List of colloquia as of March 2nd. Colloquium slots are typically 15 minutes per speaker, with some discussion time allowed.  

Ethical Dilemmas Encountered While Documenting Languages: Examples and Responses

Colloquium summary: Issues related to ethical conduct have become a visible concern for linguists in the past year, as evidenced by the Linguistic Society of America's solicitation for feedback on newly written statement of professional ethics (LSA 2008) and a recent article in 'Language' (Dobrin 2008). Linguists' attention to documenting endangered languages and the need to work ethically with the communities in which those languages are spoken appear to be driving forces behind the consideration of ethical issues. As some of the blog responses to Section 2, Responsibility to Those We Study suggest, the ideas about ethical conduct presented in the statement are thought to be most pertinent to those in the process of conducting linguistic fieldwork.

Three of the papers in this colloquium arise from situations the presenters experienced while in the field, documenting endangered languages in the Philippines, Indonesia and North America. The ways in which the presenters recognized and dealt with the ethical issues with which they were confronted demonstrate that researchers must be prepared to consider a range of options and remain flexible. These papers also make it clear that a one-size-fits-all set of responses to fieldwork ethics is unlikely to be of much use to those in the field.

The other two papers are concerned with ethical dilemmas surrounding linguistic materials in archives. This area of linguistic research arises as a result of language documentation and carries with it questions concerning what should be archived, how access will be governed, and whether there are conditions under which some materials should not be retrieved and published. These questions are important for linguists currently conducting fieldwork leading to the collection of materials that will need to be archived in the future, as well as for those retrieving items from archives for use by other linguists, language teachers and language learners. REFERENCES: Dobrin, Lise. 2008. From linguistic elicitation to eliciting the linguist: Lessons in community empowerment from Melanesia. Language 84(2):300-324. Linguistic Society of America. 2008. http://lsaethics.wordpress.com/

Colloquium Organizer: Pamela Innes, University of Wyoming

Laura C. Robinson: Informed Consent Among Analog People in a Digital World

This talk will examine the concept of informed consent when workingwith remote, non-literate groups, with reference to the presenter'sfieldwork among a hunter-gatherer group in the Philippines. Cansomeone give informed consent to have their language posted on theInternet when they've never seen a computer? This talk will examine the concept of informed consent in linguisticfieldwork. Many field linguists feel put out by the process ofobtaining IRB clearance for their research, believing these bodies tobe largely irrelevant to the "exempt" research we do. But we are not"exempt" from the ethical imperative to have our consultantsunderstand what it is we are doing (Fluehr-Lobban 1994). Ensuringthat consultants and collaborators understand our research, however,is not always straightforward. As academics, we often have a hardtime making ourselves understood to lay people in our own communities(what is it that linguists do anyway?), and this problem is augmentedby the difficulties of cross-cultural communication and languagebarriers, especially when dealing with a non-literate, remotecommunity. Can a consultant or collaborator give informed consent to alanguage documentation program involving audio and video recording,archiving and dissemination on the web when they've never even seen acomputer? According to the definitions of "informed consent" thatmost IRBs adhere to, the answer is no. People cannot consent tosomething they do not understand. Does this mean that we shouldn't doresearch with such isolated language communities? Is it paternalisticto say that such individuals, who do not constitute a protected class,cannot give their consent to language documentation projects? Is itmore paternalistic to say that we believe that they would consent ifthey understood? These questions will be explored in this talk, whichwill make reference to the presenter's fieldwork among ahunter-gatherer group in the Philippines. Unlike many American Indiangroups, the Dupaningan Agta ethnolinguistic group does not see theirlanguage as sacred and has no qualms with making information abouttheir language public. They enjoy being photographed and videorecorded and are excited about the prospect of making such materialspublic. Can I take that as informed consent, even though I was neverable to adequately explain that the materials would be availablethrough an archive? Although this important issue is not commonlyaddressed in the linguistics literature, I will explore the morethorough discussion in the anthropological literature and discuss itsapplication to linguistic fieldwork.

Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn. 1994. Informed consent in anthropologicalresearch: We are not exempt. Human Organization 53(1): 1-10.

Erin Debenport: Intellectual Property Rights and Emergent Literacy: Innovations and Implications for Communities and Scholars

This paper describes the moral, ethical and political dilemmas stemming from a Pueblo community’s decision to write their language for the first time. The consequences of literacy, for both community members and linguists, has resulted in innovative ways of engaging with texts and the use of new research methodologies. Mirroring the experience of many other groups initiating indigenous language programs, the decision to write the Southern Tiwa language for the first time was a difficult one for community members at Sandia Pueblo, New Mexico. As Paul Kroskrity has observed (Kroskrity 1993, 1998, 2000), Pueblo language ideologies link indigenous language use to ceremonial sites and practices, with knowledge of particular words and expressions by outsiders prohibited, not only for non-Pueblo people, but also for certain individuals or groups in the community. For these reasons tribal members viewed written language materials as potentially at odds with local ideologies privileging secrecy, although it was ultimately decided that creating an orthography and texts in Southern Tiwa should be part of language preservation efforts. Unsurprisingly, moral, political and ethical dilemmas have accompanied this case of emergent literacy, both for community members at Sandia and for linguists who have contributed to the tribe’s language revitalization project. In this paper I draw on six years of linguistic and ethnographic fieldwork in this community to describe several of these dilemmas, and the new ways of engaging with written materials and limiting access to cultural information that have arisen as a result. Community members are creatively respecting local language ideologies by instituting new ways of authoring learning materials and controlling textual circulation. Like such creative textual practices by community members during this period of new literacy and accompanying social change, we as researchers must also stretch our idea of what it means to work on "endangered languages" and to think creatively about new methodologies that will honor local ideologies involving intellectual property rights. In the spirit of promoting the successful partnerships of researchers and indigenous community members I offer three possible methodological approaches for linguists working in such situations: 1) describing grammatical types not tokens; 2) using previously published materials to supplement observations, and 3) supplementing grammatical research with ethnographic inquiry. Using my own ethnographic and linguistic data as examples, I show that it is possible to describe both social and grammatical processes without compromising such partnerships. 

REFERENCES:

KROSKRITY, PAUL. V. 1993. Language, history and identity: Ethnolinguistic studies of the Arizona Tewa. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

____. 1998. Arizona Tewa kiva speech as a manifestation of a dominant language ideology. In: Language ideologies: Practice and theory, ed. by Bambi Schieffelin, Kathryn Woolard, and Paul V. Kroskrity, 103-22. New York: Oxford University Press.

____. 2000 Language ideologies in the expression and representation of Arizona Tewa ethnic identity. In: Regimes of language: Ideologies, polities, and identities, ed. by Paul V. Kroskrity, 329-259. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research.

Nancy C. Dorian: Documentation and Responsibility

In the documentation of endangered languages a researcher's responsibility to scholarship, to the sources who supplied the material, and to the study community overall may be in conflict. The opposing ethical claims of such responsibilities are discussed in the light of long field experience with a variety of Scottish Gaelic. Several fundamental and sometimes opposing responsibilities can arise in connection with the documentation of endangered languages: responsibility to scholarship, responsibility to one's sources, and responsibility to the community. The first of these is the most straightforward. Scholarly responsibility and accountability make it desirable that data which will never be available again (i.e. most or all, in the case of endangered languages) should be made accessible to colleagues and successors. Determining responsibility to one's sources is more difficult. If gathered largely in private, dyadic interactions, audio recordings in particular are likely to include sensitive material, simply because speakers often prove unable to keep the potentially public nature of the interchange in mind even when the recording machinery is operating directly before their eyes. Conflict of interest then arises if obviously sensitive material contains data crucial to the researcher's analysis or arguments. A still more frequent problem is the outsider's inability to identify reliably just what material will be sensitive from the point of view of community members; years of experience with a particular community do not guarantee immunity from serious blunders in this regard. Responsibility to the community overall can become difficult because local conditions and attitudes are susceptible to unpredictable change. Long after the original sources are gone from the scene, a new generation of local people may wish to erase, to alter, or to enhance the memory of their ethnic distinctiveness and the language that represented it. In the first case they may resist any publication or public discussion of materials gathered from deceased family members and/or ask that all materials be given over to the community's keeping. In the second case they may contest the accuracy of such materials or the researcher's interpretation of them. In the third case they may demand that all materials in the possession of the researcher be made available in some universally accessible form, regardless of any promises of confidentiality made to deceased family members who served as sources. The sometimes conflicting claims of these various responsibilities have emerged in various forms in the wake of 45 years of research work with speakers of an unusual and obsolescent dialect of Scottish Gaelic and in continuing contact with their descendents. Some of the resulting ethical dilemmas are discussed here.

Pamela Innes: Ethical Problems in Archival Research: Beyond Accessibility

This paper will explore a situation involving retrieval of narratives from a linguistic archive that current members of the study community believe are dangerous for certain segments of the population to encounter. The ways in which the researcher attempts to bridge linguists' professional expectations and the community's expectations are discussed. For many, the primary ethical concerns when retrieving linguistic archival material have to do with the issue of accessibility: who will have access; how access will be controlled; who determines whether one gets access or not. These are thorny issues, particularly in light of the generally accepted view that linguistic materials constitute one form of intellectual property. There are other features about linguistic materials demanding ethical consideration from those working with archival materials, too.  While working on a project to prepare archived Muskogee language materials for public access, the presenter has brought to light narratives within the archive that members of the speech community consider to be dangerous if the full context of their production is not made clear to those who might read them. (The materials were being prepared for presentation in print on the web, with production of audio files to be undertaken at a later date.) Some of the narratives are considered dangerous and inappropriate for contextually-uninformed men and are always inappropriate for women, even when they are aware of the contexts in which the narratives are performed. This view of the narratives is based upon the Muskogee linguistic ideology in which language is itself a powerful force. Even though the original speakers are dead and the narratives are only available in written form, they are still powerful. Without a clear understanding of the contextual background, a reader will unleash this power in an ungoverned and potentially harmful way. This paper discusses how the presenter intends to respect the community's ideology while still managing to satisfy the professional expectation that linguistic data will be made available for further study.

