Aurelio Agcaoili: Philosophical and Practical Issues in the Conservation Initiatives of 'Peripheralized' Philippine Languages The paper documents and critiques the initiatives of advocates of many 'minoritized' and 'peripheralized' Philippines languages to revitalize and conserve them and draw up from these initiatives theoretical and practical issues that must be addressed by these advocacy groups and by social institutions mandated to produce and reproduce what could be deemed as a just and fair because equity-based 'national' and 'nationalized' culture in the Philippines. The initiatives of advocates of 'Other because othered' Philippine languages have a history that dates back to the imposition from the center of a counter-productive conception of 'nation' and 'nationalism' from the center that prescribed - and continues to prescribe - a 'national language' from the center at the expense of the other languages and without regard for the rich diversity of these languages of the country. The public perception of a systematic because nationwide internal colonization by way of 'Tagalogization' of the public sphere that includes the wiping up of other indigenous and community languages in basic education and in national discourse grounds these advocacy efforts to contest the Tagalogization of all peoples of the Philippines and to actively negotiate a space for a new conception of nation and nationalism framed by the virtues of cultural and linguistic pluralism. The theoretical and practical problems of revitalization and conservation of minoritized and peripheralized Philippine languages results as well from the two-pronged means and methods to the systemic and systematic marginalization of these languages because of the privileging and entitlement accorded to Tagalog and English. The privileging and entitlement cut across the political, the economic, and the cultural. With the continuing migration of Filipinos everywhere including the United States, these problems are being brought over and reproduced in and among the diasporic and exilic communities of Filipinos. This is the reason why there is the need to revisit initiatives, in the Philippines and in the United States, to re-conceptualize policy and pedagogical approaches to heritage language teaching particularly in communities where there is a heavy influx of immigrant Filipinos from various ethnolinguistic groups in the Philippines. The discussion and analysis is framed by the urgency of fundamental respect for cultural democracy and linguistic rights.
Oscar Aguilera:Language revitalisation in a multilingual community: the case of Michif(s) In this talk, we discuss how the forcing of a Western model of identity where one culture = one language has caused divisiveness within the traditionally multilingual and multicultural Métis community, and discuss ways in which to overcome this divisiveness when attempting collaborative language revitalization initiatives. The Métis are the descendants of French and First Nations intermarriage in Canada's Northwest during the Fur Trade. In the early 19th century, the Métis flourished and began to think of themselves as a separate people (Sealey & Lussier 1975: 3), distinct from either French or First Nations. Métis people traditionally spoke a few of Cree, Ojibwe, Sioux, French, English, and a Plains Cree-French mixed language, called Michif today. In this talk, we show that the multilingualism and multiculturalism of the Métis people which allowed them to flourish in the early 19th century may hold back progress in revitalization and documentation today, due to an attempt to fit a traditionally multilingual people into a Western tradition of unilingualism. For revitalization efforts to succeed, it is often said that the language community must actively support the language and the revitalization efforts. Delineating this community is not normally an issue; the language shares the same name as the ethnicity/culture, or community members feel bound together by their language. However, the Michif/Métis situation is much more complicated. The multilingual nature of the culture results in the term Michif designating at least 3 languages: the Métis variety of French; the Métis variety of Cree, and the Plains Cree-French mixed language. Although the Métis share history, music and traditions, language has become a catalyst for community divisiveness rather than unity, which becomes a serious problem in collaborative revitalization efforts. For example, in order to access federal funding, the mixed-language Michif has been designated as the Métis Nation's official language, resulting in the hierarchicization of this language over the others. Speakers of this language are now the prestige group, eligible for funding, while speakers of other Métis languages are left frustrated that their language has been demoted by their own people, unable to access the same funding. This is just one example discussed of the difficulties arising from the shift from a multilingual to a unilingual society. This paper shows how an inclusive model such as Junker's East Cree language project may be used to not only renew pride in a language, but also pride in a multilingual society.
Ante Aikio: Documentary vs. descriptive linguistics in the study of Saami languages The Saami languages, a branch of the Uralic language family, are a group of nine rather closely related but mutually mostly unintelligible languages spoken by the indigenous Saami people of Central and Northern Scandinavia, Northern Finland and extreme Northwestern Russia. All of the languages are either endangered, mostly seriously so, or moribund. The study of Saami languages has a very long tradition in the field of Uralic linguistics. Even though the research tradition has been heavily oriented towards historical linguistics, previous generations of scholars have also compiled vast amounts of primary language materials such as audio recordings and texts. In this sense, thus, most Saami languages can be characterized as very well documented. From a descriptive point of view, however, the situation is somewhat different: adequate reference grammars are few, and dictionaries of many languages are in an outdated format, employing a narrow phonetic transcription. Himmelmann (1998) has drawn attention to the distinction between 'documentary' and 'descriptive' linguistics, emphasizing the importance of extensive primary documentation that can serve a variety of linguistic and other purposes. In contrast, work aiming at the description of less studied languages has often been oriented towards the publication of reference grammars and dictionaries, sometimes altogether skipping the step of archiving and publication of primary linguistic data. In the case of Saami languages the situation is almost a reverse one: there is a huge amount of archived or published primary linguistic material, whereas descriptive work is more limited, or in the case of some languages almost entirely lacking. In my presentation I will discuss the benefits and drawbacks of this data-oriented or 'documentary' tradition. In particular, I will examine how the extant materials facilitate grammatical description (e.g., writing of reference grammars) as well as practical efforts at language revitalization. It will be seen that while the existence of extensive linguistic corpora is in many ways beneficial to both endeavors, the situation is nevertheless not as ideal as proponents of a broad 'documentary' approach have envisioned. Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. (1998). Documentary and Descriptive Linguistics. -- Linguistics 36:161-195.
Rob Amery: Phoenix or Relic? Documentation of Languages with Revitalisation in Mind Documentation of Indigenous languages has typically focussed on structural properties of languages (phonology, morphology and syntax). Comparatively little attention has been given to the documentation of language functions or to the documentation of the most commonly occurring speech formulas. Speech formulas are often culturally-specific and idiomatic and cannot be reliably reconstituted from a knowledge of grammar and lexicon alone. Many linguists and lexicographers seem to have an implicit relic view of language. It is as if linguists have been trying to capture the 'pure', 'unadulterated' language uncontaminated by language and culture contact. Accordingly, borrowed terms and neologisms are typically omitted or under-represented in their dictionaries and wordlists. Recorded texts have tended to be myths, Dreaming narratives or texts about traditional culture, though a number of contact history stories have also been admitted. Conversations, except in the context of the former are grossly under-represented, as are texts about everyday life, especially in non-traditional contexts (such as a medical consultation with an Aboriginal Health Worker). Just how useful are many language descriptions to their owners/custodians who may one day wish to revitalise them on the basis of these recordings and analyses? How can we ensure that they are maximally useful, not only to linguists but to the people most closely associated with the languages? The author will put forward some suggestions that researchers might bear in mind for future generations when documenting and conserving languages. These include working in a programmed fashion in a range of situations and contexts and in collaboration with a range of experts in specialised fields (such as health, law, botany etc). Considerable time will be needed to produce a maximally useful description of the language and its uses. Many of these suggestions emerge from first-hand experience working with Yolngu and Pintupi people in non-traditional domains as well as from attempts to reclaim and re-introduce the Kaurna language on the basis of written 19th century documentation of the language by missionaries (notably Teichelmann & Schürmann, 1840; Teichelmann, 1857) and other observers (see Author, 2000).
Carolina Aragon: The Status of Akuntsu TThis paper focuses on the status of the Akuntsu language and its documentation. Akuntsu is a member of the Tupari subfamily of Tupían (Cabral and Author, 2004), together with Makuráp, Tuparí, Mekéns, Wayoró and Kepkiriwat (already extinct). Akuntsú is spoken by only six people, all monolinguals, the remnants of a genocide. Akuntsu people were first contacted by FUNAI only in 1995. After that contact, the Akuntsu people were free to begin their life again in a small part of the land remaining after an intensive deforestation of the region. In this paper I report how the fieldwork was conducted, briefly on the structural properties of the language, and on future plans for Akuntsu. Documentation began only in 2004. First, lexical items of many sorts were collected and digitized in LALI’s database. After some fieldwork trips, the morphology and aspects of the syntactic have been better understood. Fieldwork was undertaken twice each year, to stay as long as possible each time with these monolingual Akuntsu people, learning their language and their culture in daily contact. That work resulted in some papers (Cabral and Author 2005; Author and Carvalho 2008) and in an M.A. thesis about the phonology, morphology, and some aspects of the syntactic of Akuntsu language (Author 2008). According to Rodrigues (1999a), in Brazil there are approximately 220 indigenous groups who speak 180 different languages. Some of these languages are spoken by 20,000 people, while others are spoken by fewer than 20 people. Akuntsú is among the latter group; it is among the languages considered most strongly endangered in Brazil, because by the small number of its speakers and because they are not able to pass the native language on to another generation. It is destined to disappear. There are no marriageable men able to marry with the only woman who is of child-bearing age. So, what can be done to save this language from extinction? Is there any way to avoid this drastic loss to the world?
Bibliography
Author. 2008. Fonologia e aspectos morfologicos e sintaticos da lingua Akuntsu. Dissertação de Mestrado, Universidade de Brasilia.
Author and Fernando O. Carvalho. 2008. Análise acústica das vogais orais da língua Akuntsú. Revista da ABRALIN.
Cabral, A. S. A. C and Author. 2004. Relatório de identificação lingüística da língua Akuntsú. Departamento de Índios Isolados, Fundação Nacional do Índio, Brasília. Ms.
Cabral, A. S. A.C. and Author 2005. A posição da língua Akuntsú na família lingüística Tuparí. In: Anais do IV Congresso Internacional da ABRALIN, CD-Rom, pg. 1533-1539.
Rodrigues, Aryon D. 1999. A Originalidade das línguas indígenas brasileiras. Conferência proferida na inauguração do Laboratório de Línguas Indígenas do Instituto de Letras da Universidade de Brasília, em 8 de julho.
Laura Arola: Assessing the ethnolinguistic vitality of minority languages in Northern Sweden Northern Sweden is a traditionally multilingual region. In addition to Swedish, several indigenous Saami languages, Finnish, and a local variety of Finnish called Meänkieli are spoken in the area. Even quite recently some of the villages have been monolingual in a minority language while others have been bi- and even trilingual. Nowadays, however, a rapid language shift to Swedish is remarkably changing the sociolinguistic situation. During the last two or three decades there have been attempts to revitalize the minority languages. One result of this is that Meänkieli has gained the official status of a language, and a literary standard is being currently created for it. However, the local population's opinions are divided on whether Meänkieli should be considered a language of its own or a dialect of Finnish. The Saami languages of the region are in an uneven situation: the status of North Saami, the largest Saami language, is relatively good and it also gets support from the Norwegian side of Saami land. Lule Saami, on the other hand, has only a few hundred speakers and very few young speakers. My ongoing Ph.D. research focuses on bi- and multilingualism among young people in Northern Sweden. The aim is to find out to what extent the minority languages are still known by young speakers, how they are learned and in which domains they are used, how do the speakers themselves report their knowledge of languages, and what kind of language attitudes and linguistic identities there are in the region. Questions centering on these themes are used to assess the ethnolinguistic vitality of minority languages among young speakers. The gathering of data takes place in fall 2008 through a web-based questionnaire, which will be filled out by all high school students in the five northernmost municipalities of Sweden. From this data it will be possible to study the language attitudes of both the minority-language speakers themselves as well as the dominant Swedish-speaking population. In my presentation I will examine the historical background of the linguistic situation in Northern Sweden, and discuss the future and ethnoliguistic vitality of minority languages in the region in light of data gathered through the questionnaire. I will also report my experiences on using web-based questionnaire, and discuss how the chosen set of questions has worked in the assessment of ethnolinguistic vitality.
Gratien Gualbert Atindogbe: State of affairs and prospect of language documentation in Cameroon Language documentation (LD) is a relatively new concept in linguistic research in Cameroon in particular and maybe in Africa in general. So far, with the generally high numbers of languages spoken in the African countries, researchers have been solely or most involved in language description, a term which was, for long, interchangeable with language documentation. However, since Himmelmann (1998), these two terms refer to distinct realities and language researchers are quickly adapting to the requirements of LD. Thus, it is clear that LD demands more sophisticated and up-to-date technology, as well as more specific attitudes in the interaction with the informants and the speech community. This implies new teaching modules (appropriate training), new types of technological devices and a completely new mentality for the researcher, his institution and the speech community investigated. In fact, there is a need for an appropriate qualitative adjustment of all stakeholders for a successful documentation project. This paper examines the problems of language documentation in Cameroon from the three perspectives of the language documenter, the institution he/she belongs to and the hurdles in the field. Obviously, these three components are highly related and the malfunction of one of the links of this chain can jeopardize the whole process. The problems identified range from the lack of institutional support to the researcher to the delicate question of recording people's spontaneous conversation and images in villages where the contact between modernism, tradition and beliefs can result in a serious clash: some traditional practices make people fear for their image and voice to be captured. Furthermore, how to create lasting records in our universities and in the speech community when we know all the technical problems our universities face? How to convince the stakeholders that language documentation is a priority? Language description is demanding; it has its own sophisticated rules and requires collaboration (Author, 2007). Language documentation is more demanding; it has more sophisticated rules and requires more collaborative efforts. Therefore, how should language documentation be done in a country like Cameroon in order to benefit all partners?
References Author (2007). 'Documenting in a Multilingual Setting: the case of the Barombi Language in Cameroon. ' In David, Maya Khemlani, Nicholas, Ostler and Caesar Dealwis eds. (2007) FEL XI - Working Together for Endangered Languages: Research Challenges and Social Impacts. Pp. 172-177. Bath: Foundation for Endangered Languages. Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. (1998). 'Documentary and descriptive linguistics. ' Linguistics 36. pp. 161-195. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Greg Aumann, Steven Bird:Curating Lexical Databases for Minority Languages One of the biggest challenges in compiling a dictionary of a minority language is managing the large quantity of lexical data. Decisions about the format and content of the dictionary or the orthography typically evolve over the years that such projects usually take. This results in inconsistencies between older and newer entries. Revising the data for publication as a dictionary introduces further inconsistencies as does having multiple contributors and/or editors. Proofreading a lexical database takes a great deal of time and the richer its structure the more this is the case. The tools described in this presentation significantly reduce this effort. Tools developed for checking the consistency of the lexical database in the Iu Mien-Chinese-English dictionary project have proven extremely helpful. Two basic approaches are used: 1) use of a program written to check for likely errors that scans the lexical database and produces an error report that is used by a lexicographer to make appropriate corrections. 2) outputting the lexical data in alternate forms that make it easier for the lexicographer to spot problem areas. These alternative forms include the reverse indexes and views structured according to semantic domains. The Iu Mien-Chinese-English dictionary project, like many minority language dictionary projects, uses SIL's Toolbox software. It is very flexible software but its capabilities to enforce consistency are quite limited. Some parts of the approach described here are specific to MDF (Multi-Dictionary Formatter) lexical databases in Toolbox but will be equally useful for other MDF databases. Other parts are specific to each of the three languages involved but will be useful for non-Toolbox lexical databases. Every dictionary is unique and this applies not only to content of the entries but also the decisions about how entries should be arranged to suit the languages involved. Other decisions about the structure are likely to be made differently even in other dictionaries of the same languages. It is the way that each dictionary combines themes that are found in many dictionaries that makes them unique, e.g. to be root based or not, to have include subentries. Therefore our approach is to use a toolkit based approach to curating lexical databases. This allows checking techniques to be mixed and matched to suit the unique aspects of a lexical project. The checking software is written in Python and relies on the toolbox module in NLTK (The Natural Language Toolkit http://nltk.sourceforge.net).
Julie Barbour: Texts, language consultants, and linguistics: Understanding reduplication in Neverver The Neverver language is spoken by fewer than 600 people in two inland villages on Malakula Island (Vanuatu). A language documentation project was initiated in August 2004 and is now drawing to a close. In this paper, I explore one of the more interesting morphological features of Neverver - the feature of reduplication. I consider how transcribed texts, community language consultants, and linguistic theory have all contributed to developing an understanding of this important feature in Neverver. Reduplication is understood to be a morphological process. It is generally described as type of affixation where the phonological content of the reduplicative affix is underspecified and gains content from the stem or base to which it is attached (cf. Moravcsik 1978; Broselow & McCarthy 1984; Marantz & Wiltshire 2000). Moravcsik (1978: 305) makes the early observation on reduplication that 'reference is always made both to the meaning and to the sound form of the constituent to be reduplicated'. Thus, in considering reduplication, the semantic features of the simplex stem, as well as its phonological form are deemed relevant. In terms of phonology, the reduplicative prefix in Neverver has the structure CV(C). This structure preserves the language-specific phonotactic constraint on syllables which states that the maximal structure of a well-formed syllable is CVC. In Neverver, productive reduplication is associated with the verb phrase. It is a common element in detransitive constructions including object incorporation and suppression, as well as reflexive and reciprocal constructions. Reduplication is used as a derivational process to form stative verbs and stative nominal modifiers. It is one of the means of expressing participant and event quantity. It is involved in the expression of certain negative constructions. Verbs, nouns, and members of other word classes may exhibit inherent or fossilized reduplication, where a semantically-related plain stem cannot be identified in the corpus. An important characteristic of reduplication in Neverver is that it frequently occurs in conjunction with other morphological and syntactic features to express particular meanings. Arriving at an understanding of the forms and functions of reduplication in Neverver has been the result of working with a large digitized text corpus, collaborating with multiple language consultants to document simplex and reduplicated forms and meanings, and applying a multi-tiered approach to phonological analysis (cf. Clements & Keyser 1983; Goldsmith 1990). I suggest that engaging in language documentation has allowed me to provide a rich record and analysis of reduplication that will have a lasting value for the community of Neverver speakers. References: Broselow, E. & McCarthy, J. 1984. A theory of internal reduplication. The linguistic review 3. 25-88. Clements, G.N., & Keyser, S.J. 1983. CV Phonology: a generative theory of the syllable. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Goldsmith, J.A. 1990. Autosegmental & Metrical Phonology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Marantz, A, & Wiltshire, C. 2000. Reduplication. In Lehmann, C., Booij, G.E, & Mugdan, J. (Eds). Morphologie. Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyer. Moravscik, E. A. 1978. Reduplication Constructions. In Greenberg, J. H. (Ed). Universals of human language Vol.3: Word Structure. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Rusty Barrett: The relationship between language teaching and Mayan language conservation in Guatemala This paper examines the ways in which teaching K'iche' Maya to American students impacts local language documentation and conservation efforts in Guatemala. K'iche' revitalization efforts have lead to a number of proposals for standardizing K'iche' and have resulted in more widespread use of written K'iche'. However, a number of distinct local 'standard' varieties have emerged without a unified form of K'iche' that crosses dialect regions. Although different communities have adopted unified orthographic conventions, standardized morphological and syntactic forms have not been widely adopted. Because highly localized varieties of K'iche' have been maintained, many standard forms are neither recognized nor understood by the majority of speakers, even those speakers involved in local efforts at language conservation. The paper discusses K'iche' language materials developed jointly at three U.S. universities and their implementation in an intensive language program in Guatemala. Because standardized K'iche' is not widely used, the K'iche' pedagogical materials focus primarily on a single local dialect (chosen for its conservative nature with respect to language shift), including information on dialectal variation when appropriate. The paper discusses issues in the development and use of pedagogical materials, emphasizing the ways in which the production of educational materials may contribute to language documentation. For example, the development of K'iche' materials forced researchers to examine grammatical structures that have been overlooked in most previous descriptions of K'iche' grammar. In addition, because the research required for developing pedagogical materials was clearly goal-oriented, it sparked a great deal of interest and cooperation among K'iche' speakers involved in language conservation. After considering the impact of pedagogical materials, the paper discusses the relationship between the intensive language course and local conservation efforts. The visibility of English-speaking students interested in learning K'iche' challenged local language ideologies that denigrate Mayan languages. The course also highlighted important factors in language conservation. For example, because the course tried to incorporate neologisms from standardized K'iche' to replace Spanish loan words, the use of these neologisms by foreign students spread awareness both of the issue of language shift and of specific neologisms themselves. The use of native-speaker teachers from a variety of backgrounds also highlighted linguistic variation that had been previously undescribed, uncovering variable forms that need to be addressed in the development of a standard variety. The discussion suggests that language teaching may be an important complement to traditional descriptive methods in language conservation and documentation.
Christine Beier: Prioritizing community involvement in collaborative language documentation : The Iquito case This paper focuses on the strategies developed by the Iquito Language Documentation Project (ILDP) to involve community members in the documentation and revitalization of Iquito, a highly endangered language of Peruvian Amazonia. As a five-year, team-based project, the ILDP was designed around a central goal: to involve members of the heritage language community in both documentation and revitalization work. To meet this goal, the ILDP deployed various strategies. First, the research team included several Community Linguists (CLs), literate adults trained by the ILDP's coordinators in basic linguistic description, text transcription and translation, and lexicography. The CLs became active participants in the research process; made concrete decisions about orthography and other aspects of language policy; and played an active role in language teaching and the design of pedagogical materials. These CLs (literate, but not fluent speakers of Iquito) worked year-round with a core group of older Language Specialists (LSs), all native speakers of Iquito. The CLs and LSs were paired together from the outset to give the project local continuity and stability; and to enable them to contribute consistently to the project's concrete documentation goals. The longer-term goal was to create independent local experts who could serve the community beyond the life of the ILDP. Second, the ILDP developed mechanisms for accountability to the community at large. These included making periodic reports at public meetings and establishing a supervisory committee, which, for example, chose the CLs and LSs. Third, the ILDP's products include pedagogical and textual materials designed for local use. Some of these materials are already in use by the community's school teachers; in addition, the CLs and LSs have participated in Iquito language teaching in the classroom. This paper describes and evaluates the ILDP's strategies in terms of their degree of success and their potential replicability in other language documentation contexts. These strategies were most successful at the level of language revalorization within the community. In addition, the CLs developed lasting skills in text transcription and translation, and lexicography; while the LSs greatly increased their fluency. The greatest challenges were cultivating individual long-term commitments to documentation beyond the ILDP; and developing the CLs' skills in grammatical description. In hindsight, the CLs needed more focused training; however, the participants' low level of literacy became a serious obstacle as the difficulty of their work increased. Synthesizing these observations, this paper concludes with concrete recommendations for improving upon the ILDP's strategies.
