Working with the Kokamas from the Amazon
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Language Development and Language Revitalization in Asia1
Language development and language revitalization in Asia1 Suwilai Premsrirat Institute of Language and Culture for Rural Development, Mahidol University—Salaya (Thailand Dennis Malone SIL International—Asia Abstract Language revitalization and minority language education programs face serious obstacles when the minority language has not yet been developed beyond its traditional oral state. Language development activities, therefore, must precede and contribute to the literacy and mother tongue education components of a language revitalization program. The minority community faces a serious challenge when, for example, no writing system exists for the ethnic language, or when, for whatever reasons, an existing writing system is no longer appropriate for the language. However, practitioners in applied linguistics and minority language education are developing participatory ways of assisting such communities in the process of language development. These include collaborations in designing or revising appropriate writing systems for the languages and for promoting mother tongue literature. This paper presents, in two parts, (I) an overview of language development efforts around the world, emphasizing the interactive aspects of language development and the facilitation of minority language literature development; and (II) a description of the Chong language development and language revitalization project in Thailand. Part I. Language development and language revitalization around the world The world’s linguistic diversity is under siege. That is certain. Whether the numbers are linguist Michael Krauss’s vision of catastrophic loss at 90 percent or some of the more optimistic projections that see “only” half of the world’s language dead or dying by the end of the century, no one is suggesting that the danger is a hoax. -
A Model for the Implementation of Non-Formal Language Acquisition in Language Revitalization: the Case Study of Irish
A Model for the Implementation Of Non-Formal Language Acquisition In Language Revitalization: The Case Study of Irish Anne Beltman 12299448 MA Thesis Language and Society University of Amsterdam Supervisor: prof. F. Gobbo 06-08-2019 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Prof. dr. Gobbo, my thesis supervisor, for his guidance throughout this project. In agreeing to take on this project, he has taught me a lot about sociolinguistics, but also about academia itself. I would like to thank my friends and family for all their support, for proofreading all the drafts I sent and calming me down in cases of panic. Finally, my thanks to Fien, Kim, Zach and Jenna for being there always. 2 Abstract Non-formal language acquisition (NFLA) is language acquisition that is embedded in planned activities that are not explicitly designated as learning and is intentional from the learner’s point of view (Colardyn & Bjornavold, 2004). Using existing frameworks, a model was created to test whether a threatened language has enough support to implement NFLA- based programs, in order to help revitalization of the language. To test the proposed model, it has been applied to Irish. From this case study, it can be concluded that while the model provides a good basis, there are still improvements to be made. 3 Table of contents 1. Introduction 6 1.1. Background 6 1.2. Relevance 7 1.3. Research question 8 2. Methodology 10 3. Theoretical Background 11 3.1 Non-formal language acquisition 11 3.2 Terminology 12 3.3 Language Revitalization 12 3.4 Frameworks 14 3.4.1. -
Machine Translation for Language Preservation
Machine translation for language preservation Steven BIRD1,2 David CHIANG3 (1) Department of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne (2) Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania (3) Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California [email protected], [email protected] ABSTRACT Statistical machine translation has been remarkably successful for the world’s well-resourced languages, and much effort is focussed on creating and exploiting rich resources such as treebanks and wordnets. Machine translation can also support the urgent task of document- ing the world’s endangered languages. The primary object of statistical translation models, bilingual aligned text, closely coincides with interlinear text, the primary artefact collected in documentary linguistics. It ought to be possible to exploit this similarity in order to improve the quantity and quality of documentation for a language. Yet there are many technical and logistical problems to be addressed, starting with the problem that – for most of the languages in question – no texts or lexicons exist. In this position paper, we examine these challenges, and report on a data collection effort involving 15 endangered languages spoken in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. KEYWORDS: endangered languages, documentary linguistics, language resources, bilingual texts, comparative lexicons. Proceedings of COLING 2012: Posters, pages 125–134, COLING 2012, Mumbai, December 2012. 125 1 Introduction Most of the world’s 6800 languages are relatively unstudied, even though they are no less im- portant for scientific investigation than major world languages. For example, before Hixkaryana (Carib, Brazil) was discovered to have object-verb-subject word order, it was assumed that this word order was not possible in a human language, and that some principle of universal grammar must exist to account for this systematic gap (Derbyshire, 1977). -
