New titles in Sydney University eScholarship repository

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Some recent accessions on Indigenous languages to the Sydney eScholarship repository:

  • Jeremy Hammond’s Honours thesis The Grammar of Nouns and Verbs in Whitesands, an Oceanic Language of Southern Vanuatu. A ripper read for Oceanists thinking about arguments for there being distinct categories of nouns and verbs.
  • Aidan Wilson’s Honours thesis Negative Evidence in Linguistics: The case of Wagiman Complex Predicates. What’s a possible complex predicate? Good to read in conjunction with Stephen Wilson’s University of Sydney Honours thesis also on Wagiman which was published by CSLI as Coverbs and Complex Predicates in Wagiman. NOTE: Aidan is not Stephen.
  • My 1985 paperlet “How Warumungu people express new concepts” published in the long dead, still lamented journal Language in Central Australia (issue 4, the last issue before it morphed into Language in Aboriginal Australia and died a couple of issues later). It was inspired by Geoffrey O’Grady’s 1960 paper, “New concepts in Nyangumarda: some data on linguistic acculturation” [1], and was followed by Rob Amery’s 1993 paper “Encoding new concepts in old languages: a case study of Kaurna, the language of the Adelaide Plains” [2]. I think the topic is due for further exploration. Psycholinguists are getting into it experimentally, but it’s important to understand what actually has happened when people have had to find new ways of talking about things.

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Another year over and a new one just begun

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To paraphrase John Lennon: “and so this is New Year’s Day and what have we done …”
Well 2009 has been a pretty hectic year for the Endangered Languages Project based at SOAS in London – lots of changes and some exciting new developments. Here are the highlights (you can download our 2009 Annual Report [.pdf] for all the details):

  • the Endangered Languages Academic Programme (ELAP) entered its sixth year of operation and enrolled 17 MA and 4 PhD students in September, the largest intake since we began in 2003. Five PhD and 14 MA students completed their degrees in 2009. ELAP has now graduated 62 MAs in Language Documentation and Description
  • the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP) moved into the Linguistics Department at SOAS in February 2009 under the leadership of Head of Department (and Interim ELDP Director) Peter Sells. ELDP’s sponsor, Arcadia Fund, agreed to extend its support until 2016 and to create a new post of Director of ELDP, to be filled by an appointment in 2010. ELDP had a busy granting year in 2009, with two grant cycles attracting 136 applications; 35 grants were awarded totaling GBP 1.4 million. ELDP has now funded around 250 projects on endangered languages
  • the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) purchased a 48 terabyte NAS storage unit, and designed a new data curation workflow that takes advantage of the storage hardware with fast, transparent access to the archived data. The second stage of the ELAR catalogue, based on a Drupal content management system with a customised and innovative “Web 2.0” approach to access management, went live in February 2009. This provides user accounts to depositors, including facilities to edit and update catalogue entries; development to enable safe access to data, observing depositors’ access conditions, will be operational in early 2010

We also held the 3L Summer School and the LDLT2 Conference, both of which attracted 100 participants, oh and Endangered Languages Week that brought in 500 visitors.
Early indications are that 2010 is going to be a busy and productive year both for us at SOAS and for language documentation and endangered languages more generally. For example, the Linguistic Society of America 2010 Annual Meeting in Baltimore 7-10 January features a range of sessions, talks, tutorials and meetings on relevant topics. Friday evening’s Invited Plenary Symposium Documentary Linguistics: Retrospective and Prospective followed by Saturday morning’s Invited Symposium on the same topic are likely to attract a lot of interest. Add to that Friday morning’s Tutorial on Archiving ethically: Mediating the demands of communities and institutional sponsors when producing language documentation, and Saturday morning’s Symposium on Findings from Targeted Work on Endangered Languages: 13 Years of the Endangered Language Fund’s Projects and you have an LSA meeting unlike any other in the past in terms of the attention being paid to documentation and endangered languages.
In another development that is likely to have important ramifications in 2010 and beyond, the LSA Executive Committee in November 2009 approved and endorsed the following policy statement, which was a revision of an earlier statement approved in 1994 (both statements were drafted by the Committee on Endangered Languages and Their Preservation):

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Workshop on Endangered Languages, Endangered Knowledge and Sustainability

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The Endangered Languages Academic Programme at SOAS is holding a workshop on Endangered Languages, Endangered Knowledge and Sustainability on Saturday 27th February 2010, from 9.30am to 6.00pm. The goal of the workshop is to explore sustainable approaches in our field: sustainability of endangered languages, and sustainability of research (in both theory and practice). Issues to … Read more

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Finding language material, Web2 or Wikipedia?