Jeanie Bell: Strengthening Australia's Indigenous languages: the relationship between community and linguists. Of the 250 traditional languages once spoken on the continent of Australia as recently as 100 years ago, there are now today only 20-30 languages considered to be healthy and viable into the foreseeable future as full languages. 'Prior to British invasion, linguists estimated that there were approximately 230 languages, with between 500 and 600 dialects being spoken throughout the continent. (Fesl:1993, p8) While today many languages are being revived and maintained in different ways for future generations, the current situation with the lessening of fluent speakers and the intergenerational transmission of languages is of increasing concern to the remaining speakers and traditional custodians. of these languages. In this paper I discuss the work being carried out in Australia by Aboriginal women dedicated to the cause of language revival and maintenance in their endeavours as trained linguists, language workers or community researchers. These women are also language activists on behalf of their communities and they regularly work with non-Indigenous linguists who have an interest and concern for the futute of Australian Aboriginal languages. While many of the relationships between University trained linguists and community language workers work well in many situations, at times tensions do arise particularly if the Aboriginal member of the language team believes they have little power to negotiate their role and contribution to the project in a meaningful way. These Issues between the two groups can lead to further discontent if they are not addressed openly and with the pursuit of a satisfactory outcome. As a qualified linguist and an Aboriginal community person, I believe there must be more discussion around pertinent issues such as the control and management of language materials, intellectual proprerty rights and the return of products back to the community. Dialogue needs to happen in a non-threatening way for either group, ultimately fostering more productive relationships. Aboriginal people who participate in linguistic research projects or revival and maintenance language programs may feel powerless due to a lack of training and/or knowledge and understanding of linguistics or simply because they don't have a high level of speaking competence in their own language which they may have for many decades had little or no access to. In order to strengthen their negotiating position within a language research team or language project there needs to be a more widely accepted and endorsed inclusive collaborative approach from beginning to end. In discussing particular issues of contention related to language work happening in many communities around Australia, I place the discussion within the current framework of Indigenest research methodologies as framed by leading Indigenous researcher Smith (2001), with a specific focus on intellectual and cultural property rights, and the 'reporting back' of results to Indigenous communities. As Smith states in her ground-breaking publication 'Decolonizing Methodologies' (2001:p15) 'Some methodologies regard the values and beliefs, practices and customs of communities as 'barriers' to researché Indigenous methodologies tend to approach cultural protocols, values and behaviour as an integral part of methodology. There are diverse ways of disseminating knowledge and of ensuring that research reaches the people who have helped make it. Two important ways not always addressed by scientific research are to do with 'reporting back' to the people and 'sharing knowledge'. Both ways assume a principle of reciprocity and feedback. ' In conversation with Australian Aboriginal women involved in language and culture business in their respective communities, similar ideals as those expressed by Smith (2001) are strongly stated. While they work to maintain these ideals through a community focussed approach and practice in the development of their language programs may not be explained by them in the same way as described by Smith (2001) their work nonetheless closely reflects her philosophy. For instance when I spoke to Vicki Couzens, a widely acclaimed Aboriginal visual artist and cultural warrior, at her art gallery in Port Fairy in SW Victoria, adjacent to her own traditional land of the Keeray Wooroong people, she spoke of how she actively promotes the use of her Ancestral language in many different ways through her multi dimensional artwork within and across family and community situations. "But with cultural remembering in the way the old people take you on journeys in your dreams, you are given a certain role and we grow into that there are certain things that happen along the way. That's what motivates me it is so central and language is at the core of that culture and all the information if held in the language.' (pers.comm. with Bell:2008) For most non-Indigenous linguists a scientific interest in Australian languages is motivated by a specific semantic, grammatical or typology feature in one or more of these languages, which often requires research involving ongoing investigation and analysis. While many wish to give back to the local Aboriginal language community, they may also concerned to document and analyse the dwindling numbers of endangered languages worldwide and linguistic diversity for future generations. However there are concerns about the usefulness of this work to the community if the linguist involved does not understand the needs of the language community. Eira states in a paper she delivered at a FEL Conference in Malaysia in late 2007 the following: "Nonetheless, when linguists particpate in work on endangered languages, we focus on the language itself - collecting language, analysing language, its grammar, its words etc. This has the effect of ignoring the ground of language endangerment. More importantly, it ignores the ways in which our work can actually perpetuate the status quo of unequal relations between groups. Because we still interact from a position of authority in the languages we are working with, we are maintaining the dominance of an outsider instead of acknowledging and supporting the authority of the community in their language." (Eira:2007) In order for this very valuable work to continue to benefit Aboriginal community people who are struggling to keep their traditional languages alive and strong, and for both Aboriginal community members and linguists to receive meaningful reward from this process, it is critical that there be an ongoing dialogue around the critical issues facing all of us involved in this area. 'Rather than attempting to impose our research interests, our project was formed as listening to the community's needs, forming lasting relationships.' (Otsuka and Wong: 2007)
Bibliography Eira, C., 'Addressing the ground of language endangerment'. Working together for endangered languages: Research challenges and social impacts. Proceedings of Foundation for Endangered Languages Conference XI. Kaula Lumpur, October, 2007. Fesl, E. M., 'Conned' University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1993. Smith, L.T., 'Decolonizing Methodologies: research and Indigenous people.' University of Otaga, New Zealand. 2001 Otsuka,d Y. and Wong, A., 'Fostering the Growth of Budding Community Initiatives: The Role of Linguists in Tokelauan Maintenance in Hawai'i' in Language Documentation & Conservation;, Vol 1, No 2 (December, 2007) University of Hawii (online Journal).
Elena Benedicto, Ricard iñas-de-Puig, Mayangna Yulbarangyang Balna, Alyson Eggleston: Participatory Documentation: the Mayangna Linguists Team of Nicaragua. This paper presents a model of collaboration, based on a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach, for the documentation and preservation of small languages. Thus, it addresses the intersection of two of the conference topics: community-based initiatives and collaborative teams. This model of collaboration was developed together with the Mayangna community of Nicaragua, with the logistic support of the local university, URACCAN, and its Linguistics Institute IPILC. The collaborative research group is currently formed by five local indigenous linguists and three external linguists (two of them graduate students). This paper is the result of the experiences, the thinking and the evaluation of the process undergone by this mixed group over the last 10 years. The emphasis of the group's work has been on the process itself: in shaping and refining it to be in accordance with the principles and goals of PAR. The Basic Principles on which this model is based lie on a re-balancing of the power structure between external and internal researchers and consist of: (i) the recognition of the existence of knowledge systems of equal value among external and internal linguists, (ii) an egalitarian relationship between external and internal researchers and (iii) the (self-)empowerment of the speaking community as a result of the process. For the purpose of this work, internal linguists are those who are also members of the speaking community and, in the best case scenario, also speakers of the language, while external linguists are those who are not members of the community. Assuming these principles, the General Goals that were established by the group are: (i) to create and train local technical indigenous linguistic teams, (ii) to create materials relevant for the community and (iii) to implement a participatory dynamic in the day-to-day work interaction of the members of the team. In order to achieve these goals, a set of Implementation Mechanisms is established, including three basic components: (i) a mechanism for joint decision making, to establish goals relevant to all participants; (ii) a mechanism for a continuous training program (to ensure mutual transfer of knowledge) and, most important, (iii) a mechanism of self-evaluation. Though this approach is a continuous work in progress, some intermediate milestones have been reached: a local linguistic team was formed and is operating, and basic documentation is currently underway (including linguistic materials --dictionaries, grammar, university textbooks, all of them written in the indigenous language-- and culturally relevant materials).
Andrea L. Berez, Christopher Cox : Software demonstration: CuPED (Customizable Presentation of ELAN Documents) A common outcome of language documentation projects is the annotated corpus, a collection typically consisting of both an archival component intended for posterity, as well as a presentational component in which archival resources are repackaged in an interpretive manner, so as to be of more immediate use to a speaker community. While the development of software facilitating the production of archival materials has received considerable attention in recent years, less attention appears to have been paid to the development of comparable software serving to transform such archival materials easily into attractive and accessible presentation formats. A case in point is ELAN (MPI Nijmegen), an increasingly popular piece of software that creates XML-based, time-aligned transcripts of audio and video data. Many ELAN users are documentary linguists who need to produce web-ready versions of their archival-quality transcripts - a need which is addressed only in part by current versions of this software. Here we demonstrate CuPED, a tool that transforms ELAN files into customizable web- or CD-based presentations easily and without extensive computer training. The display consists of a media player for the audio or video, plus corresponding transcription tiers. Annotations can be played individually, or the entire media file can be viewed from start to finish with highlighted scrolling text. CuPED's simple interface allows users to customize fonts and their respective display options (color, size, etc.) on a by-tier basis. Likewise, the position of the media player can be configured, allowing space for user-added images or photographs. CuPED is written in Python, and relies upon several portable, open-source components to produce standards-compliant XHTML/CSS and to convert archival media transparently into appropriate web presentation formats. The tool provides full support for Unicode in ELAN documents, with both command-line and graphical user interfaces for easier integration into the specific archive-to-web workflows of both individual users and of larger, collaborative projects. CuPED has been designed as a cross-platform tool, capable of running under a wide range of operating systems and processors, with precompiled versions offered at present for Windows and Mac OS X. As free software released under the GNU General Public License, the full source code of CuPED is available to all interested parties for extension, elaboration, and improvement.
Steven Bird, Gary Simons : OLAC: Accessing the World's Language Resources Language resources are the bread and butter of language documentation and linguistic investigation. They include the primary objects of study such as texts and recordings, the outputs of research such as dictionaries and grammars, and the enabling technologies such as software tools and interchange standards. Increasingly, these resources are maintained and distributed in digital form. Searching on the web for language resources in many languages is a hit-and-miss affair for three reasons: (i) resources are housed in archives that have never put their catalog online, (ii) resources are exposed online but are hidden behind form-based interfaces such that search engines cannot find them, or (iii) resources are exposed to online search engines but they are described in ad hoc ways so that searches do not retrieve desired results with precision. The Open Language Archives Community (OLAC) is addressing these problems by building on digital library standards to provide a standard format for describing language resources, which makes use of standardized identifiers for languages, linguistic data types, and other things of particular interest to linguists. For instance, all resources from all archives that are in or about the same language use the same three-letter language code from the ISO 639-3 standard. OLAC also provides a portal that permits users to simultaneously query the holdings of the three dozen participating language archives in a single search. Since resource description uses precise language identifiers, a search for a particular language return all and only the relevant resources. However, the current usage and coverage of OLAC is only the tip of the iceberg. Many more linguists should be using it to find many more resources. This paper describes research that is being done to make language resources maximally accessible to linguists. We describe new methods for greatly improving search access to archived language resources, new services that encourage language archives to use best common practices to produce resource descriptions that are maximally useful for searching, and new data providers that use digital library services and web-mining technologies to find language resources in the library, institutional repository, and web domains.
Jodi Burshia: Indigenous Youth Negotiate Language Acquisition - An Exercise in Stewardship, Sovereignty, and Sustainability As indigenous communities continue to be impacted by educational standardization, indigenous youth struggle to learn and maintain their culture and heritage languages. Interpretations and definitions of these constructs frame the approaches to heritage language revitalization and maintenance in and outside of the classroom. In the United States, students are held accountable for learning US history and the English language. Indigenous culture and language education has not been seen as having the same or similar value and is therefore not taught in the classroom with the same emphasis. Educators and parents interpret and respond to these definitions in a multitude of ways amidst current tribal, state and federal legislation. Indigenous youth respond to these same constructs while learning language and culture instructions outside of the home. Therefore, the primary goal of this comparative study is to determine how Laguna youth benefit from heritage language instruction in the school curriculum and to know where they see themselves in the process of current and future implementation. Many Laguna Pueblo students are leaning Keres as a second language as they are surrounded by English language and literacy within a Western school system. Therefore, the questions of 'Who is responsible for teaching indigenous culture and language and how are they kept accountable ' must be posed. In this construct, it is appropriate to ask how indigenous youth voice, including definitions of 'accountability ' and 'responsibility, ' is represented and interpreted in the classroom. The primary method of data collection will be the utilization of digital storytelling technology to document and showcase youth responses to heritage language revitalization and maintenance in the Laguna Pueblo of New Mexico. This qualitative data analysis project requires obtaining community definitions of 'accountability ' and 'responsibility ' as examinations of personal and community decisions over time and cannot be defined or answered by analyzing one Indigenous community. Instead, the examination of several indigenous communities must be compared and contrasted. I propose the terms 'responsibility ' and 'accountability ' within the frame of cultivating stewardship in one's community. The result will be an examination of the ways youth, parents, and educators perceive themselves in the language planning and implementation process as a form of defining realistic community roles and responsibilities. Language use will serve as a form of stewardship and an act of tribal sovereignty. The analysis of the enactments revealed in the digital stories will set the stage for further understanding of cultural sustainability.
Gabriele Cablitz, Fasan Chong, Edgar Tetahiotupa :Problems and benefits of web-based tools for language documentation This paper reports on a project within the DoBeS-program in which a digital multimedia encyclopaedic lexicon is created for the endangered Marquesan and Tuamotuan languages of French Polynesia with the newly developed lexicon tool LEXUS. The web-based editing possibilities of LEXUS allow the speech communities to be more actively involved in the documentation of their languages. Modern information technology and internet facilities which are more and more accessible in the remotest areas of the world make it technically possible to continue the cooperation between researchers and speech communities outside fieldwork periods. This paper discusses the problems and benefits connected with such an approach as well as a design of collaborative workspaces which has been developed together with the Tuamotuan speech community. It is not sufficient, simply to make a web-based tool available to ensure online cooperation, nor can one assume that an encyclopaedic lexicon will be easily created in a wiki-like manner by the speech community. For a successful online cooperation with LEXUS, it is a prerequisite that speech community members have substantial training in the basics of lexicography and the usage of linguistic software. Apart from these basic linguistic and IT requirements, there are community-internal obstacles to overcome as well. A web-based encyclopaedia creation is not without conflict in highly endangered speech communities. The indigenous languages of French Polynesia are currently undergoing rapid linguistic change caused by French, the dominant contact language, and depending on the age of the consultants and their upbringing, speech community members do not necessarily share the same metalinguistic and cultural knowledge about words. The continuous loss of their linguistic and cultural heritage also feeds into many insecurities of the speakers and are often ground for conflicts between speech community members in what is authentic and not authentic knowledge. Even if only the most knowledgable are invited to contribute these, mostly older, community members often cannot read or write, not to mention their lack of IT skills. They have to learn to cooperate with younger community members who have good IT skills, but often lack knowledge of the indigenous language or culture. Last but not least, the LEXUS tool needs a quality-based system of collaborative workspaces with a committee of moderators who evaluates the input of speech community members. The selection of suitable moderators is a further issue which speech communities need to address.
Maya Chacaby: Traditional Knowledge and Technologies of Orality for Community-based Anishinaabemowin Revitalization in Northern Ontario. Waaciye, Maya nitishinikaas, Kaministiqua nitoonci, Amik Dodem. Aasha ni-kakwe-nitaa Anishinaabem. Miikwec Kishe-Manito o-we-ki-minobimaatiziyan wiicishin. Aasha ni-ninanatawentan anishnaabemowin toonci ni-kanohkentaan kaa onciiyaan Miikwec* . It is my belief that Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) traditional knowledge practices are critical to the retention of new language learners and ultimately to the future direction of Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe language) revitalization. However, the forced displacement of Anishinaabe peoples from their traditional territories and the contemporary context in which this is reenacted has created a 'cultural void ' where oral practices, storytelling, and experiential-social learning are often secondary to western pedagogical structures. My research focuses on developing ways that Anishinaabe traditional knowledge practices for language transmission can work in contemporary institutional contexts. Rather than simply providing students with a short repertoire of basic words, this work focuses on creating an environment that will allow students to become part of a long-term language-learning community, which fosters fluency through an Anishinaabe framework. I have been working with northern First Nations communities, community members, and community organizations to create viable options for prioritizing methods of language transmission that emphasize the spiritual, physical, emotional and mental aspects of our identities and promote foundational Anishinaabe knowledge in language transmission. In a contemporary context, some of theses options include the development of video conferencing networks and video documentaries that can enhance oral teaching practices and create accessible story archives in the language. As well, the work has involved creating a sustainable language learning community locally at the University of Toronto and by internet-based communications across northern Ontario, through social activities, theatre projects and community participation. The goal is to stretch Anishinaabemowin interactions beyond classroom boundaries and to create greater opportunities to retain new learners and allow for more experiential, traditional learning. My vision is that, when combined, the Anishinaabe methods for transmitting the language (via traditional knowledge practices and philosophies) and technologies that promote oral language transmission could become a powerful tool for recreating healthy, vibrant Anishinaabe communities. *As Anishinaabe (Ojibwe person), I have been taught to introduce myself and state my intentions first in my language; this, according to the Elders I have learned from, is the way that my intentions are heard not just by you, but by the spirits of my ancestors and by creation. In this way, I am held responsible to my intentions on a level much deeper than words on paper.
John M. Clifton: Orthography Development as an Ongoing Collaborative Process: Lessons from Bangladesh A practical orthography is especially important for language conservation in South Asia, since there is a close psychological connection in the region between language and script. A language without a script is frequently thought to be inferior to neighboring literary languages. In this paper I develop a model of orthography development as an ongoing collaborative process and show how it was applied in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. Most commonly, a practical orthography is based on a technical phonological analysis done by an outside linguist. The linguist considers a wide range of factors important to orthography and develops a proposal that takes these factors into consideration. Significant community involvement is limited, and the final result is viewed as a stable object. When orthography development is conceived of as an ongoing collaborative process, community practices play a central role. Instead of beginning with a phonological analysis, this model begins with regional orthographic practices. Ideally, orthography development is undertaken simultaneously with application of the orthography, so that those involved can see the effects of their decisions. It is collaborative in that the linguist and the local community work together from the beginning, and is an ongoing process in that the local community learns to modify the orthography as needed. This model was applied in orthography development workshops in Bangladesh. My discussion of the workshops begins with an overview of the orthographic practices in the seven languages involved. One was previously unwritten, and four had either recently undergone script changes, or were contemplating script changes. Speakers from all of the languages indicated frustration with aspects of their orthographies. The workshops were held over a two week period; participants were simultaneously involved in producing materials for vernacular preschool programs. The collaboration between participants and linguist during the workshops uncovered many aspects of orthography development that a typical phonological analysis would have considered. Participants struggled with whether particular sound contrasts were distinctive, and whether they should be represented, with inconsistencies in spelling and wordbreaks, and the pros and con of changing scripts. For some issues, participants did not come to long-term conclusions. But they learned to make short-term decisions that allowed literacy work to proceed while the larger issues were discussed. Most importantly, they learned that orthography development is a process and that decisions can be changed. They gained skills needed to make orthography development an ongoing process over which they have control.
Matthew Coler: Aymara variant revitalization in remote Andean communities Though Aymara is spoken by over a million speakers; its many variants remain undocumented and endangered. Linguistic research, aimed at better understanding morphophonological properties of the language, indicate that the Aymara spoken in the remote Andean villages of Muylaque and Sijuaya, in the Peruvian state of Moquegua, is unique. Given government plans to build a highway nearby coupled with the lack of Aymara education, the long-term vitality of this variant, and Aymara generally, is dubious for these communities. The researcher has a complicated role in the revitalization process: he is at once a university linguist and a documentarian who must meet strict guidelines in generating lasting data of interest not only to scholars but also to community members. In the situation at hand, the researcher is the catalyst for local preservation efforts. Despite local claims that the language was impossible to put to paper, efforts were made to work together with literate community members to write their language. As many adults (especially women and elders) are illiterate, special attention was necessary to document their speech. Recorded interviews were conducted in which the researcher, together with younger family members, would ask elders to recount their youth, tell myths, or sing songs. Cooperation with locals in doing this was essential, not only for communicative purposes, but also to establish a level of trust that would make the elder feel comfortable enough to speak about such cultural topics with an outsider present. These recordings were transcribed with the locals and are to be published in a book with original illustrations. Copies will be donated to the community. In exchange for the researcher's labor in the fields, community members taught him the variant. In his (often comical) attempts to speak the language, the researcher lent a level of prestige to the speakers who came to see themselves as teachers and experts, not exotic objects of study. This, by extension, helped put an end to the belief that this variant was inferior to Spanish or "standard Aymara". This presentation will detail some of the complications encountered by the researcher; the lack of trust by community members, the early difficulties associated with gathering linguistic data, and the struggle to overcome some unique sociocultural barriers. Focus is given to the creative community-based preservation/revitalization/documentation processes, chronicling the difficulties, complications, and successes of fieldwork and the researcher's role in the process alongside effective documentation methodology.
James Crippen: 'Studying grandmother's tongue ': Heritage language and linguistics The concept of indigenous linguistics is not a new one, given that Franz Boas trained William Jones of the Fox nation to do linguistic description of his own language around the end of the 19th century. It is becoming increasingly emphasized today, particularly in projects aimed at educating native speakers of endangered and underdocumented languages so that they can document their own language and linguistic traditions. Concomitant although perhaps orthogonal with this is the idea of 'heritage linguistics ', researching a language spoken by one's family and society. This has been little discussed in linguistic circles, but is becoming more and more prominent particularly among documenters working on languages in developed countries. Working on one's heritage language brings with it many joys, but also a host of problems. The heritage linguist does 'homework ' rather than fieldwork, living with family and friends in familiar surroundings. But as a member of the society, the researcher is not a neutral, independent observer. Instead, the heritage linguist can be easily drawn into unpleasant politics, be subject to unreasonable demands from community members, and be derided for failures in language policy. Carefully guarded material may be easily available to the heritage linguist but unusable in documentation efforts because of restrictions on distribution. Conversely, social and kinship relations may interfere in the interactions with native speakers. The weight of endangerment is particularly heavy, since community members expect the researcher to be active in revitalization and maintenance regardless of personal intentions, and a heritage linguist may suddenly find themselves as 'the last living speaker ' despite being a second language learner. The relatively impartial, data-driven observations of linguistics can conflict with community language beliefs, leaving the heritage linguist in the unpleasant position of contradicting the words of their elders and potentially alienating themselves from their own society. There are other more personal issues in studying one's heritage language. The heritage linguist can become a community authority on language and cultural tradition which confers unexpected powers and responsibilities. Heritage linguists may suddenly find themselves in the uncomfortable and perhaps unwarranted position of becoming 'young elders ' out of their intimate study of language and traditions. The desire to pursue revitalization may conflict painfully with the desire for an academic career, since academia is often very distant from the homeland. Finally, lack of community support for language conservation can leave the heritage linguist disillusioned and dismayed with their own society.
