Residency Period: April 4, 2022 and April 3, 2023
IEAT resident Fabio Bonfim holds a PhD in Linguistic Studies from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (2003). From 2009 to 2010, he worked at the University of Massachusetts as a visiting professor, during which time he developed activities in projects on the morphosyntax of indigenous languages, under the supervision of Professor Ellen Woolford. In 2017, he was a visiting professor at the University of Toronto, developing research with a senior internship grant from Capes. He is currently an associate professor and affiliated with the Graduate Program in Linguistic Studies/Poslin at the Faculty of Letters of UFMG. He coordinates several research projects, with the aim of studying the syntax of indigenous Brazilian languages and African languages. In his research, he adopts as theoretical support intuitions from typological theory and recent developments in generative theory. His research interests include the triggering of ergative systems and split systems, which are very common in the indigenous languages of the Tupí (Tupí-Guarani family) and Macro-Jê (Jê and Maxacali families) trunks. In addition to these themes, he has worked on the investigation of differential object marking systems in Bantu languages, such as Changana, Rhonga, Shimaconde and Emakhwa, which are spoken in Mozambique. In addition, he coordinates a project to document and describe the Tentehar language, whose objective is to construct a descriptive grammar and produce linguistic material to be used in indigenous schools.
LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY IN BRAZIL
This proposal is justified because it seeks to investigate aspects of the grammar of minority languages spoken in Brazil, with the aim of testing theoretical hypotheses that have been discussed in the field of descriptive and theoretical linguistics. Another objective is to contribute to the work of describing, documenting and revitalizing these languages, as many are seriously threatened with extinction. According to Krauss (1992), 90% of the world’s languages may disappear by the end of the 21st century, a situation that justifies practical and concrete actions with the aim of conducting scientific work that helps prevent the disappearance of these languages. Legère (2015), in turn, considers that there are approximately 6,500 languages in the world, and that two-thirds of these may become extinct by the end of this century. In relation to South America, experts estimate that there are approximately 500 indigenous languages on the continent. Among these, it is estimated that there are around 420 Amerindian languages at serious risk of disappearing, either due to pressure from the majority languages or simply because the number of native speakers is very small. Regarding Brazil, Rodrigues (2013) states that ‘although most Brazilians have the impression of living in a monolingual country, Brazil is in fact a multilingual nation, as around 180 indigenous languages are learned as their mother tongues’. It is assumed that the indigenous population in 1500, when the Portuguese arrived on the continent, was around three to five million, so that, in several parts of Brazil, the indigenous populations were much denser, when compared with current statistical data. It is known, for example, that in the floodplains of the great Amazon rivers, as well as on the coast, there lived several ethnic groups, such as the Tapajós Indians and the Kambeba Indians, who have become completely extinct. The same situation is observed in relation to the Tupinambá Indians who inhabited the coastal strip of Brazilian territory. Available ethnographic data indicate that the Tupinambá villages had a very large population for the time and that they extended from what is now the state of Pará to Rio de Janeiro. The exception, however, was the border between Ceará and Maranhão, the region of the mouth of the Paraíba River, and the border region between the south of Bahia and the north of Espírito Santo, given that, in these regions, ethnic groups belonging to the Macro-Jê Trunk predominated. In short, there is an urgent need for action to promote the work of describing and documenting indigenous languages spoken in Brazil, since many are seriously threatened with extinction. The expectation is that this project will contribute in some way to furthering the scientific studies that I have been developing over the last twenty-five years on minority languages spoken in Brazil and South America. Among the languages that have been investigated within the scope of this project are the Maxacali, Ka’apor, Tembé, Guajajara, Terena, Chapakura, Apâniekra, Apinajé, Parkatejê, Gavião, Kuikuro, Katukina, among others. I invite readers interested in the subject to visit the portals www.letras.ufmg.br/portal_laliafro and www.letras.ufmg.br/fbonfim, where you can find part of the scientific production achieved by me and my team in recent decades on the grammar of these indigenous Brazilian languages.