Endangered Languages and Cultures

PARADISEC Research Papers on Sydney eScholarship Repository

5 February 20116 March 2007 by Amanda Harris

Alongside the conference papers from Paradisec’s 2006 Conference and 2003 Workshop, the Sydney eScholarship Repository also has a section devoted to general research papers by Paradisec collaborators. In this section you can find papers on everything from the The National Recording Project for Indigenous Music in Australia to the Tuscan Maggio in Italy. Research papers … Read more

Warlpiri in Sydney

5 February 20113 March 2007 by Jane Simpson

March is the month for Warlpiri in Sydney. Some people from Nyirrpi, a southwest Warlpiri community are putting on an exhibition of paintings, Emerging at Gallery Gondwana, 7 Danks Street, Waterloo, until March 13.
And then, just as they leave, some women from Lajamanu, the northernmost Warlpiri community, will be down as artists in residence for painting workshops at the Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales from the 13th to the 23rd. They’ll finish their visit by performing a public yawulyu (women’s ceremonial dance and song series) on 23rd March. This will take place during the launch of a book Breasts, Bodies, Canvas: Central Desert Art as Experience by Jennifer Biddle (UNSW Press).

Indigenous languages conference; Linguist wanted for Australian Indigenous languages project

5 February 201122 February 2007 by Jane Simpson

Two items for people who haven’t read the Australian Linguistics Society February 2007 newsletter (subscribe! get all the goss AND the Australian Journal of Linguistics).
• LINGAD 2008 25 – 28 September, Adelaide comprises 3 meetings, including:
••the Australian Linguistics Society Conference 26 – 28 September, abstracts due 16 March; (reminder: same due date also for the associated workshop on the language of poetry and song – 300 words abstracts in word or PDF format to christina.eira AT adelaide.edu.au.)
•• Indigenous Languages Conference 2007, 25-27 September 2007,
•• AUSTRALEX
• CAAMA (the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association) got squillions from DCITA for work on endangered languages and now want a linguist to help them do it. (In several procrastinatory moments I searched the DCITA website to find out how many squillions, but the site didn’t yield the information in an obvious way. Can anyone tell us?)

Sound files for Sustainable Data from Digital Fieldwork conference

5 February 201120 February 2007 by Amanda Harris

As promised in my blog last week, mp3s have now been uploaded to the Sydney eScholarship Repository to accompany the papers that had already been published there from the Sustainable Data from Digital Fieldwork Conference.

Eternity pills and common e-research problems

5 February 201119 February 2007 by Jane Simpson

All over Australia now people are writing reports on the progress of their grants – to attach to their begging-letters for more grants. Reading the reports gives you the sense that Australia is a garden of projects, each a mass of bright blossoms fragrant with success. (So why haven’t we solved world poverty or climate change yet?) That’s why it was really really good to go along to the ARC E-Research post-funding workshop (14-15 February), where participants were encouraged to report on the problems they encountered in their projects…

Events in March and April

5 February 201116 February 2007 by Jane Simpson

• the Central Australian Linguistics Circle call for papers on language description, education, literacy and indigenous knowledge. Friday 20 – Saturday 21, April 2007, Charles Darwin University, Alice Springs Campus, Australia. • the programme for the Pearl Beach Workshop on Australian Languages Friday 16 – Sunday 18, March 2007, Pearl Beach, Australia. • a reminder … Read more

Papers from Paradisec’s 2003 Workshop now on Sydney eScholarship Repository

5 February 201113 February 2007 by Amanda Harris

Most of you who have been keeping an eye on this blog for a while will know about the conference organised by Paradisec last year on Sustainable data from digital fieldwork, but you might not know about its predecessor in 2003, Paradisec’s inaugural workshop, Researchers, communities, institutions and sound recordings. The papers from this workshop, along with those from the 2006 conference, have now been made available online through the Sydney eScholarship Repository.

Genographic project: endangered language grants and web maps

5 February 20118 February 2007 by Jane Simpson

A post by Valerie Guerin on the Research Network for Linguistics Diversity list leads to a new source of funding open to individuals, groups, and organizations for language work (the Genographic Legacy Fund) on endangered languages (grant application deadline June 15 and December 15). It also leads to a rather interesting web-site which has time-aligned … Read more

Diyari spoken and written language

5 February 20117 February 2007 by admin

In a previous posting ‘Modern Grammar from nineteenth century mission materials’ Jane Simpson refers to the 2005 University of Adelaide doctoral dissertation, The language of the chosen view: the first phase of graphization of Dieri by Hermannsburg Missionaries, Lake Killalpaninna 1867-80 by Heidi Kneebone who, she says ‘takes linguists to task for NOT looking at early grammars of the languages they’re working on’.
Now I don’t have a copy of this dissertation and only had a few hours in Canberra recently to skim through a copy lent to me by Luise Hercus. I was impressed by the historical work Kneebone had done with Lutheran sources (some written in an old German handwriting that is incredibly difficult to read, at least for me) and how she turned up materials written in Diyari by native speakers that I had not seen before. But since the thesis makes claims about my own research on Diyari, spoken in northern South Australia, and appears to suggest that the language I recorded thirty years ago from the last generation of fluent speakers was in part a missionary creation, I would like to take this opportunity to make a couple of points.

Congratulations to Taiwan on saving languages big and small

5 February 20116 February 2007 by hilariodesousa

I was thinking about tone-vowel and consonant sandhis in Fuzhou and I stumbled across this spectacular website from Matsu where they put up their primary school Fuzhou language textbooks with recordings of all the texts (and cutesy background music). There are also audio demonstrations of all the consonants, rhymes and tones. Apparently they are also working on putting up traditional kids stories on their website. All the Chinese characters are glossed with IPA and Zhuyin. (Sorry, no English.)
http://www.chinaweblaw.com/matsu/index.htm