Stewart Curry, Kyoko Hijirida, Leon Serafim:Documenting, Teaching, and Revitalizing Uchinaa-guchi: the Future of the Okinawan Language Overview Okinawan is not in danger of disappearing and leaving no trace. It has, however, been in decline for some time — the language of modern life in Okinawa is Standard Japanese — and the extant speaker population is aging rapidly. Okinawan can be heard in limited domains, such as traditional music and theater, and there is an Okinawan written tradition dating back to the Omoro Sooshi. Dictionaries exist for Okinawan; these, with few exceptions, are in Japanese. Okinawan reference works in English Resources in Japanese, including the Okinawa-go jiten [Dictionary of the Okinawan language], limit access by the general community of linguists and by interested non-scholars. Information on Okinawan in English is not new — a dictionary and grammar appeared in 1895 — but the publication of the Okinawan-English Wordbook, a lexicon of Okinawan with definitions in English, and the planned Compleat Okinawan — a Comprehensive Portrait of its Modern and Historical Vocabulary, a scholarly tome integrating literary vocabulary as well as usage examples, have opened a new era in the field. Okinawan language and culture at the University of Hawai'i When two of the authors debuted the two-course Okinawan Language and Culture series in 2004, their efforts represented the first concrete move to teach Okinawan as a heritage language at the University of Hawaii. In the series, students acquire four-skills ability in Okinawan, and learn aspects of Okinawan folk and high culture through readings ranging from folk tales to the Omoro Sooshi. The series currently relies on Japanese for instruction, but the use of English reference works in support of reading exercises will broaden its potential audience. Okinawan language revitalization Since the 1970s, the weakening of Ryukyuan dialects has been a concern for scholars. Uemura Yukio and others began work to record information then, and Professor Karimata Shigehisa of Ryudai has continued this work in field linguistics and in teaching Okinawan as a living language. In addition, the Okinawa-go Fukyu Kyogikai [Society for the Revitalization of Uchinaa-guchi] may soon support the teaching of Okinawan in the public school system, with the cooperation of the Prefectural Board of Education. Okinawan is also being taught in the diaspora, including non-university classes in Hawai‘i and South America. It is hoped that teaching Okinawan as a living language will halt its slide into oblivion, or at least equip connoisseurs and practitioners of the Okinawan performing arts with a deeper appreciation for what performances mean.
Sarah Cutfield: Bias, Elicitation and Endangered Language Description While many have been focussed on methodological issues of documenting endangered languages, others have asked 'How will this current focus on documenting endangered languages influence language description, and language typology?' In this paper I will discuss how language endangerment may lead to biases in the data linguists collect for analytical and descriptive purposes, and the consequences of this for language description and language typology. Elicitation tools offer insight into language paradigms which may be difficult to document when relying on purely naturalistic data. They have a long history of use in descriptive linguistic fieldwork. Sometimes the use of such tools is the only way to collect data about specific domains and paradigms of severely endangered languages, where there is minimal opportunity to observe naturalistic language use. The endangered language context may also present a different set of challenges when it comes to using guided elicitations. Some elicitations require 'controlled experiment' conditions, which are unfamiliar and/or uncomfortable for elderly speakers. In such situations, there may be a preference to work with (younger) speakers who are more comfortable with elicitation tasks. The end result of this will be a bias in the data set towards their data, or their variety of the language. In this paper, I will discuss my own experiences with 'bias' when using the MPI demonstrative questionnaire (Wilkins 1999), with Dalabon speakers. Dalabon (Gunwinyguan, Australia) is a severely endangered language of south-western Arnhem Land. I will argue for the value of these tools for the insight they offer into linguistic systems, and discuss the resultant issues for analysis, description and typology which arose from relying heavily on data from younger semi-speakers. Working with younger semi-speakers produced a hypothesis I was able to test against data from the older fluent speakers, but at the same time, increased the possibility of recording language features which are inauthentic, or the product of interference from another code. For example, the younger semi-speaker's data contained a particular syntactic construction not seen previously in the data from older speakers. Bias is inherent in the collection of linguistic data, and I argue that the linguist must exercise extra care when using elicitations when documenting endangered languages. Wilkins, David P. 1999. The 1999 Demonstrative Questionnaire: "THIS" and "THAT" in comparative perspective. In "Manual" for the 1999 field season, edited by Stephen C. Levinson and N. J. Enfield. Nijmegen: Language and Cognition Group, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
Ewa Czaykowska-Higgins: Changing fieldwork roles in Community-Based Language Research This paper examines several fieldwork situations from a community-based language revitalization project taking place in British Columbia, Canada. Through this examination I intend 1) to exemplify possible types of roles played by linguists and community members, with a view to expanding linguists' perspectives on fieldwork, and 2) to touch upon several interesting implications of changing the roles and relationships of linguists and community-members in fieldwork. There is a growing movement amongst linguists to conduct linguistic research on small Indigenous languages in collaboration with community members (e.g., Yamada 2007, Stebbins 2003). A consequence of conducting research collaboratively is that the roles which outsider linguists and community members take on in fieldwork situations are no longer simply expert/informant types of roles in which a linguist is the outside expert and a speaker is a language-data source (see Rice 2006: 140-145 for discussion of roles). For example, in a Community-Based Language Research model, research on a language is conducted for, with and by the language-speaking community within which the research takes place and which it affects (Czaykowska-Higgins 2008; cf. Grinevald 2003). This model allows for the possibility that community members participating in fieldwork research will be explicitly recognized as experts and as researchers, not simply as informants, consultants, teachers, or even collaborators. As experts, the community researchers direct and lead the research; outsider linguists, in contrast, take on supporting roles. In one fieldwork situation that I discuss, for instance, two elders and their community research assistant defined the focus of their fieldwork and their working methodology. Only once the fieldwork was underway was a linguist asked to provide support in specific aspects of the fieldwork, such as helping to organize a database. One interesting aspect of this fieldwork situation is that the roles that the community members and the linguist have taken on do not fit standard roles assumed by Human Research Ethics Boards and university Research Services. This in turn raises ethical and intellectual questions about ownership and authorship, and practical questions such as whether the elders should sign the usual informed-consent forms to participate in the grant-funded project and how Memoranda of Understanding between the community and university apply to the research. As this example suggests, collaborative research requires linguists to re-define themselves as fieldworkers and researchers, to re-think research roles, and to address new issues. This paper aims to contribute to the redefinition and rethinking.
Christopher Doty: Bridging the Gap between Linguistics and Community: Producing materials for language maintenance The work of linguists, although certainly of value to our scientific understanding of human language function, has often been produced in such a way that it is nearly (or, in many cases, completely) inaccessible to the communities which speak the language or languages in question. This issue takes on special importance in language endangerment situations, where these linguistic documents can often represent the combined knowledge of more speakers than are currently living. Linguists working in these communities are thus in a unique position to either contribute substantially to language maintenance efforts, or to subtract from such efforts by monopolizing time with the few remaining speakers without channeling their knowledge and work back to the community. This talk will specifically address two issues related to linguistic materials in language maintenance and revitalization situations. First, it will present a preliminary framework for how to make newly-produced materials in such a way that they both support the overall mission of linguistics to further our understanding of the structure and function of human language, while also being accessible to and useable by the communities who rely on such materials for their language maintenance efforts. Contrary to the usually-held position that linguistic goals are separate from community needs, this framework will show that the materials can be produced in such a way that they benefit both parties, and in fact make both community and linguistic resources of a higher quality than they would be otherwise. This quality arises through a true collaboration between linguists and speakers, assuring that both parties are involved in establishing project goals, as well as the workplan to meet these goals. The second issue discussed during the talk will be ideas regarding how to 'transliterate' previously-produced materials into a more accessible format in light of the framework discussed for new materials. Because linguists in the past were focused almost solely on theoretical and documentary goals, the copious amounts of documentation they have produced is usually in such a form that it does not readily lend itself to language maintenance or revitalization efforts. Further, due to changes in linguistic conventions and theory, these older documents are often difficult to access even for trained linguists. Developing a paradigm for updating and reformatting these materials is thus extremely important for communities who speak endangered languages, as well as the linguistics community at large.
Aone van Engelenhoven: 'Speak Correct, Write Correct, Read Correct': Fataluku Perceptions on Language Documentation (Timor-Leste) This paper focuses on language attitutes in the Fataluku Language Project (FLP), a documentation project funded by the Netherlands Science Foundation from 2005 till 2008. The name Fataluku (literally 'to speak correctly ') epitomizes how, according to local foklore, after centuries of warfare, the ethnolinguistically diverse clans in the region united under 'one correct speech' (Fatalukunu) into one uniform society, naturally fading the original clan languages into oblivion. Consequently, Fataluku speakers are obsessed with the 'correctness' of their speech and perceive their language and everything related to it as sacred. Notwithstanding its status as national language, Fataluku speakers are quite aware of the dangers that lurk behind the rapid and aggressive spread of Portuguese and Tetum in their society. Attempts to standardize and document their language are therefore generally agreed with. The problem is rather that the instruments with which one attempts to safeguard Fataluku are considered by most people as kapare ('bad'). It is obvious that Fataluku should become a written language like Portuguese and Tetum, however the national standard spelling by decree is generally rejected for Fataluku. It is obvious too that Fataluku should be introduced in the school's curriculum, but the Portuguese and Indonesian linguistic terminology is considered inappropriate for Fataluku by teachers. It is obvious that Fataluku oral traditions should be recorded and written down, but there is no consensus on how to implement this. Whereas its sacredness is already a difficult element to tackle in the documentation and standardization of the Fataluku language, the requirements imposed by the responsible national body meant to protect the local languages may also severely complicate the progress of a program. This paper describes the efforts of the FLP team in cooperation with several stakeholders in the region (Radio Communidade Vox Populi, Ausaid, Timor Lorosa'e-Nippon Culture Centre, United Bible Societies, Instituto Nacional de LinguÂ’stica) to standardize and document the Fataluku language.
Margaret Field: Documenting Lexical Dialects of Kumiai in Baja California This presentation will provide an overview of ongoing collaborative language revitalization efforts in the Baja, California Kumiai community sponsored by NSF's Documenting Endangered Languages fund. Baja Kumiai, or Tiipay, is a moribund language (community members insist all dialects are mutually intelligible) with approximately 50—60 speakers, most of whom are 50 years or older. The goals of this project are multiple: 1) to document the multiple dialects of Kumiai spoken in Baja California.2) to create a discourse-based lexicon and grammar detailing the extent of this variation and representing each of these dialects. 3) to create pedagogical materials for teaching Kumiai which reflect this dialect variation, in both paper and multimedia formats, as well as Spanish and English.4) to assist Kumiai speakers in learning to write their language so that they may actively be involved not only in the creation of teaching materials but also learn how to use literacy as a teaching tool for the future. 5) to archive all of the audio and video data collected across these communities for future research and use by Kumiai communities at the Archive of Indigenous languages of Latin America (AILLA) housed at the University of Texas, Austin.This presentation will focus on the particular needs and considerations of documenting multiple dialects in a speech community whose language ideologies may be described as "variationist" (Kroskrity 2002, in press,) that is, in which dialectal variation is not hierarchized but is instead naturalized, and associated with local group identity. In Baja California there are at least six Kumiai regional communities, and preliminary data suggests that there is a good deal of lexical variation across these six communities.Special considerations include collecting word lists and example sentences which document regional lexical variation to the greatest extent possible, while taking care not to privilege one dialect over another in corpuses, lexicons, teaching materials and especially electronic materials. Community members who may be fluent in one particular dialect must be trained to document (record and transcribe) data in multiple dialects as well, without emphasizing one over another (for example, only recording their relatives) or worse, "correcting" dialect differences which to their mind may seem incorrect or lacking in some way. Training in Kumiai literacy is a major focus of an ongoing series of workshops in the Baja Kumiai community over the next three years.
Colleen Fitzgerald: Pathways for Accessing Legacy Materials in Tohono O'odham This paper reports work on two sets of legacy materials for Tohono O'odham, a Uto-Aztecan language spoken in Arizona and Sonora Mexico. Tohono O'odham speakers have declined in their numbers, with just above 8,000 speakers in 2000, suggesting a 20% decline since 1990. However, O'odham speakers and revitalization programs could benefit from linguistic resources. Fitzgerald (2005) discusses a century's worth of archival holdings, covering numerous genres, most of which is unpublished. Here we look at efforts to increase access to the texts from a dialect survey in the 1980s and at efforts to create an online version the out-of-print dictionary compiled by Madeleine Mathiot in 1973. Both projects would increase accessibility of O'odham language materials. The projects bear on several issues of relevance: archiving, collaboration, representing manuscript formats in a community-friendly format, technology, and mobilization of data. The Tohono O'odham dictionary project has gone through several incarnations, mostly at the University of Arizona. Unfortunately, the Mathiot dictionary is still not online, stymied by funding shortages, software and font challenges, changes in grad student personnel, and lack of clarity regarding copyrights. We are more than halfway done with editing the text files of this dictionary, with Mathiot herself editing for presentation and to include errors not addressed in the published version. Once this version is done and online, it will be straightforward to address orthographic differences from the tribal orthography, as well as create options for self-publishing so that community members can print it. Ofelia Zepeda and Jane Hill worked with 92 elders in the 1980s collecting word-lists and texts as part of a dialect survey. These materials have been transcribed in Tohono O'odham, but are untranslated and unpublished. We are scanning the manuscripts into PDF format for preservation and creating text files, and a community member is working on translations. Preliminary versions of accessible texts have the potential to be changed in global ways, given word-processing tools. Preserving the transcripts for accuracy is the first step, which creates a foundation for community-driven revisions. This project involves community members, original researchers, and graduate and post-graduate assistants. The resulting files offer a number of ways to increase access for the tribal community, and established collaborations with the tribal college offer an avenue for successful explorations to mobilize these materials for speakers and revitalization programs.
Margaret Florey, Susan Penfield, Benjamin Tucker:Towards a theory of language activism This paper considers the notion of language activism within the context of the fields of language documentation and revitalization. Language activism is intrinsically linked to the rise of what has been termed the "new linguistics" (Author1 2008), a more participatory and politicized linguistics which is characterized by profound changes to ethics, methods and practice, and within which the language rights movement and international conventions and declarations have played a key role in highlighting and setting out the rights of Indigenous peoples to control intellectual property and strategies and actions vis-à-vis minority languages. Although the terms "language activist" and "language activism" recur quite widely within the literature on language shift and endangerment, language revitalization, language rights and so forth, there is little agreement about definition and large variation in use of these terms. Hence, little progress has been made to date towards developing a theory of language activism and understanding its place in relation to the field of endangered language study. Here, we explore definitions of activism, consider who is a language activist, examine what activists do in diverse settings, and focus on the skills different types of language activists may need and how those skills can be acquired. We assert that the best efforts in documentation and revitalization are not going to be effective without increased attention towards activism at the local, national and international levels. We build on the earlier formulations of Penfield, Tucker et al (2007), Penfield, Tucker et al (2008), and Florey (2008) to argue the need to move towards a more holistic conception of documentation and revitalization work, one which is fundamentally based on activism and which fosters participatory practice.
Evelyn Fogwe: Language Shift Arrest: The Case of Mankon, in a Multilingual Setting The Demographic figures of Mankon and its dialects could suggest potential language viability; however, upon closer examination, this vernacular is in fact threatened (and endangered?). It is slowly and steadily dying as portrayed by some indicators as analyzed by Landweer (2000: 5-22) in her work 'Indicators of Ethnolinguistic Vitality', the recent UNESCO 2003 (nine) criteria for assessment of language vitality and endangerment and others. Recent findings indicate that Mankon, like a number of other Cameroonian (and African) languages of urban communities is characterised by a loss in vitality caused by a conjuncture of variables, which must be identified and diagnosis in order to undertake meaningful revitalization and development of the language in the perspective of its new status and function (cf. Bitja'a Kody (2001), Bruce Connel (2001), Neba, A. et al. (2006), Chibaka (2008) etc.). Cultural identity can be sustained only by revitalising and extending the usage domain of the language, which is the vehicle of cultural and linguistic transmission. Thus with respect to the identified problems causing the Mankon language shift, the goal of the study is sustaining the cultural and linguistic identity of the Mankon people. It is not enough to state the existence of, and importance attached to these cultural values but it must be learnt not only by the native speakers and their off-springs but also by interested persons out of the speech community such as researchers (linguists) for language typological studies, etc. In order to achieve the primary goal of this project, we undertook a number of specific objectives encapsulated through sociolinguistic surveys of language use patterns and language attitudes in the entire Mankon speech community at home (Bamenda and in the Diaspora (Mankon communities in Douala, Yaoundé, Limbe-Buea and Kumba)). The focus was the use of Mankon in relation to other languages and attitudes toward the language as well as attitudes of native speakers' vis-à-vis the different languages of their linguistic repertoire. This study ascertains to investigate the nature and patterns of intergenerational transmission or lack of it and factors relevant to the phenomenon. 1. The survey addressed the extent to which bilingualism is replacive thereby favouring language shift rather than language maintenance etc. 2. Assessment of measures to undertake pertaining to revitalisation of the language on the basis of relevant findings of the sociolinguistic survey. We engaged in answering the questions: a) What do we do to sustain, maintain, and ensure the intergenerational transmission of the rich culture of the Mankon? b) What strategies must be put in place and what action undertaken to ensure revitalisation of the Mankon language? The answers are multi-facets but enveloped within the implementation of the different phases of the Principle of 'Attitude Engineering' proposed by Chumbow (2008). The establishment of captivating and productive media and literacy programmes to propagate the essence of usage, scope, and extension of Mankon. Key words: Language shift, arrest, Mankon, Multilingual setting, Vitality variables, Revitalisation, 'Attitude Engineering' and Development.
Naomi Fox: Reconciling Academic and Pedagogical Objectives in Documentation: A case study of Mocho' Many endangered languages have little documentation, and that which does exist is often in a format which is not useful to communities of speakers. The rush to document because of endangerment issues and the constraints of the research schedule often drive the documentation process. In severe endangerment situations, it is vital to document as much of the language as possible, and researchers often focus the majority of precious research time on complex grammatical elicitation and the collection of narratives. However, it is not in the best interests of the documentation process to overlook the benefits of pedagogical approaches and possible alternative uses of the language data. In this paper I describe efforts to integrate legacy data and ongoing data collection to produce academic and pedagogical materials for Mocho', a Mayan language of Mexico with fewer than 50 speakers remaining and no published dictionary, grammar, or pedagogical materials. There is increasing awareness in the field of language documentation of the ethical responsibility of researchers to be responsive to the language community, and recognition of the benefits of a reciprocal collaborative relationship between academic linguists and the language community. Additionally, the process of documentation itself can benefit from pedagogical materials development since the collection of documentary resources becomes more complete. The data needed for pedagogical materials is often different from that collected according to traditional documentation methodologies and researchers can encounter new structures and understandings through the collection of data for pedagogical materials. Efforts to produce accessible language learning materials from documentation have raised issues in the reconciliation of the dual objectives of linguistic documentation and language pedagogy. From a case study of the Mocho' documentation project, I will address the following questions: - Is there a mismatch between the data necessary for documentation and those necessary for language learning? -What types of documentation are useful for the creation of language learning materials? -What factors should be considered when switching the focus from documentation to pedagogy? -What benefits could pedagogical considerations have for documentation processes? The process of digitizing legacy resources has received more rigorous attention recently within the field of language documentation; however, the use of the resultant materials is not as widely discussed. This paper presents principles drawn from the process of transforming linguistic documentation into usable digital formats, integrating current field research and legacy data, and using those resources to satisfy research goals and create language learning materials.
Andrew Garrett: Integrating Archives and New Documentation: The Berkeley Yurok Language Project Yurok is a severely endangered language still spoken by about half a dozen elderly people in northwestern California. Though it has not been used on a daily basis in any households for a decade or longer, there is an active language revitalization program and considerable community interest in linguistic and cultural revival. Academic anthropologists and linguists have documented Yurok since 1901 (non-academic documentation began earlier), with especially intense phases of work in the first, sixth, and ninth decades of the twentieth century and since 2001. A short grammar was published by R. H. Robins (1958) and numerous analytic publications have appeared in linguistics journals over the years. But the vast majority of documentary work is still unpublished, in the form of field notes by numerous scholars (A. L. Kroeber, Edward Sapir, J. P. Harrington, and others) and audio recordings in various media. The latter range from wax cylinders recorded as early as 1902 to recordings made in 2008. The Yurok Language Project at the University of California, Berkeley has assembled new and legacy data into a set of integrated databases, comprising a lexicon, several thousand short audio files, more than a hundred separate texts, and photos and other encylopedic information. We have developed an innovative web-based interface allowing users to move seamlessly among the various sub-parts of the database, for example looking up lexicon entries while reading texts or seeing illustrative text examples and hearing sample audio clips within the lexicon. The resulting web archive is among the largest integrated databases of its kind for any nonliterary language. In this presentation I will illustrate the web interface and describe the structure of the underlying database.