Gary Holton: Relatively ethical: A comparison of linguistic research paradigms in Alaska and Indonesia

Just as there is no single model for community-based research, ethical standards for community engagement are not universal. Drawing from personal experiences with language documentation among threatened communities in two very different parts of the world, this paper examines the challenges of applying universal ethical guidelines for linguistic fieldwork.

GIS 1: Methods and Case Studies in Geographically-Referenced Language Documentation

Colloquium summary: Recent years have seen increasing acknowledgment of the need to include local concepts about landscape and general geographic knowledge as part of a comprehensive documentation agenda. This can be observed in the growing number of publications on the subject (e.g., the entire special issue of Language Sciences 30) and research projects designed to do just that. The increasing availability of GPS equipment, GIS software and mapping APIs have made the handling of geographically referenced linguistic information easier than ever before. Linguists and members of speaker communities no longer need to be specialists in GIS to document aspects of language in the geographic domain. At the same time, this growing documentation necessitates attention to specialized archiving and dissemination procedures, and lends itself to novel applications in other subfields of linguistics.

This double colloquium is organized around these two themes. In the first session, 'GIS 1: Methods and Case Studies in Geographically-Referenced Language Documentation', the authors describe methods and case studies in the documentation of indigenous toponymy, landscape ontology and oral histories of land use. They present projects from communities in North America, Australia, the Himalayas and the Pacific. Some of the projects have involved GIS technology from their inception, while others have only recently supplemented the use of paper maps with digital techniques. The talks consider both long- and short-term projects and offer participants a chance to compare documentation methods.

The prospects for digital GIS in language documentation projects, however, do not end when documenters leave the field. It is these prospects that the presenters discuss in the second session, 'GIS 2: Advanced Dissemination and Linguistic Applications of Geocoded Field Data'. The nature of geographic language data is unlike the recordings, transcripts and fieldnotes traditionally collected in language documentation, and as such it presents new challenges for aggregation, dissemination and preservation. The presenters discuss initiatives to build infrastructure and develop standards for geographic language data, and talk about the difficulties and benefits of digitizing annotated paper maps in an archive setting. GIS also allows researchers to manipulate and visualize large quantities of geocoded linguistic information in ways not previously possible. This has promise for advancing other subfields of linguistics. Authors in this session present examples from historical/comparative and areal linguistics by tracing the geographic development of negators in Slavic and demonstrating the use of the R programming language to quickly produce maps of a wide range of linguistic features.

Colloquium Organizer: Andrea L. Berez

Carolyn O'Meara, David M. Mark, Andrew Turk, David Stea: Documenting the Landscape (Geographic) Domain in Anthropological Linguistic Fieldwork

Elicitation of terms for the landscape domain raises unique methodological issues due to their continuous nature both as instances and as categories. This produces considerable cross-cultural variability in geographic categories, and how category names are lexicalized. We present strategies for eliciting landscape categories and defining them within an ontological framework. Documentation of a language includes documenting the semantics of terms in the language. For domains such as zoology and botany, scientific taxonomies can provide a clear etic grid against which native methods of categorization can be recorded. For the geographic or landscape domain, however, there is no such grid. One of the contributing factors to the landscape domain not having an etic grid is the ontology of landscape—the same region of land can be subdivided into nameable landforms in many ways. Geographic objects (e.g., mountains, hills, rivers, lakes, etc.) tend to have fuzzy or graded boundaries, and there seems to be considerable variability as to what gets delimited and how the objects are categorized and named. Also, geographic objects are by definition very large and in fixed locations, hence it is difficult to elicit terms by showing real examples directly. These characteristics of the landscape domain provide the researcher with a methodological challenge regarding the elicitation of landscape terms and placenames. The presentation will address the following methodological issues related to elicitation of terms and concepts for the landscape domain:-The ambiguity of reference, for instance, if the researcher is pointing at a landscape object, the native speaker consultant could think the researcher is referring to something completely different. Also, the term may refer to a part of the landscape feature rather than the whole thing. Also, water in the landscape may be named separately from its container;-The scale of the landscape makes it difficult to capture reference during elicitation, for instance, how does one elicit terms for objects that are so large that it is hard to view them at the appropriate scale? More specifically, a mountain range is only perceived as a mountain range from a distance; when it’s up close, it is not natural to say mountain range. If photographs or maps are used for elicitation, people may misinterpret the nature of the entities shown;-For any domain, the researcher must avoid interpreting native categories as just alternative names for the categories of their own language; risk of this error seems greater for the landscape domain;-Examples from the authors’ fieldwork to document the landscape for the Seri, Yindjibarndi, and Navajo languages will illustrate these issues and some possible solutions.

James Kari and Ezekiel Beye: The Development of the Ahtna Place Names Corpus

We trace the development of the Ahtna (Alaska) placenames corpus, a list of 2100+ toponyms that the first author has been documenting with Ahtna speakers since the 1970s. We summarize our methodology, including the use of historic sources and sketch maps, and the consolidation of the database with GIS software. The Ahtna Athabacsan language area covers 35,000 square miles, mainly in the Copper River Basin of Southcentral Alaska. The Ahtna region has a comprehensive Athabascan place names system which the first author has been documenting for over thirty years. In this talk we trace the history of the Ahtna place names corpus and summarize various methods that have been employed, including the use of historic sources, the use of sketch maps, the search for lacunae, and the generation of names by rule. The Ahtna place names data were first collected and consolidated between 1975 and 1983 and were published in Author 1983 in drainage lists of 1378 names with two large wall maps. In the intervening years the first author worked with local experts to off and on to add hundreds more toponyms to the lists and label the names on sets of laminated USGS topographic maps. Since 2004, the availability of GIS technology facilitated collaboration between the first author, the Bureau of Land Management (Glennallen) and the Lands Department of Ahtna Inc., the regional Native corporation. Recently in 2008 the authors worked together at the Ahtna, Inc. Lands Department to review the corpus in GIS shape files. Reciprocal exchanges of the databases have taken place. Ahtna Inc. is now able to print and circulate customizable regional place name maps for the local village corporations and councils for review and as learning devices. Next, we will establish protocols to allow for future periodic review of the names and locations. Ahtna is the most advanced toponymic corpus for an Alaska Native language. More than fifty Ahtna speakers have contributed to the corpus, and the list has grown to over 2100 names. There are many other generalizations that we can make based upon the Ahtna place names corpus. The names are 95% analyzable. The names can be summarized in terms information content, structural patterns, memorizability, and use in overland navigation.

Julia Colleen Miller and Gabriele Mueller: The Importance of Place: Reflecting Dane-zaa Geographic Knowledge in Google Earth

In documenting the Dane-zaa language (Athabaskan) from a place-names perspective, we have focused on collecting linguistic data intrinsically tied to the land. By developing map layers for Google Earth, we've created a user-friendly portal into our digital archive and a means to express geographic knowledge of the Dane-zaa. Our language documentation team has been working toward the goal of documenting the Dane-zaa language (Athabaskan, Canada) from a place names perspective. During the first phase of our project, we collected place names along with stories of culturally relevant locations and personal migration histories, allowing for the exploration of spatial expressions in this language. The current phase of our project focuses on places and virtual representation. As a result, we have the unique benefit of collecting linguistic data that derive from stories about land and the importance of ‘place’. Materials deposited into our digital archive include narratives, conversations, folklore and procedural recordings that are intrinsically tied to the land.  One of our primary goals was to create an alternative portal through which one could access the archived materials. Additionally, this alternative was designed to reflect the geographic knowledge of the Dane-zaa. To this end, we have created .kml layers for use with Google Earth. The first layer represents specific locations that were chosen by community Elders as historically relevant locations ( http://www.mpi.nl/DOBES/projects/beaver/DoBeS_Beaver.kmz ). Each of these geographic points has various media files associated with it within the information bubbles of the layer. Direct links to these media are provided, as well as entry points into the archive to nodes bearing similar media that may interest the visitor. A second layer (unpublished at this time) represents the aboriginal place names of selected geographic features, including audio files and brief explanations of the names.  Over the course of our project we have envisioned many exciting linguistic and anthropological applications of the geographic display offered by Google Earth. Since Dane-zaa is spoken across six reserves in Alberta and British Columbia, one such project we are currently working on is a map of the various dialects and some of their distinctive features. This layer outlines phonological distinctions as well as transcriptions and audio links of select tokens.  We will conclude the talk with a discussion of possible community-driven applications for Google Earth in linguistic documentation projects: -mapping stories pertaining to settlement histories, myths, spiritual narratives -mapping selected sites of good moose-hunting, including links to procedural videos instructing viewers on how to prepare moose-meat at the camp site -creation of layers showing traditional land use along with modern use such as gas and oil well sites, with recorded interviews with Elders discussing how the changes have influenced traditional life.

Lars Borin, Anju Saxena, Ljuba Veselinova: GIS and OWL in Documentation of Ethnobiological Terms in the Himalayas

We describe a language documentation project with Swedish and Indian partners with the aim of documenting ethnobiological terms in Himalayan languages. All collected data and metadata are coded using OWL (Web Ontology Language), a powerful, flexible and extensible means of linking various knowledge sources, multimedia, and GIS/map serverapplications. Multimedia and GIS supported language documentation of the Himalayas with the focus on ethnobiological terms is a three-year collaborative project with Swedish and Indian partners, recently awarded funding by the Swedish Research Council and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. The aim of the project is to document languages of the Himalayan region of Himachal Pradesh in India – with a focus on ethnobiological (initially ethnobotanical) terms and their roles in the sociocultural activities of communities. The collected data will be geocoded, where every specimen will be provided with geographical information as regards its original location and spread. We are exploring a flexible, extensible connection between a lexical database with dialect and language variety data, where the bulk of the lexical items in this project will be botanical terms, multimedia data (images and sound recordings), and a GIS application. If we want to be flexible and look to possible future uses of these data, this puts special demands on the format of the data bases. Ideally, we would like to be able to connect the dialect identifiers used in the lexical database to geodata used in the GIS. We would also like to be able to connect the plant names to one or more botanical data bases as well as to multimedia objects such as images and sound.The currently most promising way to achieve this is through OWL, the Web Ontology Language defined as part of the World Wide Web Consortium’s Semantic Web initiative. OWL is a decentralized knowledge representation format with a standardized syntax and – more importantly – a standardized semantics, which makes it comparatively easy to integrate information from many heterogeneous and distributed sources (provided that they adhere to certain basic requirements that are set out in the OWL standard). The emerging ISO standard for computational lexicons (LMF) has a proposed OWL binding. There are several initiatives for coding both geospatial data and multimedia metadata using OWL. Finally, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization are now converting their AGROVOC thesaurus to OWL. Thus, choosing OWL as our representation format for the ethnobotanical term database will hopefully ensure interoperability between lexicon, multimedia components, domain databases and GIS. In this presentation we will demonstrate the results of our initial work with GIS supported language documentation. This demonstration will form the basis for discussing issues that we have encountered thus far in our work.

