The majority of deaf children are born to hearing parents. The fact that many of these children use sign language as their primary form of communication poses a unique language barrier between them and their hearing families. In addition, for children who are born into Hispanic families, these children have limited access to Hispanic and Deaf cultures unless their families actively pursue involvement with those communities. Data were collected through ethnographic interviews and limited participant observation and analyzed by means of grounded theory methodology. The study investigated how Hispanic mothers communicate with their deaf children who use ASL as their primary language, as well as how these mothers view Deafness as a culture.

The main archaeological features studied in this thesis are semi-subterranean house remains in the woodlands of middle northern Sweden, east of the high mountains and some 100 km from the coast. The period during which they were occupied has been delimited to 4500-2500 BC. The house remains consist of circular or sometimes rectangular depressions in the ground, surrounded by mounds of refuse and large amounts of fire-cracked stone. Eighty house remains of this kind have been discovered so far and 20 features have been excavated. They are found at 29 different localities that cover an area of more than 60,000 km2. The question put forward is whether these house remains show patterning in site location, economy and material culture, suggesting that they belonged to one people sharing a similar language and values. The majority of the locations include more than one house and because of the dug-out-floors and the large amounts of fire-cracked stone they are interpreted as winter villages. The distributions of the villages show a settlement pattern in which the locales are separated by a mean distance of approximately 35 km. In one of the regions, Vilhelmina parish, summer camps have been located by smaller lakes where the waterways from 3 different winter villages connect. Other possible summer camp sites are suggested, based on their location in areas where waterways connect two or three winter villages. The winter sites were associated with local bands, according to the social structure of hunting societies in North America, suggested by June Helm. Several local bands form a regional band that camp together during certain periods of the year. All regional bands form the tribe or the language family. No traces of social differences between groups or families have been revealed in the material and it is therefore assumed that the remains of the houses represent a hunting/gathering band society. Among the artifacts in the houses is a predominance of small scrapers of quartz and quartzite. There is also a very high representation of elk (moose) in the bone material from the house remains. Prehistoric and later pit-falls as well as paintings and carvings of elk are distributed within the same area. This shows that elk were a very important prey and this has been emphasized when discussing the explanations of the uniformity in house type and artefacts. Finally the importance of the slate tools, in particular those of red slate, is briefly discussed. The manufacture of slate tools increase during the neolithic period. In the inland of middle Norrland artifacts of red slate dominate over the grey and black slate artifacts in most of the houses and on many other sites. The raw material is, in most cases, found close to the high mountains, but the red slate is otherwise rare compared to the black and grey, which suggests that it has been highly valued. The knowledge of, and access to, red slate is suggested as having symbolized the unity of this band society. / digitalisering@umu

Suppletion is a term used to describe the occurrence of unpredictable and irregular patterns. Although typological research has been devoted to verb suppletion, not as much attention has been given to suppletion in nominal and adjectival paradigms. The thesis presents the cross-linguistic distribution of nominal and adjectival suppletion. The lexical distribution as well as the features involved are presented. The results of nominal suppletion show that nouns referring to humans are most often suppletive, that number is the most common grammatical feature involved in nominal suppletion and that „child‟ is by far the most common noun to be suppletive cross-linguistically. The results on adjectival suppletion show that adjectival suppletion is well spread though not very common cross-linguistically. A study of 8 Semitic languages shows that „woman‟ versus „women‟ are stable suppletive forms in this language family.

