Janis Nuckolls is an

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anthropological

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

and professor of linguistics and

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Brigham Young University Brigham Young University (BYU) is a Private education, private research university in Provo, Utah, United States. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is the flagship university of the Church Educational System sponsore ...

Provo, Utah Provo ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Utah County, Utah, United States. It is south of Salt Lake City along the Wasatch Front, and lies between the cities of Orem, Utah, Orem to the north and Springville, Utah, Springville to the south ...

. She has spent many years doing field research, with a primary focus on the Amazonian Quichua (Kichwa) people in Ecuador and their endangered language. Nuckolls earned her BA from the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...

and her AM and

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from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

. After first visiting the Amazon in graduate school, Nuckolls has been returning for field research for more than thirty years.

Research

Quechua, considered an endangered language, is spoken by between 10,000 and 40,000 people. Nuckolls has published extensively on the sound-symbolic grammar, performance, and cognition in Pastaza Quechua. Her interest includes studying the functions of ideophones, which are words that offer a vivid sensory impression through sound, movement, shape, or action. Nuckolls described it "as painting a word picture–even though they are words, they function as images which communicate not only with sounds but with gestures as well". She has published, among other places, in the ''Journal of Linguistic Anthropology'', ''

Language in Society ''Language in Society'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal of sociolinguistics. It was established in 1972 and is published five times a year by Cambridge University Press. The current editors in chief are Susan Ehrlich (York University) and ...

'', ''

Semiotica ''Semiotica'' is an academic journal covering semiotics. It is the official journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies. Publication Since 2000, the journal publishes five issues per year. It is published in English and French. ...

'', the ''

Annual Review of Anthropology The ''Annual Review of Anthropology'' is an academic journal that publishes review articles of significant developments in anthropology and its subfields. First published by Stanford University Press in 1959 under the name the ''Biennial Review of ...

'', ''Latin American Indian Literatures'', the ''Journal of Latin American Lore'', ''Anthropological Linguistics'', ''

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'', and ''

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''. Believing ideophones to be best recorded in video format, to capture their performative multi-modal nature, she set up the Quechua Real Words 'audio-visual dictionary' of Amazonian Quichua (formerly also written as Quechua, but now written as Quichua and Kichwa in Ecuador) ideophones, largely from Pastaza Quichua: https://quechuarealwords.byu.edu/ As Professor Nuckolls herself put it on the website: "Quechua Real Words is a site dedicated to an appreciation and study of real words that, by their nature, are difficult to define within a traditional dictionary format. Such words, called ‘ideophones,’ ‘mimetics,' ‘expressives,’ and ‘onomatopoeias’ by linguists, present many problems for analysis because of their melodic and gestural dimensions. They are not designed to be abstracted onto a two-dimensional page and are therefore presented here with audiovisual clips of their use."

Personal life

She has one son and two daughters. She is married to Steve Zuckerman since April, 2024. She is a member of

the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a Nontrinitarianism, nontrinitarian Restorationism, restorationist Christianity, Christian Christian denomination, denomination and the ...

Bibliography

*''Sounds Like Life: Sound-Symbolic Grammar, Performance, and Cognition in Pastaza Quechua'' (Oxford University Press, 1996) *''Lessons from a Quechua Strongwoman: Ideophony, Dialogue, and Perspective'' (University of Arizona Press, 2010, )

References

External links

BYU Linguistics & English Language
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nuckolls, Janis University of Chicago alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni Living people American sociolinguists Brigham Young University faculty American women linguists Communication scholars American Latter Day Saints Year of birth missing (living people)