Donald Lantzke: The Mapping of Indigenous Place names in Western Australia, a Preliminary Report

Placenames derived from Indigenous sources in Western Australia tend to possess distinctive suffix stems. The geographical distribution of some of these is well defined whilst that of others appears to be less geographically constrained. I report on the research possibilities and problems in mapping placenames according their suffix stem. According to the Commonwealth Gazetteer (2004 edition) there are almost 50,000 officially gazetted places in Western Australia. These names are derived from a range of sources: Dutch maritime explorers in the 1600s; French maritime explorers in the late 1700s and early 1800s; British maritime and terrestrial explorers up to the late 1800s; and later exploration and colonial expansions following the first British settlements in Western Australia.  In addition to these ‘imported’ placenames there are a considerable number of place names derived from Indigenous people. Whilst no formal count or assessment of the Gazetteer has been undertaken it is estimated that at least 50% of Officially Gazetted Western Australian Place Names are derived from Indigenous place names.  Indigenous-derived place names in Western Australia tend to possess distinctive locational suffixes. The geographical distribution of some of these suffixes are quite well defined whilst other the distribution of other locational suffixes appear to be less geographically constrained. The presence of the distinctive suffixes does allow the electronic Gazetteer to be search sorted and imported into a GIS for graphic representation and further analysis.  This research paper provides a preliminary synthesis of a project mapping Indigenous derived place names utilising the MapInfo software package and the electronic database version of Commonwealth Government gazetteer. As this research is in the early stages it aims to provide an overview of the results achieved too date as well as future directions and prospects of the study.

Joshua Nash: Toponymic Data Collection on Norfolk Island, South Pacific

Norfolk Island, South Pacific presents a laboratory case study in naming and language change to creolists and contact language linguists. This paper outlines the process of toponymic data collection in a sensitive and isolated research environment and presents an inventory of toponyms and other names drawn from recent fieldwork for anaylsis. Norfolk Island presents a laboratory case study in naming and language change to creolists and contact language linguists. It provides the challenge of (1) classifying an esoteric insider language that is extremely difficult to categorise, and (2) observing interactions between language and environment across starkly defined historical periods. This paper reports on the process and methodology of collecting and documenting toponyms on Norfolk Island and some complexities posed to the field linguist during fieldwork on the Island.As an isolated island community with a small population and an even smaller older population with broad knowledge of the history of the language and the toponymic history of Norfolk, data elicitation is generally achieved through interviews as well as archival research and liaising with the Norfolk Island Government and administrators. During recent visits to the Island a general typology of Norfolk toponymy has developed including hitherto undocumented taxa such as offshore fishing ground names and spatial orientation data. It is these taxa that form the empirical basis of the current analysis.This presentation argues for:1. Awareness of the sensitivity of informants in isolated island environments especially considering previous bad experiences on Norfolk with ‘blitzkrieg’ research by scientists.2. Straightforwardness in the interview situation and consistent follow up communication, e.g. emails, letters and presents.3. The acceptance of the inevitability of gaps in linguistic and toponymic data in environments such as Norfolk Island and the need to document as much as possible as soon as possible.The presented data from interviews and archival research comprises a comprehensive inventory of Norfolk toponyms and other names as part of a project concerning the linguistic and cultural history of Norfolk Island.

GIS 2: Advanced Dissemination and Linguistic Applications of Geocoded Field Data

Colloquium summary: Geographic language data is unlike traditional language documentation material and presents new challenges for preservation and dissemination.

Presenters discuss the development of infrastructure and standards. With GIS large amounts of geocoded data are manipulable like never before, and authors present implications for and examples from historical/comparative and areal linguistics.

Colloquium Organizer: Andrea L. Berez

Helen Aristar-Dry, Anthony Aristar, Dan Parker, Luiza Newlin Lukowicz, Joshua Thompson, Ben Cool, Matt Lahrman: Language and Location: A Map Annotation Project (LL-MAP)

LL-MAP (Language and Location: A Map Annotation Project) is an online Geographical Information System (GIS) designed to integrate language information with data from the physical and social sciences. The system will host a comprehensive set of language distribution maps, along with information on language resources, culture, and demographics. It will also include a ‘Scholars’ Workbench,’ whereby linguists can combine data drawn from their own linguistic research with data already existing in the LL-MAP database to produce new language maps. LL-MAP is an online Geographical Information System (GIS) designed to integrate language information with data from the physical and social sciences. The system will host a comprehensive set of language distribution maps, along with information on language resources, culture, and demographics. It will also include a 'Scholars' Workbench,' where linguists can combine data drawn from their own research with data already existing in the LL-MAP database to produce new language maps.The project originates in a belief that technology that allows integration of disparate data is crucial to scientific advancement. GIS has an advantage that other means of dealing with linguistic data do not: it makes possible the integration of disparate bodies of data through their geographical location, providing potential insight into processes of change which few other techniques could offer. In order to facilitate the free use of linguistic data in a GIS context, we have built the following facilities:1. User Facilities: a. United States census data visualization, with data normalized to ISO 639-3 and associated to the US FIPS code to the census tract level.  b. IPUMS census language data showing the number of speakers in selected areas of the world.  c. Language search, where users may search for languages by country. We provide speaker population counts and allow users to link to a data browser that provides all information available on any particular language.  d. Country Search, where users may search for countries by language.  e. Facility for searching the OLAC database. f. Multidisciplinary data browser, where users may search and view geo-encoded data from other physical/social sciences and blend it with linguistic data.2. Oracle geo-database: A relational database that stores language and geographical data and tracks scholarly projects. 3. Language data browser consolidates the display of all searchable language resources from multiple projects including: a. All data in the LINGUIST List database b. The OLAC catalog c. The LINGUIST List researchers directory d. Endangered languages lexicon data: a product of the EMELD project  e. The MultiTree project: information on the genetic classification and relationships of the world’s languages.4. The Project Browser, which allows scholars to enter, upload and display language data using any pre-defined projection5. Map harvesting using WMS (Web Map Service) to load images from publicly available WMS/ArcIMS servers and overlay map layers from multiple sources.

Gary Holton, Andrea L. Berez, Hunter Lockwood, Stephanie Morse: Preserving Geolinguistic Documentation: From Paper Maps to GIS at the ANLC

The map collection at the Alaska Native Language Center contains over 500 items, dating back to 1711. We recently geo-coded nearly 3000 toponyms in four Alaskan languages. In this talk, we trace our workflow from paper maps to ArcGIS, show our results, and discuss some of the challenges we encountered. Although geographic data have generally been of secondary concern within the field of documentary linguistics, existing language archives contain significant collections of geo coded linguistic data, mostly in the form of paper maps annotated by field linguists.The map collection at the Alaska Native Language Center contains over 500 items, dating from 1711 to the present. A recent inventory revealed that a number of these contain toponymic and language boundary data of potentially great interest to the linguistic and speaker communities. In their current state as paper maps, however, they are both difficult to access and also physically deteriorating. GIS technologies provide an opportunity to not only preserve the linguistic data represented on these maps and make it more widely available, but also allow researchers to manipulate and analyze this linguistic data in ways not easily possible with traditional non-digital maps. In a recent pilot project, we geo-coded nearly 3000 Yup’ik, Gwich’in, Tanacross and Upper Tanana toponyms spanning Alaska’s Bering Sea Coast, Yukon Flats and Upper Tanana River valley. In this talk, we trace our workflow from paper maps to ArcGIS, show our results, and discuss some of the challenges we encountered.The physical state of the archived maps was a primary concern. Maps had been taped or glued together, stenciled labels often rubbed away. Some maps were separated from their indexes, leaving only meaningless numbered codes. Metadata about author, date, speaker, and language were often missing. Versioning problems were also common, with little indication about the status or order of working versions of the maps. In many cases, map collars had been removed, making identifying the underlying USGS topographic maps difficult. The transfer of topnymic and language boundary information from paper to GIS presents many challenges. Most notably, traditional mapmaking is often contextually based and relies on a level of human interpretation that is difficult to reproduce in GIS. Toponyms gathered in the field are often assigned to areas with vague boundaries (such as a name written across a large lowland region), but GIS necessitates establishing features as points, lines or polygons. Perhaps due to the difficulty of accessing large paper maps, the map collection at ANLC has received little if any attention from researchers. Providing access to these data in digital form facilitates ongoing documentary activities, including: groundtruthing data that may have been hastily collected; data repurposing; and enriching linguistic data with cultural information.

