SP29: Participatory linguistics: Methods and case studies from around the world

ISBN-13: 978-1-952460-06-7

Edited by Timothy Stirtz, Michael Cahill, and Philip Davison

Abstract

Participatory linguistics is a partnership between local language communities and outside linguists to explore the structures of their language. This volume describes the methods by which this can be done. It begins by introducing the concepts and theoretical foundations underpinning participatory linguistics, which both empower non-dominant language communities and also lead to more effective linguistic research. Then the major part of this work presents a variety of descriptions of case studies of participatory methods from around the world. These are organized according to various linguistic subfields, and offer a range of practical tools, guidelines, and resources for linguists and educators interested in implementing such participatory linguistics and orthography projects. It includes templates for community workshops, guidelines for facilitating inclusive discussions, and recommendations for sustaining long-term language vitality. These case studies also highlight the real-life experiences of language communities engaging in these projects. They showcase diverse cultural contexts and innovative approaches that have yielded successful outcomes in different parts of the world.

Entire Volume

Cover

Front Matter

Endorsements

Contributors

Preface
Michael Cahill. xii-xiii.

Introduction
Timothy Stirtz. 1-8

PART 1: METHODOLOGY

Participatory methods in linguistic research and language development
Philip Swan. 10-27.

What does participatory research contribute to linguistics? A view from Africa
Russell Norton. 28-51.

Phonology first: Methods that delay phonetics for better collaboration
Kent Rasmussen. 52-62.

PART 2: SOCIOLINGUISTICS

A Guide for Planning the Future of Our Language: A participatory approach to community-based language development
Carletta Lahn. 64-90.

Using participatory methods tools for sociolinguistic research in Nepal
Klaas de Vries. 91-101.

PART 3: PHONOLOGY AND ORTHOGRAPHY

A community-based participatory approach to orthography development in Papua New Guinea: The Alphabet Design Workshop
Catherine Easton. 103-123.

Orthography development in Southeast Asia: A facilitated participatory approach case study
Christina Page. 124-135.

Participatory Research in Linguistics for language and orthography development: A practical guide
Constance Kutsch Lojenga. 136-158.

Ngbugu: A case study for participatory phonology
Kenneth S. Olson. 159-165.

Participatory orthography development in practice: A workshop with Maꞌdi Urule in Uganda
Maria Stølen. 166-175.

Becoming a professor in my own language: A participatory orthography approach in Southeast Asia
Shane Devereux and Jenita van den Belt. 176-187.

Computers in the community: Future-proof participatory methods
Kent Rasmussen. 188-203.

Participatory orthography development in Abawiri
Brendon Yoder. 204-216.

PART 4: MORPHOSYNTAX

Rapid Grammar Collection: Language communities owning the orthography development process
Timothy Stirtz. 218-230.

Report on the Rapid Grammar Collection workshop in Konabéré (Bobo Madare North)
Wilma Wolthuis and Carin Boone. 231-240.

The value of games and activities in participatory workshops
Carla Unseth. 241-250.

The Mombo experience: Participating in a language discovery adventure
Thomas Blecke, Baerbel Blecke and Josué Teme. 251-261.

The PAWS Method
Cheryl A. Black and H. Andrew Black. 262-273.

Case study of the PAWS grammar tool used in the Central African Republic
Paul Murrell. 274-286.

Grammar discovery applied, evaluated and enhanced: A manifesto for more participatory education
Oliver Kröger. 287-301.

Experiences with the Discover-Your-Grammar approach in Ethiopia
Andreas Joswig and Susanne Neudorf. 302-309.

Discover Your Language training in Papua New Guinea
Michel Pauw. 310-321.

Discover Your Language – Chad
James S. Roberts. 322-329.

PART 5: LEXICOGRAPHY

Lexicography: Rapid Word Collection
Kevin Warfel and Verna Stutzman. 331-346.

Rapid Word Collection workshops among the Kabwa and Ikizu-Sizaki language groups of Tanzania
John B. Walker. 347-356.

Participatory methodology in Rapid Word Collection for dictionary making: Etic vs emic perspectives from a Philippine coastal community
Jacqueline Huggins. 357-367.

‘Haisla first’: Using Rapid Word Collection and the Participant-driven Approach to support indigenous language revitalization
Chuck Murphey. 368-379.

PART 6: DISCOURSE

Mentored participatory discourse linguistics training
Carla K. Bartsch. 381-390.

Case study of Bartsch’s discourse workshop methodology: Liberia
Becky Grossmann. 391-401.

Discourse workshop: A case study of the Padi storying project (Indonesia)
Virginia J. Castro. 402-411.

Participatory discourse analysis workshops in South Asia
Sara du Preez. 412-422.

Workshops in discourse analysis for translation
Steve Nicolle. 423-434.

Evaluating the impact of participatory discourse analysis workshops in Cameroon and beyond
Ginger Boyd, Melanie Viljoen and Eszter Ernst-Kurdi. 435-450.

The song of the day: Just-in-time participatory song analysis for poetry translation
Maria Smith. 451-459.

Vol. 18 (2024)

Podcasts in Kanauji: Assisting language teaching and revitalization
Anu Pandey pp. 1-19

Podcasts are a unique media that have been used in Indigenous and endangered language communities in the form of Indigenous radio podcasts, instructional websites, or tools to aid classroom instruction. A podcast called Rituals of Kanauji speakers was created in Kanauji, a low-resource Indian language variety. Using this case study in Kanauji, I aim to examine the usage of podcasts for outside classroom instruction in low-resource and lesser-studied languages. Thus, this study highlights the uniqueness of podcasting for language revitalization, as podcasts can be created and consumed anytime and anywhere. For low-resource languages, there can be three kinds: podcasts for teaching language, those for cultural expression and general awareness, and those for entertainment purposes. The paper also describes their pros and cons as well as directions for creating a podcast, to help native speakers and linguists in their future documentary projects. Remote data collection of audio recordings was done via WhatsApp for making this podcast. The performance statistics from Kanauji’s podcast demonstrate that it has helped promote the language and brought pride and prestige to native speakers. Finally, I conclude that podcasts break the norm and help in language reclamation.

Enhancing data collection through linguistic competence in a field language: Perspectives from rural China
Manuel David González Pérez pp. 20-66

Although some critics consider it time-consuming and demanding, proponents of the monolingual approach for field research (i.e., learning to speak a target field language as part of the research process) argue that it can provide a unique insight into its structures. However, this claim remains largely unsubstantiated in the available literature on field methods. The present paper sets out to achieve a twofold objective: First, it reviews prior observations about the monolingual method in documentary-linguistics publications, highlighting important gaps in research. Secondly, based on qualitative data from the author’s fieldwork context in rural, indigenous China, it contributes to addressing one such gap by demonstrating how, when, and why basic to intermediate communicative competence can enhance the documentation, description, and analysis of a field language, in ways that complement and sometimes outperform other approaches such as bilingual and stimuli-based elicitation.

SP26: Five Key Topics in Language Documentation and Description

ISBN-13: 978-0-9856211-5-5

Edited by Peter Jenks and Lev Michael

Abstract
The five papers in this volume are intended as guides for linguists engaged in language documentation and description. Each contribution provides the conceptual background, central concepts, and where relevant, diagnostic criteria and tests, for working on five central aspects of language. The topics covered include the documentation of speech play and verbal art, information structure, basic semantic concepts in domains of definiteness and indefiniteness, tense and aspect, and valency-changing constructions and processes.

Cover

Front Matter

Preface
Peter Jenks, Lev Michael. 9-10.

Documenting Topic and Focus
Judith Aissen. 11-57.

Elicitation and Documentation of Tense and Aspect
Jürgen Bohnemeyer. 59-98.

Describing Definites and Indefinites
Virginia Dawson, Peter Jenks. 99-174.

Documenting Speech Play and Verbal Art: A Tutorial
Patience L. Epps, Anthony K Webster, Anthony C. Woodbury. 175-241.

Elicitation and Documentation of Valency-Changing Constructions and Processes
Marianne Mithun. 243-292.

Whole Volume

SP28: The Acquisition Sketch Project

Edited by Birgit Hellwig, Shanley E. M. Allen, Lucinda Davidson, Rebecca Defina, Barbara F. Kelly, & Evan Kidd

This special publication aims to build a renewed enthusiasm for collecting acquisition data across many languages, including those facing endangerment and loss. It presents a guide for documenting and describing child language and child-directed language in diverse languages and cultures, as well as a collection of acquisition sketches based on this guide. The guide is intended for anyone interested in working across child language and language documentation, including, for example, field linguists and language documenters, community language workers, child language researchers or graduate students.

Cover

Front Matter

Introduction: The acquisition sketch project

Birgit Hellwig, Shanley E. M. Allen, Lucinda Davidson, Rebecca Defina, Barbara F. Kelly, Evan Kidd

Sketch Acquisition Manual (SAM), Part I: The sketch corpus

Rebecca Defina, Shanley E. M. Allen, Lucinda Davidson, Birgit Hellwig, Barbara F. Kelly, Evan Kidd

Sketch Acquisition Manual (SAM), Part II: The acquisition sketch

Rebecca Defina, Shanley E. M. Allen, Lucinda Davidson, Birgit Hellwig, Barbara F. Kelly, Evan Kidd

Broadening language documentation with child language data: First-hand experience from Tolitoli

Christoph Bracks, Maria Bardají i Farré

Exploring case marking in German first language acquisition using the acquisition sketch approach

Gianna Urbanczik

An acquisition sketch of Inuktitut

Hannah Lee, Shanley E. M. Allen

Full Volume

Vol. 17 (2023)

An exploration of historical Alutiiq language texts
Dehrich Chya, Julia Fine pp. 1-22

For the past five years, the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository has been documenting intricacies of the Alutiiq language with the help of Elder speakers and a grant from the National Science Foundation (#1360839). The project’s primary focus has been recording vocabulary, grammar, and ways of speaking for this threatened Native Alaskan language. However, historical texts also offer insight into Alutiiq speech. In the late 1700s, foreigners began writing words and phrases in Alutiiq, creating rare records of the language as spoken in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. Staff members have been searching archival texts for archaic Alutiiq vocabulary to bring awareness of it to community members. Archives in Berkeley, California; Washington, DC; and St. Petersburg, Russia, have provided valuable linguistic information for addition to the corpus of Alutiiq language documentation. The project is breathing new life into ancestral vocabulary by sharing it with the last generation of first-language Alutiiq speakers for pronunciation and interpretation. It is also allowing students of Alutiiq to learn aspects of the language that have not been used in living memory.

Zooming through Field Methods: Teaching language documentation remotely
Shirley Gabber, Gregory Vondiziano pp. 23-48

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted not only how linguistic fieldwork is conducted but also how university-level field methods courses are taught. In this paper, we detail the methodology utilized during the 2020–21 academic year by the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Department of Linguistics for the entirely remote Field Methods sequence documenting Bua (Kubulau) Fijian. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of conducting a field methods course using videoconferencing software and present recommendations for teaching such a course online. While the necessity of holding classes remotely will wane with the pandemic, we believe that remote modalities nevertheless show promise for future application and innovation in linguistic data collection and that competence in remote field methods should be taken as both a useful and necessary part of linguistic training.