Carol Genetti, Rebekka Siemens: Infield 2008: Evaluations, Recommendations, and Impacts The first Institute on Fieldwork and Language Documentation was held during the summer of 2008 on the UC Santa Barbara campus. InField was experimental in many respects; for example, it was the first time that workshops were combined with field training, that linguists and language activists were brought together for shared training, and that teams of instructors were created from people with no prior acquaintance. By all accounts, InField was a success and it is clear that plans for extending this into a regular biennial event should move forward. However, it is critical that future offerings of InField both build on the successes and learn from the mistakes of previous institutes.In this presentation, we will provide a critical assessment of InField 2008. This assessment will be based on an analysis of three sets of participant evaluations, completed at the end of individual workshops, at the end of the set of workshops, and at the end of field training. The observations in these documents will be supplemented by our own experiences as InField directors. Among the topics we will cover are the composition of the participants, the field training component and the balance with the workshops, the extensive use of team teaching, the plenary "Models" and "Steps" workshops, the non-curricular activities, the development of the website and archives, the need for different levels of instruction, and the implications of this for curriculum development. Based on our analysis, we will then make recommendations on how future InFields can be improved. We will close the discussion with a broader assessment of the impact of InField. This can be seen at various levels, from decisions made by particular graduate students, to speech communities, to the field of linguistics as a whole. The long-term impact of InField as a biennial institute will not only provide a reliable resource for linguists and language activists. It will also help in the construction of a visible network of practitioners of documentary and conservation work and serve as one organizational center for this global network. The solidification and increased visibility of the network will in turn help to reify documentary linguistics as an independent subfield within linguistics, raising its profile internationally, and emphasizing its importance to funding bodies and universities. Equally important, as the network strengthens and grows, it will become visible to an increasing number of speech communities, allowing for the transmission of training, ideas, and inspiration for new community activists.
Akiemi Glenn: Five Dimensions of Collaboration: Toward a Critical Theory of Coordination and Interoperatability in Language Documentation Documentary linguistics is engaged in an evolving discourse on best practices, methods, and ethics in an effort to establish a theory of language documentation. A developing consensus in the literature is that a language documentation should be comprehensive, data-centered, and usable by diverse audiences of academics, speech community members, and others. Writers have argued that comprehensiveness requires an orientation to many issues that are beyond the standard training and expertise of most linguists and that any successful documentation project will draw on the multiple strengths of interdisciplinary collaboration as well as collaboration with the speech community under study. As a result, 'collaboration ' has surfaced as a key term in best practices literature in language documentation and is used to describe both interactions between scholars and between researchers and communities. At the moment, collaboration is not the norm broadly in linguistics and for linguists coming to a documentation project the methods of effective collaboration may be difficult to identify. A theory of language documentation must also grapple with its theoretical orientation to collaboration. While the nature of collaboration between researchers and communities is best determined by the situation and individual cultures involved, there should be a theoretical space within the discipline of language documentation to begin to explore best practices for researchers working together. The first aim of this paper is to provide a review of some key literature on the subject of collaboration between researchers in the physical and computer sciences and the humanities. Secondly, the goal is to identify five aspects of academic collaboration-coordination, distribution of labor, standards for interoperation, authorship and authority, and feedback that have special bearing on the enterprise of language documentation. Finally, the paper investigates these dimensions of collaboration as a starting point for linguists and our collaborators to consider critically what collaboration means for a language documentation project and for the discipline of linguistics. Through reviewing the five dimensions, I will suggest that a true theory of coordination of our efforts and interoperatability of the products of our documentation will require linguists to reorient our assumptions about the value of 'lone-wolf' linguistics, the power of the relationships between researchers, and will emphasize the advantage in engaging and perhaps altering the social and cultural underpinnings of linguistics as a discipline.
Jule Gomez de Garcia, Maria Luz Garcia, Melissa Axelrod:Language Documentation Practices and the Myth of 'Empowerment ' In his 2008 paper in the Annual Review of Anthropology, 'Reproduction and Preservation of Linguistic Knowledge: Linguistics' Response to Language Endangerment, ' Nikolaus Himmelmann alludes to the notions of 'advocacy and empowerment ' as discussion points in the conversation about responsible linguistic fieldwork. (Page 342) While he does not expand on the notion of 'empowerment, ' in subsequent sections of the paper he writes about 'control ' and 'obligation, ' and insists that 'fieldwork projects should be designed essentially as cooperative enterprises between equal parties.' This paper seeks to engage fellow linguistic researchers in a discussion of 'empowerment ' of the research subject, that is, of our language consultants, our ostensibly equal partners in the field. It is our thesis that a working philosophy of empowerment and goal of empowering our research partners produce structural relationships and ideological practices that can enact the same colonialism that such projects intend to dismantle. For the past six years, the authors of this paper have participated in the documentation of a Mayan language in Guatemala and we are currently working with fifty-five speakers to produce a tri-lingual grammar of the language. The motivation for this paper comes from comments we have received from both academic and non-academic audiences following presentations about these projects, comments congratulating us for having 'empowered ' the language consultants. These comments are surprising to us because, in our presentations, we do not use the words 'empower ' or 'empowerment, ' and we do not consider empowering others to be a necessary objective, nor even a possible outcome, of our projects. With Foucault, we believe that people 'are the vehicles of power, not its point of application, ' (Foucault 1980: 98). We begin with definitions and implications of the underlying notion of power and the increasingly popular discourses they engender. We juxtapose these with a growing body of literature by indigenous scholars that is highly critical of both the historical and contemporary role of researchers in their communities. With these concerns in mind, we discuss details of the processes and methodologies of our own collaborative research in light of the empowerment discourse. We ultimately ask if such collaborative practices in documenting a language really achieve the goal of an anti-colonialist model of research, or if the inherent inequality of power in the relationship between academics and indigenous participants is more difficult to overcome and must be acknowledged and addressed in all our research.
Tania Granadillo: Speaker-driven approach to language documentation In this paper I argue that given pragmatic constraints of time and resources speakers' interests should be given priority in establishing the goals and objectives of a language documentation project. Without the collaboration of the speakers it is impossible to document a language, therefore it is only just that their interests should be prioritized. Ultimately any materials collected are useful so in collecting materials that speakers are interested in there is much to gain for all parties involved. This will allow for multiple users as well as encourage the collaborators to take an active role in the planning and design of documentation projects. This approach, termed speaker-driven approach, is exemplified by a project carried out among the Kurripako of Venezuela. Among the Kurripako there was much interest in collecting information about myths, dances and rituals as well as obtaining descriptions of cultural specific activities such as manioc bread making, canoe making, weaving and basketry. This meant seeking out specialists in these activities who still had the linguistic and cultural knowledge to provide this information. These particular interests, fueled by the socio-political circumstances of Venezuela when the project was carried out, led to a much richer database of texts as well as to having collaborators who were more engaged in the project since they felt that they also had much at stake. Such an approach is not feasible everywhere. There needs to be certain conditions for this to work. I discuss what some of these conditions are-- collaborators' engagement, speakers interest, documenter's predisposition among others—as well as the benefits and pitfalls that this approach carries. I also provide examples of a project among the Mapoyo of Venezuela in which this approach was not feasible.
Charles E. Grimes: Documenting incipient obsolescence: a multi-pronged approach to Dhao, eastern Indonesia A visit to the island of Ndao, where they speak the Dhao language (Ethnologue/ISO code nfa; 5,000-7,000 speakers), at first gives the impression of vigorous use by all ages in almost all contexts, including in many local government interactions and church meetings. Periodic contact and research spanning ten years, however, reveals cracks appearing in this seemingly healthy picture. By working with various social segments of Dhao society for linguistic analysis, community-based dictionary-building (www.e-kamus2.org/html/dictionaries_.html), community-based text collection, and community-based translation efforts, we can document which groups know and use the 'original ' vernacular Dhao words, which use long-established loans from various sources that have assimilated to Dhao phonology, which only know recent loans that haven't yet assimilated to Dhao phonology, and which grammatical constructions seem to be getting lost or conflating to simpler forms. This paper discusses the discovery process, provides numerous examples of who is using what, shares comments on perceptions of trends and concerns of language use by Dhao speakers themselves, and reports some surprising trends when comparing social segments of society living on Ndao with those in the diaspora living elsewhere. It turns out that some of the younger generation in the diaspora have reasons that motivate them to learn and preserve Dhao (learning Indonesian and Kupang Malay are a given for them), whereas some of the younger generation on Dhao put their greatest efforts into learning and using Indonesian to have a chance to succed in the wider world, while they are not even aware of the ways they reduce the kinds of social contexts in which they are exposed to other-than-normal uses of Dhao.
Joseph Grimes: Preserving Data: The Paper Phase One object of documenting languages is to make their data available not only to oneself, but to speakers and nonspeakers who have no direct access because they are in different places or in later epochs of time. The enabling event in collecting data is the capture in written form, by native speakers or linguists, of a suitable quantity of utterances in the language whose meaning is approximated by translation into a world language. Getting this material together is an inherently messy process, however much we idealize crisp audio recordings and well transcribed and annotated text files, with or without an analysis. No matter how astute the language consultant or how gifted the linguist, initial transcriptions are inevitably sprinkled with skips, mishearings, on-the-spot editing, slips of the pen or the keyboard, initial stabs at translation that miss the point, interference of discourse patterns between spoken and written media Ð even when the recording is fresh and the language consultant is doing the work. This is the reason many linguists find it makes their final archivable reporting more accurate to go through a phase of making notes on paper, going back and reconsidering everything, reannotating it until they and their consultants are collectively satisfied that they've got it. And those records can be a source of insight to later scholars if they are in a form that can be preserved. Recently I had occasion to revisit data collected in field work decades ago, before practical archiving standards for language were worked out and more stable media came on the scene. The paper phase, especially the mundane realities that go along with paper, ink, and storage, stood out as a necessary prerequisite to being able to do anything at all with the data. In an isolated field situation, it was necessary to develop a disciplined approach to the handling of manuscript materials. Even in the so-called electronic age, we do well not to play down the handwritten parts of the process.
Lynne Harata Te Aika: Reo Kura: Developing teachers Maori language proficiency and Ng i Tahu tribal dialect proficiency in an in-school professional development programme. This presentation examines the process involved in developing a M ori language mentoring and coaching programme for teachers in two M ori language medium programmes. The Reo doctor or 'language doctor' model has evolved out of a partnership with schools, the local M ori tribal group Ng i Tahu who commissioned the programme and the researchers themselves University of Canterbury staff. The goal of the programme was to see if teachers M ori language proficiency and tribal dialect usage could be enhanced by an individualised programme supporting teachers in the classroom over a 20 week period. The pilot project involved designing and implementing a new professional development model, observing teachers, analysing their Maori language knowledge and use prior to the start of the programme. A diagnosis was made after studying oral, written and visual interview data about each individual teacher and their own personal language goals. A 'language fitness' programme was designed to support teachers over a 16 week period to improve their proficiency in the areas described above.
Andrew Hippisley, Gregory Stump, Raphael Finkel: Computing in the field: language modeling for elicitation and documentation of Shughni We propose a way of enhancing computer-based approaches to language documentation by making use not only of the engineering capability of computing but also its modeling capacity. Our proposal arises from a documentation pilot project where we used computational modeling as an elicitation tool for documenting the complex verbal morphology of the underdocumented East Iranian Pamir language Shughni. Using the computable lexical knowledge representation language DATR (Evans & Gazdar 1996) and its variant KATR (Author et al. 2002), we wrote a theory of a fragment of the Shughni verb system based on what little we knew about the language. We then presented its theorem to our group of Shughni consultants, and based on their responses refined the model, and then consulted them on the new theorem, and so on to the next refinement. Cycling through these steps allowed us to refine our model and so lead to a more accurate account of the data. Equally importantly, this method gave us an automated 'questionnaire generator', i.e. the model's theorem. This provided not only elicitation queries that, given enough time, we may have thought of ourselves but those which may never have occurred to us. Both types of query were available to us precisely because our understanding of the grammar was formal and computationally implemented, and could thereby automatically generate theorems. Computing plays a key language engineering role in language documentation and its accessibility to the wider audience, from standard mark-up of data to its storage in a relational database for query-based retrieval. But computing serves a second purpose for linguists, that of language modeling: this is 'the instrumental use of computation in the pursuit of linguistic goals ' (Thompson 1983: 23). As we develop new methods for documentation, we need to explore the possibility of harnessing this other language modeling capacity of computing. We demonstrate through our work on Shughni that computer modeling can be a means of furnishing the field-worker with elicitation tasks whose results feed into an enhanced understanding of the data, which in turn show the path to the next stage of elicitation, ultimately leading to a well-informed and robust account of the data which is already digitized and therefore exchangeable. Advances in technology, such as palm-held computers, mean that an automated model-theorem-refinement method is both a practical and potentially highly valuable addition to the field-worker's toolkit, both while in the field and back in the lab.
John Hobson, Bradley Laurie:An Australian trial of the master-apprentice method Over 200 years of active suppression have had a devastating effect on the indigenous languages of south-eastern Australia. Many have ceased to be spoken and all those that continue in active use are in extreme danger. Recent innovations such as the New South Wales (NSW) Board of Studies' K-10 Aboriginal Languages Syllabus have provided a much needed stimulus for existing community revitalization efforts and fostered the development of others. While very welcome and clearly having positive effects, this initiative has also rapidly shifted the emphasis of much revitalization activity along Fishman's Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale from Stage 8 to Stage 4, effectively bypassing intergenerational transmission outside schools and re-orienting much community effort into the classroom. The current lack of trained Aboriginal speaker-teachers and the impending crisis for such school-based revitalization programs it implies have been documented by Author (2004, 2006, 2008) and led to the implementation of the Master of Indigenous Languages Education at the University of Sydney. There has also been significant growth in the provision of languages classes for adults at the vocational level in several languages from across the state. However, these developments are also yet to have significant impact in restoring language use within communities, outside classrooms. In recent years there have been increasing calls for local trials of the Master-Apprentice method based on the successes reported from North America. These include the draft resolutions of the Indigenous Languages Conference 2007, echoing the findings of the National Indigenous Languages Survey Report (Department of Communications, Information Technology & the Arts, 2005) before it. The Current Provision of Indigenous Language Programs in Schools report under preparation for the Department of Education, Science and Technology (Australian Council for Educational Research, n.d.) was similarly charged with evaluating a Master-Apprentice program that was to have been implemented by the NSW Aboriginal Languages Research and Resource Centre, but has thus far failed to occur. In this context, a pilot Master-Apprentice project was conducted in the second half of 2008 in the relatively undocumented Waalubal dialect of Bundjalung, a revitalizing language from the Northern Rivers district of NSW, assisted by a small grant from the Foundation for Endangered Languages. This paper reports on the conduct and outcomes of the project and the implications for wider application in the Australian context. Both the project and presentation represent collaborations between teacher and student from the University of Sydney's Master of Indigenous Languages Education program.
Chun Huang: Language revitalization and identity politics: a case study of Siraya in Taiwan "You call yourself a Siraya person, which I have never heard of. So what is your language like?" This is a common question facing many modern Siraya people who are fighting for official recognition of Siraya people by Taiwan's government. Unfortunately, many of them could not offer a proper response, for the Siraya language has been declared "extinct" by some linguists and no one speaks it natively nowadays. A dreadful consequence of the death announcement is Siraya people are also perceived as having "disappeared" or "completely Sinicized," implying that there is nothing culturally unique left among them. Despite the difficult circumstances, the Tainan Ping-pu Siraya Culture Association has since 1997 dedicated itself to Siraya revitalization. In the last decade, the association has achieved tasks such as composing modern Siraya songs, organizing summer camps that teach the re-learnt native tongue, and publishing a modern Siraya dictionary. Still, this cultural movement has a political end, namely, to attain official status of the (collective) Siraya identity. In this paper, I will introduce the revitalization effort of the Siraya association and my involvement with it as a native linguist. In particular, I focus on issues pertaining to the interconnection between language revitalization and identity politics. For example, while the denial of official identity precludes the (re-)claiming of native names by individuals, the Siraya association urges its members to use Siraya names. What is the motive behind this self-(re)naming? How does one evaluate the significance of this act against the political context (cf. Huang 2007)? In 2008, the Chinese Nationalist Party replaced the localist Democratic Progressive Party in the central government of Taiwan; soon after, changes concerning indigenous policy took place. What is the implication of these changes to the future of Siraya movement? Also, most members in the association are affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, which is known for its association to political localism in Taiwan. How do these two associations interact with each other? Does the Church's political preference entail its support for native revitalization? Or does the Church perceive native revitalization, which may encourage (re-)embracing the traditional religion, as a potential threat? All in all, my aim is to bring together disciplines such as language planning, political discourse analysis, and language preservation, in response to the call for "responsible linguistics" (Hale et al. 1992). I believe it is time for linguists to confront our socio-political responsibility in actual practice.
Shoichi Iwasaki, Tsuyoshi Ono, Yukinori Takubo: Paving ways to documenting an invisible linguistic minority in Japan: Ikema This presentation introduces our collaborative project (involving researchers from Canada, Japan, and the U.S.) on the language of Ikema in Okinawa, Japan. We highlight the problems we encountered and our attempts to overcome them - a necessary step before engaging in 'Documentary Linguistics ' (Himmelmann 1998) on Ikema. Ikema is a typical endangered language: no longer acquired by children and only spoken by a decreasing number of older speakers. Islanders express concerns that their mother tongue is disappearing, but most feel that the move toward monolingualism in Standard Japanese is inevitable and even desirable. This is an expected outcome; although, linguistically speaking, Ikema and other Okinawan languages should be considered as constituting a separate language group, for many years the Japanese government treated them as merely 'dialects' of Japanese. The 1916 government initiative of homogenizing the nation by spreading Standard Japanese was so successful that 'dialect' speakers believe that they are speaking inferior versions of Japanese. In fact, remaining Ikema speakers still recall the infamous 'dialect placards', which were placed around their necks as a form of punishment when they used Ikema at school. It is thus not surprising that islanders initially showed suspicion and resistance when our team showed interest in Ikema. However, we soon started finding community leaders with concerns about their rapidly disappearing language. Through discussions with us, these leaders started to realize that documenting Ikema for future generations in collaboration with our group is a significant first step. We also recognized the importance of establishing our presence in the community through getting involved in local projects, e.g. a kindergarten teacher's project of compiling booklets to promote Ikema for the community, and local activists' attempt to archive and display a large number of precious photos taken by an ethnographer in the 1960's. By participating in these projects, we have been slowly gaining the trust of the community, which, we hope, will take us to our eventual goal of conducting a large scale community-centered documentation project. In fact, more recently we have been provided with opportunities to record narratives by older speakers (80s-90s), and to work with younger speakers (60s-70s) in eliciting sentences. Knowing their difficult history and our genuine involvement with community activities have been critical in decreasing tensions which existed in the community. These tensions may continue to exist, but we need to keep paving ways toward documenting Ikema and hopefully other invisible minority languages in Okinawa.
Alana Johns, Christine Nochasak:A Community Reference Grammar of Labrador Inuttitut This paper outlines a model of community collaborative research in which the linguist aligns documentary research with the needs and linguistic capacities of a community that is trying to reverse language shift. The linguist working on a grammar of the language responds to community topics and questions as they arise. At the same time, the writing of the grammar crucially involves members of the community as assistants. We discuss one project of this type, where the goal is the production of a grammar designed for use both by linguists and members of the community. This follows in the growing tradition of writing high quality reference grammars which can be used by speakers of that language (c.f. Valentine 2001). A community reference grammar for Inuktitut has as its primary goal that the grammar be broad ranging in topics, extending beyond the pages of inflectional paradigms which characterize most grammars of this language. Issues such as WH questions and how quantifiers are used will be included. A second goal is that the grammar be of immediate and direct use to the community. In order to ascertain that the grammar is readable and therefore useable by members of the community, the linguist must obtain feedback from language professionals (translators, language teachers, curriculum developers) within the community. This is done through the internet, where draft sections of the grammar are posted. Assistants have been hired to serve as readers and liaison to the other interested members of the community. This has two secondary purposes. Errors or omissions in the discussion are caught; the online drafts serve as a catalyst for discussion about language within the community and on the radio. A linguist is unlikely to be aware of what language professionals within the community actually need and want to know at any particular moment. In one recent case the linguist was asked to identify a set of elements. These elements are possessive suffixes which have a complex set of portmanteau features, including a) person and number of possessor, b) number of possessum and c) case. There is also some slight variation within the community. The question led to a draft entry on this topic, which is being read by the liaison assistants. In this manner, the construction of a reference grammar is one intersecting piece in the overall community effort to reverse language shift.
Daniel Kaufman: Ex-situ language documentation and the Urban Fieldstation for Linguistic Research It has been fully recognized that the looming loss of the majority of the world's languages requires rapid direct action in the form of linguistic documentation, description and conservation. However, documentation efforts have thus far been focused on traditional fieldwork largely to the exclusion of working with immigrant groups outside the original speech community. By doing so, an enormous linguistic resource has been overlooked. Here, I explore the advantages, disadvantages and general prospects for 'ex-situ ' documentation in the context of the Urban Fieldstation for Linguistic Research, a soon to be launched center for language documentation in New York City. The UFLR will operate in collaboration with the the City University of New York Graduate Center with the following goals: (i) to facilitate an ongoing survey of endangered and marginalized languages within NYC, (ii) to produce high quality documentation and descriptive work on languages spoken by local immigrant groups, (iii) to find ways of integrating language documentation into the standard linguistics curricula. Some obvious disadvantages of 'ex-situ ' documentation are that many of the original speech genres and social contexts are difficult to reproduce outside the original community, localized environmental vocabularies (e.g. fauna and flora) are impossible to document beyond the basics, and the social mobility required to travel outside the speaker's native country often corresponds to dominance in the national language, which can make finding fluent speakers challenging. Because of all these factors, ex-situ documentation will never be able to replace in-situ fieldwork. Nonetheless, I argue that ex-situ documentation is still feasible, necessary and even has its own unique advantages, the most important of which are the reduction of cost, bureaucracy, time pressure and the affordance of a controlled environment for recording. More importantly, by easing logistic burdens, large-scale collaboration with multiple researchers can be facilitated. I discuss all these issues in the context of two on-going projects in the UFLR, one on the Minahasan languages (Austronesian; North Sulawesi, Indonesia) and the other on Zaghawa (Nilo-Saharan; Darfur, Sudan).
