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| Marianne Mithun Professor, Linguistics |
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If linguist Marianne Mithun needs an example of how a language reflects a people’s cultural outlook she may pick a phrase from Australian aboriginal or African tongues, but she is most apt to use examples from the North American Indians. “The American Indian languages give us all just amazing ideas and fascinating new ways of seeing the world,” says the professor of linguistics. She has been researching minority languages, which she calls “windows on thought processes,” for more than a quarter-century. In 2000, she completed The Languages of North America, a reference that covers some 300 languages. At UCSB, she frequently invites native speakers to her classroom. In one recent course, students worked with a Navaho, which helped open intellectual windows. “I try to teach students how to discover things for themselves,” Mithun says. This year she will teach a graduate seminar and an undergraduate class on American Indian languages. |