Cheyenne

Avelino Corral Esteban works as a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain, where he teaches courses on syntax, historical linguistics, and information structure. His main areas of research cover the interaction between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics across languages, with a focus on Native American, Romance, Germanic, and Celtic languages. He has collaborated in research projects funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK, and the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival in the USA, and he co-leads the Honóxease Project, the aim of which is to foster the preservation and revitalization of the Cheyenne language. He also received the Phillips Fund grant for Native American Research and the Benjamin Franklin grant from the American Philosophical Society. He is the author of seven book chapters, published by Cambridge University Press, De Gruyter, John Benjamins, Peter Lang, and Routledge, and more than 20 research articles, which have appeared in major linguistics journals (Acta Linguistica Academica, Journal of Language Contact, Journal of Language and Intercultural Communication, RESLA, WORD, and Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie).

"Dr. Avelino Corral Esteban has produced an impressive and insightful analysis of complex sentences in Cheyenne, a Native American language of the Algonquian family. It presents some unique challenges for any theoretical approach, and Dr. Corral Esteban employs a functional-typological theory, Role and Reference Grammar, which has a sophisticated theory of clause linkage. The result is a very revealing exploration of Cheyenne complex sentences. It is an important contribution to the study of Algonquian languages, on the one hand, and to functional linguistics and language typology, on the other."Prof (emeritus) Robert D. Van Valin, Jr., University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf"This outstanding contribution of Prof. Avelino Corral to a better understanding of the grammar of Cheyenne, a critically endangered Algonquian language spoken in Montana and Oklahoma, is a unique and insightful exploration of the complex sentences of this Algonquian language according to the premises of Role and Reference Grammar. To this purpose he also provides an accurate and unmatched research on the iconic relationship between the syntactic and semantic dimensions of these sentences with the aim of improving the preservation and revitalization of this ancestral language."Prof. Ricardo Mairal Usón, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)"Dr Avelino Corral Esteban’s monograph is a timely and welcome investigation of Cheyenne, a severely endangered Plains Algonquian language spoken in Montana and Oklahoma (USA). Offering empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated analyses of predicate and clause linkage, and other aspects of the polysynthetic head-marking grammar of Cheyenne, the volume testifies to the critical importance of lesser studied languages for the advancement of knowledge in linguistic theory. It will be of interest to researchers in the discourse-semantics-syntax interface, field linguists, and the Tsėhésenėstsestȯtse speakers themselves."Professor Delia Bentley, The University of Manchester"Offering an enlightening examination of the Cheyenne language, this book comes to satisfy the dire need for studies which describe seriously endangered languages. The volume provides an analysis of complex sentences in Cheyenne from the perspective of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG), one of the most fascinating grammatical theories which aims at explaining the structure of languages from a non-Anglocentric standpoint. By means of a wealth of data and analyses, ranging from morphology and syntax to semantics and pragmatics, Dr. Corral manages to cover the linguistic intricacies of these structures. This book is an indispensable reference for typological linguists and RRG practitioners."Prof. Francisco José Cortés Rodríguez, Universidad de La Laguna

• Cheyenne flagPrefaceList of tablesList of figuresList of abbreviations1 Introduction1.1 Background information1.2 Overview of Cheyenne1.2.1 Sociolinguistic information1.2.2 Genealogical position1.2.3 Basic points on the phonology of Cheyenne1.2.4 Spelling system1.3 Basic morphosyntactic properties of Cheyenne1.3.1 Polsynthetic morphology1.3.2 Morphosyntactic alignment1.3.3 Information structure1.3.4 The verbal complex1.3.5 Grammatical categories1.3.6 Lexical categories1.3.7. Morphosyntactic coding of argumentsNotes2 RRG and Cheyenne simple sentences2.1 The syntactic representation of a sentence2.2 The semantic representation of a sentence2.3 Information structure2.4 The linking algorithmNotes3 Clause linkage theory3.1 Theoretical approaches to the study of complex sentences3.2 The RRG approach to the study of the structure of complex sentencesNotes4 Juncture-nexus combinations4.1 Nuclear junctures4.2 Core junctures4.3 Clausal junctures4.4 Sentential juncturesNotes5 Semantic relations between units5.1 Single actions5.1.1 Causative [1]5.1.2 Modifying sub-actions5.1.3 Phase5.2 Multiple actions5.2.1 Simultaneous 5.2.2 Sequential5.2.3 Causative [2]5.3 Endeavour5.3.1 Attempt5.3.2 Success5.3.3 Failure5.4 Intentions5.4.1 Refusal5.4.2 Psych-action5.4.3 Purposive5.5 Bringing about5.5.1 Causative [3]5.5.2 Jussive5.5.3 Permissive5.5.4 Injunctive5.6 Perception5.6.1 Direct perception5.6.2 Indirect perception5.7 Intentionality5.7.1 Propositional attitude5.7.2 Cognition5.7.3 Emotion5.8 Speech5.8.1 Indirect discourse5.8.2 Direct discourse5.9 Locational5.9.1 Space5.9.2 Time5.10 Circumstances5.10.1 Reason5.10.2 Conditional5.10.3 Concessive5.11 Temporality5.11.1 Temporal / Simultaneous actions5.11.2 Temporal / Sequential actions5.11.3 Situation-situation / temporally unordered SoAs5.12 Complex RPsNotes6 Relationship between clause linkage types and semantic relations6.1 Intereclausal relations hierarchy6.2 Iconic correlation between syntactic and semantic representationsNotes7 The role of discourse-pragmatics in complex sentences7.1 Information structure in complex sentences7.2 Obviation in Cheyenne narrationNotes8 Concluding remarksGlossary of RRG termsReferencesAppendixIndex