Cotopaxi Media Lengua is still very much alive
Jesse Stewart, Lucia Gonza Inlago, Gabriela Prado Ayala pp. 49-63

On a 2022 fieldtrip to Ecuador, we encountered a large community of Media Lengua speakers in the province of Cotopaxi where the language was thought to be dormant. This is the same region where Pieter Muysken had first documented this ‘mixed language’ in the 1970s. However, subsequent fieldwork thereabout by several linguists had failed to turn up the language. This field report provides a brief introduction to Media Lengua, a description of our fieldwork in Cotopaxi, and insights into this variety of Media Lengua.

Methodological problems in reclaiming Nuu-wee-ya’ from archival materials: The case of verbal prefix semantics
Jaeci Nel Hall, pp. 64-129

The purpose of this research is to support the language revitalization and reclamation of Nuu-wee-ya’, a Dene language from Southern Oregon and Northern California, and to contribute to the discussions on methodological particularities of archive-based research for language revitalization. Nuu-wee-ya’ is a sleeping language comprising three dialects (Tututni/Upper Coquille, Tolowa, and Galice), two of which are currently being reawakened through community efforts and philological analysis of archival materials. Native American philological analysis for language reclamation is a burgeoning field needing methodological introspection. This paper describes the semantic function of a small subsection of verbal prefixes: na-, ni-, nu-, ne-, and nv-. I also provide commentary on unique factors of language reclamation from a philological analysis. It is hoped that this work can provide information on approaches to analyzing verb semantics to further speaker-learner reclamation of a sleeping language, furthering the development of methodologies in the field of Native American philology as well as contributing to the understanding of the semantic use of verbal prefixes in Dene languages. May this work support the growth and use of Nuu-wee-ya’ language and culture.

On the Impact of the National Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous Languages: Developing an Assessment Model for Archive-Based Revitalization
Gabriela Pérez Báez, Kristen L. Morio, Alison L. Lapointe, Daryl Baldwin, pp. 130-184

The National Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous Languages has provided training in archive-based linguistic research for revitalization since 2011 (Baldwin et al. 2018). Four two-week workshops held biennially through 2017 provided training in phonetics, phonology, morphology, and syntax; on accessing archival documentation; and on applied uses of archive-based research for language revitalization. These workshops served 117 Community Researchers from fifty-five Native North American communities. Overtime, it became important to determine the impact of the workshops on community efforts. Thus, a third-party program assessment and evaluation was carried out, supported by the National Science Foundation Documenting Endangered Languages program (NSF-DEL BCS #1561167, PI D. Baldwin). In this paper, we outline the principles upon which the assessment and evaluation were designed, delve into the quantitative and qualitative methods implemented, and provide ample discussion of the assessment findings. We engage in a discussion on the importance and value of assessment and evaluation to any program akin to National Breath of Life. We close by showing how the assessment and evaluation have given validity to the development of new tools and workshops that address the needs of advanced phases of archive-based research for revitalization, and have also provided a foundation for the design of a Native American philology model. This was especially important considering that the workshops had remained mostly unchanged since they were first developed in the mid-1990s.

Strategies for lexical expansion in Algonquian languages
Rachel Fedorchak, Vade Kamenitsa-Hale, Hunter Thompson Lockwood, Monica Macaulay, pp. 185-220

 This paper provides an empirical study of word formation and lexical expansion in a set of Algonquian languages, considering 153 terms for each language. These terms range from words that predate European colonialism to more recent forms coined by English L1 speakers. We propose a classification of the methods of lexical innovation, which involves the intersection of a set of grammatical and a set of semantic strategies. By far, the most common means of constructing new terminology that we found in the data combined nominalization with associated-action metonymy (the use of a form denoting an action associated with the object). We discuss challenges to doing such studies, especially the idiosyncrasies of dictionary creation. We also consider how our results can be used in language reclamation, especially immersion programs that need words for concepts in the school curriculum. We do not prescribe a “right” way to develop new vocabulary, but our findings may make explicit some of the intuitions speakers of Algonquian languages have about how the naming of new objects is approached.

Same, similar, or different: Lexical overlap across Australian Indigenous signed languages
Jennifer Green, Eleanor Jorgensen, pp. 221-253

 To date, studies that investigate lexical overlap in signed languages have mainly considered the relationships between deaf community signed languages. The alternate sign languages of Indigenous Australia provide an opportunity to take another perspective – they are perhaps amongst the oldest known sign languages in the world, their main users are hearing, and senior people are the acknowledged experts, at least in some domains of sign knowledge and use. We developed a comparative list of signs as one tool in an investigation of dimensions of similarity and difference in nine language communities from Central and Northern Australia. We coded the data for the articulatory parameters of handshape, place of articulation, and movement, and developed a comparison matrix that captured similarity by using alphanumerical labels for unique sign forms. In doing so, we accommodated the existence of both inter- and intra-signer variation within single communities, a factor that has been overlooked in some previous studies. Our results support earlier observations that correlate sign diversity with geographical distance. We identify two distinct clusters of communities within which are higher percentages of lexical overlap. The first of these includes the Warlpiri, Anmatyerr, Alyawarr, and Arrernte language groups, while the second cluster includes Gurindji, Mudburra, and Kukatja. We note a general stability in lexical overlap (i.e., shared lexicon) in comparison to earlier records, but also an increase in similarity, suggesting some convergence might be taking place. Finally, we point to the need to unpack the complex sociocultural and linguistic factors that interact to drive similarity and difference in these signing practices. The list of commonly known signs, and the methods we have developed, is a useful resource that can inform future comparative studies.

Training communities in documentation and technology: The Language Documentation Training Center model
Jennifer Sou, Leah Pappas, Khairunnisa, Gary Holton, pp. 254-277

Language documentation is increasingly seen as a collaborative process, engaging community members as active participants. Collaborative research produces better documentation that is valuable for both the academic community and the speakers. However, in many communities, speakers and language advocates lack the skills necessary to fully engage in collaborative projects. One way to overcome this barrier is to provide language documentation training to community members. Such training should teach participants how to ethically and comprehensively complete every stage of the documentation process while offering opportunity for theoretical discussion and practical application. In this paper, we offer one possible model for community-based training in language documentation and conservation that focuses on bidirectional learning and capacity building. We describe a training workshop that was held in 2018 in Kupang, the capital of Indonesia’s Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT) province. A collaboration between the University of Hawai‘i, Leiden University, and Artha Wacana Christian University, this workshop implemented a model based on the practices of the Language Documentation Training Center (LDTC), an organization devoted to training speakers to document their own languages. We detail the NTT workshop itself, summarize post-workshop feedback, and offer suggestions to others looking to provide similar training in speaker communities.

Assessing access level as a quality criterion
Kristian Roncero, pp. 278-296

This paper discusses levels of access in language archives and their implications for assessment. In the absence of well-established criteria, part of the evaluation of language archives is often based on accessibility; roughly, the more “unrestricted” or “open access” content, the better the archive. In this paper, I argue that whilst open access may be indicative of good scientific practices, such criteria cannot be extrapolated to documentary linguistics. I start by explaining the differences between those concepts. Then I discuss the dialectic tension in which language depositors frequently find themselves. On the one hand, archives and grant agencies ask them to archive as much as possible with unrestricted access while also gathering a corpus as “naturalistic” and diverse as possible in terms of content, genres, speakers, and so forth. On the other hand, depositors are expected to behave ethically, which involves restricting access to certain materials. I move on to lesser-discussed cases illustrating how ethical decisions concerning accessibility are strongly bound to the needs and situations of the specific communities at a specific time. I finish by proposing new evaluation criteria, which do not penalise depositors for behaving ethically in situations out of their control, and a summary of the discussion.

Seeing Speech: Using Praat to Visualize Hul’q’umi’num’ Sounds
Sonya Bird, Rae Anne Claxton, Maida Percival, pp. 297-324

 As is typical across Turtle Island, the Hul’q’umi’num’ (Coast Salish) language revitalization movement is being carried by adult language learners (Haynes 2010; McIvor 2015) but becoming a proficient Hul’q’umi’num’ speaker is challenging given the complexity of its sound system. In this paper, we share our experiences using the speech analysis software Praat (Boersma & Weenink 2018) to help in our pronunciation work. We describe the types of pronunciation patterns that can benefit from Praat-based speech visualization, including whole sound adjustments, glottalization adjustments, and timing adjustments. We then discuss how this tool has helped us, by providing tangible feedback on our speech, by allowing us to learn by observing and modelling (a more gentle and culturally appropriate form of learning than explicit instruction), and by learning from Elders through their voices, even when they are not able to be present during pronunciation sessions. In our experience, these benefits combine to increase the confidence that learners feel in working on their pronunciation and therefore in becoming more proficient speakers.

SP27: Voices: Perspectives from the International Year of Indigenous Languages

Cover Logo by Kaylene Big Knife

Volume Introduction

Sarah Sandman, Shannon Bischoff, Jens Clegg

Front Matter

Published as a Special Publication of Language Documentation & Conservation

Linguistic Factors in Intergroup Relations and Democratic Governance in Nigeria

Adegboye Adeyanju. 1-12.

Workshopping for the Indigenous future: Indigenizing approaches that shift Indigenous language reclamation ideologies and increase perceptions of possible futures.

Bri Alexander. 13-26

Revitalizing Cameroon Indigenous Languages Usage in Empowering Realms

Kelen Ernesta Fonyuy. 27-40.

From the Square to the Page, and onto the other Page: The Order of Things in Basque Poetry in Translation

Amaia Gabantxo. 41-53

Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Colonizers: The Rejection of Manifest Destiny and Construction of an Alternate World Using Indigenous Futurisms in Popular Media

Courtney-Sophia W. Henry. 54-61.

What documenting for reclamation looks like: Ojibwemowin Forest Walks

Mary Hermes, Mel Engman, James McKenzie, Meixi. 62-74.

Kachin orature project: Documentation, archiving, and revitalization of oral heritage in northern Myanmar

Keita Kurabe, Lu Awng. 75-93.

Politics on the Periphery: The Challenges of Indigenous Linguistic Nationalism(s) in the Peruvian altiplano

Sandhya Krittika Narayanan. 94-104.

Redes de colaboración para la revitalización de las lenguas indígenas: la experiencia nasa-vasca
Creating networks and partnerships for Indigenous language revitalization: the Nasa-Basque experience

Ane Ortega, Arkaitz Zarraga. 105-116.

Making Dictionaries of Lesser-Known Indigenous languages: Coding of Lexical Semantic Information

Umarani Pappuswamy. 117-135.

Towards an Indigenously-informed Model for Assessing the Vitality of Native American Languages: a Southern Arizona Pilot Project

Tyler Peterson, Ofelia Zepeda. 136-154.

Creating wide networks of support for Indigenous languages: The workshop on Community-based Language Research Across the Americas (CBLRAA)

Katherine J. Riestenberg, Melvatha Chee, Tania Granadillo, Shannon Bischoff. 155-164.

