Literature Assignment/Buy Homework Help

1.) In the Introduction, Harrison claims that the first data (i.e., the first descriptions) about many languages come from missionaries. Please discuss two things:

• Why do missionaries tend to do linguistic fieldwork that others do not?
• What are the problems, from a cultural/linguistic standpoint, associated with indigenous people’s contact with Christian missionaries?
• 2.) One of the main arguments Harrison makes throughout the book is that language is crucial to the passing on of complex cultural knowledge—knowledge that evolves and accumulates in a specific society in a certain time and in a certain place. On page 56, Harrison correctly refers to this kind of knowledge as “fragile”; this is because, if a language disappears, all of the special and unique knowledge it contains disappears with it.

  I would like to direct your attention to the example of this situation in the second chapter, where Harrison discusses the word “iy” in Tuvan (a language spoken in Siberia). “Iy” is pronounced like the letter “e” in English (or, in the International Phonetic Alphabet, pronounced like this: [i]).

  Please discuss the following:

  • Describe what “iy” means/refers to.
  • Is there any word in English that is equivalent to this?
  • Have you ever noticed an “iy” before, in your own life?
  • Describe how this demonstrates what would be lost if Tuvan went extinct. (There is a good chance that in the next 100 years, Tuvan will, in fact, go extinct). Get Literature help today