Kathrin Brandt
A QUESTION OF LANGUAGE VITALITY? - ON INTERROGATIVES IN AN ENDANGERED CREOLE Kathrin Brandt Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Philosophischen Fakultät der Universität zu Köln im Fach Englische Philologie vorgelegt von Kathrin Brandt TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES IV LIST OF FIGURES VI ACKNOWLEDGMENTS VII 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Creole studies 1 1.2 LanguAge endAngerment 4 1.3 Minimalist syntax and wh-questions 5 1.4 Research questions and the orgAnizAtion of this study 7 2 LANGUAGE ENDANGERMENT 9 2.1 The linguistic situAtion 9 2.2 In favor of linguistic diversity 10 2.3 Models of lAnguAge loss 13 2.4 Assessing lAnguAge vitality 18 2.5 StructurAl consequences 29 3 SYNTACTIC THEORY OF INTERROGATIVES 34 3.1 Accounting for cross-linguistic vAriAtion 36 3.2 Landing sites 38 3.3 ConstrAints on wh-movement 42 3.4 Movement triggers 44 3.5 ClAuse typing 47 4 LOUISIANA CREOLE – HISTORY, SOCIOLINGUISTIC SETTING AND LINGUISTIC PROFILE 51 4.1 History 51 4.2 The genesis of LouisiAnA Creole 56 i 4.3 The sociolinguistic profile of South LouisiAnA 58 Louisiana Creole 58 Louisiana Regional French 60 Multilingual South Louisiana 61 Louisiana Creole as an endangered language 65 4.4 Selected aspects of LouisiAnA Creole grAmmAr 71 The verbal system 73 The nominal system 75 Constituent structure 77 The lexicon 80 5 METHODOLOGY 82 5.1 Field methods 82 5.2 Consultants, AnAlysis and the quAlitative approAch 91 5.3 Notation 96 6 SOCIOLINGUISTIC FINDINGS 98 6.1 DemogrAphics 98 Region 101 Education and occupation 102 6.2 LanguAge competence -
Increasing Cultural Compatibility for Native American Communities
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ScholarSpace at University of Hawai'i at Manoa Vol. 10 (2016), pp. 458–479 http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/ldc http://hdl.handle.net/10125/24715 Revised Version Received: 2 May 2016 Series: Emergent Use and Conceptualization of Language Archives Michael Alvarez Shepard, Gary Holton & Ryan Henke (eds.) The Value-Added Language Archive: Increasing Cultural Compatibility for Native American Communities Michael Alvarez Shepard Goucher College Language archives represent a complicated theoretical and practical site of con- vergence for Native American language communities. In this article, I explore how functionality and operation of language archives are misaligned with core sociopolitical priorities for Native American tribes. In particular, I consider how the concept of cultural and political self-determination contextualizes lack of use or resistance to participation in language archiving projects. In addition to critical evaluation, I envision a dramatically expanded role for language archives, with the goal of increasing their cultural and political compatibility for Native American groups and beyond. I use the term, ‘value-added language archive’ to describe an archive with features and support services that address emergent needs of a diverse stakeholder community. 1. Introduction1 The archive as an institution occupies a contested discourse for scholars and members of Native language origin communities alike (Manoff 2004; Mawani 2012). Etymology of the term ‘archive’ stems from a Greek word meaning a place of convergence, where things commence and where authority is commanded (Derrida 1995). Modern archives, including those specific to Native languages, area convergence of power and possibility. -
MIXED CODES, BILINGUALISM, and LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requi
BILINGUAL NAVAJO: MIXED CODES, BILINGUALISM, AND LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Charlotte C. Schaengold, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2004 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Brian Joseph, Advisor Professor Donald Winford ________________________ Professor Keith Johnson Advisor Linguistics Graduate Program ABSTRACT Many American Indian Languages today are spoken by fewer than one hundred people, yet Navajo is still spoken by over 100,000 people and has maintained regional as well as formal and informal dialects. However, the language is changing. While the Navajo population is gradually shifting from Navajo toward English, the “tip” in the shift has not yet occurred, and enormous efforts are being made in Navajoland to slow the language’s decline. One symptom in this process of shift is the fact that many young people on the Reservation now speak a non-standard variety of Navajo called “Bilingual Navajo.” This non-standard variety of Navajo is the linguistic result of the contact between speakers of English and speakers of Navajo. Similar to Michif, as described by Bakker and Papen (1988, 1994, 1997) and Media Lengua, as described by Muysken (1994, 1997, 2000), Bilingual Navajo has the structure of an American Indian language with parts of its lexicon from a European language. “Bilingual mixed languages” are defined by Winford (2003) as languages created in a bilingual speech community with the grammar of one language and the lexicon of another. My intention is to place Bilingual Navajo into the historical and theoretical framework of the bilingual mixed language, and to explain how ii this language can be used in the Navajo speech community to help maintain the Navajo language. -