NAMA in the IYIL 2019 Perspectives: Celebrating 20 Years Training Native Scholars in Linguistics

W. D. L. Silva, Amy Fountain, Bri Alexander, Corey Roberts, Mosiah Bluecloud, Joseph Dupris, Joseph Marks. 165-178.

Indigenous Community Media for Language Survival in Nepal

Dev Kumar Sunuwar. 179-185.

Proclamación y Celebración del Año Internacional de Lenguas Indígenas por Las Naciones Unidas

Proclamation and Celebration of The International Year of Indigenous Languages by The United Nations

Diego Tituaña. 186-196.

A Text Documentation and Socio-Pragmatic Analysis of Ibibio Women’s Satirical Folksongs

Eshiet Udosen, Ogbonna Anyanwu. 197-215.

Full Volume

LD&C Special Publication No. 27: Voices: Perspectives from the International Year of Indigenous Languages.

Vol. 16 (2022)

User needs in language archives: Findings from interviews with language archive managers, depositors, and end-users
Mary Burke, Oksana L. Zavalina, Shobhana L. Chelliah & Mark E. Phillips pp. 1-24

Language archives, like other scholarly digital repositories, are built with two major audiences in mind. These are depositors of language data and various potential end-users of these materials: researchers (linguistics and others), language communities, students, educators, artists, etc. Being a relatively new phenomenon, language archives have made significant strides forward in providing access to digital language data. With the purpose of identifying the needs of language archive end-users (both met and currently unmet), our interdisciplinary team of linguists and information scientists interviewed language archive managers, end-users, and depositors. This study offers a first look into the decision-making processes and end-user experiences of these groups. To support the continued development of language archives, the exploratory study reported in this article provides empirical data on language archive user needs and supports some anecdotal evidence of known issues facing language archive end-users, depositors, and managers in primarily academic contexts.

Review of Creating orthographies for endangered languages
Bryn Hauk pp. 25-31

Two decades of sign language and gesture research in Australia: 2000–2020
Jennifer Green, Gabrielle Hodge, Barbara F. Kelly pp. 32-78

In this article, we provide an overview of the last twenty years of research on Indigenous sign languages, deaf community sign languages, co-speech gesture, and multimodal communication in the Australian context. From a global perspective, research on sign languages and on the gestures that normally accompany speech has been used as the basis for exploring different aspects of linguistic theory. Such research informs debates about the nature of the human language capacity and questions as to whether the diverse range of languages we see in the world share some universal patterns of organisation. We outline some of the theoretical and methodological achievements of scholars working in these interconnected disciplines in Australia, highlight the value of corpus-based approaches to linguistic research, draw attention to research on multimodality in the verbal arts, and discuss community-oriented research outputs guided by collaborative research practices. The article is accompanied by an on-line and editable bibliography of well over 300 publications that is accessible to researchers and others working in these related fields.

Building trust on Zoom: A workflow for language documentation via videoconferencing software
Karolina Grzech, Selena Tisalema Shaca pp. 79-97

The COVID-19 pandemic affected the capacity to conduct linguistic fieldwork in person. For many fieldworkers, this meant they needed to adapt, and do so urgently. This paper discusses a language documentation workflow based entirely on the online conferencing software Zoom, in which a linguist, external to the community, establishes a new project together with a native-speaker community member. The paper describes how such a working relationship can be built online, and accounts for all the steps of the authors’ Zoom-mediated workflow in detail allowing for their replication. It also offers a critical appraisal of this workflow from the perspectives of both the native speaker and the researcher. To conclude, the authors summarise all the conditions necessary for a workflow like this one to be successful.

Supporting linguistic data collection from afar: A mobile metadata system
Richard T. Griscom, pp. 98-119

The global COVID-19 pandemic has put into high relief the need for better remote communication and collaboration tools, but also serves as an opportunity to focus on building community capacity and promoting greater community agency in the language documentation process. This paper describes a method for remotely supporting and monitoring a language documentation project conducted by speakers, community activists, and/or academic researchers, through the use of a free and open-source data collection platform called KoBoToolbox. Rather than relying on access to audiovisual data, which are typically large and can be difficult to share remotely, the system is based on the creation of digital linguistic metadata with mobile devices linked to a secure central server, giving project leaders the ability to immediately access metadata as it is submitted, quickly generate summary reports and visualizations, and export metadata for further processing and archiving. The system is suitable for anyone who would like to integrate mobile metadata into a new or ongoing project and is able to provide the necessary training either remotely or in person.

Language ideology planning as central to successful revitalization projects
Sarah Shulist, Tania Granadillo, pp. 120-144

Linguistic and anthropological research has demonstrated that language ideologies play a complex role in contexts of language endangerment, as well as in revitalization initiatives. In this paper, we articulate some central ways in which these beliefs and interests can translate into significant barriers to successful language revitalization. Based on collaborative ethnographic fieldwork with Indigenous languages in North and South America, we propose a model for planning language ideologies as a practice that can be deliberately incorporated into revitalization efforts. Given the urgency of the situation facing many languages, we argue that treating language ideologies as requiring planning is necessary and offer preliminary suggestions about what this planning could look like by analyzing examples around the language ideology assemblages of language teaching and learning.

Knowing and remembering: Rethinking lexical recall as a measure of proficiency in endangered language communities
Daria Boltokova, Jessica Kantarovich, Lenore Grenoble, Maria Pupynina, pp. 145-167

This paper problematizes the assessment of speakers’ proficiency in endangered language communities. We focus in particular on processes of lexical production and elicitation as proxies for full proficiency assessment. Among linguists, it is standard to assess a speaker’s knowledge of specific lexical items in order to set a baseline for further data collection and research. Yet, as we argue in this paper, such tests can give the false impression that speakers do not know their language, since such tests do not distinguish between what speakers can recall in a particular moment and what they do not know because they did not acquire it. The endangered language context in particular calls for a more fine-tuned interpretation of lexical knowledge, given the high degree of idiolectal variation and lack of a community-based standard language. Drawing on fieldwork with Chukchi and Even Indigenous communities in northeastern Russia, we analyze lexical items that speakers claim to not remember. We then distinguish different reasons that are given for not remembering and consider their implications for speakers’ proficiency. Finally, we conclude with two recommendations for improving elicitation and language assessment tests.

Musicolinguistic documentation: Tone & tune in Tlahuapa Tù’un Sàví songs
Morgan Sleeper, Griselda Reyes Basurto, pp. 168-208

This study introduces a new methodology for integrating musical and linguistic data in language documentation, using ABC notation and open-source tools like ELAN and MuseScore. Designed for portability and exportability, and to facilitate both linguistic analysis and community-oriented material development, this methodology is used here to explore the link between linguistic tone and musical tune in Tlahuapa Tù’un Sàví, a Mixtec language of Guerrero, Mexico. Through a multimodal analysis of three Tlahuapa Tù’un Sàví songs, this study illuminates several interactions between tone and tune, including a strong preference for melodic lines to move in parallel with the tone melody of the lyrics and associations between musical ornamentation and specific tonemes. The results of this study not only increase our understanding of the tonal system of Tlahuapa Tù’un Sàví and its interaction with musical style but also help illustrate the rich potential of musical data in linguistic research and documentation. More than simply language data with a melody, the combination of music and language in song offers a unique opportunity for analysis not otherwise possible, and the methodologies demonstrated here aim to make this combination as accessible as possible for researchers, archivers, and community members alike.

Networks of support: How online resources are built, maintained, and adapted for community language revitalization needs at FirstVoices
Bridget Chase, Kyra Borland, pp. 209-227

FirstVoices is a technology-centered organization that works with forty-seven Indigenous language communities around British Columbia. One of its top priorities is providing high-quality technical assistance as well as accessible annual training sessions for the platform. This requires nuanced systems of support and adaptability within the methods we use. Over the last two years, its team has grown and modified its procedures with the goal of best serving the unique needs of different communities. With nearly 1,000 support emails in its Service Desk system since June 2018 and two years of regional training – one in-person, one entirely online – the team has tracked trends within technology-centered language requests. In this paper, we will conduct a mixed methods analysis of all the support tickets the team has received, as well as an analysis of the qualitative and quantitative feedback from training sessions in order to break down the patterns and themes that exist. We will also discuss the process of creating and maintaining a wiki-style Knowledge Base, the variety of techniques employed to assist remote users, and the potential for future growth in FirstVoices’ networks of support. Our intentions with this paper are to provide insight for community groups, language organizations, and linguists alike around capacity-building opportunities in the field of digital language mobilization. As FirstVoices continues to grow and as technology becomes even more essential within the realm of language revitalization, it is crucial that we make note of these trends and prepare ourselves to adapt to the digital-based needs of language communities.

Centering relationality in online Indigenous language learning: Reflecting on the creation and use of Rosetta Stone Chickasaw
Kari A. B. Chew, Lokosh (Joshua D. Hinson), Juliet Morgan, pp. 228-258

Drawing on the authors’ experiences developing Rosetta Stone Chickasaw (RSC), an asynchronous online Chikashshanompa’ (Chickasaw language) course, this article shares examples of how relationality is enacted in online Indigenous language learning. We discuss the RSC interface and ways that it created opportunities and barriers to centering Indigenous and Chikasha (Chickasaw) relational epistemologies in which people are related to one another, the land, the spirits, and to the language itself. Our reflections on relationality in RSC are guided by the following questions: What relationships are required to create an online Indigenous language course? How do people create and strengthen relationships in online education spaces? How can online language work be re-emplaced in off-line relationships? Sharing examples from RSC, we consider relationality in video, audio, images, written instruction, and assessment. We conclude by returning to our guiding questions, offering our reflections and encouragement to others who may undertake similar work.

Shifting teacher/learner roles in language reclamation efforts relying on digital technology
Edwin Ko, pp. 259-289

This paper examines social interactions between caregivers and youths at two language revitalization camps of Northern Pomo, a dormant language of Northern California. Drawing from video- and audio-recorded interactions at the two camps, I examine the discursive strategies caregivers use while collaborating with youths in joint language-learning activities. Because some of the activities rely on the use of digital tools, I also investigate whether the use of digital technology has any effect on these strategies and on social interactions more generally. By employing discourse analytic techniques, I find that youths often position themselves in the more powerful role of teacher while positioning caregivers in the role of student regardless of whether digital technology is used. The key insight is that caregivers, who act as agents of primary socialization, acquiesce in the roles that are imposed on them. They do this by surrendering some of their own authority to create a space that helps to promote youth empowerment. Thus, inversions of positions – and power – may be seen as a welcoming and, perhaps, important aspect of the language revitalization endeavor.

