Language documentation and conservation

When it comes to language, few corners of the globe are as diverse as South Asia. Throughout history, this has been an area of high multilingualism and intense linguistic contact, leading to often extreme processes of change, linguistic conflict and accommodation, as well as the emergence of new languages. However, while diversity may be the order of the day in South Asia, language obsolescence and loss have now become equally conspicuous. As a matter of fact, the most linguistically diverse countries in this region feature prominently in the worlwide charts of linguistic endangerment. In UNESCO’s online (and constantly evolving) Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, for instance, India has more entries than any other country, viz. 197 (in December 2012). Other countries in the region with a significant presence in the Atlas include Nepal (71 languages listed), Pakistan (28), Afghanistan (23) and Bhutan (19); only the Maldives are absent.
In South Asian nations, there is an established tradition of research and reflection on the preservation of linguistic and cultural diversity. Yet, given the enormity of the task, more needs to be done to understand the causes of linguistic endangerment and design solutions. It is the intention of this volume to contribute to the debate by focusing on specifically South Asian problems, processes and constraints, from both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective. As expected, most of the languages studied are, by most definitions, currently endangered - the type of languages that might feature in UNESCO’s Atlas. However, some authors also discuss languages whose vitality (and even dominance in some domains) seems assured in the near future. Their articles are a reminder that language endangerment is a complex and multi-faceted issue, and call for long-term approaches to language preservation. [...]
(from the "Foreword")

What can be downloaded here is the Second edition. The first edition was published in India by the Tura Book Room. Reference: van Breugel, Seino. 2009. Atongmorot balgaba golpho. Tura: Tura Book Room.
Atongmorot Balgaba Golpho is a book of texts in Atong recorded during my fieldwork in India for my PhD. The stories are written in the Roman alphabet, which I adapted to write Atong. The book contains 37 texts on a variety of topics from Atong speakers.

In the last fifteen years, we have seen the emergence of a branch of linguistics which has come to be called Documentary Linguistics. It is concerned with the making and keeping of records of the world’s languages and their patterns of use. This emergence has taken place alongside major changes in the technology of linguistic data representation and maintenance; alongside new attention to linguistic diversity; alongside an increasing focus on the threats to that diversity by the endangerment of languages and language practices around the world, especially in small indigenous communities; and perhaps most importantly of all, alongside the discipline’s growing awareness that linguistic documentation has crucial stakeholders well beyond the academic community; in endangered language communities themselves, but also beyond. The purpose of this paper is to discuss documentary linguistics, how it has been emerging, and where it may be headed.