Thesis written in co-mentorship with Richard Chase Smith Ph.D, of El Instituto del Bien Comun (IBC) in Peru. The attached file is a pdf created in Word. The pdf file serves to preserve the accuracy of the many linguistic symbols found in the text. / La langue Yanesha’ est parlée sur la frontière de deux mondes, les Andes et l’Amazonie, au Pérou central. Un travail de terrain ethnolinguistique parmi le peuple Yanesha’ a été effectué en mai-août 2008 pour étudier cette langue et les facteurs menant possiblement à sa disparition. Ce mémoire porte sur les traits caractéristiques de la langue Yanesha’ et sa place à l’intérieur de la famille linguistique Arawak. L’auteure discute aussi à propos de ponapnora, un rituel de puberté qui joue un rôle important dans la préservation d’héritage musical et linguistique auprès des femmes Yanesha’. / The Yanesha’ language is spoken on the edges of two worlds, the Andes and the Amazon, in southcentral Peru. Ethnolinguistic fieldwork was carried out among the Yanesha’ people in May-August 2008 to learn about their language and the possible factors leading to its endangerment. This thesis examines the unique linguistic features of Yanesha and its place within the Arawak language family. It also discusses a puberty ritual that plays an important role in preserving musical and linguistic heritage among Yanesha’ women: the ponapnora female initiation ritual.

Nesta tese, buscou-se realizar interpretações contextualizadas visando à compreensão da história de longa duração das antigas populações ceramistas do alto rio Madeira, sob a perspectiva da Ecologia Histórica. Tais interpretações foram realizadas a partir de uma análise comparativa de cinco sítios arqueológicos da região sudoeste da Amazônia. O método comparativo continuou sendo utilizado de maneira a possibilitar uma discussão sobre diferentes Estilos e Tradições amazônicas. O objetivo final foi contribuir para o conhecimento historiográfico relativo a populações falantes de línguas do tronco Tupi, em especial os Tupi-Guarani, bem como apresentar dados cronológicos e estilísticos que permitissem repensar a chamada Tradição Polícroma da Amazônia. / Based on contextualized interpretations, this thesis sought to make a contribution to the comprehension of the history (longue durée) of pottery-producing indigenous populations of the upper Madeira region, from the perspective of Historical Ecology. The comparison of five archaeological sites from this region (southwestern Amazonia) formed the basis for these interpretations. The comparative method was further used so as to make possible an extensive discussion about different archaeological Styles and Traditions in Amazonia. The final aim was to contribute to the historiographical knowledge of ancient speakers of languages of the Tupi stock, specially the Tupi-Guarani family, and to present stylistic and chronological data which would enable the rethinking of the so-called Polychrome Tradition of Amazonia.

La langue Yanesha’ est parlée sur la frontière de deux mondes, les Andes et l’Amazonie, au Pérou central. Un travail de terrain ethnolinguistique parmi le peuple Yanesha’ a été effectué en mai-août 2008 pour étudier cette langue et les facteurs menant possiblement à sa disparition. Ce mémoire porte sur les traits caractéristiques de la langue Yanesha’ et sa place à l’intérieur de la famille linguistique Arawak. L’auteure discute aussi à propos de ponapnora, un rituel de puberté qui joue un rôle important dans la préservation d’héritage musical et linguistique auprès des femmes Yanesha’. / The Yanesha’ language is spoken on the edges of two worlds, the Andes and the Amazon, in southcentral Peru. Ethnolinguistic fieldwork was carried out among the Yanesha’ people in May-August 2008 to learn about their language and the possible factors leading to its endangerment. This thesis examines the unique linguistic features of Yanesha and its place within the Arawak language family. It also discusses a puberty ritual that plays an important role in preserving musical and linguistic heritage among Yanesha’ women: the ponapnora female initiation ritual. / Thesis written in co-mentorship with Richard Chase Smith Ph.D, of El Instituto del Bien Comun (IBC) in Peru. The attached file is a pdf created in Word. The pdf file serves to preserve the accuracy of the many linguistic symbols found in the text.