Linking endangerment databases and descriptive linguistics: An assessment of the use of terms relating to language endangerment in grammars
Roberto Zariquiey, Mónica Arakaki, Javier Vera, Guido Torres-Orihuela, Claret Cuba-Raime, Carlos Barrientos, Aracelli García, Adriano Ingunza, Harald Hammarström, pp. 290-318

The world harbours a diversity of some 6,500 mutually unintelligible languages. As has been increasingly observed by linguists, many minority languages are becoming endangered and will be lost forever if not documented. The increased urgency has led to the development of several global endangerment databases and a more fine-grained understanding of the language endangerment progression as well as its possible reversal. In the present paper, we explore the terminological correlates of this development as found in the descriptive linguistic literature, using a corpus of over 10,000 digitized grammatical descriptions. Comparing this with existing endangerment databases, we find that simply counting terms related to endangerment does signal endangerment, but the degree of endangerment is more difficult to assess from grammatical descriptions. The label endangered seems to be an umbrella term that covers different situations ranging from moribund languages with less than ten speakers to minority languages with several thousand speakers. For many languages considered endangered in existing databases, explicit terms to this effect cannot be found in their descriptions. The discrepancy is due to incompleteness of the searchterm set, gaps in the literature, and projected rather than observed information in the databases. Our explorations illustrate the potential for database curation assisted by computational searches both to maintain accuracy of the databases and to investigate assumed language endangerment. Future work includes a larger cloud of search terms, usage of term frequencies, and prescreening of descriptive literature for the existence of a relevant section. From the perspective of descriptive linguistics, this study calls for a more careful correlation between the language endangerment indexes, as developed in the global endangerment databases, and the treatment of the endangerment status of individual languages in descriptive grammars.

Maya-kwobabiny: Re-embedding language at Kepa Kurl, Western Australia
Clint Bracknell, Amy Budrikis, Roma Yibiyung Winmar, pp. 319-340

This paper describes a Nyungar language revitalisation project in the southern region of Western Australia conducted in partnership between a university research team and the Esperance Tjaltjraak Native Title Aboriginal Corporation. It discusses how linguistic analysis of historical Nyungar documentation was essential to addressing community aims of re-embedding the language into the community, developing and using pedagogical resources, and exploring new domains for language use. In particular, this paper focuses on the community’s desire for the reclamation of a dialectal flavour of Nyungar that is distinctive to the Esperance region, and the factors contributing to a successful partnership between the researchers and the community organisation in terms of capacity-building, leadership, and sustainability.

Experiences with remote linguistic-ethnobiological fieldwork on bird names in the Qaqet language of Papua New Guinea
Henrike Frye, Shirley Balar, Aung Si, pp. 341-363

Language-focused ethnobiological research can be a challenging endeavour, even when research teams are able to access their field sites and talk to consultants in person. The challenges are compounded when research must be carried out remotely. In this paper, we present our experiences in carrying out remote linguistic-ethnobiological research on bird names in the Qaqet language spoken in East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea, with the participation of a locally based research assistant. We discuss the numerous issues faced by the researchers and the assistant and the steps we took collaboratively to overcome these issues. Ultimately, changes were required to the stimulus materials, interview protocol, and consultant selection procedure; these changes were implemented stepwise over a series of four field trips. The data obtained in the process provide the first reliable identifications of culturally important bird species in Qaqet, along with ethnographic reports of the role these birds play in Qaqet society and culture. This, and other preliminary findings on phenomena such as interindividual variation, has indicated fruitful avenues for research, following the end of the current global crisis.

Type right: Examining the underlying causes of common typeface and font errors for Indigenous orthographies, and a possible path forward
Julia Schillo, Mark Turin, pp. 364-398

Despite considerable typographical innovations over the past twenty years that have enabled and facilitated typing capabilities for many Indigenous language orthographies, typographical errors continue to disproportionately affect Indigenous languages. These include errors in glyph shapes, which impact legibility, and issues with glyph positioning, which impact readability. In this article, the glottalization accent mark is used to demonstrate how such errors manifest in various widely used typefaces. Through a case study of the glottalization accent mark, we identify the root causes of common typographical errors, stemming from the Unicode Standard, which provides the code structure for digital typing, and from the typeface design methodology used to create most of the typefaces available to Indigenous language communities. Many Unicode characters used by Indigenous orthographies lack rigorous and precise semantic definitions, leading to inconsistencies in glyphs created through a language-agnostic typeface design process that does not require designers to be familiar with the specific orthographies for which they design glyphs. To address these issues, we recommend that Unicode revisit the character semantics of Indigenous orthographic elements to create more robust semantic definitions and that typeface designers use a community-partnered design methodology that engages with the goals of language reclamation and revitalization.

Case study of using Facebook groups to connect community users to archived CoRSAL content
Merrion Dale, Prafulla Basumatary, Javid Iqbal, Rex Khullar, Maaz Shaikh, pp. 399-416

The purpose of this article is to examine the way community depositors can utilize Facebook to promote increased interaction with their archived language collections. The Facebook groups we are observing are run by individuals who have deposited language materials with the University of North Texas’ Computational Resource for South Asian Languages (CoRSAL). The depositors are sharing these materials for community review and discussion. Traditionally, language archives are not heavily used by members of the communities whose languages are contained in the archive. It is the aim of this project to foster more active relationships between language archives and language communities.

An integrated FLEx–ELAN workflow for linguistic analysis with multiple transcriptions and translations and multiple participants
Timotheus A. Bodt, pp. 417-452

This paper presents a workflow integrating the linguistic software ELAN and FLEx. This workflow allows the user to move between these two software applications to refine the transcription, translation, and annotation of the speech of multiple participants. The workflow also enables the addition of multiple writing systems for vernacular and analysis languages. The paper is based on a manual that explains in a simple and visual manner how to achieve such a set-up in both ELAN and FLEx. The workflow allows language consultants to make changes and additions to transcriptions and translations in ELAN in a script and language that they are most comfortable with. In this way, the workflow fills a gap where language consultants with limited computer literacy and command of the major interface languages of software programmes can still work on the basic analysis of recordings of a language that they know well.


SP25: Doing Corpus-Based Typology With Spoken Language Corpora: State of the art

This volume features state-of-the art typological research, based on corpora from 64 spoken languages and one signed language. It is primarily intended to counteract the written bias in current corpus-based typology, and to illustrate how language documentation data is crucial for this endeavour. The volume does, however, reflect the unfortunate historical bias towards spoken languages, which is also reflected in the title of the volume, and we sincerely regret if this is construed as perpetrating the ongoing marginalization of signed language in linguistic research, and elsewhere.

The role of language documentation in corpus-based typology
Stefan Schnell, Geoffrey Haig & Frank Seifart. 1–28.

Child language documentation: The sketch acquisition project
Birgit Hellwig, Rebecca Defina, Evan Kidd, Shanley E. M. Allen, Lucinda Davidson & Barbara F. Kelly. 29–58.

Prosodic segmentation and cross-linguistic comparison in CorpAfroAs and CorTypo: Corpus-driven and corpus-based approaches
Amina Mettouchi & Martine Vanhove. 59–113.

Combining documentary linguistics and corpus phonetics to advance corpus-based typology
Frank Seifart. 115–139.

Universals of reference in discourse and grammar: Evidence from the Multi-CAST collection of spoken corpora
Geoffrey Haig, Stefan Schnell & Nils N. Schiborr. 141–177.

Language vs individuals in cross-linguistic corpus typology
Danielle Barth, Nicholas Evans, I Wayan Arka, Henrik Bergqvist, Diana Forker, Sonja Gipper, Gabrielle Hodge, Eri Kashima, Yuki Kasuga, Carine Kawakami, Yukinori Kimoto, Dominique Knuchel, Norikazu Kogura, Keita Kurabe, John Mansfield, Heiko Narrog, Desak Pratiwi, Eka Putu, Saskia van Putten, Chikako Senge & Olena Tykhostup. 179–232.

This research topic of yours – is it a research topic at all? Using comparative interactional data for a fine-grained reanalysis of traditional concepts
Pavel Ozerov. 233–280.

SP25 Front matter

SP25 Whole volume

SP25 Cover

SP24: Phonetic fieldwork in southern New Guinea

Edited by

Kate L. Lindsey & Dineke Schokkin

ISBN-13: 978-0-9979673-2-6

Abstract: This article provides an overview of the phonologies of Southern New Guinea languages, based on the six languages in this special issue plus two others for which JIPA illustrations have recently been published –Yelmek (Yelmek-Maklew family), Ngkolmpu, Nmbo and Nen (Yam family), Idi and Ende (Pahoturi River), Bitur (Marind-Anim branch of Trans-New Guinea) and Urama (Kiwaian branch of Trans-New Guinea). It surveys overall inventory sizes (maximal 28 consonants and 8 vowels, in Nmbo, minimal 13 consonants plus 5 vowels in Urama), and the most important segment types characteristic of the region, including retroflexion in Idi and Ende, labial-velar stops (Nen, Nmbo), rounded stops (Nmbo), relatively large liquid inventories (Pahoturi River) and prenasalised stop phonemes (Ngkolmpu, Nen, Nmbo).

2. A phonetic description of Yelmek
Tina Gregor

Abstract: This paper provides a first description of the phonetics and phonology of a language from the Yelmek-Maklew family, a language family without a genealogical link to any other language family in New Guinea or elsewhere. The variety under consideration in this paper is used by people from the village of Wanam, located in the Papuan Province on the Indonesian side of New Guinea. Wanam is the northernmost of the four villages attributed to the Yelmek branch of the family (ISO 639-3:jel, glottocode: yelm1242). The variety in question has 13 consonant phonemes and 7 vowel phonemes. The vowel inventory includes a phonemic schwa, which is distinct from the epenthetic schwa that is used to split illicit consonant cluster. Noteworthy suprasegmental features include the absence of word-level stress and the fact that interrogative and declarative utterances have the same basic pitch contour.

3. Phonetics and Phonology of Ngkolmpu

Matthew J. Carroll

Abstract: This paper describes the phonetics and phonology of segments in Ngkolmpu, a language spoken in the Merauke region of Indonesian Papua. The language is a member of the the Tonda-Kanum branch of the Yam family and displays a fairly typical segmental inventory for a Yam language with some notable exceptions. There are sixteen phonemic consonantal segments. As commonly found in Papuan languages, the primary manner distinction of stops is between voiceless oral stops and prenasalised stops. Rather unusually, both the plain oral stops and the prenasalised stops are voiceless for the oral period of the articulation. There are seven phonemic vowels and one epenthetic vowel whose distribution is phonotactically determined.

4. The phonetics of Nmbo (Nɐmbo) with some comments on its phonology (Yam family; Morehead district)

Eri Kashima

Abstract: This paper presents aspects of the phonetics and phonology of the Nmbo language as spoken by the Kerake tribe peoples of southern Western Province, Papua New Guinea. The paper is primarily concerned with the phonetics of consonants and vowels, but also presents description and audio examples of stress and clausal intonation patterns.

5. Phonetics and phonology of Idi
Dineke Schokkin, Volker Gast, Nicholas Evans, & Christian Döhler

Abstract: This paper provides a first description of the phonetics and phonology of Idi (Pahoturi River; ISO 639-3: idi, glottocode: idii1243) as spoken by about 1,000 people in the villages of Dimsisi and Sibidiri, located in the Morehead District of Western Province, Papua New Guinea. Idi has a fairly large inventory of 21 consonant phonemes and 8 vowel phonemes. As with other languages spoken in the region, the two central vowels show a hybrid status and could be analysed as sometimes phonemic and sometimes epenthetic. Other noteworthy characteristics are the presence of vowel harmony, voiced and voiceless retroflex plosives/affricates, nasality as a “floating” feature, and coarticulated labial-velar plosives, although the latter most likely originated as loan phonemes from Nen.