Oliver Streiter: From Cooperative GIS to Language Monitor: Harmonizing Documentation Activities and Sharing Data

In this talk we propose and motivate the development of a language monitor, a device that traces the development of languages and, in parallel, the documentation or maintenance efforts. We will give an outline of requirements for this tool and the status of current implementations and data. The purpose of the talk is to advance its realization in a collaborative project. As languages are dying at an unseen pace (Dressler 1988, Robins & Uhlenbeck 1991, Brenzinger 1992,1998, Wurm 1996,2001, Hagège 2000, Skutnabb-Kangas 2000, Nettle & Romaine 2002), linguists are struggling worldwide to support and document endangered languages, hoping to promote and preserve them, or at least to know as much as possible about them before they have gone forever (cf. Aristar Dry 2002). In this light, we propose and discuss Language GIS, a possible corner-stone methodology for future language studies and for the management and coordination of language preservation projects. The overall promise of Language GIS is to create, manage and process interoperational formal language data, where interoperationality is defined through natural references to space an time. This promise of GIS has for Language Documentation another implication than in typological or other theoretical linguistic studies (Streiter 2007), or the integration of GIS with Computational Linguistic applications (2008). What we propose for Language Documentation is the development of a Language Monitor where linguists can leave a trace of their documentation project together with data they are willing to share, e.g. about the number of speakers, writing systems developed and taught, migration of communities or changes of legal status of a language or an ethnicity, i.e. Features that change quickly, that a linguist might be willing to share without loosing too much of his or her intellectual property and that are relevant to plan future documentation and maintenance efforts, or that can be provided by language communities themselves. As documentation and maintenance efforts will become a run against time in the years to come, live updates as in cooperative projects like Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org) or OpenStreetMap (http://www.openstreetmap.org) will supersede slow, not collaborative, not GIS-enabled projects like Ethnologue or Rosetta Stone. In this paper we will give a principled outline of requirements for a language monitor, such as web-based, collaborative, space enabled, time-enabled, multilingual, authoritative, providing formal data, authoritative, as well as the status of the current implementation. The purpose of the paper is to advance the discussion of the necessity and the properties of a language monitor and to promote its realization in a collaborative project.

Ljuba Veselinova: Using GIS for Tracing Language Change

GIS technology is used for historical comparison and syntactic reconstruction. Data from all Slavic languages are entered into a GIS application in order to trace the emergence of special negators, e.g., negators that differ from the standard negator. Other processes explored here are lexicalization of negation and general constructional change. So far the use of GIS technology for language studies has been limited. However, this is gradually changing as linguists are awakening to its huge potential in several sub-fields of linguistics. Dahl (2004) suggested using GIS for mapping smaller languages based on settlements rather than abstract areas (see Dahl & Veselinova (2005) for a pilot application of his ideas; see also Uytvanck, Dukers, Ringersma and Trilbeek (2008) for a similar idea). Author & Booza (2005) use GIS to map the multilingual structure of urban areas. In this study, GIS are used for historical comparison and syntactic reconstruction. Data from all Slavic languages are entered into a GIS application in order to trace the emergence of special negators, e.g., negators that differ from the standard negator. The standard negator is shown in (1); the special negators in (2) and (3). Other processes explored here are lexicalization of negation and constructional change. Some kind of special negator is found in all Slavic languages except the two Sorbian varieties, which are western outliers in the family. These special negators are relatively new fusions of the standard negator plus a particular verb; most of them are contextually restricted. A number of other developments can be traced such as the emergence of new lexicalized expressions for concepts such as lack of desire, inability, and negation of obligation. All of the changes observed in Slavic languages have a geographic dimension, that is, they occur in neighboring varieties and form geographically coherent clusters. Highlighting the areal character of language change is not new per se (cf Harris and Campbell, 1995; Lehmann, 1992). However, using GIS technology enables us to better structure and visualize the data. More importantly, GIS provides the flexibility absent in traditional dialect maps in that we can easily combine different variables and incorporate large amounts of data in the same set. Additionally, as done in this study, we can compare data from the standard languages with local varieties and thus get a sense of the direction and spread of language change something that has rarely been done for entire language families: Typically, traditional atlases concentrate either on localized variation or on generalized standard languages.  

Examples 

Serbian (South Slavic) (Sonja Petrović Lundberg p.c.) 

(1) Meri ne peva Mary NEG sing.3.SG.PRES ‘Mary does not sing’ 

(2) Nema divl-jih mač-aka  not.have.3.SG.PRES wild-GEN.PL.M cat-GEN.PL.M  ‘There are no wild cats’ 

(3) Tom nije nastavnik, on je lekar  Tom not.be.3.SG.PRES teacher, he be.3.pres physician  ‘Tom is not a teacher, he is a physician’

Hans-Joerg Bibiko: The usage of R in areal linguistics (exemplified by 'The R package WALS')

The usage of R in areal linguistics (exemplified by "The R package WALS") This talk wants to exemplify the power of R – a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics (http://www.r-project.org) – by the approach to gain access the entire WALS data – (http://wals.info) – to R in order to be able not only to process the WALS data but also to generate maps displaying the geographical distribution. "R" (http://www.r-project.org) is a free software environment for statistical computing and allows the generation of publication-quality graphs. It compiles and runs on a wide variety of UNIXplatforms, Windows and MacOS. R is highly extensible through the use of user-defined functions (packages) to enhance the bandwidth of functionality (e.g. for biology,bio-informatics,working with SQLdatabases,geo-statistics, geoprocessing, processing of GISdata, etc.). This talk wants to exemplify the power of Rby the approach to gain access the entire WALS data to R. "The World Atlas of Language Structures" (WALS, http://wals.info) is a large database of structural (phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials. The work-in-progress project "The Rpackage WALS" aims to make the entire WALSdata (such as linguistic features,genealogical data,geographical information,bibliographical references,etc.) available in conjunction with essential functions to handle and visualize these data. Furthermore this WALS package allows to dilate and/or modify the WALS data by own research results easily. Here a list of some functions available: -displaying the standard WALS maps -displaying the geographical distribution of families including genera for a specific area -displaying of correlated feature values as user-defined symbols (e.g. as pie charts in different sizes and colors) -selecting of the entire WALSdata according to complex pattern (e.g.which word order feature value is the rarest one in South America) -calculating several distance matrices of linguistic properties -listing all attested languages for given set of feature values -generating of different kinds of language trees based on genealogical data -several import (csv,xls, txt,…) and export (csv,kml,…) functionality -merging of user-defined data into the WALS data -importing of GISdata (e.g. from language documentation projects)

Colloquium summary: This colloquium will address issues of language documentation and conservation from the perspective of graduate students in linguistics or related areas. This colloquium will provide an opportunity for graduate students to share their research and experiences.

Colloquium Organizer: Hiroko Sato

Stefan Schnell: PhD in linguistics on an interdisciplinary language documentation project

It is becoming common for language documentation projects to include several different disciplines besides linguistics. Though doing a PhD in linguistics on such a project is an interesting and stimulating enterprise, the involvement of several researchers without a linguistic background, and therefore often without any opportunity to acquire some competence in the language(s) being documented, is not unproblematic. This is especially the case if the PhD student is the only linguist focusing on the/a language being documented. As all researchers need the collected data to be archived and be made useful for further scientific work, it needs to be processed and – at least minimally - annotated, i.e. recorded texts have to be transcribed and translated into the language of the project/scientific disciplines, e.g. English. It might easily happen that it is the PhD student who is left with this work. S/he might also be needed to check word lists elicited by colleagues not familiar with the language. As any project would also aim at the preparation of material for the speech community, the completion of the PhD thesis can easily be pushed aside in such a constellation.Based on my own experience on such an interdisciplinary language documentation project, the paper makes the following proposals in order to minimize work for the PhD student that is not immediately related to the PhD thesis:1. Researchers of any discipline need to familiarize at least minimally with the tools/software used in the project. Ideally, this can be helpful for various tasks, as for instance, the knowledge of Toolbox could enable a marine-biologist to feed the lexical database with names of fish and also to produce a small fish lexicon for the speech community.2. Members of the speech community should be involved in the transcription and translation of recorded texts, and their edition for language materials as much as possible. The edited texts can easily be compiled for a story book.3. PhD student and researchers in other disciplines should collaborate as intensely as possible in the field to minimize work after the fieldtrip.

Elena Indjieva: I am a linguist therefore I am Kalmyk

Most of the works on language endangerment and revitalization are written by linguists who are not members of the endangered language community concerned (Tsunoda 2005:135). In this presentation I delve into my experience regarding the value of linguistic heritage from an intricately mixed standpoint, as an insider, an ethnic representative of an endangered linguistic community and as an outsider, a foreign linguistic fieldworker. I am Kalmyk, a descendant from the Oirat tribes that due to the internal political pressure in 1616 were forced to emigrate from their original homeland, currently the Xinjiang region of China, to the western part of Russia. Kalmyks as a linguistic community have been isolated from the rest of the Oirats (as well as other Mongolian tribes) for almost 400 years (1616-2009). Due to the drastic assimilation policies of the Soviet period, highlighted by Stalin’s ethnic cleansing, the present-day Kalmyks face a real threat of native language and culture loss. Under such conditions, the knowledge of the native language among Kalmyks (including myself) is limited to basic vocabulary. However, as a language documenter (trained at the University of Hawai’i), I conducted fieldwork on Oirat in the Xinjiang region, the original homeland of the Kalmyks, where I was able to reclaim my native language, learning it from the representatives of the Xinjiang Oirat linguistic community. A few months of this fieldwork provided me with a rare opportunity to reconnect with my ancestral culture, not from books or museum exhibits (as in Russia), but through every day traditional lifestyle ‘magically’ preserved in the Xinjiang region. Reclaiming my native language not only strengthened my realization of ethnic identity but had a profound impact on my self-identity, as well. Foremost, such experience deepened my understanding of the value of linguistic heritage.In this case, being a linguist and therefore someone who has been introduced to the global issue of language endangerment has several implications. In my presentation I explore such notions as ‘I am a linguist therefore I am Kalmyk’ and ‘without a language a nation is just a bunch of people with weird first and last names’ among others. An intimate knowledge of one’s native language coupled with linguistic training allows a first-hand realization of the spiritual and integrative nature of a native language and its inseparability from the culture. Learning my native language was a life changing experience.

References:

Bläsing, Uwe. 2003. Kalmuck. In Juha Janhunen (ed.), The Mongolic Language. London, New York: Routlegje Taylor & Francis Group. 

Tsunoda, T. (2005). Language Endangerment and language revitalization. An  Introduction. Berlin: Muoton de Gruyter. (pp. 134-167).

Julia Wieting: Collaboration in conservation

Collaboration as an institutional imperative for language conservation has gained ground inasmuch as it relates to how academic linguistics approach working with communities of speakers (Penfield et al. 2008). However, the imperative for interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers from different linguistic subfields, or from other cognitive or social sciences, lacks definition. Accordingly, without having answered why collaborative research should be entertained in language conservation, there is no corresponding attempt to outline how such research can be accomplished. For graduate students in linguistics who may not be oriented purely towards linguistic description, yet who may be drawn to the language conservation ethic, the question of how to contribute may be answered at least in some part by investigating how research from other subfields may add to language documentation and revitalization enterprises. This paper will first consider the role of interdisciplinary research in language conservation before presenting a survey of collaborative models which may be applicable for graduate student research. 