Peter Keegan, Jeanette King:How documentation needs to change as language revitalization progresses Maori, the indigenous language of Aotearoa/New Zealand, has been subject to intensive revitalization efforts since the 1970s. These efforts have largely focused on the education sector and include well known examples such as kohanga reo 'Maori early childhood immersion centres' and kura kaupapa Maori 'Maori schools'. Maori is fortunate that stories, oral traditions and narratives have been recorded since the 1800s and this information is readily available. A key area where further documentation is required centers on the Maori language of speakers who are products of Maori language revitalization efforts. Aspects of Maori requiring ongoing documentation include speech and written language, which allow examination of changes in pronunciation, phonology, the lexicon, word formation and syntax. Maori is reported to be changing. This is a result of a number of related factors. Revitalization efforts require creation of new language and terminology for the modern world which means that some of the lexicon of younger speakers will be different from that of their elders. In addition, virtually all of the current younger generation of speakers speak English as a first language and this interferes with their Maori syntax and pronunciation. Many younger speakers have also been taught by teachers who are second language learners themselves. One project attempting to analyse changes in Maori speech over time is the MAOZNE (Maori New Zealand English) project which has been examining changes in Maori and New Zealand English over time. Changes in Maori pronunciation remains a key issue amongst Maori speakers as older native speakers are often critical of the Maori spoken by younger speakers, particularly those involved in Maori-medium programmes. This suggests an urgent need for ongoing documentation of current speakers of all age groups in order to attempt to understand existing changes and to disseminate this information as widely as possible, as these changes have major implications for teachers of Maori who need to be aware that the Maori being pronounced by different age groups is different. It is clear from the example of Maori that once a language has undergone revitalization efforts for a reasonable period of time the documentation and conservation needs change, especially as the language itself changes. Indeed it may be argued that the need for ongoing documentation of current language use increases especially as those involved in language revitalization efforts to look to researchers for guidance and advice on future language requirements.
Jeanette King, Nichole Gully: Towards a theory of motivation: describing commitment to the Maori language Just what movitates indigenous peoples to revitalise their languages? In his study of Tewa and Haida, Frederick White (2006) finds little in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theory to adequately capture the aspects of commitment involved. Typically SLA theory describes the motivation of immigrant and other communities who are involved in learning a Language of Wider Communication (LWC). With indigenous languages the situation is quite different: indigenous languages are almost by definition minority languages. This paper reports on a study designed to evaluate what motivates second language speaking adults who are proficient speakers of Maori in their commitment to speaking Maori. In analysing the results we propose a model of Indigenous Language Acquisition (ILA), which draws on four interlinking aspects: the importance of identity, participation in the target culture, responsibility (towards the language itself and to others) and a sense of fulfilment. Although the particular components of the ILA situation in New Zealand differ somewhat from the situation of, for example, North American indigenous languages, the paper will discuss the application of this theory to other language situations. A theory of motivation is particularly relevant at the moment in New Zealand where we now have a second generation involved in language revitalisation and increasing language planning by both national and tribal institutions. White, F. (2006). Rethinking Native American Language Revitalization. American Indian Quarterly, 30(1 & 2), 91-109.
Jordan Lachler, Yarrow Vaara, Linda Belarde:The Paradox of Language Revival in Southeast Alaska Over the past century, there has been a sharp decline in the number of fluent speakers of Tlingit and Haida, two of the indigenous languages of Southeast Alaska. Today, there are fewer than 200 fluent speakers of Tlingit, and only 5 fluent speakers of Haida left in Alaska. Despite of these grim numbers, or perhaps because of them, the past five years has seen a dramatic increase the number of people studying these languages. As the last generation of fluent elders begins to pass, more and more younger people in the communities are expressing a desire to learn their ancestral language. While this reawakening has been a long-hoped for dream among local language activists, it actually poses a serious challenge to the prospects for language revitalization. Across the region, very few of the fluent elders are young enough and healthy enough to teach anymore. At the same time, only a handful of long-time language students have progressed to a solid intermediate level where they are capable of teaching new beginning students. The increased demand among community members for beginning-level language classes has created a flood of new teaching opportunities in the local elementary schools, high schools, universities, after-school programs and culture camps, both in the Native villages and in the larger urban centers. In nearly all cases, these teaching positions are being filled by dedicated intermediate-level students, some of whom are teaching language to multiple age groups in multiple schools on a daily basis. As a direct result of the increased demand for language instruction, many of these intermediate students now find themselves spending more time teaching the language to beginners than working with the remaining fluent elders to improve their own abilities with the language. In some ways, the more they teach, the less they learn. As time to work with fluent elders runs out, some worry that they will miss their last opportunity to progress in their language learning and may never become conversationally proficient. These students/teachers then find themselves caught between the immediate needs of their communities, and the long-term survival of their Native language. In this paper, we will examine this paradoxical relationship between language teaching and language learning, and discuss the ways in which the problem is being addressed in various communities throughout southeast Alaska.
Jason Lee: OLCAP: The Online Language Community Access Program in Australia Audiovisual archives in Australia and around the world include significant recordings of Australian indigenous languages. Newer documentation programs are digital and some have high standards of metadata and annotation. Two challenges that audiovisual archives face are documentation and repatriation. Older analogue recordings are being digitised. However, not many have content metadata or annotation such as transcriptions and translations added. Indigenous languages are nearly all highly endangered and inadequately documented. As time passes, the ease with which detailed documentation can be carried out is lessened. The number of native speakers and researchers who understand these languages may decrease. Many recordings are in danger of becoming less meaningful to future generations. In Australia many Indigenous people are assisting to document recordings through their own bodies like Regional Indigenous Language Centres. They are using them to create educational materials which will help keep their heritage alive. In some cases, materials from repositories are simply returned to communities. In the absence of proper local archiving and documentation, this can be ineffective. In other cases, local archives are set up in communities. However, the infrastructure and expertise needed to maintain such operations is sometimes beyond local capacities. An alternative is to build an online central repository which can provide materials to local and regional centres as needed. OLCAP is a pilot to trial, from AIATSIS (the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies), the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics' online system of storing digital recordings, adding annotation such as transcriptions and translations, adding metadata, and, the online delivery of such recordings to communities. That is, MPI Nijmegen's Language Archiving Tools (the software tools that support the DoBeS Documentation of Endangered Languages archive) are being used. Centres in Katherine serving the Victoria River District, Northern Territory; the Iwaidja community on Croker Island, Northern Territory; and, at Lockhart River in Cape York Peninsula, Queensland are linked in and Indigenous users are trialling the system. This paper describes OLCAP and evaluates some of the issues (such as rights management and user experiences) and the direction it is heading.
Wesley Leonard, Erin Haynes: Making Collaboration Collaborative: An Examination of Perspectives that Frame Field Research Collaboration is increasingly seen as desirable in linguistic field research, but scholarship in the fields of Linguistics and Anthropology is only beginning to explore what it truly entails (see, for example, Evers & Toelken, 2001). Collaboration, within the western academic sociopolitical culture, has become a 'best practice ' but in many aspects maintains remnants of earlier colonial practices in that the definition of 'collaboration ' itself is usually framed by professional researchers. Institutional Review Board paperwork at the authors' institution, for example, incorporates the term 'collaborators ' but with reference only to members of other research institutions; people who usually fall within the scope of 'community member ' are deemed 'human subjects '. Furthermore, as Rice (2006) points out, 'Collaborative working arrangements are not truly collaborative if the linguist still controls the content and framework of the research, and the form in which it appears ' (pp. 149-150). Based on interviews and ongoing discussion with members of two Native American language programs, we present a comparative analysis of 'collaboration '. Our findings reveal underlying differences in what collaboration can or should entail. For example, both communities emphasize relationships that extend beyond the immediate scope of the research and its participants. In the Warm Springs (Oregon) community, successful researchers must be empowered by appropriate members of the community itself. In the Miami (Oklahoma) community, language and culture research protocols have developed such that an ideal research model not only includes regular, explicit mutual examination of the topic, but also involvement and consideration of the needs of the larger Miami community. Such a diversity of views accounts for areas in which conflicts arise in the implementation of research, which in some cases leads to failure to accomplish mutual goals. We present a case study showing how different notions of collaboration can help or hinder one of the fundamental processes common to most linguistic field research - identifying speakers. We incorporate collaborative consultation (Cameron et al., 1993; Leonard & Haynes, 2007), which refers to any kind of open interview in which the initial investigator's goals are explicit and continually reframed and revised by all research participants. We show how political, cultural, social, and relational dimensions of speakerhood can be addressed through this method. Beyond issues of funding, time, and general accessibility, collaboration may be one of the most important aspects of successful field research. However, the notion of collaboration itself warrants critical examination, with appropriate adjustments in research methods.
Hsiu-chuan Liao: The State of the Art of the Documentation of Philippine Languages The Philippines is a land with great linguistic diversity. According to the latest edition of Ethnologue (Gordon 2005), there are 175 languages spoken in the Philippines. Of these, 168 are Austronesian. In the past few decades, a number of articles summarizing the state of the art of Philippine linguistics have appeared, including Constantino 1971; McKaughan 1971; Reid 1981; Quakenbush 2003, 2005; Author 2006. However, none of these papers focus on the documentation of the languages of the Philippines. This paper fills in the gap by focusing the discussion on the state of the art of the documentation of Philippine languages. The term 'Philippine languages ' refers to indigenous languages of the Philippines. Thus, those languages that are not found in the geographical confines of the Philippines that have been proposed to be part of a subgroup of Philippine languages, such as Yami and the Sangiric, Minahasan, and Gorontalic languages of northern Sulawesi (Blust 1991), are excluded from the present study. Moreover, languages that are spoken inside the Philippines but are not considered to be indigenous to it, such as English, Spanish, and Chinese languages, are also excluded. This paper surveys works on Philippine languages with an attempt to address the following two questions. First, what types of work (e.g. dictionaries, grammars, texts, etc.) have been done on the documentation of Philippine languages? Second, are these works mainly done by Filipinos or non-Filipinos? Statements made in this paper are based on information gathered from the following sources: (i)
Bibliography of the Summer Institute of Linguistics Philippines 1953-2003 (Johnson et al. 2003)-for SIL academic publications, (ii) annual reports of Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino; (iii) lists of publications directly solicited from scholars, (iv) abstracts of theses and dissertations, Department of Linguistics, College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of the Philippines at Diliman, and (v) web search. It is hoped that this study not only offers an overview of the documentation of Philippine languages, but also can inspire more linguists and/or local communities to get involve in the documentation of Philippine languages. Moreover, it is hoped that this study can also inspire and/or encourage more Filipinos to work on documenting Philippine languages.
References Author. 2006. Philippine linguistics: The state of the art 1981-2005. Paper delivered as the Annual Lecture for 'The Andrew Gonzalez, FSC, Distinguished Professorial Chair in Linguistics and Language Education ', March 4, 2006, at De La Salle University in Manila. Blust, Robert A. 1991. The Greater Central Philippines hypothesis. Oceanic Linguistics 30:73-129. Constantino, Ernesto. 1971. Tagalog and other major languages of the Philippines. In Current Trends in Linguistics, Vol. 8: Linguistics in Oceania, ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok, 112-154. The Hague and Paris: Mouton. Gordon, Raymond G., Jr., ed. 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the world, 15th edition. (http://www.ethnologue.com/) Johnson, Rex A., Grace O. Tan, and Cynthia Goshert, compilers. 2003.
Bibliography of the Summer Institute of Linguistics Philippines 1953-2003 (50th Anniversary Edition). Manila: Summer Institute of Linguistics Philippines. [
Bibliography alphabetically listed by language names] McKaughan, Howard P. 1971. Minor languages of the Philippines. Current Trends in Linguistics, Volume 8: Linguistics in Oceania, Part One, ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok, 155-167. The Hague: Mouton. Quakenbush, J. Stephen. 2003. Philippine linguistics from an SIL perspective: Trends and prospects. Philippine Journal of Linguistics 34(1):1-27. Quakenbush, J. Stephen. 2005. Philippine linguistics from an SIL perspective: Trends and prospects. In Current issues in Philippine linguistics and anthropology: Parangal kay Lawrence A. Reid, ed. by Hsiu-chuan Liao and Carl R. Galvez Rubino, 3-27. Manila: Linguistic Society of the Philippines and SIL Philippines. Reid, Lawrence A. 1981. Philippine linguistics: The state of the art: 1970-1980. In Philippine studies: Political science, economics, and linguistics, ed. by Don V. Hart, 212-273. DeKalb: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University.
Kristen M. Lindahl, Naomi Palosaari Fox, Jelena Markovic, Zuzana Tomas, Raichle Farrelly:A Collaborative Approach to Materials Design Many documentary linguists find themselves the only academic in contact with a particular community of speakers, stretched to fill many roles outside their areas of expertise. It may be particularly beneficial for a documentary linguist to seek help in the creation of language learning materials. In this presentation, we share principles for cross-disciplinary collaborative materials design using a case study of language learning materials creation for an endangered language community. A field linguist documenting Mocho', a Mayan language with fewer than fifty surviving speakers, collaborated with four applied linguists in order to create pedagogical materials. The purpose of the pedagogical materials was twofold: first, to provide materials to a specific community which had no language learning resources and few documentary resources; and second, to create a template usable by this and other communities of speakers who wish to create their own materials, with the eventual aim of introducing both print and multimedia resources. This collaboration addressed various complexities of working with minority underdocumented languages: data collection, community relations, and instructional materials development based on sound second language acquisition (SLA) principles. Upon examination, seven steps in the development process emerged: (1) initial fieldwork with the community to gain perspective of community needs; (2) appraisal of available language data; (3) proposal of topics for the initial set of materials and identification of additional language data to be gathered; (4) identification of guiding SLA principles, grammatical aspects to include, and a sequence of materials for target learner levels based on community input; (5) format and design template for the materials; (6) initial design and coordination of the proposed materials; and (7), revision of pilot materials and feedback sessions with community members. Early on, it became clear that the development cycle was iterative so that multiple opportunities for input from all parties remained focal in creating materials both relevant and useful to the Mocho' community. Our project was no exception to the unique challenges presented by materials design for minority and endangered languages. We encountered unforeseen issues resulting from both the nature of the Mocho' language and community, and the correlation between data we obtained and materials we sought to generate. However, discussion of these issues and the search for resolutions enriched our collaboration, causing us to reflect more closely upon the process outcomes and the necessity of accounting for input from all parties in creating appropriate and effective language learning materials.
Friederike Lüpke: Bainouk contact, concord and classification – a research paradigm for language documentation in multilingual areas Baïnouk is a severely endangered and undocumented language cluster spoken in the Casamance area of Senegal (West Africa). As typical for the region (Childs, 2004), the Baïnouk language area is characterised by a complex multilingual situation, and the different varieties are partly in contact with each other and with additional languages. Depending on their location, speakers use two varieties of the Atlantic language cluster Joola and/or the Mande language Mandinka. All of them are fluent to some extent in the national lingua franca Wolof, an Atlantic language, and many of them speak the official language French. The complex contact situation results in massive (and partly different) linguistic interferences. Evidence points to language contact playing a crucial role in explaining typologically highly unusual traits of its noun-class system: some nouns without an overt class prefix copy the first syllable of the stem onto agreeing elements, thus creating a potentially open class of agreement markers. Baïnouk is one of only two undisputed cases exhibiting this so-called literal (Dobrin, 1995), productive (Dimitriadis, 1997) or radical (Aronoff, 1998) alliterative concord/agreement. Literal alliterative concord (LAC) challenges our understanding of NC systems, since it creates a potentially open class of agreement affixes or target genders (Corbett, 1991, Corbett, 2006), only limited by constraints on syllable structure. In addition, it constitutes an apparent counterexample to the principle of phonology-free syntax (PPFS) (Zwicky, 1969, Zwicky and Pullum, 1986), stating that no syntactic rule can have recourse to phonology. Data I collected during a pilot project on Gunyaamolo point to more complex factors governing LAC than admitted so far. The nouns concerned by LAC are not always morphologically simple but can be blends out of loanwords and fossilised class markers that are still attested in related languages. In order to understand LAC in Baïnouk, it is crucial to model the complex contact situation and to consider data not just from the different Baïnouk varieties, but also from the main contact languages. The talk will outline a research paradigm taking these data into account for the description and documentation of Baïnouk. This issue is expected to be relevant for documentation projects in multilingual areas in general, where an essentialist view of the concepts of 'language' and 'speech community' fail to capture the complex ways in which linguistic structure is shaped in a multilingual environment.
Andrew Margetts: Transforming an existing dataset into a web application with SQL and XML It is normal for recent collections of linguistic data to be computer based and to provide additional functionality beyond being a mere record of speech of interest to the linguist only. Many of these corpora are in specialized and/or proprietary formats and so face the prospect of remaining largely unread and becoming ultimately unreadable. There exists a need to transform such datasets into common, open source and, ideally, human readable formats to allow greater, continuing exposure of the data. The challenge extends to preserving and even extending the functionality of the original database as far as possible. These days this implies creating a web based application. This paper contends that Structured Query Language (SQL) and Extensible Markup Language (XML) are currently the most appropriate vehicles for such transformations. A common data scenario is a Shoebox/Toolbox 'project' linking texts and lexica. Such a set-up typically facilitates interlinearisation and a wide variety of other processes. It would be extremely hard to recreate all of Toolbox's functionality. Moreover the data is stored in an easily readable text format. Therefore it could be supposed that there is scant cause to transform it to anything else. However there are still grounds for making the attempt. First, not everyone will be prepared to learn Toolbox in order to examine a given corpus so it is useful to provide an interface via a standard web browser even if this cannot reproduce all aspects of Toolbox. Second, it becomes possible to exploit data connections which cannot be easily captured in a Toolbox file. Examples are the metadata implicit in the identity of a speaker: A speaker can be efficiently marked for each record in a text collection, but it is unrealistic to add to each record the sex, age, dialect, etc. of each speaker. It is however quite feasible to link that information to the speaker by using SQL. Third, XML provides an excellent archive format, should Toolbox disappear. I will outline the case for using SQL and XML structures in general and discuss the choice of one over the other based on our own Toolbox corpus. I will show schematically how the resulting files can be integrated with each other and with other required technologies, i.e. with common server and client side languages to produce a web-based query system, and I shall demonstrate some of the potential for going beyond the original Toolbox project.
Anna Margetts: Collaborative fieldwork and language documentation in PNG: learning about sailing canoe In this paper I discuss the experience of collaborative fieldwork between a linguist and a boat builder in documenting local knowledge relating to sailing canoes. Saliba-Logea is an Oceanic language spoken in Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea by about 2,500 speakers. The Saliba-Logea language documentation project is funded by the Documentation of Endangered Languages (DoBeS) program of the Volkswagen foundation and aims at a rich documentation of the language in its cultural context with a focus on text-audio linked annotated texts. Among the texts and events we are seeking to record are procedural texts, demonstrations and explanations by speakers with specialist knowledge in areas such as plant use, fishing, traditional customs, and boatbuilding technologies. Once a rare sight in the Saliba-Logea area, it is now more common again to see sailing canoes commuting between islands, possibly due to the rise in petrol prices. In the documentation of sailing canoes, the collaboration between a linguist and a boat builder proved essential. It enabled us to record procedural texts, narratives and interviews with detailed descriptions of woodworking and sail making methods, star navigation, traditional and new ways of sailing the vessels, as well as specialised lexical information which would have been inaccessible to us otherwise. We discussed questions on seafaring topics, building and sailing methods and technical details in English and then translated key points into Saliba-Logea for monolingual interviews and prompts for procedural texts and narratives. The linguist, though fluent in the language, would not have been an adequate conversational partner to the speakers who hold the specialist knowledge. The boat builder's perspective and background were needed to provide an addressee who was worthy of the technical details. But without the linguist's knowledge of the language, the ability to follow up linguistic details and to translate for the boat builder it would have not been possible to collect the texts in the Saliba-Logea language. In this paper I demonstrate the benefits of this approach through discussing some of the materials we recorded and the technical details we gathered in this way.
Stephen Matthews, Virginia Yip:Bilingual acquisition and language revitalization Prospects for language revitalization depend on transmission of endangered minority languages in a bilingual context. The outcomes that can be expected therefore depend on an understanding of processes involved in bilingual first language acquisition and/or child second language acquisition. In this paper we review relevant findings from recent research on bilingual acquisition of typologically divergent language pairs, and explore some implications for revitalization projects such as the Hawaiian punana leo 'language nests' initiative. Findings suggest that given regular exposure to two or more languages from birth, normally developing children achieve childhood bilingualism as a matter of course. However, findings are mixed with regard to degree of interaction between the child's developing language systems. While some studies have reported balanced development without interaction (De Houwer 1990, Meisel 1990), many recent studies have described interactive development, typically under conditions of unbalanced input (Bernardini and Schlyter 2004, Matthews & Yip 2007). Applied to the context of language revitalization, these findings predict that children provided with regular and consistent exposure to a minority language should be able to achieve functional bilingualism; and that to the extent that balance of input disfavors the minority language, it will be subject to influence from the socially dominant language(s). In such cases bilingual children may play the role of agents of contact-induced change (Thomason 2001), as well as revitalization. Reports from Hawaiian punana leo 'language nests' attest to such outcomes, with children tending to transfer features from English, such as substituting SVO order where traditional Hawaiian would use VSO. Depending on age of first exposure, some such children may be considered to have two first languages. Success of revitalization hinges on the maintenance of the language by a vibrant community of such bilingual children, making the minority language sustainable even in the face of massive influence from the dominant language. References: Bernardini, P. and S. Schlyter. 2004. Growing syntactic structure and code-mixing in the weaker language. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 7:49-69. De Hower, A. 1990. The Acquisition of Two Languages from Birth: A Case Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meisel, J. 1990. Two First Languages: Early Grammatical Development in Bilingual Children. Dordrecht: Foris. Thomason, S. 2001. Language Contact: An Introduction. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press.