6. The phonetics of Bitur
Phillip G. Rogers

Abstract: This paper offers a description of the phonetics of Bitur, a language spoken by less than a thousand people in Western Province, Papua New Guinea. With just thirteen consonants and five vowels, the phoneme inventory of Bitur is fairly typical of a Papuan language and yet relatively small in its more immediate geographic and genealogical contexts. The consonants of Bitur represent five manners of articulation and span four places of articulation. Prenasalized stops are noticeably absent, despite their prevalence in the region and among related languages. The low central vowel /a/ assimilates in height to nearby mid and high vowels, and it provides a means to distinguish high vowels from approximants. The Bitur syllable consists minimally of a vowel nucleus with simple onsets and codas allowed. Vowel length is not contrastive, but it seems to be the most salient prosodic feature of the Bitur word. As the first substantial phonetic description of a Lower Fly language— the least-known language group in Southern New Guinea—this paper represents an important contribution to our understanding of Papuan languages.

7. A phonetic sketch of Urama
Jason Brown, Alex Muir, & Robbie Petterson

Abstract: This paper provides a phonetic sketch of Urama (Glottocode: uram1241), one of the varieties of the Northeast Kiwai group (iso code: kiw). Urama’s consonant and vowel inventories, with 12 and 5 members respectively, are characteristic of Papuan languages generally. Vowel length is contrastive, but may be in the process of being lost. Urama exhibits a pitch accent system, but only a few words are found in which tone alone distinguishes meaning.

SP24 Front Matter

SP24 Cover

SP23: Theoretical reflections around the role of fieldwork in linguistics and linguistic anthropology: Contributions of Indigenous researchers from southern Mexico

This is an English translation of an earlier Special Publication in Spanish:

Cruz Cruz, Emiliana, ed. 2020. Reflexiones teóricas en torno a la función del tra- bajo de campo en lingüística-antropológica: Contribuciones de investigadores indí- genas del sur de México. Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication 22.

These six articles, all fruit of the work of Indigenous researchers, come to us at an important moment, feeding the existing debates on “fieldwork” led by Indigenous researchers in the social sciences generally. Yet the volume Theoretical reflections around the role of fieldwork in linguistics and anthropology: Contributions of Indigenous researchers from southern Mexico is a pioneering study into the critiques, discourses, and limitations associated with fieldwork and research in the places where we live and where our families live. This critical edge must be considered when thinking about fieldwork and research in general.

SP23: Theoretical reflections around the role of fieldwork in linguistics and linguistic anthropology: Contributions of Indigenous researchers from southern Mexico

Vol. 15 (2021)

Notes from the Field: Wisconsin Walloon Documentation and Orthography
Kelly Biers & Ellen Osterhaus, pp. 1-29

Wisconsin Walloon is a heritage dialect of a threatened language in the langue d’oïl family that originated in southern Belgium and expanded to northeastern Wisconsin, USA in the mid-1850s. Walloon-speaking immigrants formed an isolated agricultural community, passing on and using the language for the next two generations until English became the dominant functional language. Although younger generations today have not learned the language, there remain enough Walloon speakers as well as Belgian descendants interested in their linguistic heritage to have generated community support for a Walloon documentation and conservation project. In this paper, we report on the results of over three years of collaboration between university researchers, students, and community members to document, study, and promote the language for the benefit of both scholars and community. We provide a description of the language, collaborative documentation efforts, and the development of community resources, including a phonetically-accessible Walloon orthography. We conclude with an outlook on future work with an eye toward increased community-led efforts.

What’s your sign for TORTILLA? Documenting lexical variation in Yucatec Maya Sign Languages
Josefina Safar, pp. 30-74

In this paper, I discuss methodological and ethical issues that arose in the process of documenting lexical variation in Yucatec Maya Sign Languages (YMSLs). YMSLs are indigenous sign languages used by deaf and hearing people in Yucatec Maya villages with a high incidence of deafness in the peninsula of Yucatán, Mexico. The documentation of rural sign languages such as YMSLs shares many characteristics with research on urban sign languages as well as spoken minority languages, but it also comes with a range of specific challenges. Elicitation materials, research procedures, and ethical decisions need to be adapted to specific local and cultural requirements while trying to maintain a level of comparability with previous studies. I will illustrate this process of negotiation by providing a detailed account of how I developed stimulus materials for lexical elicitation, obtained informed consent from the participants, and established ways of collaboration with community members in the Yucatec Maya Sign Language Documentation Project. Furthermore, I will present first results about lexical variation in YMSLs.

Living Language, Resurgent Radio: A Survey of Indigenous Language Broadcasting Initiatives
David Danos & Mark Turin, pp. 75-152

For a demise that has been predicted for over 60 years, radio is a remarkably resilient communications medium, and one that warrants deeper examination as a vehicle for the revitalization of historically marginalized and Indigenous languages. 

Radio has not been eroded by the rise of new media, whether that be television, video, or newer multimodal technologies associated with the internet. To the contrary, communities are leveraging the formerly analogue medium of radio in transformative ways, breathing new life into old transistors, and using radio for the transmission of stories, song, and conversation. In this contribution, we highlight effective and imaginative uses of radio for Indigenous language reclamation through a series of case studies, and we offer a preliminary analysis of the structural conditions that can both support and impede developments in Indigenous-language radio programming. 

The success of radio for Indigenous language programming is thanks to the comparatively low cost of operations, its asynchronous nature that supports programs to be consumed at any time (through repeats, podcasts, downloads, and streaming services) and the unusual, even unique, quality of radio being both engaging yet not all-consuming, meaning that a listener can be actively involved in another activity at the same time.

Ticuna (tca) language documentation: A guide to materials in the California Language Archive
Amalia Skilton, pp. 153-189

Ticuna (ISO: tca) is a language isolate spoken in the northwestern Amazon Basin (Brazil, Colombia, Peru). Ticuna has more speakers than almost all other Indigenous Amazonian languages and – unlike most languages of the area – is still learned by children. Yet academic linguists have given it relatively little research attention. Therefore, to raise the profile of this areally important language, I offer a guide to three collections of Ticuna language materials held in the California Language Archive. These materials are extensive, including over 1,396 hours of recordings – primarily of child language and everyday conversations between adults – and 33 hours of transcriptions. To contextualize the materials, I provide background on the Ticuna language and people; the research projects which produced the materials; the participants who appear in them; and the ethical and permissions issues involved in collecting them. I then discuss the nature and scope of the materials, showing how the content of each collection motivated collection-specific choices about recording, transcription, organization in the archive, and metadata. Last, I outline how other researchers could draw on the collections for comparative analysis.

Language use and attitudes as indicators of subjective vitality: The Iban of Sarawak, Malaysia
Su-Hie Ting, Andyson Tinggang, & Lilly Metom, pp. 190-218

The study examined the subjective ethnolinguistic vitality of an Iban community in Sarawak, Malaysia based on their language use and attitudes. A survey of 200 respondents in the Song district was conducted. To determine the objective ethnolinguistic vitality, a structural analysis was performed on their sociolinguistic backgrounds. The results show the Iban language dominates in family, friendship, transactions, religious, employment, and education domains. The language use patterns show functional differentiation into the Iban language as the “low language” and Malay as the “high language”. The respondents have positive attitudes towards the Iban language. The dimensions of language attitudes that are strongly positive are use of the Iban language, Iban identity, and intergenerational transmission of the Iban language. The marginally positive dimensions are instrumental use of the Iban language, social status of Iban speakers, and prestige value of the Iban language. Inferential statistical tests show that language attitudes are influenced by education level. However, language attitudes and use of the Iban language are not significantly correlated. By viewing language use and attitudes from the perspective of ethnolinguistic vitality, this study has revealed that a numerically dominant group assumed to be safe from language shift has only medium vitality, based on both objective and subjective evaluation.

Playing with Language: Three Language Games in the Gulf of Guinea
Ana Lívia Agostinho & Gabriel Antunes de Araujo, pp. 219-238

We present a description and an analysis of three related language games in Africa’s Gulf of Guinea: Fa d’Ambô’s Fa do Vesu, Lung’Ie’s Faa di Vesu, and São Tomé and Príncipe Portuguese’s P-language. We show how these language games can be used to investigate the linguistic features of their main languages and as learning resources for second language learners. First, we defend the common origin of these language games and that they emerged from contact with Portuguese settlers’ Língua do Pê’s varieties. Second, we discuss phonological issues, such as syllable structure, focusing on the loci of onglides, offglides, syllabic nasals, and word prosody. Finally, we discuss how these ludlings can help speakers, learners, and linguists perceive phonological properties as well as the contribution of describing and analyzing language games for language documentation.

#KeepOurLanguagesStrong: Indigenous Language Revitalization on Social Media during the Early COVID-19 Pandemic
Kari A. B. Chew, pp. 239-266

Indigenous communities, organizations, and individuals work tirelessly to #KeepOurLanguagesStrong. The COVID-19 pandemic was potentially detrimental to Indigenous language revitalization (ILR) as this mostly in-person work shifted online. This article shares findings from an analysis of public social media posts, dated March through July 2020 and primarily from Canada and the US, about ILR and the COVID-19 pandemic. The research team, affiliated with the NEȾOLṈEW̱ “one mind, one people” Indigenous language research partnership at the University of Victoria, identified six key themes of social media posts concerning ILR and the pandemic, including: 1. language promotion, 2. using Indigenous languages to talk about COVID-19, 3. trainings to support ILR, 4. language education, 5. creating and sharing language resources, and 6. information about ILR and COVID-19. Enacting the principle of reciprocity in Indigenous research, part of the research process was to create a short video to share research findings back to social media. This article presents a selection of slides from the video accompanied by an in-depth analysis of the themes. Written about the pandemic, during the pandemic, this article seeks to offer some insights and understandings of a time during which much is uncertain. Therefore, this article does not have a formal conclusion; rather, it closes with ideas about long-term implications and future research directions that can benefit ILR.

Community Archiving of Ethnic Groups in Thailand
Siripen Ungsitipoonporn, Buachut Watyam, Vera Ferreira, & Mandana Seyfeddinipur, pp. 267-284

This article presents the research process of the project “The Ethnic Group Digital Archive Project: Promoting the protection and preservation of language and culture diversity in Thailand”. This project involved the development of a local digital archive website for the ethnic groups of Thailand to archive, preserve, and transmit their knowledge of languages and cultures to their younger generations and those interested. The core objective of this digital archive development was the implementation of the archive website with uncomplicated accessibility and simple and interesting design that serves the language documentation purpose. The digital archive output includes collections from 18 ethnic groups in Thailand, containing 385 bundles of legacy and fieldwork data obtained by means of video, audio, text, image, and ELAN file. Despite the low number of researchers working on language documentation and archiving, the research team managed to expand both national and international networks working in this particular field of study. This serves as an opportunity for scholars and speaker communities in Thailand to recognize the importance of local knowledge preservation and transmission, and the availability of the digital archive is a practical way to support sustainable data preservation and accessibility in the future.

