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SUMMARY:Endangered languages in contact: Domari in its ethnographic and cu
 ltural context - Yaron Matras (University of Manchester)
DTSTART:20171011T171000Z
DTEND:20171011T180000Z
UID:TALK86611@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Oliver Mayeux
DESCRIPTION:Domari is the name of a language spoken by peripatetic communi
 ties across the Middle East\, currently attested mainly in Syria\, Lebanon
 \, Jordan and Palestine. The paper focuses on the variety spoken in Jerusa
 lem\, which is the only one to have been documented extensively (Matras 20
 12). Domari is an Indic language\, which shows some archaic features\, but
  also a language that has been heavily influenced by contact\, especially 
 with Arabic. The language was already endangered when I began my documenta
 tion in Jerusalem in 1996\, and is now moribund\, and probably has just on
 e single living fluent speaker and a few semi-speakers. My paper discusses
  the ethnographic setting\, the language’s history and the reasons for i
 ts abandonment\, and touches on some theoretical dilemmas of linguistic de
 scription and analysis that arise through the wholesale import of entire s
 tructural categories from Arabic into Domari.\n\nYaron Matras is Professor
  of Linguistics at the University of Manchester. His research interests in
 clude language contact\, urban multilingualism\, linguistic typology\, dia
 lectology and language documentation\, and he has worked on various langua
 ges of the Middle East including Kurdish\, Arabic\, and Domari.
LOCATION:Faculty of English\, Room GR-06/07
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