James McElvenny, Aidan Wilson:Electronic dictionaries for language reclamation This paper presents the ongoing work of the lexicography team at an Australian university in developing electronic dictionaries for languages undergoing reclamation. We are currently working with Kaurna Warra Pintyandi and the Dharug Language Group to produce electronic dictionaries for speakers of Kaurna and Dharug respectively. Both languages are no longer spoken and are being reclaimed from written sources from the nineteenth century. Our work requires collecting and presenting archival records of the languages as well as new written material and related multimedia data, such as sound files of words being spoken and pictures. We have had to develop our own file formats for storing this information in a structured and stable manner. We have used XML and developed our own document type for these dictionaries. The main piece of software that we have used to present the dictionaries is the Kirrkirr dictionary visualisation program (http://nlp.stanford.edu/kirrkirr/, accessed on 30/9/08). We have also begun development our own software for presenting electronic dictionaries on mobile phones (http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/elac/2008/07/mobile_phone_dictionaries.html , accessed on 30/9/08). Proof of concept versions of the software have already been implemented and work on improving the efficiency and user friendliness of the software is ongoing. In this paper we will discuss the methods we have developed to create electronic dictionaries for languages undergoing reclamation. We will also look at the software we have developed for presenting electronic dictionaries. We will show that our methods and software can be used in other language documentation and conservation situations.
Lev Michael: Developing infrastructure for team-based research: The module-and-seminar model This paper focuses on the infrastructure that was developed to coordinate research activities among the participants of the Iquito Language Documentation Project (ILDP), a team-based project involving both graduate students and trained community members, aimed at documenting Iquito, a highly endangered language of Peruvian Amazonia. The ILDP was designed to document Iquito during six eight-week field periods between 2002 and 2006. To compensate for these short field periods, fieldwork was carried out by a team of researchers. Additionally, the project was designed to rely on graduate student researchers, thereby tapping this large pool for endangered language documentation. Concomittantly, the ILDP was intended to test methods for team-based language documentation, the focus of the present talk. Team-based research faces two challenges not faced by a lone linguist: a synchronic coordination problem and a diachronic one. The synchronic problem arises from the holistic character of linguistic fieldwork, and the fact that knowledge gained by any one researcher on a team is relevant to the work of the other researchers. In order to avoid duplication of research, overlap in research topics must be avoided, and data and analyses need to be shared rapidly among researchers. The diachronic problem concerns documentation of the findings of one season's research team for use by the following one. To address these issues, we developed the module-and-seminar model, which consisted of domain-specific project coordinators, modules, a module schedule, and daily seminars. Briefly, modules were week-long research projects assigned to individual researchers, focusing on a particular part of the grammar; these were written up in reports that were presented to the rest of the team during the daily seminar. The revised modules were subsequently included in a project-internal volume of that season's findings, for use in following years. In order to provide continuity in the project, two coordinators were selected, one who coordinated text and pedagogical materials preparation, and another who coordinated dictionary and module preparation. The latter coordinator also prepared each season's module schedule, in consultation with participating researchers. In this talk I discuss the overall success of this model, especially in addressing the synchronic coordination problem, and its potential replicability in other field contexts. I also discuss the few difficulties faced by this model, principally with respect to diachronic coordination, as new students were challenged to rapidly assimilate previous findings in order to contribute to new descriptive work.
Brad Montgomery-Anderson: The Cherokee Electronic Dictionary: Balancing the Needs of Learners, Speakers, and Linguists This paper describes the ongoing creation of the Cherokee Electronic Dictionary Database. This project has two main goals: to create a multimedia database of all Cherokee stems, affixes, and phrases and to produce new Cherokee language specialists through the process of creating the database itself. One of the database's most important features is the listing of words in their stem form, i.e. without their prefixes. Using stems allows learners to correctly produce all the forms of the word and to understand otherwise opaque derivational relationships. The electronic format solves many of the problems traditionally faced by lexicographers of polysynthetic languages; instead of being organized as unnatural stems or as naturally occurring words, the individual entries list both. Another important advantage of the electronic database is that users are able to look up any word, no matter what their dialect or writing system. The entries not only have numerous written examples, but contain sound and occasionally video files as well. Grammatical morphemes are listed and carefully detailed as well. Even though 'natural citation form' users have easy access to all the entries, they are also exposed to the main entry, or stem, which helps them understand grammatical rules. This project creates a user-friendly environment for learning about how stems and prefixes are used and combined. The database is being incorporated into Northeastern State University's Cherokee curriculum, and students are learning how to use it to create sentences as part of homework assignments. The project of creating the dictionary itself is of immense value to the student workers who do the work of database entry. Once they have gained experience with databasing written material, they will move on to the more complex task of gathering data through interviews. The database will also be useful to teachers and curriculum planners who will be able to instantly group words according to semantic or syntactic characteristics. Linguists will be able to browse through stem lists to learn about the historical development of the language. The Language Advisory Council's task of creating new Cherokee words will be greatly helped by having a database that includes recently created words as well as showing general patterns of word creation. The electronic format allows all users to easily find entries and to organize these entries according to the individual user's language needs.
Ulrike Mosel: Turning the linguist's lexical database into a community dictionary The paper first briefly outlines the differences between a lexical data base as it typically results from a language documentation project and the kind of dictionaries the speech community wants for educational purposes with respect to the choice of head words, grammatical information, definitions of meaning and translations, encyclopaedic information and the choice of examples. The second part of the paper then explores how in spite of limited resources in terms of time, money and man power the speech community and the linguists can develop a method of dictionary making that both satisfies the needs of the community and the interests of linguists. Since it is impossible to create a comprehensive dictionary in a language documentation project, we opted for the thematic approach in which lexicographers work on particular semantic domains such as body parts, architecture or fishing, and try to cover all those lexemes of the respective domain that seem to be important for the intended dictionary users. In our project the headwords of the lexical database were classified according to their domains, and then filtered and exported from the lexical database in order to produce a mini dictionary for each selected domain. In the case of body parts, for instance, we did not only select the nouns that signify the body parts, but also verbs that express bodily actions like 'sweat' and 'comb your hair' as well as speech formulas like 'have a heavy heart'. The indigenous lexicographers then checked this preliminary mini-dictionary for missing head words and fixed multi-word expressions,and revised the examples which often were so context dependent that they did not make much sense in isolation. Focussing on one particular semantic domain at a time helps to easily identify various kinds of lexical relations such as taxonomies, meronymies and metonymies as well as metaphorical usages, collocational restrictions and grammatical constructions. As one and the same lexeme can belong to more than one semantic domain, the mini-dictionaries must be accompanied by an index. The paper concludes with a discussion of how this kind of practical lexicography is related to frame semantics and how it can be used for semantic typology.
Sadaf Munshi, Piar Karim: Documenting the Burushaski Language: Issues in Data Collection, Transmission, Preservation, and Revitalization As globalization increases so does the loss of world languages. Two most common reasons for language endangerment are: (1) there are few living native speakers, and (2) many children do not learn the language of their parents because other languages are considered more helpful or powerful. While the first scenario leads to rapid extinction, the second scenario, quite common in South Asia and the developing world, leads to slow language attrition and eventual death. The two types of endangered languages are under pressure to differing degrees and in different ways in relation to language maintenance. Many linguists across the world are seeking to document and preserve the so-called 'endangered ' languages. Taking advantage of the latest state-of-the-art technologies, documentary linguists are making efforts towards documenting and recording oral and written linguistic traditions, translating and annotating documentation materials, compiling grammatical descriptions and dictionaries, and preparing pedagogical materials for language teaching/learning for the ethnic population which claims ownership of the language. The aim of this paper is to discuss the various steps, methods, and challenges in the documentation and revitalization of Burushaski - a linguistic isolate spoken by about 90,000 people in Gilgit, Pakistan (Ethnologue 2005), and (by approximately 300 speakers) in Srinagar, India (first author 2006). Burushaski is primarily orally-preserved and literacy in the native language is practically zero. Its survival is greatly threatened by multilingualism and language shift. Documentation efforts have been conducted by western scholars, but because their publications are mostly in foreign languages (Berger 1974-1998, Tiffou 1999), they are inaccessible to Burushos who are (mainly) literate in Urdu - the prestigious language. Recently, some Pakistani scholars have produced pedagogical materials for the promotion of Burushaski but, because of limited resources and lack of training, such efforts are yet to produce substantial results. Awaiting official standardization, local rivalries have also resulted in a number of competing writing systems. Burushaski is spoken in a socio-culturally conservative and a politically volatile region and documentation efforts by non-natives encounter many obstacles. Presenting a progress report of an ongoing project (starting 2003), this paper examines the various issues in documenting Burushaski, such as: initial encounters in encouraging community participation; social, cultural, political, and financial obstacles in data collection; effective use of information technologies without disrupting community traditions; and different challenges in revitalization efforts. To meet the various project goals, we propose steps in developing an integrated framework sensitive to the issues unique to this particular situation.
David Nathan: The soundness of documentation: an epistemology for audio in documentary linguistics Documentary linguistics for endangered languages emphasizes primary data - recordings and representation of linguistic events - and audio and video recordings are a priority for both fieldwork and for archiving because those events are unlikely to occur into the future. Audio is the focal component of our primary data. While video offers much promise, it is by definition less close to the principal concerns of documenting (spoken) languages, and introduces many costs. Recent debates about the motivations for and value of video have raised valuable questions such as: What/who is it for? What makes a good recording? How can we figure the documentation value? What aspects of events are captured/not captured? But these questions, in turn (and some of the arguments for video), when applied to audio, reveal that we have tended to take audio for granted; at worst (and frequently enough), audio is simply an inconvenience on the way to creating symbolic representations such as transcriptions and analyses. Up till now, there have been some developments, such as increasing the accountability of analyses by providing direct links to "primary audio data", and tools built to support this such as Thieberger's Audiamus. But these on their own are not enough; they do not challenge audio's emasculated status as evidence rather than performance. Finnegan (2008), for example, has recently pointed out the almost unbounded richness of audio phenomena in linguistic performance, for which we don't have a vocabulary nor even recognition that without such a framework we are effectively hiding these phenomena from research. And we have been reminded (by Dietrich Schueller) that linguistics is one of the least scientific of disciplines when it comes to audio data collection. This paper considers audio from several perspectives, including documentary linguistics, experiences in training young documenters, information theory, and acoustics, to propose an epistemology for audio within documentation that surpasses descriptors such as formats and resolutions, and restores criteria such as informativeness, replicability, and representational validity for audio in language documentation.
References Finnegan, R. 2008. Data - but data from what? In Peter Austin (ed) Language Documentation and Description. London: SOAS Schueller, D. 2006. Audio recording, digitisation and archiving. Workshop held at ELAR, SOAS, 13 February 2006.
William O'Grady, Amy J.Schafer: A Psycholinguistic Tool for the Assessment of Language Loss From a socio-cultural perspective, language loss takes place at the level of a community, affecting virtually every aspect of its culture. Beneath this macro-phenomenon, however, is a much smaller-scale cognitive phenomenon that is manifested in individual speakers of the ill-fated language-a reduction in proficiency to the point where the language is no longer a viable tool for communication. The basic pattern is all too familiar: exposure to an external language leads first to bilingualism, then to language weakening, and finally to language loss. Even in those cases where a community wishes to act to preserve their indigenous language, there are serious challenges beyond the obvious social and political obstacles. One such challenge, which we wish to address, involves the question of how and whether language weakening can be measured so that (a) its presence can be diagnosed at an early point, and (b) the success of efforts to reverse it can be accurately assessed. A well known psycholinguistic correlate of limited linguistic proficiency is slow access to vocabulary and weak activation of the routines for forming and interpreting sentences. Our goal is to exploit this fact by developing an assessment package that will provide a reliable picture of a language's relative accessibility to its speaker-that is, a way of measuring the strength or weakness an indigenous language relative to a competitor language. As we will illustrate in our presentation, we are designing and pilot testing a series of psycholinguistic tasks that will allow us to measure a speaker's response time, both for lexical access and for phrase building. By comparing the scores on these tasks for the two (or more) languages used by individual speakers, we believe that inferences can be drawn about relative language strength in different vocabulary domains and for different types of linguistic performance. This information in turn will be useful for those interested in assessing the degree of language weakening in particular groups, regions, and communities. The assessment package that we will describe has a number of practical advantages as well: it is easily adaptable from language to language, it is inexpensive, it is easy to use, and it can be run on small portable devices, making it appropriate for most field circumstances. We anticipate opportunities for testing in a variety of field situations in the near future.
Takayuki Okazaki, Mere Kepa, Linita Manu'atu, Alister Tolenoa,  David A. Hough: Making language documentation work for the community: Some indigenous priorities and perspectives It is necessary that linguists and others involved in the documentation of indigenous and minority languages listen to the voices of the communities they wish to serve.  This one-hour panel session brings together experts from Asia and the Pacific who will report on community perspectives as they apply to indigenous and minority language protection and promotion.  Particular emphasis will be placed on what such communities have to say regarding the applicability of linguistic documentation within the context of educational initiatives, either as part of language/culture revitalization projects, or as part of mother tongue medium of instruction, bilingual or multilingual/multicultural education programs.

The panelists, who for the most part are indigenous themselves, have been both activists and leaders on issues of language policy, planning and implementation in their respective regions.  Their work covers a wide geographical span including Kosrae in the Federated States of Micronesia; Maori, Tongan and Pasifika communities in Aotearoa/New Zealand and the South Pacific; and among Udeghe and Nanai communities in Far East Russia.  Their reports will focus on what these communities have to say about some of the following key issues:

1.    The extent to which indigenous and minority language communities – even highly endangered ones – have traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and related skills to tell their stories and develop educational materials which will protect and promote their languages and cultures.
2.    The degree to which much linguistic documentation involves "outside experts" collecting data from "native informants" and how this may create an elitist dichotomy, which serves to marginalize indigenous communities, and further exacerbate what has been referred to as a "glass barrier" in academia.
3.    How well linguistic documentation is linked to application and why in some cases data never gets back to the community – or never gets back in usable form.
4.    How to ensure that funding procedures and decisions regarding research methodologies are placed in the hands of the community and based on indigenous models of communication and epistemologies, rather than on research models and technical categories imposed from the outside. (This is in keeping with the 2007 United Nations Resolution on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples)
5.    The necessity of linking all work within indigenous communities to a critical understanding of the processes of globalization and how these relate to the killing of biological, cultural and linguistic diversity.
Barbara Blaha Pfeiler: Documenting the Acquisition of Endangered Languages The defining feature of language endangerment is the imperfect transmission of a minority language to children of the speech community. Imperfect transmission typically occurs long before adult members of the community recognize that their language is threatened. Few studies of language transmission in the context of endangered languages exist since the children in many minority communities already speak the dominant language as their first language. Thus, the opportunity is missed to document the language forms that parents use with children in minority communities and the typical stages of linguistic development of their children. The Mayan world is undergoing rapid political and economic change. At present many men between seventeen and forty years of age have migrated to the United States from towns and villages throughout Mexico and Guatemala. The last decade has also brought a greater intrusion of Spanish into remote Mayan communities in the form of satellite and cable television and internet service. It is a critical time to document the acquisition of Mayan languages as fewer and fewer children still acquire their language in traditional settings. The present paper shows the steps of documenting language acquisition of Yucatec Maya as well as part of an ongoing project on documenting language acquisition of five Mayan languages. A group of researchers is comparing the longitudinal acquisition with data of Tzeltal (Penelope Brown), Tzotzil (Lourdes de Le 'n), K'iche'(Clifton Pye), Q'anjob'al (Pedro Mateo) and Yucatec (Pfeiler). This collaboration has led to a new approach to the crosslinguistic study of language acquisition that makes use of the comparative method (Pye et al. 2007). We have discovered that a comparative approach to the study of language development is at once more complex and more illuminating than the analysis of a single language or genetically unrelated languages.
References Pye, Clifton et al. 2007 Roots or Edges? Explaining variation in children's early verb forms across five Mayan languages. En: Barbara Pfeiler (ed.), Learning indigenous languages. Child language acquisition in Mesoamerica, 15-45. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Susan Poetsch, Kevin Lowe:Fostering revitalisation through the teaching and learning small languages in schools in NSW Aboriginal languages in the state of New South Wales (NSW), like many others on the south-east coast of Australia, have born the brunt of invasion and colonisation, and rapidly lost full inter-generational transmission of language. Hence current revival efforts for many languages in NSW rely on a combination of the cultural and linguistic knowledge that has been held and remembered by Aboriginal communities, and the reconstruction and analysis of historical and archival documentation. According to the 2006 Australian Bureau of Statistics census, the Aboriginal population of NSW is 148,178 (2.2% of the state's population). And, while NSW consists of approximately 10% of the total land area of Australia, there are 70 Aboriginal languages in the state. By such measures, these are small languages. However, this has not dampened community efforts to bring back and strengthen languages and to maintain linguistic diversity and identity. This presentation provides and overview of relationships between community language reclamation efforts and the NSW Aboriginal Languages K - 10 Syllabus (Board of Studies NSW 2003). School programs developed from the syllabus are taught by Aboriginal community members who are re-learning and re-connecting with their languages. The programs are supported by resources from government and non-government school systems and curriculum support agencies. The syllabus aims to support community aspirations for language revival, firstly for languages to be heard and spoken again. As such, school programs include opportunities for students to use language. The syllabus assumes a second-language learning environment and encourages communicative language teaching pedagogy. Secondly, reflecting community aspirations for school programs, the syllabus includes learning outcomes reflecting the interdependence of language and culture. Through the third broad objective of the syllabus, students develop skills in 'Making Linguistic Connections ' for the language they are studying and its relationship to other Aboriginal languages. Since the syllabus was released in 2003, the Board of Studies NSW has been working with particular schools, communities and languages to develop local programs and foster positive school-community partnerships. Implementation of the syllabus has had impacts beyond the school programs. It has strategically fostered small-scale, community-based projects and provided a focus for language revival activities in local communities. This presentation describes observations of a number of locations, illustrating how the school programs both support and are supported community efforts for the rebuilding and strengthening of their languages.
Victoria Rau, Meng-Chien Yang, Maa-Neu Dong:Building Online Dictionaries for a Taiwanese Indigenous Language in a Collaborative Team This paper features collaboration among community members, linguists, and computer scientists with the goal of producing both traditional and wiki online dictionaries. It reports an ongoing project on building an online dictionary in Yami (http://yamibow.cs.pu.edu.tw), supported by the Council of Indigenous Peoples in Taiwan. There are three core members in the collaborative team, each pair of whom has produced a separate product. The collaboration between the linguist and the community language activist over a decade has produced a traditional dictionary, made using Toolbox and Lexique Pro. The interaction between the community members and the computer scientist has resulted in development of a wiki online dictionary using the concepts and techniques of Web 2.0 to provide a platform for Formosan language activists to initiate language documentation and archiving. The collaboration between the linguist and the computer scientist has resulted in research on ontology, using Protege to reconstruct indigenous knowledge. Each of the three separate products has extended applications for language revitalization and capacity building. The traditional dictionary in both print version and online version, published in July 2008, has provided resources for Yami teenagers preparing for Yami language proficiency test to enter better high schools and universities, although the impact of this dictionary is yet to be investigated. The participatory wiki online dictionary has interested several Formosan language activists to contribute to the system. The following four issues are to be resolved: (1) protection of the language resources, (2) steps of editing and annotation for the online resources, (3) identification of the user group, and (4) language sharing policy, as it is being developed into a full-fledged system for all indigenous language groups in Taiwan. Finally, the building of an ontology based on traditional domains has established the necessary foundation for better material development to teach indigenous languages and cultures. The methodology used to build Yami fish names will provide an example for the construction of other ontologies in Yami and other Formosan languages. This paper will be presented in Yami, Chinese and English, a reflection of the languages involved in building this online resource. The Yami language project will provide an inspiring case of language documentation and conservation to illustrate how online dictionaries have been produced in a collaborative team and how technology has been used in the process.
Will Reiman: Basic Oral Language Documentation The urgency of language documentation requires, as Krauss (1992:10) concludes, that 'we must do some serious rethinking of our priorities. ' In the past, linguists in SIL International have seen the priority as the traditional products of descriptive linguistics, namely, a grammar, a lexicon, and a corpus of interlinear texts. But we have been challenged by Himmelmann (1998) to see the distinction between language documentation (as compiling and commenting on primary recordings of speech events) and language description (as embodying the secondary results of analyzing the primary data and making generalizations). We've been further challenged by Woodbury (2003:45) who proposes that one could start the documentation process with purely oral techniques like producing 'running UN style translations ' and, instead of transcribing everything, 'starting with hard-to-hear tapes and asking elders to 'respeak' them to a second tape slowly so that anyone with training in hearing the language can make the transcription if they wish. ' This presentation describes a method of language documentation being developed by a team at SIL International, and the results of my efforts to field test it in Africa. It is an approach we call BOLD, for Basic Oral Language Documentation. Since the majority of languages that need documentation have neither an orthography nor a literate community, the method focuses on oral data gathering. A great advantage of this approach is that it allows language community members to participate fully in the language documentation process with only minimal training. The methodology's name derives from the process of enabling native speakers to use digital audio to both compile and comment on the corpus of speech events. The process is one of re-recording the original recordings piece-by-piece while inserting oral annotations into the resulting recording. The annotations are of three types: (a) 'oral transcription ' with phrase-by-phrase re-iteration in careful speech, (b) 'oral translation ' with the insertion of clause-level translations in a language of wider communication (LWC), and (c) 'oral commentary ' with the insertion of explanatory comments - from members of the language community itself - in an LWC. The paper also discusses the unexpected pitfalls encountered during the implementation of this technique and how they were overcome or dealt with. In addition, areas for further development of the method will be discussed.
References Himmelmann, Nikolaus. 1998. Documentary and descriptive linguistics. Linguistics 36:165-191. Krauss, Michael. 1992. The world's languages in crisis. Language 68(1):4-10. Woodbury, Anthony C. 2003. Defining language documentation. In Peter K. Austin (ed.), Language Documentation and Description 1:35-51. London: SOAS.
