Talking Backwards in Cuna: The Sociological Reality of Phonological Descriptions

Abstract

The Cuna Indians of Panama play a word game which sheds light on problems involved in the linguistic description of Cuna phonology. Investigation of the game led to the discovery that not all speakers play it the same way; i.e., there is variation in the forms different speakers use when playing. One of the possible interpretations of this variation is that there is more than one model or grammar in use among Cuna speakers. The possibility of the existence of alternative linguistic models goes against the most current view in theoretical linguistics, which argues that all speakers of a language have the same model for that language. The data from the Cuna game support instead a sociolinguistic perspective which holds that for at least certain areas of language variation or heterogeneity rather than homogeneity is common.