Jarrette K Allen

This dissertation describes a collaborative effort between myself and community members from Bantayan Island in Cebu province to begin the process of documenting and describing the Bantayanon language and reinvigorating it for future generations. Based on the precepts of the Sustainable Use Model, which argue that literacy and a literary tradition are major factors in language maintenance and revitalization, we have developed a proposed orthography for Bantayanon and have begun the process of developing a Bantayanon dictionary. I describe the process and methods by which a significant corpus of data was collected, by way of video interviews and a modified version of the Rapid Word Collection method. I also present a brief grammatical description of Bantayanon. In doing so, I focus on its unique features and present the scholarly arguments for situating Bantayanon linguistically among its related languages. In doing so, it is my objective to provide a framework by which Bantayanon may continue to be documented and analyzed by future researchers and/or by the community itself and a basis for the development of elementary-level pedagogical materials in Bantayanon. I finish by evaluating the final result in terms of what worked well and what did not and suggest ideas for further development and revitalization of the language, in the hope that this dissertation may also serve to inform researchers who attempt similar projects on other languages in the Philippines in the future.

Unfortunately, there is to date no written historical primary data on Bantayanon from which we can draw as we work to document the language. Inevitably, the process of documentation includes the necessity to systematize, or otherwise standardize, an orthography, and this paper discusses one issue we have encountered as we work to do so: the problem of the respelling of loanwords, with which Bantayanon is replete. As is the case for most Philippine languages, the majority of loanwords in Bantayanon historically are from Spanish, but today loans from English are understandably ubiquitous and pervasive. This paper presents the arguments we considered, both for and against, on the question of the respelling of loanwords and discusses our reasoning behind why we have chosen to respell the vast majority of them. It begins with a presentation of the arguments of the famed lexicographer Leo James English for his preference to not respell, together with what I trust is a reasoned response to those arguments. It continues with a discussion of selected linguistic arguments against respelling certain words and ends with a treatment of why we opted generally for respelling.

The Ursulines of New Orleans have been serving their beloved community now for just short of 300 years, ever since they arrived from France in 1727. They brought with them long-standing traditions and values from the Old World and innovated in many ways to adapt to the New. One of these traditions was the sending of circular letters that served as eulogies for their deceased sisters. They maintained this tradition in New Orleans but also developed a unique style, creating a livre des décédées (or “book of the dead”) that contains the biographies of the sisters and memorializes them for future generations as models of Ursuline piety and priorities.

This thesis describes the eulogistic tradition as it developed in France among the Ursuline order in general and the obituary circular letter tradition in particular, providing a background for the practice as it was implemented in New Orleans. I will show that the letters not only reveal details about the lives of the individual sisters but also insights as to the values and priorities inherited from France and maintained in New Orleans. Then I will demonstrate how these values and priorities were adapted in the face of unique challenges for life and ministry in Louisiana.

Lévi-Strauss “argued that the ‘savage’ mind [has] the same structures as the ‘civilized’ mind and that human characteristics are the same everywhere.” This theory is reviewed as it relates to Rousseau’s theories on the “homme sauvage”, “l’homme dans la nature”, and “l’homme civilisé” in Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes. Special attention is paid to the difference between the three “hommes” and the effects of white influence when contact is made. As a particular example, I discuss Lenita Assis’ work on the Dâw people of Brazil and the work done among them to help them free themselves from the culturally destructive effects of rampant alcoholism.

In her 2007 article, Basso describes the linguistic and behavioral customs of the Kalapalo people in the Upper Xingu region of Mato Grosso, Brazil (area located inside of the protective Xingu National Park) by which the Kalapalo adjust their speech and behavior to create an “elaborate and pervasive register of politeness and respect” that navigates them delicately through difficult situations and/or sensitive familial relationships. Her goal in analyzing this process, which is similar in certain aspects to that of groups in Australia, is to investigate “how registers more generally constitute changes in a social world of personal differences”.

With so little interest for and the active resistance of the Medieval Church against the production of translations of the Holy Scriptures into the vernacular during the Middle Ages, the contributions of Vaudès and the Waldensians, as well as the Albigensians, to pursue such translations in defiance of the authorities can not be under-appreciated. Several key factors made his work so remarkable and enduring that it is evident, despite the denials of those such as Jeffrey Russell to the contrary, that these groups played a key role in what would later develop in the full force of the 16th century Protestant Reformation. Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, although lauded for their devotion to sola scriptura and to the works of translation they produced, were not the initiators of such an ideal. Instead, this nomination should more rightly be given to Vaudès who did so during a time much more precarious and perilous to this endeavor.