Gabriela Caballero

E-mail: gcaballe@berkeley.edu

*The email address gcaballero@notes.cc.sunysb.edu is no longer active*

CV: PDF or click here (updated September 2009)

Work on Indigenous Languages of Latin America
The empirical basis of my work is research on languages of Latin America. My dissertation research is based on my fieldwork on Rarámuri (Taracahitan; Uto-Aztecan) in the community of Choguita, Chihuahua, where I have spent 12 months since 2003. Before that, I worked with a speaker of Ojachichi Rarámuri (between 2000 and 2002) for my undergraduate honors thesis. I have also worked with speakers of Mayo (Taracahitan; Uto-Aztecan), Huastec Nahuatl (Aztecan; Uto-Aztecan), Yucatec Maya (Yucatecan; Mayan) and Popti’ (Kanjobalan; Mayan) for different projects. I have also worked with published sources of Guarijío (Taracahitan; Uto-Aztecan) and several Tepiman languages (Uto-Aztecan) for projects on synchronic and diachronic aspects of the prosodic morphology of these languages.

Dissertation: (Abstract) (Preliminary pages, PDF 447 pages)
My dissertation (completed in August 2008) provides a detailed description and analysis of the phonology and morphology of Choguita Rarámuri, a previously undocumented Uto-Aztecan language. Based on a corpus of original data obtained through field research, this thesis presents phonological and morphotactic evidence for a hierarchical structure of the verb, consisting of six verbal domains. I argue that this particular morphological configuration is pivotal in understanding the complexities of the morphophonological processes of this agglutinating language. This dissertation investigates how Choguita Rarámuri fits into the larger, cross-linguistic picture through the analysis of four phenomena that have significant implications for developing theories of the phonology-morphology interface: i) the morphologically conditioned stress system (which features an initial three-syllable window); ii) morphophonologically conditioned multiple exponence of derivational morphology; iii) outwardly conditioned allomorph selection; and iv) patterns of variable suffix ordering. These topics are analyzed under two main assumptions: i) morphophonological processes are intimately related to the word’s hierarchical structure; and ii) languages may contain several phonological sub-grammars pertaining to lexical class, morphological categories, or particular morphological constructions (Cophonology theory).

Choguita Rarámuri language documentation
I am currently engaged in a documentation project funded by the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project, hosted at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London. In in collaboration with community members, the project will produce a reference grammar of Choguita Rarámuri, and a corpus of annotated texts, audio and video (more information about the project can be found here). These documents will be deposited in the community, responding to the interests of native speakers to have an archive of audio and video recordings that will serve as a community heritage for future generations. Community members are interested in creating a record of the speech of elders, as well as the community’s historical past, agricultural practices and rapidly changing rituals and artistic expressions, in order to expose younger speakers to registers and vocabulary that are rapidly changing. This project builds on work started through the project Choguita Raramuri (Tarahumara) documentation and description.

Last update: September 29, 2009

ELDP Post-doctoral Fellow
Seminario de Lenguas Indígenas,
Instituto de Inv. Filológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

PhD Linguistics, UC Berkeley

Professional interests: phonology, morphology, language documentation, comparative/historical linguistics, typology,
Uto-Aztecan languages