James Rementer, Bruce Pearson:The Lenape Talking Dictionary Lenape (also known as Delaware), an important language of the Algonquian family, was spoken originally in all of New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, northern Delaware, and southeastern New York. The tribe was relocated in stages through western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, central Indiana, Missouri, Kansas, and finally Oklahoma. Members of the tribe preserved the language into the 20th century, with the last native speaker remaining fluent until her death in 2000. The author was adopted informally into a Delaware-speaking household in 1963 and over the years gained increasing fluency in the language. The co-author began working with the author's adoptive aunt, Nora Thompson Dean (Touching Leaves Woman)1907-1984), as a graduate student and continued working jointly with another fluent speaker and with the author after the aunt's death. Over his years of working with the aunt and other speakers, the author compiled a library of tape recordings which have become the nucleus of the Lenape Talking Dictionary website (www.talk-lenape.org). The site provides information about the speakers whose voices are heard and offers a practical orthography, as well as a survey of grammatical patterns. The site currently has about 13,000 entries, 4,650 of which are accompanied by sound files, and over 1,100 sentence sound files. Most entries include a grammatical analysis showing how individual words are formed. We also have been adding lessons about the language as part of the website. Our original grant funds ran out over a year ago, but additional entries are constantly being added on a daily basis. The site is available to members of the Delaware tribe who are interested in their ancestral language and to scholars and members of the general public who wish to learn about the language. The author and co-author will show images from the site and demonstrate how the site is set up, and how it offers a self-guided learning opportunity. The project was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Jacquelijn Ringersma, Claus Zinn, Marc Kemps-Snijders: LEXUS and ViCoS: from lexical to conceptual spaces The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics provides a rich set of tools for archiving, management and the enrichment of linguistic resources, and hosts all data of the Endangered Languages Documentation project DoBeS [1] in the online digital archive. In this paper, we focus on LEXUS, a web-based tool for the creation of multimedia encyclopedic lexica and dictionaries, and ViCoS, which allows users to define arbitrary relations between objects within and across lexica, complementing lexical spaces with a conceptual dimension. We describe the LEXUS and ViCoS functionalities using three cases from DoBeS language documentation projects.
Marquesan [2] The Marquesan lexicon, initially created in Toolbox, has been automatically imported into LEXUS, and then further enriched with multimedia to better illustrate the meaning of words in their cultural environment. For members of the speech community, however, the meaning of words is best described by the various associations they evoke rather than in terms of any formal theory of meaning. To better capture this aspect, ViCoS is used to construct a knowledge space of associations featuring relevant parts of Marquesan life and tradition.
Kola-Sámi [3] Two lexica are being created in LEXUS: RuSaDic, a plain Russian-Kildin wordlist, and SaRuDic, providing highly structured content, including multimedia fragments and derivations. Using ViCoS we connected the two lexica, so that speakers who are familiar with Russian and wish to revitalize Kildin can enter the lexical space through RuSaDic and from there access the more informative SaRuDic. Similarly, we will create relations from these lexica to external databases, like e.g. Álgu.
Beaver [4] A speaker database including kinship relations has been created and imported into LEXUS, allowing users to get a basic view of the relationships between individuals. Using ViCoS, relational information from the database will be extracted to form a knowledge space of various kinship relation types, which users can then easily explore using advanced views (e.g., filters, zoom) and further enrich (adding new relations between individuals, or new relation types).
[1] The DoBeS Project. http://www.mpi.nl/DOBES
[2] Cablitz, G. (2006). Marquesan. A Grammar of Space, Mouton de Gruyter.
[3] Riessler, M. and Wilbur, J. (2007) Documentation of the endangered Kola Saami languages. Språk og språkforhold i Sápmi. (=Berliner Beiträage zur Skandinavistik 11). Ed. by Tove Bull, Jurij Kusmenko & Michael Rießler. Berlin: Humboldt-Universität, 2007. 39–82.
[4] Jung et al. (2007). http://www.mpi.nl/DOBES/projects/ beaver
Nicole Rosen, Heather Souter: Language revitalisation in a multilingual community: the case of Michif(s) In this talk, we discuss how the forcing of a Western model of identity where one culture = one language has caused divisiveness within the traditionally multilingual and multicultural Métis community, and discuss ways in which to overcome this divisiveness when attempting collaborative language revitalization initiatives. The Métis are the descendants of French and First Nations intermarriage in Canada's Northwest during the Fur Trade. In the early 19th century, the Métis flourished and began to think of themselves as a separate people (Sealey & Lussier 1975: 3), distinct from either French or First Nations. Métis people traditionally spoke a few of Cree, Ojibwe, Sioux, French, English, and a Plains Cree-French mixed language, called Michif today. In this talk, we show that the multilingualism and multiculturalism of the Métis people which allowed them to flourish in the early 19th century may hold back progress in revitalization and documentation today, due to an attempt to fit a traditionally multilingual people into a Western tradition of unilingualism. For revitalization efforts to succeed, it is often said that the language community must actively support the language and the revitalization efforts. Delineating this community is not normally an issue; the language shares the same name as the ethnicity/culture, or community members feel bound together by their language. However, the Michif/Métis situation is much more complicated. The multilingual nature of the culture results in the term Michif designating at least 3 languages: the Métis variety of French; the Métis variety of Cree, and the Plains Cree-French mixed language. Although the Métis share history, music and traditions, language has become a catalyst for community divisiveness rather than unity, which becomes a serious problem in collaborative revitalization efforts. For example, in order to access federal funding, the mixed-language Michif has been designated as the Métis Nation's official language, resulting in the hierarchicization of this language over the others. Speakers of this language are now the prestige group, eligible for funding, while speakers of other Métis languages are left frustrated that their language has been demoted by their own people, unable to access the same funding. This is just one example discussed of the difficulties arising from the shift from a multilingual to a unilingual society.This paper shows how an inclusive model such as Junker's East Cree language project may be used to not only renew pride in a language, but also pride in a multilingual society.
Mary Salisbury: Are our documentation projects speeding up language change? Pukapukan is a minority language spoken in the Northern Cook Islands, characterised by diglossia in which the national language, Cook Islands Maori, is used for religious, political and educational functions. For informal settings Pukapukan is the preferred language, but there is also a degree of code-mixing with the national language. Most of the 5,000 speakers live in New Zealand and Australia, with only about 500 people living on the home island itself. In the migrant setting there is widespread Pukapukan-Cook Islands Maori-English multilingualism and language shift to English taking place, yet there is a strong sense of solidarity resulting in the minority language taking precedence over the national language of the Cook Islands for formal spoken registers. Language documentation initiatives are highly valued by Pukapukan communities in every location, but the documentation projects themselves appear to be agents for language change in the direction of conservatism, especially in the migrant setting. Words that are almost obsolete are being revived and archaic words are acquiring new meanings in the process of documentation. Both lexical items and grammatical particles which are perceived to be of Cook Islands Maori origin are being excluded from text-based materials by respected native speakers who are expert in the culture. Their perception is often based on a word containing distinctive sounds of the language which are not present in the national language, or the existence of lexical doublets in which a word found also in the national language is rejected as Pukapukan irrespective of the linguistic evidence that it has pan-Polynesian cognates. As a result, a formal written register is being established where none previously existed. Native speakers view the revival of the old language with reverence saying that this is their 'real language ', yet some perceptive native speakers recognise that a 'new language ' is being recorded. Tensions are also evident between the aspirations of the home island and the migrant population. The documentation process itself could result in the emergence of a conservative spoken dialect in the migrant setting and may even hasten language loss if the younger generation perceives the load of learning old words to be too great to enjoy literacy in the language. The need for community training in the foundational elements of comparative linguistics is highlighted as an aspect of training in documentation methods. The role of the linguist working in partnership with the community is also addressed.
Adjaratou Sall, Sophie Wade: Bédik Documentation, revitalization and communication: field experience and local community's involvement The purpose of this paper is to share the fieldwork experience of our project on Bédik Documentation and to highlight the importance of incorporating local speakers of Bédik language and its daily practice in the local context. We would like to present our research works and talk about the field results we got on one hand from the national and international linguists' community and on the other hand from the community of speakers we are working with. Bédik is an endangered language spoken in Senegal and classified as part of Tenda group within the Mande branch, belonging to the Niger-Congo language family. The Bédiks are an ethnic minority gathering around 3500 inhabitants living in villages located on the mountains of eastern Senegal. The aim of our project is to set up the documentation of the Bedik language as part of a long-term revitalization process. Thus, the general idea of this project is focuses on the creation of a corpus of texts, collection of audio and videos recordings in various genres and cultural contexts, with a first trilingual dictionary of around 3000 entries. Moreover, this project has been is initiated with the Bédik community (local language community consultants and some teachers) who will be trained in writing the language in order to speed up data collection and beyond this project keep on working on the documentation of the language, thus enhance the revitalization efforts. Our researches will be undertaken in Bandafassi, Iwol and Bapen, places located in the East of Senegal where the Bedik language is still spoken. Following a brief overview on the situation of endangered languages in Senegal and the presentation of the project on the Bédik language, we will highlight our first field experiences and show the alliances which are being built between we linguists and the local community of speakers and how minority language and culture can be revitalized through combining the villagers' daily practices and their participation. The documentation and the description are necessary for a language but the teaching, the learning, the involvement of the local community and the communication between this latter and linguists can contribute to the protection of fast dying languages and traditions. By the way we would like to share our experience and take advantage on others as well.
Hiroko Sato: When collaboration is not an option: fieldwork in Kove, Papua New Guinea Collaborative work with community members is one of the issues increasingly emphasized in the field of language documentation. However, if community members are indifferent or negative toward their languages, it can be difficult for a researcher to work with them. The purpose of this presentation is to discuss my experience of collaborative work in Kove (PNG), and the role of researchers in a situation where community members are indifferent toward their language. Kove is spoken in West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea. As is generally seen in much of New Britain and Melanesia, the Kove area shows considerable linguistic diversity. Kove is primarily spoken in an area where it is surrounded by five other indigenous languages. In addition to local linguistic diversity, with modernization, educational developments and social interactions, Kove people have begun to use Tok Pisin and English as lingua francas for communication. During my fieldwork among the Kove, I have observed that the number of languages spoken is different for different generations and for the different genders. For example, an elderly woman may speak only the Kove language, a middle-aged woman may speak Kove and Tok Pisin, and some middle-aged men might speak English in addition to Kove and Tok Pisin. Among younger people, it is common to speak all three of these languages. From my observations, community members, especially in younger generations, are rapidly losing language competence in their heritage language. However, as in many other marginalized minority communities, the Kove people are not aware of the existing imminent threat to their language. Although they are losing the language, many Kove speakers are indifferent to their language and do not care whether the language is spoken or not. They were equally indifferent to what research I might be doing on their language. During my fieldwork, I found that I could not collaborate with the community members of Kove, even if I established good relationships with them. If they have indifferent or negative attitudes toward the language, speakers may not be willing to engage in collaborative work with linguists. In my fieldwork, I have had to confront difficult questions about my role as an outside linguist. For example, how can I collaborate with this community on language documentation? Should I wait until they realize the importance of the language? The fact is that I cannot engage in collaborative work with unwilling and uninterested community members. However, even if linguists cannot collaborate with community members, this is still the goal we need to work toward. And even in the absence of community collaboration or interest, it is important and significant to record the linguistic practices and traditions of a community.
Stefan Schnell: Documentation, analysis and writing of TAM markers in Vera'a Vera'a, an Oceanic language spoken by approx. 300 people in Northern Vanuatu, has two TAM markers that consist of just one consonant (k and m). Both pose problems in terms of formal analysis and in terms of practical orthography. The language has SVO word order, and the markers concerned are the first element of the verbal predicate. However, they form a phonological unit with the preceding element, i.e. the last constituent of the subject NP in most cases. Francois (2007) classifies them as prefixes of the verb on morpho-syntactic grounds, claiming that no material can intervene between TAM marker and following verb. However, an enclitic analysis seems possible as well, and is supported by the fact that speakers frequently pause after the TAM marker. This is also the cut-off point if a clause is interrupted and restarted, and the TAM marker is repeated then together with the preceding word. Lastly, my data do show cases where other morphs intervene between TAM marker and verb. An additional source of evidence are native speakers' metalinguistic intuitions: they write the TAM markers in a unit with what precedes them. Though this kind of evidence should not be given highest priority in deciding on the correct analysis (Himmelmann 2006), it nevertheless reflects metalinguistic knowledge and should be documented alongside with the facts. In principle, both the prefix and the clitic analysis seem to have advantages. Instead of imposing one of them on all products involved in a comprehensive documentation of the language (annotations, sketch grammar, edited texts for story books, etc.), both should be equally accommodated. Different pieces of evidence that back one of the two analysis should be extensively commented on, e.g. in a separate commentary tier in ELAN that links the annotations with the relevant data to the descriptive (sketch) grammar and addresses the analytical problems (Schultze-Berndt 2006). Thus, the different levels of linguistic annotations, linguistic analysis and practical orthography should be kept separate and interlinked at the same time. Finally, an orthography of the language does not necessarily have to reflect linguistic analysis, but should be acceptable and of practical value for the speech community. Therefore, speakers' decision should be followed here.
Margaret Sharpe: Language revitalisation at Ngukurr - one tack worked partway, time to change tack? Ngukurr township (N.T. Australia) evolved from an Anglican mission started in 1908, after many Aborigines of the area had been killed. As a result of massacres, work on cattle stations, and mission policy, the survivors began to abandon traditional languages for a pidgin which evolved to the Kriol language of today. Although most of its vocabulary is clearly derived from English, Kriol, evolving in contact with traditional languages, has phonology, grammar and semantics derived from them. Some languages were going out of use before linguistic researchers focussed on them, but good accounts of the languages were produced, as well as many audio recordings of texts. Over the last ten years and with the help of linguists from the Diwurruwurru-Jaru Aboriginal Corporation, seven of these languages have been taught in the schools: five at Ngukurr, and one each at Urapunga and Minyerri. One language taught at Ngukurr is still spoken regularly in other communities; two others less so, but none are in common use at Ngukurr, though Alawa is heard at Minyerri. Despite valiant attempts by a succession of Ngukurr linguists resident at Ngukurr to train those prepared to teach language, the teaching by language teachers rarely progresses beyond teaching words and a few songs sung to well known tunes. Their classroom control language is mostly Kriol. What is more, it cannot be guaranteed from week to week which teachers covering which languages will be available to teach. Add on top of this a change in school organisation, a small cut in the time available, little awareness of clock time for changing from one class to another, and lameness of older language teachers. The longstanding method of teaching has reached its limit in effectiveness. It is arguable that the school should be bilingual in Kriol and English, and that traditional languages should be introduced later, but the language teachers will not agree. Despite their everyday use of Kriol, they only see their traditional languages as the ones that should be taught. From the third term of the 2008 school year, the school is working to have about three Language and Culture Days each term, dropping the preceding type of language teaching. The focus is on culture, with language introduced as relevant to the particular cultural matters being taught. The initial such day was recognised as a success, involving not only language teachers, but the whole school staff, white and indigenous.
Patricia A. Shaw: Engaging the Challenges of Language Reclamation through Participatory Theatre Major challenges for many Aboriginal language revitalization programs are the complex and often covert tensions stemming from deeply internalized, fundamentally conflictual attitudes and values. Many of the very people who are the most treasured assets for language reclamation are also those who were the most negatively impacted by socio-political hostilities towards the value of that heritage. How does such an individual reconcile painfully buried memories of external judgments that their language was ugly, heathen, savage, an assured path to eternal damnation in the afterworld, and a guaranteed impediment to educational and social survival in the present world with the current tidal reversal which honours that same language for its beauty, structural complexity, cultural coherence, spiritual power, historical validity, intellectual insights, and cognitive breadth? How do subsequent generations reconcile their anger at having been deprived of their linguistic and cultural birthright with the historically contextualized fact that it was often the protective, loving, conscious decision of fluent parents not to pass on their ancestral language because it had engendered so much pain and degradation in their own lives? How do the profound intergenerational differences in world view that stem from an ( 'illiterate ') oral traditions culture versus our current literacy-dependent society interface with the challenges of teaching/learning what is now a critically endangered language? How do other values of the 'dominant ' socio-cultural institutions (economic utility, contextually delimited functionality, curricular choices, etc.) interface with Aboriginal language reclamation efforts? Such conflicts may be simultaneously internal, interpersonal, and intergenerational, and can constitute a major impediment to revitalization initiatives. This paper documents a process of engagement with these challenges through participatory theatre as an empowering art. Sponsored by a post-secondary Aboriginal language revitalization program in collaboration with a renowned theatre workshop director, 16 people from 15 different Aboriginal nations across Canada, ranging from adolescents to elders, came together to create audience-interactive plays about their struggles with language loss and the challenges of reclamation. The impact of this project, on both the participants and the audience, was extremely powerful. Drawing on video sections of the performances to illustrate specific points, this presentation will discuss first the particular issues that the workshop participants chose to focus on; secondly, the insights gained from the audience interventions; and finally, the effectiveness of the process of participatory theatre and staged dramatization as a means of engaging with issues of passionate import in people's lives that, off-stage, are often too conflictual for individuals to address.
Michinori Shimoji: Reference Grammar as Basis for Language Revitalization: A Case Study of Ryukyuan Ryukyuan, a Japonic language spoken on Okinawa, is in imminent danger of extinction, with all fluent native speakers over their sixty's and seventy's (Karimata 2004). Even though Ryukyuan has received much attention in Japanese dialectology, the research practice of Japanese dialectology did not really recognize Ryukyuan as an endangered language: Japanese dialectology has been concerned with historical phonology and morphology aiming at uncovering the history of Japonic, regarding Ryukyuan as an important 'database' for this purpose, and little attention has been paid to the Ryukyuan language per se. As a result, there are only one or two reliable reference grammars of Ryukyuan varieties (Miyara 1995; Nishioka and Nakahara 2000). This means (1) that almost every Ryukyuan variety will die out leaving no reliable linguistic record, and (2) that it is very difficult for the local community of a given Ryukyuan variety to provide a proper textbook of their community language since such a textbook must be based on a systematic arrangement of terms and concepts that can only be offered by a reference grammar. This talk will concentrate on the topic concerning (2) above, addressing one challenging attempt by the present author, who is a native Okinawan and a PhD scholar. I will introduce my PhD project aiming at providing the first comprehensive grammar of Irabu Ryukyuan, a north-west variety of Miyako Ryukyuan spoken on Irabu Island with approximately 2,500 speakers (out of 7,000 local populations). I first note the local community's growing awareness of the need to revitalize their own language, and point out that many of the practical problems that they raise actually stem from a lack of a reliable reference grammar of Irabu. Then three specific problems raised by the community are discussed: (a) How to organize the complex grammatical system of Irabu in the textbook? (b) How to write and segment their speech? (c) How should materials for the textbook be obtained and provided (e.g. conversation skits, folktales, vocabulary lists, etc.)? I note what the local community expects of my grammar, what my grammar project can do for them, and what problems are being encountered in resolving the three specific problems (a-c).
References Miyara, Shinsho. 1995. Minami Ryuukyuu Yaeyama Ishigaki hoogen no bunpoo. Tokyo: Kuroshio Shuppan. Karimata, Shigehisa. 2004. Kikigengo to shite no Ryuukyuugo no bunpoo kenkyuu no kadai. Nihon Tooyoo bunka ronshuu 10: 57-77. Nishioka, Satoshi, and Jo Nakahara. 2000. Okinawa go no nyuumon. Tokyo: Hakusuisha.
Julianne Smith, Laura Cranmer, Patricia Shaw: Reconciling difference and building trust: International collaboration in Indigenous Language Revitalization In the summer of 2008, the University of California at Santa Barbara hosted a six-week "InField" institute (www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/infield/) that brought together Indigenous language activists and linguistic scholars to share experience and expertise on issues related to endangered language documentations. The first two weeks featured a concentrated series of workshops, offering instruction in field methods, video, audio, life in the field, grant writing, documentation software, language activism, and an introduction to linguistics. Each day there was a Language Revitalization Model presented by endangered language activists and/or linguistic scholars. The remaining four weeks of the program focused on applying these skills to intensive documentation-for-revitalization of 3 very different endangered languages, one from Kenya, one from Sierra Leone, and one from British Columbia: Kwak'wala. Under the sponsorship of a SSHRC Strategic Aboriginal Research project on Kwak'wala, two fluent Elders and four younger Kwakwaka'wakw community members participated in this program, along with a very diverse group of other learners - Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, from Canada, across the US, and Europe. The challenges of this context - a wide range of individual talents and expertise, academic skills, cultural backgrounds, short- and long-term goals, institutional expectations, personal apprehensions, experience with or ignorance of historical appropriation issues - were brought together by a shared dedication to this language revitalization initiative. Under the broad rubric of 'Indigenous - Academic Relationships ' we invite you to hear of our experience working collaboratively within the Aboriginal and academic communities as we explore the issues confronting the diverse constituencies. We will discuss measures of success along with residual challenges, and will share strategies used to address issues of difference that frequently interface with language revitalization initiatives, such as trust, race, expertise, entitlement, and intellectual property rights. We aim to impart the value we have found in recognizing, reconsidering and confronting traditionally divisive issues as we pursue the on-going challenges nurturing Indigenous language survival
Jozsef Szakos: Verba volant.... media durant: Collecting Formosan Indigenous TV News for Documenting and Reviving the Languages Ever since Taiwan Indigenous TV started operations three years ago, daily news in Atayal, Bunun, Paiwan, Tsou, Tau, Kavalan, Amis,Puyuma languages have been regularly broadcast. Policy changes shifted the originally monolingual news blocks to multilingual communication during the past year. The news broadcasts have not been archived by the station, therefore in the summer of 2006 we decided to regularly record and index these items. I wish to introduce what is comprised in about three years' news that we have collected. The 2 TB of recordings are catalogued and they are easy to access ( on 400 DVDs,low video resolution, about 2000 hours). Whenever I went to the mountains, I used selected parts for prompting field-work elicitation in Tsou, Kanakanavu and Saaroa, the latter two not being represented in the broadcasts. Linguistically, when all the indexing and transcription done, we receive a very real picture of the bilingual speakers' competence, heavily influenced by the Chinese environment. Contrasted with the more conservative speech style of field-work recordings, the question arises which one should become the model of revival. Culturally we can see how the language is adapted to modern life, but certain interviews stress the traditions and their transformation. Technically, as I intend to demonstrate, this ongoing collection is a good testing ground for new software solutions dealing with fast transcription, thematic and word by word indexing methods, extraction of audio files, handling of large media files for archiving and documentation. Practically, the amount of data elicited by far exceeds the needs and capabilities of a lone researcher. For the broadcasters the news seem to be ephemeral, but as language materials in good technical quality, they could be a treasure for international linguists and native speakers. I wish to explore ways how the scholarly community could offer ways of preserving, continuing and completing the documentation for the benefit of mankind.