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[From Nick Thieberger, University of Melbourne] On the topic of trying to locate material in a small language, I was reading Kaisa Maliniemi’s 2009 article on the discovery of new linguistic material in Kven and Sámi in Norway’s public records archives. She discusses the fact that the records have been publicly available for some time … Read more

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Recording Aboriginal conversation with video

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In 2006 Tom Honeyman began an e-thread on the benefits of and complications relating to using digital video to record natural conversation in a fieldwork setting (see also here, here and here and here). For several years I have been trying to record conversation without actually being present to monitor the recordings. It can be quite tricky because there are so many variables. Mostly I haven’t been completely satisfied with the results. I began by using straight audio, partly because it is easier to bring it off successfully but then the visual information was sadly lacking. My first attempts with video were not very successful, partly because of inadequate equipment. I had a large imposing camera with a huge tripod. The resultant recordings were far from naturalistic. Three years ago I said that I hoped for success adapting techniques reported here, for audio, to video. It has taken a while to provide an update because even with a smaller camera, I felt I hadn’t got the mike placement right, or the images were overexposed, or they weren’t clear enough to see people’s faces easily. In fact I’ve been getting sick of trying to transcribe this sort of material. On my latest fieldtrip I was determined to do a really good recording. This meant getting outdoors in the bush, away from the sounds of ceiling fans, vehicles, aeroplanes and whippersnippers.

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FEL Scholarship established

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The Foundation for Endangered Languages (FEL) has established a fieldwork scholarship to sponsor one MA student in the Endangered Languages Academic Programme (ELAP) at SOAS. The scholarship, funded by income from FEL book sales through the SOAS Endangered Languages Project website, will support one student to undertake fieldwork during 2010 in Guernsey on the endangered … Read more

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Book announcement – Language Documentation and Description Volume 7

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Language Documentation and Description Volume 7 is a special issue containing lectures on topics in language documentation and description from the 3L Summer School held at SOAS in June-July 2009. The lectures have been revised and expanded for publication, with added examples, diagrams, tutorial questions and exercises, and suggestions for further reading. Additional papers, by Peter Austin (practical advice on applying for a research grant) and David Nathan (on the role of audio, based on a paper published in the International Association of Sound Archives journal), will make the volume particularly useful to aspiring language documenters.
The lectures and papers represent state-of-the-art discussions of the theory and practice of language documentation and description by leading exponents, and the volume will be of interest to anyone teaching or learning about documenting and describing languages. The volume will be published in early 2010.
The price for LDD 7 is normally GBP 10 however until 31 January 2010 only, we are offering a special pre-order price of GBP 7.50 (plus P & P), a 25% discount. To order use the discount order form [.doc], or visit our website.
Contents

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Inauguration of Linguamón Casa de les Llengues

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On Friday 20th November at Can Ricart in Barcelona, the permanent home of Casa de les Llengues (House of Languages) of Linguamón was officially opened by the Vice-President of Catalonia. The site is an old fabric factory (see photos) that is being completely renovated to house both permanent and temporary exhibitions on the nature of … Read more

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Job advertisement: Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre

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Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre SENIOR LINGUIST Key position available in one of Australia’s leading language centres. This is a great opportunity to work in a vibrant and complex linguistic and cultural environment. Be part of a passionate, hard-working team. We are looking for an experienced, motivated linguist who can engage with the community … Read more

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Book announcement “Endangered Languages of Austronesia” – Margaret Florey

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[from Margaret Florey] Endangered Languages of Austronesia (Oxford University Press, 2009), edited by Margaret Florey, is now published. Many of the languages in the diverse and linguistically rich Austronesian language family are undocumented and endangered. This book draws together research from authors actively involved in language documentation to provide a critical account of current knowledge. … Read more

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