Nesta tese, buscou-se realizar interpretações contextualizadas visando à compreensão da história de longa duração das antigas populações ceramistas do alto rio Madeira, sob a perspectiva da Ecologia Histórica. Tais interpretações foram realizadas a partir de uma análise comparativa de cinco sítios arqueológicos da região sudoeste da Amazônia. O método comparativo continuou sendo utilizado de maneira a possibilitar uma discussão sobre diferentes Estilos e Tradições amazônicas. O objetivo final foi contribuir para o conhecimento historiográfico relativo a populações falantes de línguas do tronco Tupi, em especial os Tupi-Guarani, bem como apresentar dados cronológicos e estilísticos que permitissem repensar a chamada Tradição Polícroma da Amazônia. / Based on contextualized interpretations, this thesis sought to make a contribution to the comprehension of the history (longue durée) of pottery-producing indigenous populations of the upper Madeira region, from the perspective of Historical Ecology. The comparison of five archaeological sites from this region (southwestern Amazonia) formed the basis for these interpretations. The comparative method was further used so as to make possible an extensive discussion about different archaeological Styles and Traditions in Amazonia. The final aim was to contribute to the historiographical knowledge of ancient speakers of languages of the Tupi stock, specially the Tupi-Guarani family, and to present stylistic and chronological data which would enable the rethinking of the so-called Polychrome Tradition of Amazonia.

The benefits of Model-Driven Software Development (MDSD) and Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) wrt. efficiency and quality in software engineering increase the demand for custom languages and the need for efficient methods for language engineering. This motivated the introduction of language families that aim at further reducing the development costs and the maintenance effort for custom languages. The basic idea is to exploit the commonalities and provide means to enable systematic variation among a set of related languages. Current techniques and methodologies for language engineering are not prepared to deal with the particular challenges of language families. First, language engineering processes lack means for a systematic analysis, specification and management of variability as found in language families. Second, technical approaches for a modular specification and realisation of languages suffer from insufficient modularity properties. They lack means for information hiding, for explicit module interfaces, for loose coupling, and for flexible module integration. Our first contribution, Feature-Oriented Language Family Engineering (LFE), adapts methods from Software Product Line Engineering to the domain of language engineering. It extends Feature-Oriented Software Development to support metamodelling approaches used for language engineering and replaces state-of-the-art processes by a variability- and reuse-oriented LFE process. Feature-oriented techniques are used as means for systematic variability analysis, variability management, language variant specification, and the automatic derivation of custom language variants. Our second contribution, Integrative Role-Based Language Composition, extends existing metamodelling approaches with roles. Role models introduce enhanced modularity for object-oriented specifications like abstract syntax metamodels. We introduce a role-based language for the specification of language components, a role-based composition language, and an extensible composition system to evaluate role-based language composition programs. The composition system introduces integrative, grey-box composition techniques for language syntax and semantics that realise the statics and dynamics of role composition, respectively. To evaluate the introduced approaches and to show their applicability, we apply them in three major case studies. First, we use feature-oriented LFE to implement a language family for the ontology language OWL. Second, we employ role-based language composition to realise a component-based version of the language OCL. Third, we apply both approaches in combination for the development of SumUp, a family of languages for mathematical equations.