La synthèse, intitulée "Décrire les langues pour comprendre le Langage", que je présente dans le cadre du diplôme national d'habilitation à diriger des recherches, vise à faire le point sur ma production scientifique actuelle et sur mes projets futurs.
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Dans une première partie introductive, j'évoque brièvement mon parcours de linguiste, qui compte pour le moment trois étapes fondamentales :
- 1. l'étude de l'occitan (commencée à partir du dialecte que l'on parlait dans ma propre famille) puis d'autres langues romanes ;
- 2. la description d'une langue créole, le capverdien (avec laquelle je suis entré en contact dans le cadre de mon Service National) ;
- 3. l'ouverture, lors de mon entrée au C.N.R.S. en 1999, d'un nouveau champ de recherche sur les langues kordofaniennes (parlées au centre de la République du Soudan), dont fait partie le koalib, idiome auquel j'ai consacré environ 12 mois de terrain depuis l'an 2.000.
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Dans une deuxième partie, intitulée la description ou le défi de rendre compte de l'altérité, je passe en revue les principales caractéristiques de mon approche (essentiellement descriptive) du Langage, en commençant par évoquer dans un premier chapitre la façon dont je recueille des données sur le terrain auprès de mes informateurs. J'analyse ensuite (second chapitre) les descriptions que j'ai publiées des idiomes que j'ai étudiés : ces travaux témoignent dans leur ensemble d'une recherche de l'exhaustivité dans le traitement de l'objet considéré et d'un intérêt marqué pour la lexicographie, illustré en particulier par mes deux dictionnaires les plus récents, le Dicionário Prático Português-Caboverdiano, "Dictionnaire pratique portugais-capverdien" (Mendes & al. 2002) et mon Dictionnaire koalib-français (en cours de préparation). Je consacre ensuite un chapitre à la prise en compte de la diachronie, un autre thème récurrent dans mon approche, puis, dans un dernier chapitre, je m'attache à montrer, à l'aide d'exemples tirés de mes divers champs d'étude, l'importance du travail de terrain pour arriver à prendre conscience de certains phénomènes linguistiques.
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La troisième partie, intitulée la relativisation de l'approche, traite des évolutions méthodologiques qui ont accompagné mon cheminement scientifique. Parmi ces évolutions, je mentionne tout d'abord la prise en compte des textes, qui m'a ouvert à la syntaxe. Je mets ensuite l'accent sur la remise en cause de plusieurs concepts de base (langue, dialecte, catégories grammaticales), au fur et à mesure de mes enquêtes de terrain ou de mes études (découverte de la tradition grammaticale arabe). Puis je m'intéresse à la façon dont ont évolué les interférences entre visées descriptives et prescriptives dans mes productions, avant de conclure sur la question du difficile équilibre entre le travail de terrain et un nécessaire entretien des connaissances théoriques du linguiste descripteur.
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La partie suivante, intitulée la diffusion du savoir, traite de l'ensemble de mes activités visant à la transmission des connaissances. Dans un premier chapitre, j'évoque mes expériences d'enseignement (cursus réguliers, cours facultatifs et conférences ponctuelles). Puis, après avoir souligné de façon générale l'intérêt et la valeur scientifiques des ouvrages de vulgarisation, je passe en revue mes principales publications dans ce domaine : articles et synthèses présentant mes recherches à un public de chercheurs, méthodes de langue, traductions et ouvrages lexicaux bilingues. Dans le dernier chapitre de cette partie, j'ai inclus une réflexion sur les relations du linguiste avec les médias, relations qui me semblent cruciales pour l'avenir de la discipline dans les sociétés occidentales contemporaines.
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Dans une cinquième partie, intitulée perspectives, je parle de mes principaux projets de publications et de recherches, en particulier dans le domaine kordofanien (poursuite de la description du koalib, étude d'autres langues heibaniennes) et dans celui des créoles afro-portugais (divers projets pour le capverdien, description de l'annobonais et du saint-antonien). Je mentionne également la vision que j'ai du futur en ce qui concerne mes activités d'encadrement de la recherche (direction de thèses, retour des connaissances acquises vers les communautés linguistiques concernées) et les projets collectifs (opération de recherche, colloques) que j'aimerais voir aboutir.
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En conclusion, je mets l'accent sur l'importance donnée au travail de terrain dans mon approche des langues et du Langage ainsi que sur la nécessité de prendre son temps pour produire des descriptions valables. Je rappelle en dernier lieu que l'étude rigoureuse des langue de communautés minorisées (et souvent brimées) peut aussi être une façon de souligner l'égale dignité des divers groupes humains (grands ou petits) en ce qui concerne le génie du Langage.

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

The Ahamb language is spoken by around 950 people, most of whom reside on the small Ahamb Island off the south coast of Malekula, the second largest island in the Republic of Vanuatu in the South Pacific. Ahamb is one of more than 30 languages of Malekula, and little was known about it until 2017 when a major language documentation project was initiated. In this paper we present the linguistic, geographic and social context in which Ahamb is spoken, assess its current vitality status, and consider prospects for its future. It is hoped that outputs of the Ahamb Documentation Project will boost the status of the language and increase literacy levels, counteracting external pressures to shift to the regional lingua franca Bislama.