Virtual Frisian: A comparison of language use in North and West Frisian virtual communities
Guillem Belmar & Hauke Heyen, pp. 285-315

Social networking sites have become ubiquitous in our daily communicative exchanges, which has brought about new platforms of identification and opened possibilities that were out of reach for many minoritized communities. As they represent an increasing percentage of the media we consume, these sites have been considered crucial for revitalization processes. However, the growing importance of social media may also pose a problem for minoritized languages, as the need for communication with a wider audience seems to require the use of a language of wider communication. One way in which this apparent need for a global language can be avoided is by creating virtual communities where the minoritized languages can be used without competition, a virtual breathing space. 

This study analyzes language practices of eight communities: four North Frisian and four West Frisian virtual communities. The analysis focuses on the languages used in each community, the topics discussed, as well as the status of the minoritized language in the community. A total of 1,127 posts are analyzed to determine whether these communities function as breathing spaces, the factors that may foster or prevent the emergence of these spaces, and the similarities and differences between these two sociolinguistic contexts.

Collecting and annotating corpora for three under-resourced languages of France: Methodological issues
Delphine Bernhard, Anne-Laure Ligozat, Myriam Bras, Fanny Martin, Marianne Vergez-Couret, Pascale Erhart, Jean Sibille, Amalia Todirascu, Philippe Boula de Mareüil, & Dominique Huck, pp. 316-357

In contrast to French, the vast majority of regional languages of France can be considered as under-resourced. In this article, we present the results of a research project aiming to produce annotated resources for three regional languages of France: Alsatian, Occitan, and Picard. These languages cover three different language families (Germanic and two subfamilies of Romance, Oïl and Oc languages) and different sociolinguistic situations. Yet, they all face issues common to many under-resourced languages: lack of human and financial resources and presence of geolinguistic variation. The originality of this project is that it brought together researchers from different fields (sociolinguistics, descriptive linguistics, dialectology, natural language processing, digital humanities) to work together towards the common goal of developing annotated corpora for Alsatian, Occitan, and Picard. This created a favorable and stimulating working environment which could not have been achieved had different research groups worked independently, each on a single language. This article details the annotation process, with a special focus on the delimitation of the tokens and the definition of the part-of-speech tags.

The Utility of Orthographic Design for Different Users: The Case of the Approved Dagbani Orthography
Fusheini Angulu Hudu, pp. 358-374

This paper presents a critical assessment of the utility of the orthography of Dagbani (a Gur language of Ghana) in the documentation, linguistic research, and literacy acquisition of Dagbani. While written literature on Dagbani dates to over a century, it was only in 1997 that the only known documented orthographic rules of the language, the Approved Dagbani Orthography (ADO), was put together. Its stated goal was to address inconsistencies that existed in the orthographic rules at the time. It has since largely served this goal and has remained a resource for linguists engaged in language documentation and linguistic research as well as adult and young learners acquiring literacy in Dagbani in formal and informal settings. The paper discusses the influence of the orthography in the understanding of aspects of Dagbani linguistics and the challenges that remain with its use in modern-day multimodal communication. It shows that while the ADO has impacted literacy, documentation, and research on Dagbani linguistics, aspects of the design of the orthography have limited its potential impact and have given room for the emergence or maintenance of co-orthographic practices used for electronic communication and in the documentation of names in non-native official circles.

The Conundrum of Friulian Language Vitality
Simone De Cia, pp. 375-410

Italy is characterized by a considerable amount of language variation. Only a few spoken vernaculars enjoy institutional support and are officially recognized as minority languages. Among these, Friulian is one of the largest in terms of number of speakers. In the past decade, the assessment of Friulian language vitality has yielded discordant conclusions. The aim of the present paper is to shed light on Friulian’s vitality by providing an informed discussion of the findings of the three most recent studies on the topic, namely De Cia (2013), Coluzzi (2015), and Melchior (2015). As a framework for discussion and means of synthesis among the different claims put forward on Friulian’s vitality, I will make reference to the nine factors of language vitality proposed by UNESCO (2003): each factor describes six possible sociolinguistic scenarios, which reflect six different levels of language vitality. Despite its official status and institutional support, Friulian lacks young native speakers and is used more and more infrequently in a limited number of social settings. The overall picture suggests that a marked process of language shift from Friulian to Italian is taking place. National and regional authorities should take immediate action to ensure the future survival of the minority language.

Collaborative Fieldwork with Custom Mobile Apps
Mat Bettinson & Steven Bird, pp. 411-432

Mobile apps have the potential to support collaborative fieldwork even where web connectivity is unreliable or unavailable. To explore this potential, we developed portable network infrastructure and custom-made field tool apps. We deployed this solution in remote communities in the far north of Australia, in connection with co-located cooperative language work. Throughout a series of visits, we worked with community members to iterate the designs, optimising their suitability for the tasks and the context. We found that custom toolmaking provides the benefits of digital collaboration tailored for the specific needs of the environment and community. However, we argue that it is activity design – not the technology itself – that must be foregrounded, placing fieldworkers in the driving seat of innovation in digital fieldwork practice.

The Role of Input in Language Revitalization: The Case of Lexical Development
William O’Grady, Raina Heaton, Sharon Bulalang & Jeanette King, pp. 433-457

Immersion programs have long been considered the gold standard for school-based language revitalization, but surprisingly little attention has been paid to the quantity and quality of the input that they provide to young language learners. Drawing on new data from three such programs (Kaqchikel, Western Subanon, and Māori), each with its own particular motivation, objectives, and pedagogical practices, we examine a key component of this revitalization strategy, namely the amount and type of lexical input that children receive. Our findings include previously unknown facts about the number of words that children in these programs hear per hour, the ratio of word tokens to word types, and the skewed frequency distribution of the particular words that make up the input. We discuss our findings with reference both to comparable measures for first language acquisition in a home setting and to their relevance for pedagogical strategies in the classroom.

Mapping Urban Linguistic Diversity in New York City: Motives, Methods, Tools, and Outcomes
Ross Perlin, Daniel Kaufman, Mark Turin, Maya Daurio, Sienna Craig, Jason Lampel, pp. 458-490

Communities around the world have distinctive ways of representing language use across space and territory. The approach to and method of mapping languages that began with nineteenth-century European dialectology and colonial boundary making is one such way. Though practiced by relatively few linguists today, language mapping has developed considerably from its roots yet remains stymied by problems of ideology, representation, and data quality. In this paper, we argue that digital language mapping in hyperdiverse cities can both contribute to overcoming these problems and bring visibility and resources to communities using Indigenous, minority, and primarily oral languages. For these communities, official surveys like the census are often inadequate, leaving a gap that communities, linguists, and mapping experts working in partnership can address. Urban language mapping as a field should make space for Indigenous, minority, and primarily oral languages through geospatial visualization – in terms that the communities themselves recognize and with a public policy agenda. As a case study, we present our ongoing efforts with LANGUAGEMAP.NYC to map the most linguistically diverse urban center in the world: New York City.

Automatic Speech Recognition for Supporting Endangered Language Documentation
Emily Prud’hommeaux, Robbie Jimerson, Richard Hatcher, Karin Michelson, pp. 491-513

Generating accurate word-level transcripts of recorded speech for language documentation is difficult and time-consuming, even for skilled speakers of the target language. Automatic speech recognition (ASR) has the potential to streamline transcription efforts for endangered language documentation, but the practical utility of ASR for this purpose has not been fully explored. In this paper, we present results of a study in which both linguists and community members, with varying levels of language proficiency, transcribe audio recordings of an endangered language under timed conditions with and without the assistance of ASR. We find that both time-to-transcribe and transcription error rates are significantly reduced when correcting ASR for language learners of all levels. Despite these improvements, most community members in our study express a preference for unassisted transcription, highlighting the need for developers to directly engage with stakeholders when designing and deploying technologies for supporting language documentation.

Using YouTube as the Primary Transcription and Translation Platform for Remote Corpus Work
Alexander Rice, pp. 514-550

This paper presents a remote corpus work model that was developed between an outside researcher and community collaborator to continue transcription/translation work at a distance with previously collected material in response to the travel restrictions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic. The paper describes, in detail, the corpus work model, which is based on Ryan Pennington’s (2014) SayMore-FLEx-ELAN workflow and uses YouTube as the primary transcription/translation platform. The paper also describes the pros, cons, and specific situational context in which this model has proven useful so that other documentation teams in similar contexts might benefit. In addition to simply providing a method of doing corpus work remotely, the model also provides a way to maintain community capacity building at a distance.

Between Stress and Tone: Acoustic Evidence of Word Prominence in Kurtöp
Gwendolyn Hyslop, pp. 551-575

Classic typologies within prosody tend to treat ‘tone’ languages as being diametrically opposed to ‘stress’ languages. However, Hyman (2006) highlights several languages that can have both, including Seneca, Fasu, and Copala Trique. As language documentation advances and our acoustic methodologies in the field are further refined, we have seen this list continue to expand. The aim in this article is to further this research trajectory by presenting the correlates of stress in Kurtöp, a tonal Tibeto-Burman language. Kurtöp has a word-level tone system, in which high versus low tone is required on the first syllable of every word. Stress, or prosodic word-level prominence, is realised on the first syllable of a root. Thus, stress and tone usually occur on the same syllable; they are only separated from each other when the negative prefix triggers movement of the tone to the initial syllable, leaving a stressed but toneless second syllable. Based on data collected in the field from three speakers, this article shows that the primary correlate of stress is duration, not pitch, intensity, or expansion of vowel space.

SP22: Reflexiones teóricas en torno a la función del trabajo de campo en lingüística- antropológica: Contribuciones de investigadores indígenas del sur de México

Editora: Emiliana Cruz Cruz

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SP21: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Language Documentation

Edited by Susan D. Penfield
ISBN: 978-0-9856211-9-3

SP20: Collaborative Approaches to the Challenges of Language Documentation and Conservation

Edited by Wilson de Lima Silva & Katherine J. Riestenberg

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Vol. 14 (2020)

Note that embedded audio/video media are no longer playable inline in LD&C articles. All articles and associated media files are stored together in our repository, and readers can access and listen to/view media online.

Articles

Notes from the Field: Inagta Alabat: A moribund Philippine language, with supporting audio
Jason William Lobel, Amy Jugueta Alpay, Rosie Susutin Barreno, & Emelinda Jugueta Barreno, pp. 1-57

Arguably the most critically-endangered language in the Philippines, Inagta Al- abat (also known as Inagta Lopez and Inagta Villa Espina) is spoken by fewer than ten members of the small Agta community on the island of Alabat off the northern coast of Quezon Province on the large northern Philippine island of Lu- zon, and by an even smaller number of Agta further east in the province. This short sketch provides some brief sociolinguistic notes on the group, followed by an overview of its phoneme system, grammatical subsystems, and verb system. Over 800 audio recordings accompany the article, including 100 sentences, three short narratives, and a list of over 200 basic vocabulary items.

