ellipsis. In English, it is possible to omit verbs under appropriate pragmatic conditions, e.g. in response to Is he reading? one can answer Yes, he is, with omission of the whole word reading, but not *Yes, he is -ing, with omission of just the root read. Precisely this bizarre non-existent English type is what is attested in Akabea. ; A língua akabea pertence à família grande-andamanesa, uma das duas famílias linguísticas indígenas das ilhas Andamão. Tudo o que sobra hoje desta família é um pequeno número de “lembradores” da língua chamada grande-andamanês contemporâneo, a língua mais distantemente relacionada com o akabea. Nenhuma das línguas tradicionais foi o objeto de documentação o de análise linguística profissional. Contudo, dois funcionários ...