An announcement on the Language Typology mailing list on 12/30:
we are hosting the ninth Syntax of the World’s languages in Lima (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú) between July 23th and 26th 2024. We are “cooking” (the culinary verb is in order when we talk about Peru) a very nice and welcoming conference for all of you, so we really hope you come over … SWL IX will provide a forum for linguists working on the syntax of less widely studied languages from a variety of perspectives.
This from the organizer, Roberto Zariquiey, at PUCP. Whoa! A splendid Z-name, one I’m sure I’d never seen before. And, extra points, on an Amazonian linguist. (I suppose it would have been too much to hope that RZ came from the town of Zaraza in Venezuela.)
You see, as a Z-person, I’m keenly aware of the letter Z, unconsciously aware of words (especially names) with a Z in them, which is why I’m so sure that the name Zariquiey is new to me. More on implicit attentiveness below.
Then there’s the question of the origins of the name. My family name, Zwicky, has been a Swiss name for hundreds of years, centered very specifically on a small town in the Alps. But there are some variant spellings. Also the possibility of a historical connection to somewhat similar names in Bavaria, and of those names to another set of names from the Slavic areas of Eastern Europe, More on those names below too. There are some surprises, like the remarkable spelling Tsviki, first seen in Belarus (but then people get up and move to new places, so there are now Tsvikis in the Miami area and New York City).
The family name Zariquiey doesn’t look much like any of the Swiss, Bavarian, or Slavic names (Slavic Zawickey is about as close as it gets), and it’s way separated from them geographically as well: apparently, almost all the Zariquieys in the world come from Spain, or from what is pretty clearly a Spanish settlement, in Peru (where RZ comes from). At some point, I will write RZ — I have his e-mail address — and ask him what he knows about his family’s origins. I’m somewhat reluctant to do this, though, since as you’re about to see, he’s a busy person, intellectually and emotionally committed to a program of intense and pressing research in Amazonia. On the other hand, as you can also see from the tone of his SWL IX announcement above and judge from his Radcliffe Institute photo (to come in a moment), he seems like a pretty cool guy.
In any case, now I dive right into information about RZ and his research. With all the other stuff to follow