References

Penfield, S., Serratos, A., Tucker, A.F., Harper, G., Hill Jr., J, and Vasquez, N. 2008 ‘Community Collaborations: Best Practices for North American Indigenous Language Documentation.’ International Journal of Society and Language, 191: 187-202

Apay Tang: Documenting Truku, an Endangered Language of Taiwan

Truku is an endangered language spoken in eastern Taiwan. The number of speakers is unknown and members of the younger generations cannot speak it. Truku is undergoing strong attrition and language shift to Mandarin Chinese. Efforts have been made toward documenting and revitalization, for example, pedagogical materials such as textbooks, an abridged dictionary, tapes, and CDs have been produced. However, sustainable archives do not exist yet and younger people do not have strong motivation to learn Truku. This paper (1) proposes to show the significance of archiving in support of language revitalization; (2) describes the process of documenting the language with digital software; and (3) discusses the necessity of providing Truku semi-speakers and young learners with a user-friendly description of certain complicated aspects of the Truku language. All of this is from the perspective of a Truku speaker studying for a PhD in linguistics. The traditional language description approach has not greatly benefitted Truku speakers and learners. In the first place, linguists have stored Truku linguistic descriptions in their own personal bookshelves and computers, rather than making them available to the community. In addition, most of the descriptions are not user-friendly, which may partially contribute to attrition of the language, as learners have the perception that the language is too difficult to learn. As part of the documentation and revitalization effort, it is crucial both to develop integrated and user-friendly linguistic descriptions and to ensure that all language materials are archived and easily accessible to the community. I began my current project by digitizing stories a Truku senior man and woman had recorded in 1999, after which I transcribed the linguistic data using the program Transcriber; I then interlinearized them in the program Toolbox. Through the interlinearizing process, I found that several complicated linguistic phenomena can be described and categorized together. This new understanding of Truku grammar will contribute to the development of a clearer and more accessible description for learners of the language. Building up an archive, documenting Truku by using appropriate software, and developing user-friendly pedagogical materials may help Truku semi-speakers and learners gain a better understanding of the language in general. In addition, these efforts can not only store the linguistic data in a more sustainable way, but also motivate Truku semi-speakers and young learners to adopt authentic expressions.

Akiemi Glenn, Betty Ickes: Cross-disciplinary and community-researcher cooperation: Community scholar collaboration for language documentation

Starting from the belief that graduate student researchers working on language documentation have much to gain in developing collaborative relationships with community members and other researchers, this paper presents our cross-disciplinary collaboration as student researchers in linguistics and history, respectively, working with the community of Tokelauans residing on Hawai'i's island of O'ahu. Tokelauan is an endangered Polynesian language traditionally spoken on four low-lying atolls northwest of Sāmoa. Most speakers today, however, reside in a diaspora distributed over the vast area of the Pacific. Because of the dispersal of Tokelauan speakers across national boundaries and great distance, collecting representative linguistic data presents several significant challenges in the contexts of historical variation and emerging divergence under the pressures of endangerment. We outline a project to make use of oral history recordings of first generation Tokelauans in Hawai'i as the basis of a corpus of natural texts documenting the undescribed dialect of Olohega atoll. Additionally, we review our positions as outside (linguist) and inside (historian) the community under study and how our different positions have facilitated our separate research, our collaboration, and addressed issues of institutional invisibility for the community. We present several collaborative strategies and examine the challenging aspects of collaboration across disciplines.

Valèrie Guèrin, Sèbastien Lacrampe: Graduate student documenters: the "swim or sink" approach to fieldwork

Although comprehensive language documentations call for the collaboration of linguists, anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, and like-minded researchers, graduate students are often left out from such collaborative teams on the basis that a PhD dissertation must be original and singly authored. Interestingly enough, these academic constraints do not (in general) impact the quality and comprehensiveness of a student’s work in any significant ways. Alone in the field, students have to "swim or sink" and, more often than not, they learn how to "swim". In this presentation we show how we too learnt to "swim" by describing two projects we completed in Vanuatu. We identify key ingredients that made our documentation projects successful as well problems we encountered and averted while in the field. Specifically, we compare our documentation projects and highlight similarities and differences in terms of our linguistic training, the language communities (size, age, and fluency) we worked with, the state of endangerment of the languages at stake, our interactions and involvements with the communities (in terms our documentation goals and the communities’ desires), our field method techniques, and the outcomes of our projects. Given that "swim or sink" is often the only type of fieldwork available to graduate student documenters, we try and demystify this approach throughout this talk and present what we believe are its main advantages: alone in a language community for months, the fieldworker has to seek not only the collaboration of native speakers but also their trust and friendship. This bond one is "compelled" to create opens the way to a social dimension to fieldwork that may not be available to a team of researchers. This approach also has the advantage to teach the fieldworker how to cope with the many challenges of the field, and, eventually, to forge him/her to be an all-rounded linguist.

Qinglian Zhao: [No title yet]

Naxi is the language spoken by the Naxi people, an ethnic minority group primarily inhabiting Lijiang City, Yunnan Province, China. The total population of the Naxi ethnic group is 308,839 (2000 census). Of these, about 100,000 are monolingual in Naxi with the remainder . The others are bilingual in Naxi and Chinese. Naxi has several writing systems, which are known as Dongba script, Geba script and Naxi Pinyin. But none of the three writing system is widely used by the Naxi. Chinese is the dominant writing system for Naxi people in their daily life. Dongba script consists of ancient pictographic characters mainly mastered by the Dongba, the priests of Naxi’s Dongba religion. It has attracted the attention of the scholars both from China and abroad since the early 1900s who have conducted significant study and documentation work on it. Compared with the Dongba script, the study of spoken Naxi has been neglected. From the 1980’s, some Naxi children in the Lijiang Old Town learned to speak Chinese as their first language because many people thought that speaking the Naxi language would affect their children’s study of Mandarin Chinese, which is necessary for advanced education and economic opportunities. Naxi language is used in less and less settings by the young people, representing a danger to the maintenance of the language. During the last 10 years, tourism has developed rapidly in Lijiang. As visitors from all over the world have come to Lijiang, Naxi people have begun to introspect on their culture and have become aware that it is important to maintain their culture and language. In response to increased tourism, the Dongba script is once again coming into the focus. Some Naxi scholars and language activists have done language documentation work, however these are mostly individual efforts. Government supported documentation of the Naxi spoken language is urgently needed. First, a survey on Naxi language should be done in order to determine state of endangerment of the language. Second, a Naxi-Chinese bilingual dictionary will be one important part of the documentation. Third, language documentation is costly work and requires support from the government as well as the public. As a native speaker of Naxi and a graduate student of language documentation, I will play an active role in the documentation and maintenance of the language.

Kaori Ueki: Student initiatives in language documentation: the case of the Language Documentation Training Center (LDTC)

The Language Documentation Training Center (LDTC) is a program initiated and run by graduate students in linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, to contribute to the worldwide effort to document endangered languages. Since its inception, LDTC has been entirely run by graduate students with minimal input from faculty. In this presentation, we will first describe how the program is run and what kinds of people have participated. Then, we will discuss some of the difficulties and merits of the program, overall impact of LDTC on graduate students, and future directions. The main goal of LDTC has always been to train native speakers so that they can document their own language, and encourage them to be active language advocates in their home communities. The program content has evolved through trial and error, ranging from a completely unstructured free-for-all, using pre-made templates, to our current format that emphasizes text collection. Some of the participants’ projects are an online dictionary, collections of stories, songs, or proverbs. One of the difficulties in running LDTC is that the participants are not necessarily of endangered or understudied language communities. This is due to a difference in perception between what linguists consider undocumented, understudied, or endangered, and what many speakers believe of their native or heritage language. Consequently, there have been many participants who speak fairly well documented languages with several million speakers. Our shifting curriculum is evidence of the struggle to balance linguistic analysis and text collection. Nevertheless, the overall impact on its participants, both linguistics students and speakers, has been positive. For the linguistics student, working with a native speaker makes them aware of how native speakers perceive their own language and culture within their home communities. The benefit for the native speakers can be described as a heightened awareness of their language. Even though they may not continue to work on their language, many have expressed renewed appreciation for their language and culture. In this sense, the success of the LDTC may be as a community outreach program designed to raise people’s awareness their language and for them to re-connect with their heritage. Our future goals include exploring broader outreach opportunities to discuss the importance of language documentation and issues in language endangerment with a nonlinguistic audience. We also hope to connect with other organizations working in language documentation or revitalization.

Amanda Barie: Ya waft 'She knits': A Graduate Student's Role in Shughni Language Collaboration

The Shughni sentence Ya waft ëshe knitsí, a piece of data collected by University of Kentucky linguistics, suggests the undertaking of the graduate student in the cooperative-linguistic capacity. In this paper, knitting is a metaphor for the array of tasks and services a graduate student can perform and characterizes in particular my contributions to the Shughni language project. My work to preserve Shughni, an endangered language spoken in Tajikistan and Afghanistan, involved not only the realm of the clerical but also the analytical, causing me to realize that collaborative field research requires a graduate student to be a master-of-all-trades. I sit in the ranks between undergraduates and faculty, a space where expectations include video and audio recording sessions as well as participating in them with full attention and full notebooks. A graduate student must comprehend solicited data at the level of advanced scholars. Accordingly, this paper will detail my routine as factotum, which included driving Shughni speakers Gulnoro Mirzovafoeva, Muqbilsho Alamshoev, and Shoxnazar Mirzoev to the library, where I prepared equipment to record the solicitations. Because of the wide availability of technology at our university, data collection and archiving occurred in tandem; therefore, I spent the afternoons uploading video and transferring sound files to a computer, where they could be edited and checked for clarity. During data-gathering sessions, my primary task shifted to asking questions about the material and, on one occasion, presenting an analysis of the function of ëta + -ií in Shughni cleft sentences. For me, these activities will culminate in a Masterís thesis on Shughni syntax to be completed in the spring of 2009. Most importantly, knitting marks the integration of cultures and language-learning. My experience is special in one regard because the field came to us, thus introducing a new graduate-student role: liaison between cultures, American diplomat. As I transported the consultants to campus, answering questions about social norms for young American women and where to buy bread made without high fructose corn syrup--both of which were complicated by the fact that only Gulnoro speaks Englishó-I mediated between two worlds. My titles of secretary, techie, and scholar often merged, especially as my personal contact with our guests facilitated the intertwining of cultures. Showing Gulnoro how to find Shughni music videos on YouTube and pronouncing words from a childrenís magazine at the doctorís office to help Muqbilsho learn English are just two examples of role-weaving.

