My colleague Stuart McGill and I have recently completed work on a new book Endangered Languages: Criticial Concepts in Linguistics that will be published by Routledge later this year. At 1,600 pages in 4 volumes it is one of the largest projects I have been involved with. The book consists of 75 key journal articles … Read more
As I mentioned in a previous post, recently anthropologists have pointed to the need to highlight issues of concern, especially in the public media. I suggested that linguists are ahead of the game here, and doing fairly well at “express[ing] their views in public forums, including the popular press”. The media sharing site YouTube is … Read more
“Welcome to this land and welcome to us all”. That’s how on 11th March Aunty Margaret Iselin opened the (tenth or eleventh) Australian Languages Workshop held this time at the University of Queensland’s Marine Biology Research Station on North Stradbroke Island. She grew up on Myora mission, and learned some language from two old grannies. … Read more
The Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages edited by Julia Sallabank and myself will be available in the UK next week (and in Australia in June). The book is being launched by Mari Jones at the conference on Language Endangerment: Documentation, Pedagogy, and Revitalization at Cambridge on 25th March. The Handbook covers issues in linguistic diversity … Read more
On the ‘5th Sunday after Epiphany 1838’ ((This is the date as given in the full title of the Darstellung der Ordinationsfeier, edited by Dr Fr Hesekiel, 1838. Altenburg: Pierer. This date correspondes to 4 February 1838)) two Lutheran missionaries from the Dresden Missionary Society, Christian (Gottlieb|Gottlob)[see comments below] Teichelmann and Clamor WIlhelm Schürmann, were … Read more
The Endangered Languages Academic Programme (ELAP) at SOAS is organising a workshop on Applied Language Documentation in sub-Saharan Africa on Saturday 14th May 2011. The workshop will discuss how the central themes of language documentation relate to improving site-specific applied language documentation, including: how corpus design might help/hinder local dissemination of language documentation outcomes; how … Read more
At the end of last month the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) at SOAS made available its 36th collection of endangered languages materials. Deposits added in February include Bogong from Ghana, Pingjiang from China, Surel from Nepal and South Eastern Huastec from Mexico. The Pingjiang collection of 69 love songs is notable for having a description … Read more
The third biennial Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory conference (LDLT3) aims to bring together researchers working on linguistic theory and language documentation and description, with a particular focus on innovative work on under-described or endangered languages. The conference will be held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London from 18-20 November 2011. In … Read more
The documentary linguistics training course DocLing 2011 wrapped up at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS) on Thursday last week. This was the fourth annual training course held in Tokyo through collaboration between the Linguistic Dynamics project of the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA) and the Hans Rausing Endangered … Read more
All volumes of our publication series Language Documentation and Description are now available for purchase through the new SOAS online store. Payment can be made by all major credit cards and the store uses the latest security technology, including Verified by Visa, so you can shop in complete safety. Simply register you name and address, … Read more
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