Nearly half a century has passed since Philippine educator Teodoro Llamzon discovered the Remontado language, which would be introduced to the world in a master’s thesis written by his student Pilar Santos. Although data from the wordlists they collected have been included in subsequent publications by several other authors, no one had revisited the language community, let alone collected any additional data on this highly-endangered language, prior to the current authors. This article presents updated information on the language community, the current state of the language, and a revised description of the various grammatical subsystems of the language, including its verbal morphology. Also included are over 400 audio recordings illustrating basic aspects of the phonology as well as the various functor sets and verb forms, and a short text for comparison with other similar language sketches.

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SP19: Documentation and Maintenance of Contact Languages from South Asia to East Asia

Edited by Mário Pinharanda-Nunes and Hugo C. Cardoso

2019   ISBN 978-0-9973295-6-8

In the time spanning from Himmelmann’s (1998) seminal article, the practice of language documentation has understandably developed a discernible focus on endangered, minority, and lesser described languages.

As a result of the realization of the global pervasiveness of language endangerment, these associated endeavours have significantly expanded their vitality and visibility in recent years. However, contact languages have been to some extent absent from discourses on language endangerment, but also from institutional initiatives to counter the situation. In practice, contact languages have also been and continue to be the object of language documentation, description, and revitalization efforts, as demonstrated in this special volume with concrete reference to the regions of South, Southeast, and East Asia.

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SP18: Archival Returns: Central Australia and Beyond

ISBN: 978-0-9973295-7-5

Edited by Linda Barwick, Jennifer Green, and Petronella Vaarzon-Morel

Co-published with Sydney University Press

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SP17: Language and Toponymy in Alaska and Beyond

Papers in Honor of James Kari

Edited by Gary Holton & Thomas F. Thornton
ISBN 978-0-9973295-4-4
March 1, 2019

It is difficult to imagine place names research in Alaska without the work of James Kari. Through his tireless field work and advocacy, Dr. Kari has collaborated with speakers of all of Alaska’s Dene languages to help build a comprehensive record of Dene geographic knowledge. When Jim came to Alaska in 1972, the documentation of Dene languages was fragmentary at best, and the only records of Native place names were those found inaccurately spelled on maps and gazetteers. Now nearly a half a century later we are surrounded by Native names—from K’esugi Ridge in Susitna Valley to Troth Yeddha’ on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus. The increased visibility of Alaska Native place names today is due in no small part to Jim’s efforts. His work has inspired a generation of scholars, including the contributors to this volume, and continues to set the standard for toponymy research in Alaska and beyond. 

A print version of this volume, in paper with sewn binding, will be published by the Alaska Native Language Center Press in July 2019.

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SP16: Methodological tools for linguistic description and typology

ISBN: 978-0-9973295-5-1

Edited by Aimée Lahaussois and Marine Vuillermet

This volume is an outcome of a collaborative multi-year research project on Questionnaires for linguistic description and typology. For the purposes of the project, we use Questionnaire (with a capital Q) as a general term to cover any kind of methodological tool designed to elicit linguistic expressions, including word lists, visual stimuli, descriptive templates, field manuals, and the like. This volume thus brings together articles about written questionnaires and visual stimuli, which due to their epistemological differences are rarely considered together, and treats them as sub-types of the large category of methodological tools that help linguists carry out descriptive and comparative work.

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SP15: Reflections on Language Documentation 20 Years after Himmelmann 1998

Edited by Bradley McDonnell, Andrea L. Berez-Kroeker & Gary Holton

University of Hawai‘i Press
ISBN 978-0-9973295-3-7
December 31, 2018

This volume reflects on key issues in the field of language documentation on the 20 year anniversary of Nikolaus Himmelmann’s seminal article “Documentary and descriptive linguistics” in the journal Linguistics. Himmelmann’s central argument that language documentation should “be conceived of as a fairly independent field of linguistic inquiry and practice” has prompted major theoretical and practical shifts, helping to establish documentary linguistics as a genuine subfield of linguistics. Now 20 years later we are able ask: how has this new field evolved? Continue reading

Vol. 13 (2019)

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Articles

Notes from the Field: Remontado (Hatang-Kayi): A Moribund Language of the Philippines
Jason William Lobel & Orlando Vertudez Surbano, pp. 1-35

Nearly half a century has passed since Philippine educator Teodoro Llamzon discovered the Remontado language, which would be introduced to the world in a master’s thesis written by his student Pilar Santos. Although data from the wordlists they collected have been included in subsequent publications by several other authors, no one had revisited the language community, let alone collected any additional data on this highly-endangered language, prior to the current authors. This article presents updated information on the language community, the current state of the language, and a revised description of the various grammatical subsystems of the language, including its verbal morphology. Also included are over 400 audio recordings illustrating basic aspects of the phonology as well as the various functor sets and verb forms, and a short text for comparison with other similar language sketches.

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SP14: A Descriptive Grammar of Shilluk

By Bert Remijsen & Otto Gwado Ayoker
ISBN: 978-0-9973295-2-9

This special publication of Language Documentation & Conservation presents descriptive analyses on topics in the grammar of Shilluk, a Nilo Saharan language spoken primarily in South Sudan. A salient characteristic of Shilluk is that it is rich in fusional morphology. That is, stem-internal changes, particularly in terms of tone and vowel length, have a high functional load in the paradigms of verbs and nouns. From 2008 onwards, we have built up a detailed understanding of these contrasts and their role in the grammar. Accountability is a central concern in documentary and descriptive linguistics, and it is one that has determined the design of this publication in various ways. One way we are ensuring that our description is accountable is by including sound examples. We do this because the phenomena themselves are sounds; transcriptions based on the sounds are hypotheses. Aside from making the work more accountable, sound examples embedded in publications make the phenomena more accessible, reducing the threshold between the reader and an unfamiliar language.

This grammar represents a long-term project. It will be published in instalments.

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Vol. 12 (2018)

 

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Articles

The endangered state of Negidal: A field report
Brigitte Pakendorf & Natalia Aralova, pp. 1-14

Negidal is a Northern Tungusic language closely related to Evenki with two recognized dialects, Upper and Lower Negidal. This nearly extinct language used to be spoken in the Lower Amur region of the Russian Far East by people whose traditional way of life was based on fishing and hunting. While the number of remaining active speakers of Upper Negidal was more or less known, the current state of Lower Negidal was still uncertain. We here report on a trip to ascertain the state of Lower Negidal and give a precise assessment of the linguistic situation of both dialects. While the Upper dialect is still represented by seven elderly female speakers, varying in proficiency from fully fluent to barely able to produce a narrative, not a single active speaker of Lower Negidal is left. The language will therefore probably be extinct in the next decade or two. Continue reading

SP13: Documenting Variation in Endangered Languages

Documenting Variation in Endangered Languages

edited by
Kristine A. Hildebrandt, Carmen Jany & Wilson Silva
ISBN­10: 0­9973295­0­5

The papers in this special publication are the result of presentations and follow-up dialogue on emergent and alternative methods to documenting variation in endangered, minority, or otherwise under-represented languages. Recent decades have seen a burgeoning interest in many aspects of language documentation and field linguistics and there is also a great deal of material dealing with language variation in major languages.
In contrast, intersections of language variation in endangered and minority languages are still few in number. Yet examples of those few cases published on the intersection of language documentation and language variation reveal exciting potentials for linguistics as a discipline, challenging and supporting classical models, creating new models and predictions.

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SP12: The Social Cognition Parallax Interview Corpus (SCOPIC)

Edited by Danielle Barth and Nicholas Evans
ISBN 0-9973295-1-3

The Social Cognition Parallax Interview Corpus (SCOPIC) provides naturalistic but cross-linguistically-matched corpus data with enriched annotations of grammatical categories relevant to social cognition. By ‘parallax corpus’ we mean ‘broadly comparable formulations resulting from a comparable task’, to avoid the implications of ‘parallel corpus’ that there will be exact semantic equivalence across languages. The problem with that, from a semantic typologist’s point of view, is that it can only be achieved by privileging the semantic structure of the source language in the translations, and that it prevents us from studying the fundamental question of how languages – or the formulation practices of language communities – bias the expression of particular categories in language-specific ways. This volume will grow incrementally with new chapters added in coming years.

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Vol. 11 (2017)

 

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LD&C 10th Anniversary Articles

LD&C possibilities for the next decade
Nick Thieberger, pp. 1–4

The Founding of Language Documentation & Conservation
Kenneth L. Rehg, pp. 5–9

Articles

Language Vitality among the Mako Communities of the Ventuari River
Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada, pp. 10–48

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SP10: African language documentation: new data, methods and approaches

Seyfeddinipur_2016

Edited by Mandana Seyfeddinipur
University of Hawai‘i Press
ISBN-13: 978-0-9856211-6-2

Over the past 20 years, language documentation activities have been increasing all over the world. Major funding initiatives in Germany (Dokumentation Bedrohter Sprachen (DoBeS) funded by Volkswagen Stiftung), the UK (Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP) funded by Arcadia) and the US (Documentation of Endangered Languages (DEL) funded by the National Science Foundation) have enabled more and more scholars and students to conduct fieldwork and to document languages for which little or no documentation exists. Continue reading

Vol. 10 (2016)

 

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Articles

Chirila: Contemporary and Historical Resources for the Indigenous Languages of Australia
Claire Bowern, pp. 1–44

Here I present the background to, and a description of, a newly developed database of historical and contemporary lexical data for Australian languages (Chirila), concentrating on the Pama-Nyungan family (the largest family in the country). While the database was initially developed in order to facilitate research on cognate words and reconstructions, it has had many uses beyond its original purpose, in synchronic theoretical linguistics, language documentation, and language reclamation. Creating a multi-audience database of this type has been challenging, however. Some of the challenges stemmed from success: as the size of the database grew, the original data structure became unwieldy. Other challenges grew from the difficulties in anticipating future needs, in keeping track of materials, and in coping with diverse input formats for so many highly endangered languages.

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SP11: Mutsun-English English-Mutsun Dictionary, mutsun-inkiS inkiS-mutsun riica pappel


MutsunCover

University of Hawai‘i Press
ISBN-13: 978-0-9856211-8-6

The Mutsun-English English-Mutsun Dictionary
By Natasha Warner, Lynnika Butler and Quirina Geary

Mutsun is a Costanoan language (part of the Utian language family) from California in the area around the modern towns of San Juan Bautista, Hollister, and Gilroy. The last fluent speaker of Mutsun, Mrs. Ascension Solarsano, died in 1930. Because of her work and the work of earlier native Mutsun speakers with early linguists, there is a large written corpus of Mutsun. This dictionary was compiled by analyzing that documentation. The dictionary is written to be useful both for language revitalization and for linguistic research.

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SP09: Language Documentation and Conservation in Europe


SP09cover

Edited by Vera Ferreira and Peter Bouda

University of Hawai‘i Press
ISBN-13: 978-0-9856211-5-5

 

 

 

 Europe is a continent with low linguistic diversity and the number of minority and endangered languages is reduced in comparison to other parts of the world. Consequently, Europe is not in the focus of the researchers working on language documentation. Apart from some “major” minority languages in Europe (Catalan, Galician, Breton, Welsh, Basque, etc.), several of the European endangered languages are not known in detail (even in the academia) or documented in a concise and comprehensive way. Primary data on these languages, reflecting their everyday use, is almost non-existent. Moreover, the linguistic diversity in Europe is also unknown to the general public.