Cassandra Pace: Collaboration with Language Centers: An Option for Fieldwork and Research

An increasing number of linguists are recognizing the importance of language documentation. Graduate students in particular may be interested in obtaining original language data and engaging in fieldwork. They may not, however, have considered the option of working through a language center. This presentation discusses collaborating with language centers as an opportunity for fieldwork and ongoing research. Anecdotal information will be drawn from personal experience writing a dissertation in partnership with Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre, in Western Australia. Advice will be given regarding finding and choosing a language center. Some centers are very pro-active regarding documentation efforts, and other focus solely on community-initiated projects. There will be discussion on ways to ensure a particular language center is appropriate for certain goals. Additionally, discussion will include how an academic background may influence a researcherís expectations, as well as strategies for clarifying expectations ahead of time. This portion of the talk will explain the importance of having a contract, what a contract should include, and how to negotiate satisfactory copyright agreements. This presentation will also address the resources of language centers, including introductions to communities, advice about cultural norms, and funding. Working under the auspices of a language center with an established reputation may drastically reduce the time necessary for initial contact and explaining linguistic research. Working at a language center may also provide access to notebooks, tapes, and other resources that could take months to obtain from an archive. The knowledge and experience of colleagues at the center may also prove invaluable. Collaboration may involve taking on work beyond the researcherís primary research. If the primary consultants are temporarily unavailable, language centers often have short-term or on-going projects that can be contributed to. Such projects may directly benefit the community, and can be a good way to ensure the researcher is giving giving back. This portion of the presentation will cover types of projects that language centers may help facilitate, the benefits of multi-tasking in field research, and time-management. Finally, the presentation will address what to do if the linguistís research interests no longer coincide with the interests of the language center. Responsibilities of the researcher will be considered. Discussion will cover how to continue working with a community beyond the umbrella of a language center, and how to express changed affiliations to consultants.

Paulina Yourupi: A Pollapese speaker’s fieldwork experience in her homeland

For decades, linguistic fieldwork has been dominated by non-native speakers who were in search of exotic languages or linguistic phenomena to study. Despite all the odds against them in a foreign land, they prevailed and succeeded to become parts of such environments or to document aspects of said languages. It is only in recent years that the field has attracted native speakers, who want to study or document their own language. Being a native speaker, one would think that field working will be a smooth experience or less of a challenge because one is in his/her own backyard. However, as experienced by this particular native speaker, this view isn’t always true. There are both advantages and disadvantages to carrying out fieldwork as a native speaker, but the latter seems more pronounced for an unmarried woman. My student status was no hindrance at all and, I guess, this was overwritten by my status as a native speaker and my social standing in the community. In this session, I will share my experiences in the field, developing an orthography for Pollapese and documenting aspects of the language. More emphasis will be placed on my attempts to document aspects of what is considered ‘male domain’. Being part of the “in-group” guarantees full acceptance by the community to carry out my research without any resistance. Further, it denotes an underlying responsibility to my community - to carry out this research with their best interests at heart. However, being a native woman, certain restrictions were placed upon me. For instance, my movements had to be curtailed, for the most part in order to meet cultural standards. I found this to be a major stumbling block. Also, being privy to the protocols, customs, and mechanics of the culture meant conducting my research within the boundaries accorded a Pollapese woman. Exemption from cultural plunders or errors, usually afforded a foreigner, was not an option for me. I was expected to behave accordingly since I knew what was culturally appropriate and inappropriate or accepted and unaccepted. Thus, my research activities were tailored within the culturally appropriate boundaries. Not only was this cultural awareness crucial but also my responsibilities and obligations to family, friends, and island. Herein lay my biggest challenge. It was a constant struggle to choose between the responsibilities to my family or my research since, oftentimes, they clashed. In this colloquium, I will share the compromises I had to make and why those decisions were chosen instead of the other. Despite acceptance from the community to carry out my research, personal ethics, responsibilities, and cultural restrictions prohibited me from documenting as many stories, events, or natural conversations as I aspired to. Documentation was limited to certain contexts and individuals. My desire to tab into the “male world” or to document unique aspects of it was not fully realized. Again, family responsibilities and cultural restrictions had much to account for. I believe a native male researcher will have a more advantageous position than me or than his female counterpart. Nevertheless, I would not trade this position, that of a native speaker to a non-native one, despite the difficulties I experienced during my fieldwork. Having a native speaker’s insights and intuition about the language will be of tremendous assets when describing the language.

Colloquium summary: Japan has a tradition of field linguistic research. It also had a major language documentation project. However, the future of language documentation research in Japan is far from certain. In this organized session we will discuss the present issues and the new initiatives in Japan.

Colloquium Organizer: Toshihide Nakayama

Kayo Nagai: The present state of descriptive linguistics in Japan

This presentation gives an overview of the present state of descriptive linguistics in Japan and discusses related problems. After introducing the background of descriptive linguistics in Japan briefly, I will discuss problems we are facing in fostering younger linguists. Descriptive linguistics is a traditional subdiscipline of linguistics in Japan. Some linguists began to study Ainu, Ryukyuan, and some Altaic languages based on their fieldwork research in the early 20th century. Observing this tradition, Japanese descriptive linguists have been working on languages all over the world. They have made contributions not only to general linguistics by revealing unknown facts, but also to communities by devising orthographies, publishing textbooks, and so on. Although the number of theoretical linguists has increased after generative grammar was introduced, a considerable number of linguists continue to study languages based on their fieldwork. The research activities conducted under the ELPR project, a large-scale language documentation project, indicate that Japanese descriptive linguists cover very diverse languages. This tradition serves as a good foundation for advancing language documentation research in Japan. However, when we think of the future of language documentation research in Japan, we are facing some problems. I would like to discuss two sets of problems here: (1) problems surrounding the subdiscipline of descriptive linguistics-Unlike theoretical linguistics in Japan, descriptive linguistics does not have its own organization. Besides LSJ or other small circles, descriptive linguists do not have a place to exchange their opinions. -Not many domestic journals are available for descriptive linguists to submit papers. (2) problems surrounding graduate students- Only about five universities, such as the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University, have been training prospective field linguists. - Even in these universities, field methods have hardly been taught. Students who want to learn field methods have to take courses outside their program, for example at the LSA summer institute, or learn all by themselves. - Grants available for graduate students are limited.- It often takes longer for a field linguist to write a paper because research and data management are time consuming. As a result, he or she might have fewer publications than his or her competitors when applying for academic positions.

Toshihide Nakayama: New initiative for building better supporting infrastructure

This presentation will provide an outline of the new initiative that has just started in Japan in order to build a lasting infrastructure, i.e. a framework of academic collaboration and international collaborative network, in support of language documentation work. In this presentation I will provide an outline of our new initiative for building better academic infrastructure in support of language documentation (LD) research. At the center of the initiative is the 'Linguistic Dynamics Research Project (LingDy)', the new 5-year project that has started in April 2008 at the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA), Tokyo University of Foreign Studies in Japan. LingDy aims at deepening our understanding of linguistic diversity and advancing our understanding of why and how human languages have come to take the shape they have now. The major part of LingDy activities is directed toward promotion and providing a better support for LD work. The emphasis of the project is placed on building a lasting infrastructure, i.e. a framework of academic collaboration and international collaborative network, in support of LD work, rather than providing direct financial support for specific LD activities (fieldwork, data processing, etc.). The reason behind this decision is realization that there is very little support structure for LD work in Japan. Because of this structural problem, conducting LD work takes much more effort than necessary and the product of LD work is under-utilized. This lack of support structure seriously impacts junior researchers. We therefore consider it urgent and important to build the support infrastructure for LD-related work in Japan.The LD-related activities of LingDy cover the following areas:1) Improving the LD methodology (regarding collection, processing, archiving, and mobilization of data);2) Cultivating a researcher community (esp. among junior researchers);3) Creating more opportunities for presenting / producing LD work - Workshops, conferences - Various publications: papers, texts, grammars 4) Resource creation: supporting creation/production of usable materials - Assistance for creation of archivable materials - Assistance for processing data - Assistance in making the materials distributable (on the internet in particular)5) International collaborative network - Assisting creating internationally accessible materials - Contribution, collaboration in training, data archiving, resource finding, providing information about field situationsThe project has also incorporated another initiative 'FIELDLING', that was originally started in 2005 to support building a community of graduate students and postdocs who engage in LD work. This initiative was conceived to help students and junior researchers by providing them with methodological training, opportunities for organizing informal workshops and study groups, forming a community of mutual support and knowledge sharing.

