PhD candidate David Ginebra awarded the Jesús Tuson Prize for Language Diversity
Two research projects on language diversity in Latin America were awarded the 2023 Jesús Tuson Prize, one of which is the first grammatical study of the Yamalero language (of the Guahiban family), conducted by UAB PhD candidate David Ginebra Domingo. The Jesús Tuson Prize is an initiative by the University of Barcelona's Endangered Languages Study Group, Òmnium Cultural and the Vives Network of Universities.
In its fifth edition, the Endangered Languages Study Group of the University of Barcelona, Òmnium Cultural and the Vive Network of Universities award the 2023 Jesús Tuson Prize on language diversity to two candidates due to the quality of both their studies. Thus, one of the awardees was David Ginebra Domingo, PhD candidate at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), for his article on the phonological description of the Yamalero language: “Descripció fonològica del yamalero, la llengua dels yaruro de les Planes Orientals de Colòmbia”. The other person to receive the award was Eshek Tarazona Vega, PhD candidate at the Rovira i Virgili University (URV), for his Master Dissertation on the interculturality in Peruvian classrooms, entitled “Construcción de la interculturalidad en el aula a partir de tres cuentos breves. Estudio hecho con un grupo de estudiantes peruanos de un contexto escolar urbano”.
The article written by Ginebra represents the first grammatical study of the Yamalero language, which belongs to the Guahiban family). In the study, he describes the language's vowel and consonant phonemes, alongside the more common phonological processes (palatalisations, elisions, epentheses, etc.). It also includes the first approximation to its syllable structure and word stress.
The study also compares the phonological traits of Yamalero to other Guahiban languages and other languages of the region. Finally, it demonstrates that the language spoken by the Yaruro people of Colombia is not actually Yaruro, but Yamalero, two languages stemming from completely different language families.
The Jesús Tuson Prize on language diversity, awarded annually, aims to foster the research and transfer of knowledge on humanity's language heritage, while at the same time commemmorate Jesús Tuson and his work to make the world's linguistic diversity known and respected.