This paper gives a detailed overview of the archived language documentation materials for the two languages spoken in northern Ambrym, Vanuatu: North Am-brym and Fanbyak. I discuss the speakers and the language situation in northern Ambrym to give readers an introduction to the culture of the area. The archived materials encompass five different research projects focussing on the two languages , including documentation and literacy development projects. Data collection , workflows, file-naming conventions, and community involvement are all discussed. The deposited materials are described along with overviews of the different genres, sub-genres, and keywords to enable users to navigate and discover relevant recordings.

All anthropologists should take to heart Dell Hymes’s frequent quip, “Language is too important to leave to linguists and linguistics is too valuable to ignore.” This century will see the disappearance of hundreds of languages and a significant reduction in the use of thousands of others, at the very least. Documenting endangered ways of speaking (in any language) is part of producing sophisticated and ethically robust anthropology. Most indigenous communities want knowledge documented and many are enthusiastic about collaborative projects with anthropologists. Producing language documentation has never been easier with the recent proliferation of computer software and inexpensive quality audio equipment. Collaborative anthropology need not eclipse theory driven anthropology or divert junior scholars from the production of PhD dissertations and journal articles critical for professional advancement. This presentation will provide anthropologists with a six-step program to add a language documentation element to their current ethnographic research practices. Documentary linguists preach to their colleagues that people speak in a context, and this context needs attention. Anthropologists know that, of course, but they need to be reminded of the importance of form in expression and the documentation of specific, original forms leads to a richer and deeper anthropology. It is also a vital part of ethical research practices, good relations with source communities, and an easy way to make a significant impact now and forever.  A small investment in time and money produces anthropology that makes a difference in people’s lives.

The development of written literature in languages which are not usually written by their speakers can be confounded by a circular problem. Potential writers are reluctant or unmotivated to write in a language that no one can read. But at the same time, why learn to read a language for which there is nothing available to read? The writers wait for the readership, while the readers wait for material. In this paper I argue that Twitter can be used effectively to support burgeoning writers of languages for which no current readership exists by partnering writers with volunteer readers who do not need to know the target language. I lay out a model for this type of work that is an effective way for outside linguists and their students to support indigenous language activists.

Michel Ferlus est un spécialiste de la phonologie historique des langues d’Asie du Sud-Est, et en particulier de la famille austroasiatique et du tai-kadai. Les données qu’il a recueillies au cours de son activité comme « linguiste de terrain » proviennent de plus de quarante parlers, dont un grand nombre étaient jusque-là non documentés. Ces données sont désormais librement accessibles en ligne, grâce à un projet de numérisation intitulé « DO-RE-MI-FA : Données des Recherches linguistiques de Michel Ferlus en Asie du sud-est », réalisé de septembre 2014 à février 2016.

In this chapter, I endeavor to contribute towards a collective effort to reflect on the evolution and state-of-the-art of language documentation. I reflect on Himmelman (1998) from the perspective of language endangerment and revitalization in Mexico and Central America today. I identify a number of topics that are critical to the practice of language documentation in the region and that in my view were only marginally mentioned in Himmelmann’s seminal paper. These topics revolve around the participation, consent, interests and needs of speakers of the very languages that are documented. Notably, I argue that (i) language documentation is critical for language revitalization, (ii) I echo current calls in the community-based research literature for ensuring that language documentation is collaborative, (iii) that to this end, training opportunities for language community members need to increase and (iv) that a concerted effort is needed to develop appropriate ways to ensure informed...

In this paper, I reflect on the diversity of participation in language documentation in the Indonesian context over the past two decades. I show that progress has been made in documentation research on the minority languages, with the concerted efforts of different stakeholders (community/non-community—among the latter, affiliations with universities, non-governmental organizations, the government, and other types of organizations of local speech communities). However, challenging issues remain in relation to the local communities' capacity, motivation, and leadership for helpful and long-term active participation in language documentation.