Yasuhiro Yamakoshi: Sharing research information and skills on the net: FIELDLING community site

One of the main objectives of FIELDLING is to facilitate sharing information and skills among field workers.Very few graduate schools in Japan offer a systematic program for field methods. In order to offer training and facilitate exchange of information and skills, FIELDLING launched a community website. This website enables us to share information and build an interuniversity network of field researchers. In this presentation, I will talk about the mechanism we set up in FIELDLING for sharing information and skills and will explain why we need such mechanisms in Japan. The FIELDLING community site was launched in February 2005. Since then, FIELDLING has provided several projects for members to communicate and acquire several skills as follows: -For communication and sharing of information: BBS and mailing list, a wiki-based website named 'whiteboard,' online meeting via Skype and ooVoo -For acquiring training skills: Documentary linguistics 2008, several workshops on topics such as how to use the toolbox and how to write a grammatical sketch of languages In particular, the whiteboard is very useful for us to share a lot of valuable information and communicate with each other. This is because we have had few opportunities to communicate with researchers or students in other university/graduate schools before the FIELDLING community was organized. Most of the FIELDLING members are graduate school students studying descriptive linguistics. However, there are very few graduate programs in Japan that offer systematic training in field linguistics. We have had no opportunity to learn methodologies for fieldwork such as 'where to go,' 'how to meet native speakers (consultants),' 'how much to pay their consultants,' 'how/what to ask their consultants,' 'what tools (recording tools, writing software) are good/bad,' 'how to record sound materials,' 'how to manage metadata,' 'how to write sound materials with grammatical gloss,' and 'how to get money (research grant) to do our fieldwork.'  Then, how do we acquire necessary ∞esurvival skills∞f? Usually, we privately ask our supervisor or seniors who have already begun their fieldwork in our own university. However, they have also acquired such skills from their seniors or have gained self-taught knowledge; moreover, they are also not very confident of their knowledge. We cannot judge whether their information is correct/effective/valuable; therefore, we always worry about the effectiveness of our skills and methods. Furthermore, there has been no interaction among universities. Most of the young field-linguists in Japan have experienced such a situation. Thus, we need to communicate with each other to share information and establish networks across various universities.

Yukari Nagayama: Problems in Sharability of Language Data

This talk outlines the problems in sharability of language data as being experienced by field researchers in Japan and the efforts we are making under the framework of FIELDLING in order to address the problems. This talk outlines the problems in sharability of language data as being experienced by field researchers in Japan and the efforts we are making under the framework of FIELDLING in order to address the problems. There are several factors that are hindering efficient exchange and sharing of data in Japan. They can be summarized as follows:1. There are few opportunities to publish language data (online or print); this is especially true for young field linguists.2. There is no reliable archive for storing language data.3. There is no systematic training for field linguists on data management.The last point, in particular, is responsible for the problems related to data sharing. In many cases, each linguist stores his/her data (including audio/video data) privately using his/her own method; therefore, others cannot access or use these data. Such data are often stored as handwritten notebooks, audio tapes (without systematic labeling about recording), files in proprietary formats (MS Word, FileMaker and specialized software), and text files (without documented or systematic formatting).We have been making efforts to address some of these fundamental problems by raising awareness on the issues and providing training in proper data management skills. Past events organized by FIELDLING on data sharing and data management include:- Toolbox workshop Toolbox is a data management and analysis tool for field linguists. This workshop was held not only to introduce researchers to a tool that is useful for linguistic analysis but also to emphasize the value of using a file format that is explicitly tagged to make the data structure clear. - Text manipulation workshop This workshop was held to exchange stories about data management headaches and ideas. Discussion touched on data formats, data management tools, recording devices, recording methods and the method of preparing and storing field notes.- Documentary Linguistic WorkshopWe were the first to offer a four-day workshop that was specifically designed to offer well-rounded training in various aspects of language documentation. The workshop included sessions on data collection, recording, archiving, data management, metadata creation, and corpora management.

Fuyuki Ebata: Grammatical sketch project: a FIELDLING project

The Grammatical sketch project is one of active projects of our community FIELDLING. This project aims to write concise grammatical descriptions based on our primary data. Participants of the project describe outlines of the languages they work on, using their own data obtained in their own fieldwork. Each sketch contains phonological, morphological and syntactic sections plus a short text with an interlinear morpheme-by-morpheme gloss. During the years from 2005 to 2007, our project held six workshops for this project. We did not collect perfect manuscripts from the beginning. Instead, drafts were developed through several stages with each stage punctuated with a presentation and discussion in a workshop. We have published two collections of our sketches from the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Cross-linguistic perspective. A common format was decided upon, with a view toward ease in making comparisons between the sketches. Grammatical terminology was also unified from a typological and cross-linguistic perspective. This provided a good opportunity for us to think about the essence of some traditional terms. The term 'verbal noun', for instance, is one such term widely used in the grammars for Northern languages, but it was difficult to make a precise description of its morpho-syntactic properties. Having active discussions in workshops and, in addition, on the web, we reconsidered the sketches of our languages. Problems and prospects. Writing about an overall structure of a language, from a cross-linguistic perspective, made us notice gaps and problems in our research or analyses. Also, the sketches themselves are important for the researchers and the language communities, for in the future they will serve as bases for full grammars or textbooks for the community.

Ken Sasahara: Toolbox Workshop: Training in data processing

This presentation reports on a series of workshops on a software tool Toolbox. In our workshops, we try not only to provide training on how to use the program, but also to teach how to use the program in actual workflow of processing field data. In our community, FIELDLING, a variety of workshops have been held since its establishment. This presentation reports on one of such workshops, Toolbox Workshop. The workshop was held to introduce researchers who are unfamiliar with the program to a useful software tool for linguistic analysis. However, we also asked advanced user to participate the workshop in order to create an opportunity to share skills and knowledge among field researchers. The workshop also included time for discussing various issues in data analysis and data management, which made the workshop much more than a skill training session. The first workshop was held in 2005 with great success, and since then we have had three meetings.  Editing text materials with a computer indeed requires other skills than the linguistic knowledge. Thanks to Unicode and the latest version of Toolbox, we can manage the linguistic data with multilingual gloss and translation. But many of us do not have knowledge of technical matters. Consequently, special lectures on the basics of text editing on a computer might be needed.  Within the framework of Toolbox Workshop, we are organizing an on-going project for publishing a collection of texts analyzed with the program. The idea behind this project is to create an opportunity for researchers to build an experience of the complete flow of data processing from data input, data analysis, exporting of the data to a word-processor, to preparing a camera-ready copy for publication. It is very useful to embed the training of Toolbox in actual workflow: we can make the value of Toolbox more clearly understandable; and we can provide training in how to utilize the software in the workflow, rather than just in operation of a piece of software.

Colloquium summary: One fundamental focus of the field of ethnobiology is the study of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). TEK includes the ability to identify ecosystem components, use and manage them, and a worldview that shapes environmental perspectives. TEK is inherently linked to indigenous languages, and both are highly threatened globally. This colloquium presents research that bridges the divide between linguistics and ethnobiology by gathering data on poorly documented languages and TEK simultaneously or by applying research outcomes towards TEK and language conservation.

Colloquium Organizer: Michael Gavin

Will McClatchey, Myknee Sirikolo, Jodi Stevens, and Piet Lincoln: Ethnobotany Research and Documentation of the Endangered Ririo Language (Solomon Islands)

Ririo is one of seven to nine languages still spoken on the island of Lauru (Choiseul) in the Western Solomon Islands. Because former missionary activities on the island, including Bible translation and language documentation, concentrated first in areas where people spoke different languages, namely Babatana and Varesi, the number of Ririo speakers had diminished to about twelve by 2000. In the prior sixty years Ririo tribal members had converted to Christianity and in order to practice their new faith and participate in a growing national education system began to speak Babatana and Solomon island Pijin as their primary language. We will present how a group of biologists from the University of South Pacific, the Solomon Islands Ministry of Conservation, Environment and Forestry, and the University of Hawaii worked within the Ririo community of Susuka on Lauru and with Ririo speakers living on Guadalcanal to document the Ririo language.

Michael Gavin: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Languages: Diversity, Loss, and Conservation in Malakula, Vanuatu

Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) includes the ability to identify ecosystem components, use and manage them, and a worldview that shapes environmental perspectives. TEK is a vital global resource, linking humans to ecosystems and providing models for environmental management. However, we know little about rates of TEK loss or how TEK varies geographically. The 190 countries party to the CBD are considering linguistic diversity as a proxy to map TEK. TEK and language diversity are inherently linked, and both also face an incredible array of similar threats globally.I present preliminary results from research undertaken on Malakula, Vanuatu mapping TEK diversity and loss, and comparing the geographic patterns of TEK to those of the 26 indigenous languages on the island. Many of the island’s languages remain undocumented or poorly documented. Through the use of participatory methods, we have been able to document both TEK and languages. We have also identified local priorities for cultural conservation. These locally-driven initiatives call for a dual emphasis on TEK and language conservation in the development of traditional cultural education programs. The steps local communities have outlined for the development of these education programs demonstrate the need for research and conservation initiatives that combine ethnobiological and linguistic approaches.

Rick Stepp: Global Patterns in Biocultural Diversity and Implications for Language Conservation

Previous work by the author and others has noted the strong correlation between areas of high plant species richness and areas of high language richness. This paper present a preliminary explanatory framework for these patterns, drawing from theory in biological ecology, human ecology, ethnobiology, anthropology, geography and linguistics. The creation, maintenance and loss of biodiversity is also discussed, both globally and regionally. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for language conservation.

Kevin Salisbury & Mary Salisbury: Fossicking for fauna and flora: an interdisciplinary approach

The diversity of flora and fauna (particularly sea creatures) in the Pacific presents a special challenge to linguists. Local fishing experts can provide vernacular accounts describing the appearance and behaviour of each species and defining habitat as well as method and time of fishing, yet the outsider finds it hard to fathom the extent of this knowledge as it is distributed unevenly in the population and traditional lore has all but disappeared in many places. The outsider’s fallback method of showing photographs from books to elicit fishnames is very useful but can create its own problems, as the similarity between many species makes it easy for them to be misidentified unless the actual fish is caught and photographed. Fortunately the use of digital images has revolutionized the sharing of knowledge and the accurate identification of species. Linguists may at first resist the daunting task of familiarising themselves with the Linnean classification system before entering the field. Once there they may prefer to append the informal descriptive names in English from fish books to their ethnographic data. But when at a later stage they wish to verify their identification, they could be caught out by the limitations of their method. Consequently inaccurate or vague identifications are often included in dictionaries, thus disseminating and perpetuating confusion.  How one approaches the collection of data may influence the method chosen in presenting the final results. Questions arise as to how each language community organises and presents its knowledge, and the scholar needs to consider whether the Linnean system of ordering data is congruent with ethnoclassification procedures or imposes a foreign structure on the body of knowledge collected.  Scientists are greatly aided in their work when they have detailed ethnographic descriptions and the assistance of language experts. The best possible outcomes arise through collaborative efforts, where a fish specialist visits the field location at the same time as the linguist. Even so, this kind of research creates its own tensions as to the sort of data to be recorded, and what formats in which to present it, both to the local community and to the world of scholarly endeavour.Reflecting on our research experiences on Pukapuka (northern Cook Islands) since 1981, we will describe the interdisciplinary approach (linguistics, ethnomusicology, folklore studies, ethnography) that culminated in a collaborative biodiversity project in 2004, offering practical suggestions towards successful "fossicking" elsewhere in the Pacific.