The benefits of Model-Driven Software Development (MDSD) and Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) wrt. efficiency and quality in software engineering increase the demand for custom languages and the need for efficient methods for language engineering. This motivated the introduction of language families that aim at further reducing the development costs and the maintenance effort for custom languages. The basic idea is to exploit the commonalities and provide means to enable systematic variation among a set of related languages. Current techniques and methodologies for language engineering are not prepared to deal with the particular challenges of language families. First, language engineering processes lack means for a systematic analysis, specification and management of variability as found in language families. Second, technical approaches for a modular specification and realisation of languages suffer from insufficient modularity properties. They lack means for information hiding, for explicit module interfaces, for loose coupling, and for flexible module integration. Our first contribution, Feature-Oriented Language Family Engineering (LFE), adapts methods from Software Product Line Engineering to the domain of language engineering. It extends Feature-Oriented Software Development to support metamodelling approaches used for language engineering and replaces state-of-the-art processes by a variability- and reuse-oriented LFE process. Feature-oriented techniques are used as means for systematic variability analysis, variability management, language variant specification, and the automatic derivation of custom language variants. Our second contribution, Integrative Role-Based Language Composition, extends existing metamodelling approaches with roles. Role models introduce enhanced modularity for object-oriented specifications like abstract syntax metamodels. We introduce a role-based language for the specification of language components, a role-based composition language, and an extensible composition system to evaluate role-based language composition programs. The composition system introduces integrative, grey-box composition techniques for language syntax and semantics that realise the statics and dynamics of role composition, respectively. To evaluate the introduced approaches and to show their applicability, we apply them in three major case studies. First, we use feature-oriented LFE to implement a language family for the ontology language OWL. Second, we employ role-based language composition to realise a component-based version of the language OCL. Third, we apply both approaches in combination for the development of SumUp, a family of languages for mathematical equations.:1. Introduction 1.1. The Omnipresence of Language Families 1.2. Challenges for Language Family Engineering 1.3. Language Family Engineering with Features and Role-Based Composition 2. Review of Current Language Engineering 2.1. Language Engineering Processes 2.1.1. Analysis Phase 2.1.2. Design Phase 2.1.3. Implementation Phase 2.1.4. Applicability in Language Family Engineering 2.1.5. Requirements for an Enhanced LFE Process 2.2. Technical Approaches in Language Engineering 2.2.1. Specification of Abstract Syntax 2.2.2. Specification of Concrete Syntax 2.2.3. Specification of Semantics 2.2.4. Requirements for an Enhanced LFE Technique 3. Feature-Oriented Language Family Engineering 3.1. Foundations of Feature-Oriented SPLE 3.1.1. Introduction to SPLE 3.1.2. Feature-Oriented Software Development 3.2. Feature-Oriented Language Family Engineering 3.2.1. Variability and Variant Specification in LFE 3.2.2. Product-Line Realisation, Mapping and Variant Derivation for LFE 3.3. Case Study: Scalability in Ontology Specification, Evaluation and Application 3.3.1. Review of Evolution, Customisation and Combination in the OWL LanguageFamily 3.3.2. Application of Feature-Oriented Language Family Engineering for OWL 3.4. Discussion 3.4.1. Contributions 3.4.2. Related Work. 3.4.3. Conclusion 4. Integrative, Role-Based Composition for Language Family Engineering 4.1. Foundations of Role-Based Modelling. 4.1.1. Information Hiding and Interface Specification in Role Models 4.1.2. Loose Coupling and Flexible Integration in Role Composition 4.2. The LanGems Language Composition System 4.2.1. The Language Component Specification Language . 4.2.2. TheLanguageCompositionLanguage 4.2.3. TechniquesofLanguageComposition 4.3. Case Study: Component-based OCL 4.3.1. Role-Based OCL Modularisation 4.3.2. Role-Based OCL Composition 4.4. Discussion 4.4.1. Contributions 4.4.2. Related Work 4.4.3. Conclusion 5. LFE with Integrative, Role-Based Syntax and Semantics Composition 5.1. Integrating Features and Roles 5.2. SumUp Case Study 5.2.1. Motivation 5.2.2. Feature-Oriented Variability and Variant Specification 5.2.3. Role-Based Component Realisation 5.2.4. Feature-Oriented Variability and Variant Evolution 5.2.5. Model-driven Concrete Syntax Realisation 5.2.6. Model-driven Semantics Realisation 5.2.7. Role-Based Composition and Feature Mapping 5.2.8. Language Variant Derivation 5.3. Conclusion 6. Conclusion 6.1. Contributions 6.2. Outlook 6.2.1. Co-Evolution in Language Families 6.2.2. Role-Based Tool Integration. 6.2.3. Automatic Modularisation of Existing Language Families 6.2.4. Language Component Library Appendix A Appendix B Bibliography