Magnus Pharao Hansen
Areas of Interest:
I study the relationship between language and culture in indigenous communities of Mesoamerica, particularly central Mexico. I work in the disciplinary area between descriptive linguistics and ethnography, trying to understand how social categories and processes are reflected in linguistic structure and usage - an area sometimes called ethnosyntax. I work with the Nahuatl language as it is spoken in Hueyapan, Morelos and with the Otomí variety spoken in San Jerónimo Acazulco, Estado de México.
Status: Pre Field
MA paper, Brown:
Kinship in the Past Tense: Language, Care and Cultural Memory in a Mexican Community An ethno-linguistic account of the usage and indexical meanings of kinship terms in the critically endangered Acazulco Otomi langauge. I argue that that kinship terms draw their meanings from their associations with social organization of the past, and the different kinds of social relationships they used to refer to. In this way the terms are used to place social demands on interlocutors. The usage meanings of the kinship terms challenge genealogical-referential theories of kinship terminology, because several relation categories are defined in terms of the type of relation that exist between ego and the relative, such as age, hierarchy, solidarity, rather than by genealogical positions.
MA thesis, Copenhagen:
"Tamasolin kānin tikah?" An Investigation of the use of Polysynthetic Morphology in Hueyapan Nahuatl" Analysis of material gathered through a year of fieldwork in Hueyapan Morelos. Comparing the degree of usage of polysynthetic constructions among different age groups in order to determine whether a shift towards a more analytical typology under influence from Spanish is in progress. Thesis advisor: Una Canger.
Previous Degrees:
- (2012) MA in Anthropology, Brown University
- (2007) MA in Mesoamerican Cultural and Linguistic Studies, University of Copenhagen
- (2003) BA in Mesoamerican Cultural and Linguistic Studies, University of Copenhagen
Publications:
- (2010) Nahuatl among Jehovah's Witnesses in Hueyapan,International Journal of the Sociology of Language. Number 203. 124-137
- (2011) Polysynthesis in Hueyapan Nahuatl: Status of NP's, word order and other concerns. Anthropological Linguistics. 52.3 (2010): 274-299.
- (2011) Adjectives in Hueyapan Nahuatl: Do they exist? And if do what kind of adjectives are they? Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics Vol 32. 8-19
Contact Information: magnus_pharao_hansen (AT) brown.edu