Emily Bartelson: A Multipurpose Record: Traditional Botanical Knowledge in Language Documentation

In the case of both the documentation of Kove (PNG) and the ongoing ethnobotanical and linguistic work on Pohnpei (Micronesia), it is clear there are many overlaps between language documentation and traditional botanical knowledge. This paper explores how language documentation can help provide a useful record of traditional botanical knowledge. Language documentation is frequently referred to as the creation of a "lasting, multipurpose record of a language" (Himmelmann 2006, italics mine). When language documentation creates at least a partial record of some aspect of traditional culture, such as plant-related knowledge, "multipurpose" becomes an even more appropriate descriptor. This paper explores how language documentation can help provide a useful record of traditional botanical knowledge. Two language situations will show how this might happen. The Kove language of Papua New Guinea is beginning to lose speakers to the regional lingua franca. At the same time, speakers are abandoning a complex set of vocabulary that encodes a deep knowledge of the plants around them. Traditionally Kove had no general term meaning "tree"; instead, a wide variety of words might be used depending on where the tree grows or what it is used for. Now, however, young people use the single term avei "tree" (originally "upland tree") to cover all these meanings. The ongoing documentation of Kove provides a record of some of this traditional knowledge and will make this information available to the people of Kove in the future.  On the island of Pohnpei in Micronesia, the language is fairly well documented and still widely spoken, but some knowledge of traditional medicine and agricultural methods are beginning to be forgotten. Ethnobotanists involved in the Plants and People of Micronesia Project enlisted the help of linguists to clearly document plant names in Pohnpeian. This information, along with other data from the project, is being used to create a health resource manual for the people of Pohnpei. The joint effort of ethnobotanists and linguists to document plant terminology has led to the creation of health and cultural resources for Pohnpeians, a more thorough record of Pohnpeian plant names for linguists, and a deeper understanding of traditional knowledge on Pohnpei for ethnobotanists.  In both situations, language documentation is helping to create a record of traditional botanical knowledge that is useful to various groups of people. A final issue that must be considered is whether, in situations like these, this record is accessible. Digital archiving and dissemination via the Internet are certainly essential but may not be sufficient. In many instances it may be of more use to the community if research results are distributed in physical form or are made available at a local or regional library or museum.

The Role of Linguistics in Identifying Social-Ecological Keystones: Kawika Winter, Kim Bridges, & Will McClatchey

The emerging field of quantum ethnobotany draws upon disciplines such as linguistics, ecology and others in an attempt to provide theory and tools to quantify the smallest measurable relationships between people and plants. One concept of quantum ethnobotany is that of 'social-ecological keystones' which are found at the juncture between 'cultural keystone practices' and 'ecological keystone species.' Applications of research about social-ecological keystones deal with guiding resource management policy and practice. Linguistics plays a role in identifying cultural keystone practices, and is therefore an important factor in determining which links between cultural practices and plants can be classified as social-ecological keystones. We will discuss the relationship between linguistics and ecology in the process.

Music in language documentation

Colloquium summary: [Yet to be provided]

Colloquium Organizer: Linda Barwick

Linda Barwick and Michael Walsh: About Murriny Patha song

In 1997 the Murriny Patha (Murrinh-patha) songman and composer Lawrence Piyalem Kolumboort (1939-2006) recorded a session for the Wadeye Aboriginal Languages Centre (northwest Northern Territory, Australia) in which he discussed and performed the Murriny Patha song sets malgarrin and djanba. Our presentation will focus on djanba, a set of approximately 100 songs entirely in Murriny Patha language, which have great cultural and historical significance in Wadeye. In the recorded session Kolumboort set out in Murriny Patha details of the background and significance of a selection of djanba songs, followed by performances of them in which he was joined by other senior singers. Although Murriny Patha is one of the healthiest Australian languages, with approximately 3000 speakers, knowledge of djanba and other Murriny Patha song traditions is highly endangered, with all of the main performers from the 1997 performance now having passed away.In 2006 members of the Murrriny Patha song project*, working closely with a number of different speakers of the language, began to transcribe and gloss this authoritative explanation by a senior singer and composer. This presentation will set out the considerable difficulties faced by the transcribers in grappling with this material, due to Kolumboort's idiosyncratic and very speedy enunciation of Murriny Patha and the specialised knowledge of the subject matter and song styles needed for accurate glossing. We will also discuss the ways in which this material is being made available in the community through the digital workstation in the Wadeye Knowledge Centre, publications for use in the school, and a published CD with transcriptions, translations and explanations of the songs.*A cross-disciplinary Australian Research Council Discovery Project whose members include Allan Marett and Linda Barwick (musicologists), Michael Walsh, Joe Blythe, Nick Reid and Lysbeth Ford (linguists).

Allan Marett and Nicholas Evans: The roles of singing, poetics, language loss and obfuscation in the production and interpretation of a song series from Western Arnhem Land.

Bongolinj-bongolinj is a set of songs from the kunborrk genre of Western Arnhem Land, Northern Australia. The first songs were composed around the early 1960s by Djorli Laywanga and have over the succeeding decades been widely disseminated in Arnhem Land. During 2007 and 2008, funded by the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project, we collected texts and interpretations for many songs of the Bongolinj-bonoalinj set, which are in a number of endangered languages from the Gunwinjguan language group (Mayali, Dalabon) as well as in spirit languages. In this paper we will reflect on the rolea of singing, poetics, language loss and obfuscation in generating variant forms of the text and differences in interpretation. In addition we will discuss some of the metaphors that musicians employ in the discussion of aspects of musical form.

Keola Donaghy: He Ola Ka lelo I Ke Mele: Hawaiian Language Lives Through Its Songs

A discussion of the significance of the Hawaiian language to Hawaiianmusic, and use of Hawaiian music in Hawaiian language instruction. While the use of the Hawaiian language as the language of home andcommunity decline precipitously during the twentieth century, the language maintained aprominent position in live and recorded Hawaiian musical performance. It was alsoduring this period of decline that some of the most enduring Hawaiian language songswere written and recorded by some of Hawai i's most highly regarded composers andperformers, many of whom were native speakers of the language.Over the past half-century, Hawaiian music has played a substantial role in thereestablishment of nationalistic pride, cultural identity as well as in social protest. Whileyoung Hawaiians in the early years of the second Hawaiian Renaissance struggled withissues of textual and pronunciation accuracy and haku mele (Hawaiian languagecomposition), many of contemporary composers and recording artists have achieved ahigh level of fluency in Hawaiian. This increased fluency is reflected in the quality oftheir new compositions and recordings.In recent years Hawaiian music has also played a significant role in efforts to revitalizethe Hawaiian language. In this presentation I will discuss how Hawaiian language songsare used in both Hawaiian immersion and non-immersion classrooms to enhance thelearning experience, to reestablish the use of abandoned cultural practices, to aid invocabulary and grammar acquisition, and to correct grammatical and word useproblems encountered by second language learners as well as immersion students whoare extensively exposed to English in their everyday lives.

Teaching and Learning Less Commonly Taught Languages

Colloquium summary: Linguists who work in language documentation frequently become involved, (directly or indirectly) in language learning and teaching, but in situations that are dramatically different from the paradigmatic language teaching approaches established for languages that enjoy the benefit of having cadres of trained teachers, publishing industries, and reliable institutional support.

Colloquium Organizer: Richard Schmidt

Leanne Hinton, University of California, Berkeley: "Teaching and learning a moribund language"

Many American Indian languages are so endangered that there are only a handful of native speakers -- or else none at all.Furthermore, most of these languages have no learning materials and no professional venue for language classes. Yet the descendants of the speakers still have a burning desire to learn those languages. I will discuss some of the unique characteristics of teaching and learning such languages - methods used, and possible and actual results.

Mary Boyce, The University of Hawaii at Mānoa : "Challenges in Māori-medium instruction: teacher education, teacher language proficiency, and development of quality curriculum resources"

A broad overview of issues in the provision of quality immersion education in an endangered language. Māori-medium education is a Māori-led initiative, and comparatively recent. It rose in response to severe language loss. The first kōhanga reo opened in 1982, and primary, secondary and tertiary level education in Māori followed.

Frederick Jackson, National Foreign Language Center, University of Maryland: "Enabling adult learners to achieve advanced proficiency levels in less-documented languages"

The Foreign Service Institute teaches over 70 languages to adult professionals preparing to serve in 225 different countries. A few languages are well documented (Chinese, Russian, Spanish) but most are not (e.g., Albanian, Georgian, Tadjik. Gujarati), yet students are required to achieve high xproficiencies. The session will describe ways this is achieved.

Mei-Li Fang, Imperial College, University of London: "A performance approach to minority language teaching and learning"

This paper describes a "Performance Approach" to endangered and minority language teaching and learning, where pedagogy needs to be effective, predictable, and accountable. The approach, which will be described through video documentation, emphasizes language production and resource creation through use of group-created drama and other routinized performances.

Eyamba Bokamba, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign : "A paradigm shift in African language teaching and learning in the US"

Until recently, the teaching of African languages in American universities followed the "NDEA model," relying on graduate teaching assistants (with or without training in language pedagogy) as instructors. Since 2000 there has emerged a new and exciting paradigm that emphasizes outcome-based instruction and potentiates the professionalization of the field and production of the next generations of African language scholars.

Joseph Keola Donaghy, Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani College of Hawaiian Language, The University of Hawaii at Hilo: "Ka ‘Ehehana Hawai‘i – Technology in Hawaiian Language Revitalization and Community Building"

In their effort to reestablish Hawaiian as a language of the home, school, and community, Hawaiian language advocates have aggressively adapted technology to address the needs of their programs. In this presentation I will share the lessons learned in the delivery of Hawaiian language instruction via the Internet, and our explorations into social network spaces that allow Hawaiian speaker to interact via a Hawaiian language environment.