Alice Taff: Recording real conversations for language learning and analysis Sufficient exposure to everyday conversation is crucial for language learners to become fluent; however, such exposure can be difficult for learners in small language communities with few active speakers. For the Tlingit (Alaska/Canada) language community we are producing videos of spontaneous conversations with time-aligned bilingual texts with the aim that these recordings fill some of the learners' needs for exposure to real language. Today Tlingit has approximately 200 birth speakers. The mortality rate over the past two years is 13%. This project serves as a case study in small language documentation, conservation, and revitalization. In this session we describe the collaborative processes by which we video spontaneous conversations, create time-aligned bilingual annotations, and produce accessible language learning materials. We discuss how this collaboration creates new opportunities for language use and for weaving the generations together in language transfer. The core team for our NSF-funded project includes university administrators, professors, researchers, and students. We collaborate with local and regional school district administrators, teachers and students, with tribal administrations and with individual language community members. Since Tlingit ancestral territory includes both US and Canadian lands, our project includes Tlingit speakers and learners on both sides of the border. Working with people: We discuss adapting the project design to meet the needs of students and speakers, finding fluent speakers willing to record, and making the recordings. We describe transcription/translation sessions between fluent speakers and learners. These sessions, focused on specific items of language, give the learner and speaker opportunities to transfer language directly from one person to another. With the goal of doing their work IN the target language, the pair develops a Tlingit phrase repertoire to use during their work. Language learning takes place during recording sessions, translation/transcription sessions, and with the language community use of the end-products of the recordings. Working with technology: We describe workflow; capturing conversations on DVcam formatted video-recordings, computer processing in iMovie, reformatting as .mov and .wav., ELAN and PRAAT as aids for bilingual annotation and acoustic phonetic or morpho-syntactic analyses, production of interlinear texts and subtitled QuickTime videos for language learning, making materials available on the Web, and archiving. We discuss challenges and solutions in tracking the media as it migrates from one format to another and one person to another as well as the challenges of training dispersed team members in the many details of several software programs.
Yukinori Takubo, Yuka Hayashi, Chigusa Kurumada, Tamaki Motoki :The Digital Museum project for the documentation of Ikema Ryukyuan The object of this presentation is to introduce a prototype of the Digital Museum Project in our attempt at the documentation of Ikema, one of the endangered dialects of Southern Ryukyuan, spoken on Miyakojima Island, Okinawa, Japan. The language is no longer acquired by younger people, and are spoken fluently only by people in their 60's or older. We have been studying one of the dialects of the language spoken in Nishihara since January 2006, and have made recordings of natural discourse and elicitation sessions totaling over 400 hours. The local people, especially the senior generations, are deeply concerned about the imminent disappearance of their language and culture, and have been making every effort to pass them on to younger generations. Their enthusiasm culminated in the creation of a vernacular musical titled Nishihara Muradate (The making of the Nishihara village), depicting their migration to Nishihara from the Ikema Island, their ancestral island, some 130 years ago. It was performed in July 2007, at the 40th anniversary of the Meeting of the Ikema people, with more than a hundred people participating in the performance, was filmed and made into a DVD. Attempts at documenting the language are also being made by a nursery school principal, who have written fairy stories for children, scored traditional songs, and collected proverbs for raising children, all prepared bilingually in Ikema and the standard Japanese. In order to store the recordings we have made and to make the works accomplished by local people accessible to the public, we are constructing a digital museum, a web-based three layered digital storage space. The first layer is the exhibit space, open to the public and stores the general introduction to the language and culture of Ikema, Nisihara Muradate, fairy tales for children, old songs, all subtitled in three languages: Ikema, the standard Japanese, and English. The exhibit space will serve as a forum for the local people in Nishihara, as well as for the people who have migrated to other parts of the world. The second layer, the access to which is password protected, is for researchers specializing in Ryukyuans. It stores transcribed recordings with translations, papers on Ikema and the related dialects. The third layer contains all the raw data, which are accessible only to our research group. We will make a demonstration of the prototype of the museum in this presentation. (394 words)
Laura Tejada: Electroglottography (EGG) and acoustic analyses in the documentation of Cajonos Zapotec This paper discusses the use of electroglottography (EGG) and acoustic analyses in the documentation of an endangered language of Oaxaca, Mexico. The author investigates non-modal phonation in San Miguel Cajonos Zapotec (SMCZ). Despite potential difficulties with the use of such technology for these purposes, the importance of accurate phonetic description in language documentation is emphasized. The electroglottograph is a non-invasive, painless method for studying the opening and closing movements of the vocal folds. It is used in this study to examine vowel phonation contrasts. A small, high frequency current is passed between two electrodes that are positioned on either side of a participant's larynx (Adam's apple). When the vocal folds are open, more resistance to the current is encountered because air does not conduct electricity as well as human tissue. When the folds are closed, the current is transferred more easily. Changes in the resistance to the signal are recorded and given in a waveform output. Different phonation types have characteristic waveform shapes that identify them. Acoustic measurements such as the difference in amplitude between the first and second harmonics (H1-H2) are also used, since the relation of these amplitudes varies by phonation type. Work in progress suggests that SMCZ has four phonation types, including modal, creaky, breathy, and pressed. Modal voicing is characterized by periodic opening and closing of the vocal folds, while breathy voicing occurs when the vocal folds are not pressed tightly together and have little longitudinal tension (Gordon and Ladefoged, 2001). In contrast, creaky vowels have aperiodic vibration that results from the constriction of the vocal folds (ibid). The fourth phonation type described as 'pressed' is at present not well understood, although it appears to form a separate category from the other three. SMCZ has not been the subject of any previous phonetic analyses, and these findings differ from those reported by Nellis and Hollenbach (1980) for the closely related language San Pedro Cajonos Zapotec (SPCZ). EGG and acoustic analyses provide a degree of accuracy not available in traditional elicitation and transcription practices. Potential problems with these methods include the need for a quiet recording environment, and the fact that women sometimes have vocal folds which are too small to obtain accurate EGG data. Nevertheless, these methods have provided a detailed record of the production of contrastive sounds in SMCZ, and have been useful in the development of orthography for native speakers.
Selected References Gordon, Matthew and Peter Ladefoged. 2001. Phonation types: a cross-linguistic overview. Journal of Phonetics 29/4: 383:406. Nellis, Donald G. and Barbara E. Hollenbach. 1980. Fortis versus Lenis in Cajonos Zapotec Phonology. International Journal of American Linguistics 46: 92-105.
Jose Tonko: Rescuing Kawesqar Cultural Heritage. A community-based documentation initiative Some years ago the documentation of language and cultural data of Kawesqar, the only Fueguian language that is still spoken today, was aimed at the academic community with scarce participation of the speaker-community except as informants. Rarely the product of research projects reached the community and their evaluation of these results ranged from approval to indifference, indignation, concern. Approval because the language was going to be known by scholars and it would not disappear undocumented; indifference because language death was not something they should care about; indignation because they found out that some of the information they had provided such as songs or visual documentation were commercially used without their permission or compensation; concern because the direct descendants of the community would never know the language and culture of their forebears. The urban Kawesqars, being Spanish monolinguals considered the language of their ancestor the only way to reflect their identity, since no cultural or tradition feature could differentiate them from other ethnic groups. However they had no opportunity to learn the language or get acquainted with the ancestral culture. Therefore they urged the regional government to implement a plan to revitalize the language. This plan worked at a slow pace because of bureaucracy, but it allowed to get enough language materials to start a teaching program. Nevertheless it took long time to get the necessary funding for cultural data documentation. This paper will present how the community worked in this project, how their motivation increased positively and what have been the results of the work done, present problems and future expectations.
Paul Trilsbeek, Gabriele Müller, Julia Colleen Miller:Creating alternative access layers to the DOBES archive from existing metadata structure In many areas of the world, language archives are being created, containing information on endangered languages, adhering to sophisticated metadata schemes and archiving standards. The data deposited in these archives, however, is as of yet hard to access, especially for community members who might be easily frustrated when trying to access data. In the DoBeS archive, there are various ways of searching and browsing through the deposited data, allowing for sophisticated queries targeting information in the metadata or annotations, so that expert users can work with the language documentations. However, this user-interface is too complex for a visitor that has not been thoroughly introduced to the structures and it is difficult to find results that may satisfy typical community members' interests. As a shortcut for users from the community, a community portal has been created which displays an array of traditionally relevant topics in a simple and attractive way and links to resources in the archive. Topics include traditional and personal stories, procedurals and traditional activities. It is suitable for school use and due to its topical structure, may also serve as a base for developing teaching materials. In the community portal, a number of pre-defined searches have been set up for certain resource categories. These categories are marked in the metadata, so whenever a metadata file is uploaded into the archive containing one of these values, it will automatically become part of the search results in the portal. The query to the metadata database is made possible through a so-called REST interface. Via this protocol, the metadata search can be accessed as a web service within any other dynamic web content management framework. This search technology could also be used to implement a portal for a broader audience, introducing the archive from various angles to different potential user groups. Here too, the dynamic searches guarantee a low maintenance effort once the portal has been created. And finally, we will show additional ways to represent archived data (e. g. using Google Earth layers), in order to draw a comprehensive picture of the various ways to enter the DoBeS archive and efficiently access relevant information. It is hoped that this paper will contribute to bridging the gap between the creation of comprehensive language documentation and community efforts at revitalization, and help researchers to fulfill their ethical commitment to make data as accessible as possible.
Christina Lai Truong, Lilian Garcez: Participatory Methods for Language Documentation and Conservation Language conservation and revitalization initiatives face the challenge of mitigating or reversing the impact of many powerful sociolinguistic factors which push speakers of minority language communities to shift away from their heritage languages. While practitioners of language documentation are very often concerned about language endangerment issues and value minority languages for their intrinsic worth, many language documentation programs, even when done in collaboration with a few members of the target community, do not engage with larger segments of the community, nor garner sufficient resources to address factors underlying the decline of language vitality. This paper describes three participatory methods developed to engage communities in research, planning, implementation and evaluation of language programs for their own benefit. These methods facilitate investigation of sociolinguistic phenomena to inform and spur planning for effective documentation and conservation initiatives. In a series of guided interactions, members of language communities together build visual representations of collective knowledge about their language and patterns of language use using text, symbols, and pictures. They are then invited to react to the resulting representation and discuss changes they would like to see in their situation. The first of these three tools is designed to investigate language variation, intelligibility and attitudes towards varieties of the minority language, enabling the community to discuss the scope of a language program. In the second activity, patterns of bilingualism among demographic sub-groups are diagrammed and analyzed by the community. In the third activity, the community creates a diagram of language use in various situations and the frequency with which each language spoken in the community is used in these domains. Several pilot tests of the methods have been conducted with groups of minority languages speakers in Sabah, Malaysia and on the island of Java, Indonesia. Applications for these participatory methods include 1) identifying which variety of the language would have the broadest extensibility for use in materials (audio recordings, video, books, literacy efforts), 2) assessment of language vitality and underlying factors, and 3) identifying domains which should be targeted first for documentation or conservation. However, the most valuable impact of using participatory methods is that the process itself builds community awareness and engagement with language conservation issues. The process of thinking critically about their own language situation is a step from passivity towards engagement that creates an opportunity for the community to participate in, shape, and own collaborative documentation and conservation initiatives for their language.
Ricard Vinas-de-Puig, Mayanga Yulbarangyang Balna: Linguistic and technical training as a community empowerment tool This paper addresses linguistic technical training of members of the community, under a Participatory Action Research approach. We show how it can be a contributing factor to obtain an egalitarian relationship between the speaking community and the external researchers. Also, this training increases the self-sufficiency of the indigenous team, and facilitates their role as agents in research, while being an effective element to facilitate the community's empowerment process and strengthen their agentive role in linguistic research. The project concerns the Mayangna community of North Eastern Nicaragua. The Mayangna linguists' team, a team of indigenous linguists, had been established in the mid 1990's and had been working on the collection of oral history, traditional folktales, and life stories. The team had also received linguistic training. At this point the need to consolidate the linguistic data and its analysis called for an optimization of the handling of the data. The external member of the team provided, then, the technical training for transfer and annotation of the linguistic data collected, which involved the following steps: (a) the use of (video, audio) equipment for (new) data recording, (b) the conversion of the collected data from analog to digital format, (d) the transfer of the linguistic data into ELAN software, and (c) its use for transcription and annotation. The external researcher arranged an ELAN template with the different fields relevant for the actual annotation: original text, sentence, word category, lexical meaning, inflectional information, and Spanish and English translations. The Mayangna team worked with this template in the training sessions, where the whole process (a-d above) was reviewed step-by-step. Once the training sessions were completed, the team of local linguists was able to do the actual recording, transferring and annotation tasks by themselves. These materials will be used in the bilingual educational system, in radio-broadcasting programs and for cultural revival activities. This experience of PAR, involving the equal collaboration of members of the Mayangna community and external researchers, provides an example of how a multi-faceted, continuous linguistic training enhances the process of decision making by the members of the speaking community, since the members of the community, as owners of the data, decide what kinds of elements are to be collected and analyzed and, eventually, what the research will focus on. Besides, this training component results in the empowerment of the language community, as it contributes to their self-sufficiency and autonomy as a linguistic team.
D. H. Whalen, Gary Simons: Endangered Language Families Linguists have been responding to the sharp decline in the number of languages for fifteen years and more now. While individual languages have unique features, language families, by virtue of their shared heritage, often share typologically rare features. The endangerment of entire families, implicit in language loss, has not been explored to date. Here, we use population estimates as an indicator of endangerment of families. Historically, some languages have, seemingly, survived for centuries with only a few thousand speakers. Conversely, a language with a million speakers is endangered if the youngest is 50 years old. The isolation that fostered small languages is an increasingly rare commodity, so small languages are likelier than ever to be endangered. Gordon (2005) reports that 10% of languages have 300,000 or more speakers; Krauss's (1992:7) prediction that this century would "see either the death or the doom of 90% of mankind's languages" would lead us to expect that languages smaller than this would be at risk. More conservative estimates call for a 50% loss (e.g., Crystal 2000:19). There, language families whose largest language has fewer than 7,000 speakers (the median number of speakers; Gordon 2005:15) would be at risk. Using Gordon's (2005) 94 language families, about three-quarters of the world's language families can be classified as endangered. 40% of those language families have their most populous language spoken by fewer than 7,000 speakers; another 33% fall below 300,000 in population. We plan a further analysis using Balthasar and Nichols' (2008) approximately 350 "stocks" (that is, families whose relations can be firmly established by the comparative method). The proportion of endangerment can only increase in those statistics: If we split a family into two stocks, one is bound to have a smaller language as its most populous.Some aspects of language unique to those disappearing families are outlined. Examples are the existence of OVS default word order, elaborated click inventories, grammatical metathesis and obligatory use of evidentials. Renewed efforts at documenting members of those language families seem justified.

References

BICKEL, BALTHASAR, AND JOHANNA NICHOLS. 2008. The Autotyp genealogical classification. Preprint; published version to appear by September 2008 at http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~autotyp< p>CRYSTAL, DAVID. 2000. Language death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

GORDON, RAYMOND G., JR. (ed.) 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, TX: SIL International.

KRAUSS, MICHAEL. 1992. The world's languages in crisis. Language, 68.4-10.

Robert Williams, Angelika Jacobi, Jade Comfort: Language documentation in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan: The Ghulfan Documentation Project In this paper we will report on the long history of language documentation in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, highlighting recent endangered language work being carried out in the area. Of particular focus will be the Ghulfan Documentation Project (GDP), a major documentation project working to document, analyze, and archive Ghulfan, an endangered and little documented East Sudanic language spoken in the Nuba Mountains and in the Ghulfan Diaspora. The GDP, funded through the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project, is an internationally-based collaborative team of seven linguists, situated at the American University in Cairo and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Various team members (four postdoctoral linguists, one doctoral student linguist, and two language community linguists) live in Khartoum, Cairo, and Germany, coming together for fieldwork and sharing documentation and analytical work according to team member competencies and interests. We will begin our talk with a historical overview of areal documentary linguistics in the Nuba Mountains, beginning in modern times with the work of Junker and Czermak in the first quarter of the 20th century, and continuing into the present with the GDP and other ongoing documentation projects in the Nuba Mountains, including the DOBES-sponsored Tima documentation project. In particular, we will discuss how different projects in the area have historically benefited from one another and what this has meant to the accumulated knowledge base for Nuba Mountain languages. With respect to the GDP, we will discuss a range of issues, including those involved with our preliminary work in Cairo, Egypt, with Ghulfan-speaking refugees; the challenges of working as an internationally-based team; communication and sharing of ideas and resources with other documentation projects in the area; doing fieldwork in politically sensitive areas; and the use of Geographic Information System (GIS) technology in fieldwork. It is our hope that this talk will begin a discussion of these and other issues with documentation workers in other areas so that we might mutually benefit from strategies and techniques used to confront similar challenges.
Peter Wittenburg, Chris Cox, Gerhard Budin, Debbie Garside:ISO 639 language codes in language documentation In language documentation it is a necessity to uniquely identify the documented language/dialect in a unique way. In general researchers use a specific name which has been established due to scholarly discourse or interaction with the language community. However, names are often spelled differently, various names are handled by different groups for the same language and even sometimes it may occur that a single name is used to refer to different languages. So language names only clarify for a limited group which language is meant. Language codes in the contrary were created to uniquely identify the language in focus. Statistics on 27.000 metadata descriptions in the language resource archive of the Max Planck Institute has shown that researchers, however, are often reluctant to use language codes. While the language name element was used in almost 100% of the cases exhibiting all the possible pitfalls, the language code element was only used in 40%, although the tools offered the Ethnologue list for easy classification. Some major reasons are:
- unawareness of the language codes systems
- disagreement with the classification system despite the fact that standards may offer alternative names
-unwillingness to use codes due to potential political impacts This presentation provides information on recent and future changes to the ISO 639 family of standards which deals exclusively with codes for language families, languages and dialects. Recently, pushed by the linguistic community it was recognized that the two- and three-letter codes (ISO 639-1/2) were not at all sufficient to identify the majority of the 6500 languages spoken today. Therefore, ISO adopted the Ethnologue code worked out by SIL as 639-3 since it is already widely used and has a broad coverage. However, 639-3 cannot be seen as final step along the road, since there are large communities that do not accept the chosen classification scheme and the process that is not based on regionally accepted expert communities. Therefore, work was started to specify ISO 639-4 to regulate operations within the ISO 639 family; ISO 639-5 to provide representations for the identification of language groupings and ISO 639-6, a hierarchical system to provide four letter codes for the identification of linguistic entities to a level of granularity not already included within the preceding standards. The talk will discuss the need for involving regional expert communities to comply with the basic ISO rules.
Gail Woods: Language, art, media and youth: a community-based, collaborative approach to documentation The Centre for Australian Languages and Linguistics (CALL) at Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education (BIITE) has developed Certificates I and II in Own Language Work to assist in building capacity in remote Indigenous communities to maintain, strengthen and preserve Indigenous languages. The courses provide training in language worker skills including vernacular literacy development, audio and visual recording, language analysis, transcribing and translating, language management and planning, language teaching skills and resource development. We take a project-based, interdisciplinary approach to course delivery, responding specifically to community needs and aspirations. In so doing, the foundations for community-based documentation initiatives are laid. In late 2007, a group of older women from Utopia, a remote Aboriginal communtiy in Central Australia, requested support to document bush medicine knowledge. The women wanted to create opportunities for 'old people' and young people to come together to 'record stories and write them down'. In response to this request, lecturers for Certificates in Own Language Work, Certificates in Visual Arts and Contemporary Crafts and youth media trainers have been collaborating with the community, drawing on existing strengths: oral language competence, elders' traditional knowledge and visual art practices, to establish a community driven documentation process. Key factors of the process are:
- to engage youth to research and document local knowledge of bush medicine and,
- to encourage them to express and respond to this knowledge through contemporary visual art, multimedia and the Alyawarr and Anmatyerr languages. Critical to the success of this project is the creation and maintenance of a space that allows for self-directed, creative and culturally meaningful activity for youth, to afford them the opportunity to confidently take on the role of mediating between old knowledges and digital technologies. This paper will report on the effectiveness of combining youth, media and art practices with respect to cultural knowledge preservation and language documentation. The discussion will consider factors including: successful youth engagement, the benefits of a collaborative approach to intergenerational knowledge transfer, the range and effectiveness of artefacts produced, reactions from youth and elders, and the acquisiton of new skills and roles.
Paiyu Zhang, Stephen Matthews: Documentation of Hezhen (Kile), a moribund Tungusic language: Methods and Principles Hezhen is a moribund language with less than 10 aged native speakers, but it has a comparatively rich documentary record. Such moribund languages deserve a high priority for documentation. One objective of this study is to establish a set of documentation methods and principles applicable to such languages based on the case of Hezhen. The discussion is mainly focused on sorting and evaluation of existing documents, recordings and analyses based on the moribund language, and provides processes, methods and principles of documentation for researchers, thus offering a working model of documentation. Existing documents here means those documents recorded in relatively constant and modern forms (such as audio recording, video, and transcripts in IPA, Pinyin or Chinese characters). These materials consist mainly of folk songs, oral literature and the author's lexical field notes. This paper will be divided into two parts, covering technical processing, and selection/processing of content. With regard to technical processing, we will discuss the following questions: 1. Standardization of documentation format; 2. Construction of a corpus with part-of-speech tagging; 3. development of a concise multi-lingual Tungusic (Hezhen - Manchu - Sibe - Jurchen) glossary. In the case of Hezhen, each genre of literature (oral literature, folk songs and shaman blessings) shows distinct characteristics with respect to features such as vowel harmony, case forms, aspect, particles and word order. Regarding content selection, we will discuss the different functions and values of each genre, which include: 1. Basic vocabulary and Ancient Tungusic vowel harmony in Shaman blessings; 2. Classical grammar (such as: special particle usage, suffixes as aspect marker, special word orders) and prosodic change (stem and suffix change) in folk songs; 3. Modern grammar/phonology principles of Hezhen in oral literature; 4. Loanwords and their adaptation (such as lexicalization and phonological change) in each genre.