Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication No. 13 Documenting Variation in Endangered Languages edited by Kristine A. Hildebrandt, Carmen Jany, and Wilson Silva Documenting Variation in Endangered Languages edited by Kristine A. Hildebrandt Carmen Jany Wilson Silva Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication No. 13 ii PUBLISHED AS A SPECIAL PUBLICATION OF LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION & CONSERVATION LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION & CONSERVATION Department of Linguistics, UHM Moore Hall 569 1890 East-West Road Honolulu, Hawai'i 96822 USA UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI'I PRESS 2840 Kolowalu Street Honolulu Hawai'i 96822 1888 USA © All texts and images are copyright to the respective authors, 2017 All chapters are licensed under Creative Commons Licenses Cover design title 'Purple Spiral' using image generously provided by Kasia Mosaics http://www.kasiamosaics.com Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data ISBN-10: 0-9973295-0-5 ISBN-13: 978-0-9973295-0-6 http://hdl.handle.net/24754 iii Contents Contributors iv 1. Introduction: Documenting variation in endangered languages 1 Kristine A. Hildebrandt, Carmen Jany, and Wilson Silva 2. Perspectives on linguistic documentation from sociolinguistic 6 research on dialects Sali A. Tagliamonte 3. Documenting variation in (endangered) heritage languages: 33 How and why? Naomi Nagy 4. He nui nā ala e hiki aku ai: Factors influencing phonetic 65 variation in the Hawaiian word kēia Katie Drager, Bethany Kaleialohapau‘ole Chun Comstock and Hina Puamohala Kneubuhl 5. Three speakers, four dialects: Documenting variation in an 94 endangered Amazonian language Amalia Horan Skilton 6. Documenting sociolinguistic variation in lesser-studied 116 indigenous communities: Challenges and practical solutions John Mansfield and James Stanford 7. Language shift and linguistic insecurity 137 Maya Ravindranath Abtahian and Conor McDonough Quinn 8. Areal analysis of language attitudes and practices: 152 A case study from Nepal Kristine A. Hildebrandt and Shunfu Hu iv Contributors MAYA RAVINDRANATH ABTAHIAN is a sociolinguist who studies language variation and change, with a special interest in language contact, maintenance and shift. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Rochester in the Department of Linguistics and was previously an assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire. She received her Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania, where her dissertation focused on language variation in Garifuna, a Central American Arawak language in contact with Belizean Kriol in Belize. In addition to ongoing work on Garifuna she is currently involved in two projects: one that explores language contact and shift in Indonesia, and second project that seeks to examine language variation and change in the context of the deindustrialization of northern U.S. cities. KATIE DRAGER is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her interests are phonetics, sociolinguistics, and experimental phonology, and her work focuses on the production and perception of linguistic variation. As a parent of a child in the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo program (a Hawaiian immersion ‘language nest’), she also has a vested interest in – and a responsibility to – the conservation, regeneration, and reclamation of Hawaiian. KRISTINE HILDEBRANDT received her Ph.D. in linguistics at the University of California Santa Barbara. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She specializes in language documentation and conservation of Tibeto-Burman languages of Nepal, with particular interests in tonal phonology, argument structure, speaker-reported language practices and attitudes, spatial visualization of variation, and more generally, in the effects of language contact in multilingual, typologically diverse areas. SHUNFU HU is Professor of geography at the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He was the recipient of ESRI Best Scientific Paper Award in Geographic Information Systems and has been an active researcher in multimedia mapping. Dr. Hu serves on the editorial advisory board for the International Journal of Information and Communication and Technology Research, and the Journal of Geovisualization and Spatial Analysis. He also serves as the associate editor for the Journal of Emerging Trends in Computing and Information Sciences. Dr. Hu has published over 40 peer refereed journal papers and book chapters. He has received numerous contracts with local governments and federal research grants. CARMEN JANY is Professor of linguistics and Spanish at California State University, San Bernardino. She received her Ph.D. in linguistics from UC Santa Barbara in 2007 and a doctorate from the University of Zurich, Switzerland in Hispanic Linguistics in 2001. Her expertise includes typology, language contact, grammatical relations, language documentation and orthography development, and phonetics and phonology. Her research focus lies on Chimariko (Northern California) and on Chuxnabán Mixe (Oaxaca, Mexico). BETHANY KALEIALOHAPAU‘OLE CHUN COMSTOCK received her Master's degree in experimental linguistics from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. As a native Hawaiian linguist, her interests concern language in Hawaiʻi, including revitalization, sociolinguistics, and acquisition. She v advocates for revitalization and linguistic diversity through lettering design and is committed to educating young people about language and identity. JOHN MANSFIELD researches how the social uses of language are manifested in diverse language types, especially the Aboriginal languages of northern Australia. John obtained his Ph.D. from the Australian National University, and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Melbourne and a visiting scholar at the University of Zurich. John specializes in the Murrinhpatha and Marri Tjevin languages, both spoken at Wadeye in the Northern Territory of Australia. He has further research interests in the Anindhilyakwa language of Groote Eylandt, the Chintang language of Nepal, and the Reira Tangsa language of Arunachal Pradesh, India. NAOMI NAGY is an Associate Professor of linguistics and undergraduate chair of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Toronto. She received her Ph.D. in linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1996, writing a dissertation about language contact and its effects on Faetar, a Francoprovençal dialect spoken in a village in southern Italy. Her primary research project now analyzes variation and change in eight heritage languages spoken in Toronto (http://projects.chass.utoronto.ca/ngn/HLVC), including comparison to homeland varieties, examination of the effects of ethnic orientation, and pedagogical components to train researchers to conduct variationist analyses of less-codified varieties. She has published recently in Heritage Language Journal, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Journal of Sociolinguistics, Language and Communication, Language Variation and Change, Lingua, and Linguistic Vanguard CONNOR MCDONOUGH QUINN is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Southern Maine Department of Linguistics. A documentary and revitalization linguist whose theoretical research centers mainly around morphosyntax, he has worked primarily with the Eastern Algonquian speech communities indigenous to the current-day U.S.-Canadian Northeast. His dissertation examines gender, person, and referential- and clausal-dependency morphology in Penobscot verbal argument structure; subsequent and ongoing collaborative work has included creating an audiovisual archive of Passamaquoddy conversational speech, devising learner-L1- informed approaches to ESOL/ELL teaching, and developing effective adult heritage-learner curricula for Maliseet, Mi'kmaw, and Abenaki revitalization efforts. He is now finishing a three- year NSF/NEH DEL-funded project to finalize and publish a legacy manuscript dictionary of Penobscot, while also continuing to focus on improving L2 pedagogical strategies for Eastern Algonquian and other indigenous North American languages. HINA PUAMOHALA KNEUBUHL is a former Lecturer of Hawaiian language at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where she received her M.A. from the Kawaihuelani Center for Hawaiian Language. Her interests are language preservation and revitalization, with a focus on variation in native speakers' speech and the creation of resources aimed at helping second language speakers learn about and acquire the variation. In addition to her research on variation in Hawaiian, she has worked extensively with the Hawaiian language recordings at the Bishop Museum's Library and Archives in an effort to increase their accessibility. She also works to normalize the language through, for example, being part of a fashion company that creates clothing featuring Hawaiian language along with native plants and animals. With Hawaiian language as her primary means of communication with her two daughters, Hina is deeply invested in its perpetuation. vi WILSON SILVA is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He works on the documentation and description of Desano and Siriano, two Eastern Tukanoan languages of the Northwest Amazonia. His research interests includes: language documentation, linguistic typology and description, language revitalization. AMALIA HORAN SKILTON is a Ph.D. candidate in