Sri Lanka Portuguese (SLP) is a Portuguese-lexified creole formed during Sri Lanka’s Portuguese colonial period, which lasted from the early 16th century to the mid-17th century. The language withstood several political changes and became an important medium of communication for a portion of the island’s population, but reached the late 20th century much reduced in its distribution and vitality, having essentially contracted to the Portuguese Burgher community of Eastern Sri Lanka. In the 1970s and 1980s, the language was the object of considerable research and documentation efforts, which were, however, curtailed by the Sri Lankan civil war. This chapter reports on the activities, challenges, and results of a recent documentation project developed in the post-war period and designed to create an appropriate and diverse record of modern SLP. The project is characterised by a highly multidisciplinary approach that combines linguistics and ethnomusicology, a strong focus on video recordings and open-access dissemination of materials through an online digital platform (Endangered Languages Archive), archival prospection to collect diachronic sources, a sociolinguistic component aimed at determining ethnolinguistic vitality with a view to delineating revitalisation strategies, and a strongly collaborative nature. Here, we describe the principal outputs of the documentation project, which, in addition to a digital corpus of transcribed and annotated materials representing modern manifestations of SLP and the oral/musical traditions of the Burgher community, also include the findings of the sociolinguistic survey, an orthographic proposal for the language, as well as the copies and transcriptions of hard-to-obtain historical sources on SLP (grammars, dictionaries, biblical translations, liturgical texts, and collections of songs).

This paper discusses a collaboration between a university linguistics department and an Indigenous community, with the joint aim to increase the vitality of, and knowledge about, Mi’gmaq (Eastern Algonquian). It describes the history of the language in the community and how the partnership was initially formed. It discusses several joint initiatives: the development of digital language-learning resources, a class curriculum, and the hosting of an intergenerational open language workshop in the community. The authors share the models of work and lessons that have influenced them as this partnership has grown.

This presentation unpacks the rationale and delivery of a series of workshops designed to support Gumbaynggirr community members teaching their language in schools in NSW, Australia. The strengths of people and resources at the heart of Gumbaynggirr language revival lead to ‘story’ emerging as the basis of the workshops. (session 3.5.6)

The last decade has seen great advances in the development of electronic tools for automated interlinearization, corpus creation and lexicon building (e.g. Fieldworks Explorer [FLEx]), as well as tools for creating time-aligned annotations (e.g. ELAN). However, methods for sharing these new data formats online lag far behind. While good options exist for lexical data (e.g. Webonary, Lexique Pro), there is no tool for turning a project created in the FLEx software into an online interlinearized corpus. We present here a tool in development which does precisely that. FLEx databases can be searched using regular expressions and individual lines from a text can be linked to audio and video media. The tool can furthermore bring together linguistic data in diverse formats (from ELAN, Praat, Fieldworks, Toolbox, Shoebox) for a single query and allow for queries over multiple language projects. We discuss the benefits of this program in relation to several ongoing fieldwork projects that ar...

The Saliba-Logea documentation project has been working towards a web-based text database with text-audio linkage and searchable annotations. In this article, I discuss the impact that the nature of data processing can have on linguistic analysis and I demonstrate this on the basis of two research questions: the positioning of PPs and the distribution of plural markers. Saliba-Logea PPs can be ambiguous as to whether they belong to the preceding or following clause. To investigate whether there is a correlation between a PP’s position and its semantic role text-only transcriptions turn out to be insufficient. The second question relates to the Saliba-Logea plural suffix which originally occurred only on nouns with human referents. However, some speakers use it in novel contexts and in order to investigate these extended uses and who drives them access to metadata about the speakers is required. I show that text-audio linkage can be a prerequisite for the analysis of syntactic constructions and that access to metadata can have a direct effect on the linguistic analysis.