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Vol. 9 (2015)

 

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On Training in Language Documentation and Capacity Building in Papua New Guinea: A Response to Bird et al.
Joseph D. Brooks, pp. 1–9

In a recent article, Bird et al. (2013) discuss a workshop held at the University of Goroka in Papua New Guinea (PNG) in 2012. The workshop was intended to offer a new methodological framework for language documentation and capacity building that streamlines the documentation process and accelerates the global effort to document endangered languages through machine translation and automated glossing technology developed by computer scientists. As a volunteer staff member at the workshop, in this response to Bird et al. I suggest that it did not in the end provide us with a model that should be replicated in the future. I explain how its failure to uphold fundamental commitments from a documentary linguistic and humanistic perspective can help inform future workshops and large-scale documentary efforts in PNG. Instead of experimenting with technological shortcuts that aim to reduce the role of linguists in language documentation and that construct participants as sources of data, we should implement training workshops geared toward the interests and skills of local participants who are interested in documenting their languages, and focus on building meaningful partnerships with academic institutions in PNG.

Documentary Linguistics and Computational Linguistics: A response to Brooks
Steven Bird, David Chiang, Friedel Frowein, Florian Hanke & Ashish Vaswani, pp. 10–11

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SP08: The Art and Practice of Grammar Writing

University of Hawai‘i Press
ISBN-13: 978-0-9856211-4-8 (2014)


GramWriting_Cover
Edited by Toshihide Nakayama and Keren Rice

 

 

 

 

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Vol.8 (2014)

In addition to our normal offering of excellent articles, in Volume 8 we have published three sets of themed articles: Language Documentation in the Americas edited by Keren Rice and Bruna Franchetto; The Role of Linguists in Indigenous Community Language Programs in Australia edited by John Henderson; How to Study a Tone Language edited by Steven Bird and Larry Hyman.

This volume also marks the retirement of our founding editor, Ken Rehg. It was his vision that established LD&C with resources from the NFLRC and University of Hawai’i and it has gone from strength to strength, always with the benefit of his guidance. The editorial team at LD&C wishes him a long and happy retirement

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SP07: Language Endangerment and Preservation in South Asia

front coverUniversity of Hawai‘i Press
ISBN 978-0-9856211-4-8 (2014)


Edited by Hugo C. Cardoso

 

 

 

 

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Vol. 7 (2013)

Articles

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The Sociolinguistic Situation of the Manila Bay Chabacano-Speaking Communities
Marivic Lesho and Eeva Sippola, pp. 1–30

This study is an assessment of the vitality of the Manila Bay Chabacano varieties spoken in Cavite City and Ternate, Philippines. These Spanish-lexified creoles have often been described as endangered, but until now there has been no systematic description of how stable the varieties are. The evaluation of the vitality of Manila Bay Chabacano is made based on participant observation and interviews conducted in both communities over the past nine years, using the UNESCO (2003) framework. Comparison between the two varieties shows that the proportional size of the speech community, degree of urbanization, and proximity to Manila account for differences in the vitality of the creoles. In rural Ternate, Chabacano is more stable in terms of intergenerational transmission and the proportion of speakers to the overall community. In the more urban Cavite City, most speakers are of the grandparental generation, but the community is more organized in its language preservation efforts. This study sheds light on two creole varieties in need of further documentation and sociolinguistic description, as well as the status of minority languages in the Philippines. It also offers a critical assessment of a practically-oriented methodological framework and demonstrates its application in the field.

Language Management and Minority Language Maintenance in (Eastern) Indonesia: Strategic Issues
I Wayan Arka, pp. 74–105

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SP06: Microphone in the Mud

front cover
University of Hawai‘i Press
ISBN 978-0-9856211-3-1 (2013)

 

LD&C Special Publication No. 6
By Laura Robinson (with Gary Robinson)

 

 

 

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Vol. 6 (2012)

Articles

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Subcontracting Native Speakers in Linguistic Fieldwork: A Case Study of the Ashéninka Perené (Arawak) Research Community from the Peruvian Amazon
Elena I. Mihas, pp. 1–21

In light of a growing need to develop best practices for collaboration between the linguist and community researchers, this study provides orientation points on how to engage native speakers in linguistic fieldwork. Subcontracting native speaker-insiders is a variety of empowering collaborative field research, in which trained collaborators independently make audio and video recordings of fellow speakers in the research community, with subsequent transcription and translation of the collected texts. Using fieldwork in the Peruvian high jungle communities of Ashéninka Perené (Kampan, Arawak) as a case study, this paper examines practicalities of subcontracting such as identifying potential subcontractors, negotiating and signing an agreement, training to use practical orthography and equipment, and evaluation of the end-product.

Participatory Methods for Language Documentation and Conservation: Building Community Awareness and Engagement
Christina Lai Truong and Lilian Garcez, pp. 22-37

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SP05: Melanesian Languages on the Edge of Asia: Challenges for the 21st Century

SP05 front coverUniversity of Hawai‘i Press
ISBN 978-0-9856211-2-4 (2012)

Melanesian Languages on the Edge of Asia: Challenges for the 21st Century

 
LD&C Special Publication No. 5
Edited by Nicholas Evans & Marian Klamer
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SP04: Electronic Grammaticography

LD&C SP04 coverUniversity of Hawai‘i Press
ISBN 978-0-9856211-1-7 (2012)

Electronic Grammaticography


LD&C Special Publication No. 4
Edited by Sebastian Nordhoff

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SP03: Potentials of Language Documentation: Methods, Analyses, and Utilization

LD&C SP03 cover
University of Hawai‘i Press
ISBN 978-0-9856211-0-0 (2012)

Potentials of Language Documentation: Methods, Analyses, and Utilization


LD&C Special Publication No. 3
Edited by Frank Seifart, Geoffrey Haig, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann, Dagmar Jung, Anna Margetts, and Paul Trilsbeek

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LD&C, vol. 5 (2011)

Articles

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Integrating Documentation and Formal Teaching of Kari’nja: Documentary Materials as Pedagogical Materials
Racquel-María Yamada, pp. 1–30

In response to the loss of more traditional modes of transmission and decreased contexts of use, members of many endangered language communities have begun revitalization programs that include formal teaching. Linguistic documentation of these languages often occurs independently of revitalization efforts and is largely led by outsider academics. Separation of documentation and revitalization is unnecessary. In fact, the two endeavors can readily support and strengthen each other. This paper describes the process of concurrently creating formal teaching materials and a documentary corpus of Kari’nja, an endangered Cariban language of Suriname. Activities described embody the Community Partnerships Model (CPM), a methodological approach to linguistic fieldwork that is collaborative and speech community-based. The work described herein represents a small portion of an ongoing documentation, description, and revitalization program.

Puana ‘Ia me ka ‘Oko‘a: A Comparative Analysis of Hawaiian Language Pronunciation as Spoken and Sung
Joseph Keola Donaghy, pp. 107-133

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LD&C, vol. 4 (2010)

Articles

Why Revisit Published Data of an Endangered Language with Native Speakers? An Illustration from Cherokee
Durbin Feeling, Christine Armer, Charles Foster, Marcellino Berardo, and Sean O’Neill, pp. 1-21

In this paper we show that much can be gained when speakers of an endangered language team up with linguistic anthropologists to comment on the documentary record of an endangered language. The Cherokee speakers in this study examined published linguistic data of a relatively understudied grammatical construction, Cherokee prepronominals. They commented freely on the form, usage, context, meaning, dialect, and other related aspects of the construction. As a result of this examination, we make the data of Cherokee prepronominals applicable to a wider audience, including other Cherokee speakers, teachers, language learners, and general community members, as well as linguists and anthropologists.

Trust me, I am a Linguist! Building Partnership in the Field
Valérie Guérin and Sébastien Lacrampe, pp. 22-33

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SP02: Fieldwork and Linguistic Analysis in Indigenous Languages of the Americas

front cover
University of Hawai‘i Press
ISBN 978-0-8248-3530-9 (2010)

Fieldwork and Linguistic Analysis in Indigenous Languages of the Americas


LD&C Special Publication No. 2
Edited by Andrea L. Berez, Jean Mulder, and Daisy Rosenblum

Download full version in PDF.

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Vol. 3 (2009)

vol. 3, no. 1

Articles

Kaipuleohone, the University of Hawai‘i’s Digital Ethnographic Archive
Emily E. Albarillo and Nick Thieberger, 1-14

The University of Hawai‘i’s Kaipuleohone Digital Ethnographic Archive was created in 2008 as part of the ongoing language documentation initiative of the Department of Linguistics. The archive is a repository for linguistic and ethnographic data gathered by linguists, anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, and others. Over the past year, the archive has grown from idea to reality, due to the hard work of faculty and students, as well as support from inside and outside the Department. This paper will outline the context for digital archiving and provide an overview of the development of Kaipuleohone, examining both concrete and theoretical issues that have been addressed along the way. The creation of the archive has not been problem-free and the archive itself is an ongoing process rather than a finished product. We hope that this paper will be useful to scholars and language workers in other areas who are considering setting up their own digital archive.

Research Models, Community Engagement, and Linguistic Fieldwork: Reflections on Working within Canadian Indigenous Communities
Ewa Czaykowska-Higgins, 15-50

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Vol. 2 (2008)

vol. 2, no. 1

Articles

Static Palatography for Language Fieldwork
Victoria B. Anderson

This article describes how to do static palatography, a way to collect articulatory records about speech sounds that can be used either in the field or in the laboratory. Palatography creates records of the contact pattern of the tongue on the roof of the mouth during an utterance, and when the actual dimensions of the palate are known, can be a rich source of data about articulatory strategies. This paper (1) instructs the reader about the tools and methods needed to collect palatograms (records of contact on the roof of the mouth) and linguograms (records of contact on the tongue); (2) shows how to collect three-dimensional information about the size and shape of a speaker’s hard palate; (3) illustrates how to incorporate these three types of records into life-size, anatomically accurate midsagittal diagrams of speakers’ articulations; and (4) demonstrates how palatograms can be measured (and how linguograms can be categorized) in order to statistically compare articulatory strategies across speech sounds and/or across speakers.

Diglossia, Bilingualism, and the Revitalization of Written Eastern Cham
Marc Brunelle

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SP01: Documenting and Revitalizing Austronesian Languages

frontcover
University of Hawai‘i Press
ISBN 978-0-8248-3309-1 (2007)

Documenting and Revitalizing Austronesian Languages


LD&C Special Publication No. 1
Edited by D. Victoria Rau and Margaret Florey

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Vol. 1 (2007)

vol. 1, no. 1

Articles

Endangered Sound Patterns: Three Perspectives on Theory and Description
Juliette Blevins

In this essay, I highlight the important role of endangered language documentation and description in the study of sound patterns. Three different perspectives are presented: a long view of phonology, from ancient to modern traditions; an areal and genetic view of sound patterns, and their relation to theory and description; and a practical perspective on the importance of research on endangered sound patterns. All perspectives converge on a common theme: the most lasting and influential contributions to the field are those with seamless boundaries between description and analysis.

Solar Power for the Digital Fieldworker
Tom Honeyman and Laura C. Robinson

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