This paper describes a new methodology for testing intelligibility across closely related languages and dialects in a traditional oral society in Vanuatu. There are many reasons why it could be useful to establish how well speakers of related varieties can understand one another: such knowledge is relevant to language planning and policy making, and it can shed light on the dynamics of language contact. However, conventional approaches to intelligibility testing, such as ‘recorded text testing’ (Hickerton et al. 1952; Pierce 1952; Voegelin & Harris 1951), are time consuming to score, and difficult to implement consistently. In Europe, fast and efficient intelligibility testing has been successfully carried out across closely related varieties (cf. Vanhove 2014; Gooskens forthcoming; Schuppert & Gooskens 2011a, 2011b, inter alia). However, these methods assume that test subjects are literate and computer-savvy. The methodology discussed in the present paper adapts European methods to...

This paper describes the evolution of a lexical resource project for Nxaʔamxcin, an endangered Salish language, from the project’s inception in the 1990s, based on legacy materials recorded in the 1960s and 1970s, to its current form as an online database that is transformable into various print and web-based formats for varying uses. We illustrate how we are using TEI P5 for data-encoding and archiving and show that TEI is a mature, reliable, flexible standard which is a valuable tool for lexical and morphological markup and for the production of lexical resources. Lexical resource creation, as is the case with language documentation and description more generally, benefits from portability and thus from conformance to standards (Bird and Simons 2003, Thieberger 2011). This paper therefore also discusses standards-harmonization, focusing on our attempt to achieve interoperability in format and terminology between our database and standards proposed for LMF, RELISH and GOLD. We show...

Whether tone should be represented in writing, and if so how much, is one of the most formidable challenges facing those developing orthographies for tone languages. Various researchers have attempted to quantify the level of written ambiguity in a language if tone is not marked, but these contributions are not easily comparable because they use different measurement criteria. This article presents a first attempt to develop a standardized instrument and evaluate its potential. The method is exemplified using four narrative texts translated into Elip, Mbelime, and Eastern Dan. It lists all distinct written word forms that are homographs if tone is not marked, discarding repeated words, homophony, and polysemy, as well as pairs that never share the same syntactic slot. It treats lexical and grammatical tone separately, while acknowledging that these two functions often coincide. The results show that the level of written ambiguity in Elip is weighted towards the grammar, while in Mbe...

We describe a structured task for gathering enriched language data for descriptive, comparative, and documentary purposes, focusing on the domain of social cognition. The task involves collaborative narrative problem-solving and retelling by a pair or small group ...

Plains Apache is a Southern Athabaskan language with no fluent first language speakers that is spoken in southwestern Oklahoma by semi-speakers and rememberers. Given the absence of fluency, any future endeavors with the language by either academic researchers and/or the heritage language community will necessarily have to rely heavily on previously documented materials. Finding and accessing previous documentation is already a priority for any endangered language community, but it is even more urgent for a language like Plains Apache. This paper examines why the challenges of accessing documented and archived data of endangered native North American languages exist in general and specifically discusses the accessibility, or lack thereof, of all the known documentation of Plains Apache.
Archiving has become an integral part of documentary linguistics, but the linking of archiving with language documentation was not really articulated or considered part of ethical professional behavior until the late 1990s. As such there is a large amount of unarchived and currently inaccessible endangered language documentation for many native North American languages collected during the twentieth century.  As a research assistant on a project to document the Plains Apache language, I have been gathering all the known documentation of the language to contribute to the dictionary that will be created as part of the project. The discussion in this presentation will focus on the linguistic content, presence or lack of metadata, and ease of access of currently accessible Plains Apache documentation. Making any and all previous documentation known and accessible will be valuable not only to any members of the Plains Apache community for any future endeavors at language revitalization, but also to researchers and linguists for guiding current and future work with those who still have some knowledge or memory of the language.

Social networking sites have become ubiquitous in our daily communicative exchanges, which has brought about new platforms of identification and opened possibilities that were out of reach for many minoritized communities. As they represent an increasing percentage of the media we consume, these sites have been considered crucial for revitalization processes. However, the growing importance of social media may also pose a problem for minoritized languages, as the need for communication with a wider audience seems to require the use of a language of wider communication. One way in which this apparent need for a global language can be avoided is by creating virtual communities where the minoritized languages can be used without competition, a virtual breathing space. This study analyzes language practices of eight communities: four North Frisian and four West Frisian virtual communities. The analysis focuses on the languages used in each community, the topics discussed, as well as the status of the minoritized language in the community. A total of 1,127 posts are analyzed to determine whether these communities function as breathing spaces, the factors that may foster or prevent the emergence of these spaces, and the similarities and differences between these two sociolinguistic contexts.

We describe a structured task for gathering enriched language data for descriptive, comparative, and documentary purposes, focusing on the domain of social cognition. The task involves collaborative narrative problem-solving and retelling by a pair or small group ...

This paper presents an overview of the British Sign Language Corpus Project–the first endeavor ever to create a machine-readable digital corpus of British Sign Language (BSL) collected from deaf signers across the United Kingdom. In the field of sign language studies, it represents a unique combination of methodology from variationist sociolinguistics and corpus linguistics. Unlike previous large-scale sign language sociolinguistic projects, the dataset is being annotated and tagged using ELAN software, given metadata descriptions, ...

Language documentation and description are closely related practices, often performed as part of the same fieldwork project on an un(der)-studied language. Research trends in recent decades have seen a great volume of publishing in regards to the methods of language documentation, however, it is not clear that linguists' awareness of the importance of robust data-collection methods is translating into transparency about those methods or data citation in resultant publications. We analyze 50 dissertations and 50 grammars from a ten-year span (2003-2012) to assess the current state of the field. Publications are critiqued on the basis of transparency of data collection methods, analysis and storage, as well as citation of primary data. While we found examples of transparent reporting in these areas, much of the surveyed research does not include key information about methodology or data. We acknowledge that descriptive linguists often practice good methodology in data collection, ...

We describe a structured task for gathering enriched language data for descriptive, comparative, and documentary purposes, focusing on the domain of social cognition. The task involves collaborative narrative problem-solving and retelling by a pair or small group of language speakers, and was developed as an aid to investigating grammatical categories relevant to social cognition. The pictures set up a dramatic story in which participants can feel empathetic involvement with the characters, and trace individual motivations, mental and physical states, and points of view. The data-gathering task allows different cultural groups to imbue the pictures with their own experiences, concerns, and conventions, and stimulates the spontaneous use of previously under-recorded linguistic structures. We argue that stimulus-based elicitation tasks that are designed to stimulate a range of speech types (descriptions, dialogic interactions, narrative) within the single task contribute quantitativel...

Most people in the world speak more than one language, making bilingualism the norm rather than the exception. Furthermore, speakers generally also move their hands – they gesture – in coordination with speech and language in nontrivial ways. Bilingualism and multimodality should thus be on research agendas focused on the nature of linguistic systems and language use in context, yet they are often overlooked. Conversely, research and theorizing on bilingualism and multimodality is often based on WesternEuropean, standardized languages, and little is known about other linguistic contexts. This paper makes the point that language documentation data has the potential to inform theoretical and empirical studies of linguistics, bilingualism and multimodality in entirely new ways, and, conversely, that documentation work would benefit from taking the bilingual and multimodal nature of its data into account.

This article discusses the technical aspects of a solar power setup for remote field situations. It guides the reader through estimating power consumption and setting up a basic solar kit. The authors address picking a solar panel, using a charge regulator, and choosing a battery based on estimated power consumption and availability. They discuss two different types of power adaptors, how to connect the equipment, and the benefits and drawbacks of using multi-meters. They address the use of rechargeable batteries and finally, caution against too heavy a reliance on solar power.