John Walsh and Bernadette O'rourke
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Heriot Watt Pure TITLE OF EDITION: John Walsh and Bernadette O’Rourke (editors). ‘Comparing “new speakers” across language contexts: mobility and motivations’. Thematic edition of Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. 1 Introduction Bernadette O’Rourkea* and John Walshb aDepartment of Languages and Intercultural Studies, School of Social Sciences, Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh, UK; bSchool of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland * Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies School of Social Sciences Heriot Watt University Edinburgh EH14 4AS UK Email: b.m.a.o’[email protected] 2 Introduction In this Special Issue we describe and analyse the practices and ideologies of ‘new speakers’ of minority languages. The ‘new speaker’ label is used to describe individuals with little or no home or community exposure to a minority language but who instead acquire it through immersion or bilingual educational programmes, revitalisation projects or as adult language learners (O’Rourke, Pujolar and Ramallo 2015). Dominant discourses in linguistics and its associated strands have tended to prioritise native speech over learner varieties. In applied linguistics native speech has often been presented to learners as the only authentic and desirable variety (Davies 2003). The revitalisation of minority languages has been framed within a preservationist rhetoric often with little tolerance for linguistic innovation or transgressive practices such as code-switching, translanguaging, or hybridisation (O’Rourke and Pujolar 2013). Work on new speakers has been informed by a theoretical framework which critiques such an approach to language revitalisation. -
Indigenous and Regional Language Preservation in the U.S. and France By: Aurora Margarita-Goldkamp
Indigenous and Regional Language Preservation in the U.S. and France By: Aurora Margarita-Goldkamp Aurora Margarita - Goldkamp COMPARATIVE INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION November 23, 2014, Monterey Institute of International Studies Aurora Margarita-Goldkamp FRANCE & US LANGUAGE PRESERVATION Personal Note What if the phrase “I love you” was outlawed? Tammy De Couteau, Director of the Association of American Indian Affairs’ Native Language Program asked this question in 2004 in the Tribal College Journal. This analogy made perfect sense to her audience of self-identified American Indians whose families have lived through a history of systematic language repression. The Dakotah language presents an example of language loss; “mitakuy owasin” is now translated as “all my relatives” to those who do not understand the language very well. Yet to native speakers, this phrase actually literally represents a lost way of acknowledging that every pebble and blade of grass in the universe is a relative (AAIA). A threat much worse than losing a single meaning is the loss of a whole language. As a child, I created my own languages, so I cannot picture a world where a child is beaten for speaking its native tongue; a tongue that holds secrets, meanings, and perspectives that should be treasured and taught to others. Yet, I live in a country that has historically oppressed many cultures’ ways and tongues. When I taught English in France, I was introduced to the uncomfortable idea that I was perpetuating a lingua franca instead of revitalizing endangered tongues that are native to France. The need to research the history and recent preservation efforts of indigenous and regional languages in both the U.S. -
A Brief History of Archiving in Language Documentation, with an Annotated Bibliography
Vol. 10 (2016), pp. 411–457 http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/ldc http://hdl.handle.net/10125/24714 Revised Version Received: 19 April 2016 Series: Emergent Use and Conceptualization of Language Archives Michael Alvarez Shepard, Gary Holton & Ryan Henke (eds.) A Brief History of Archiving in Language Documentation, with an Annotated Bibliography Ryan E. Henke University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Andrea L. Berez-Kroeker University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa We survey the history of practices, theories, and trends in archiving for the pur- poses of language documentation and endangered language conservation. We identify four major periods in the history of such archiving. First, a period from before the time of Boas and Sapir until the early 1990s, in which analog materials were collected and deposited into physical repositories that were not easily acces- sible to many researchers or speaker communities. A second period began in the 1990s, when increased attention to language endangerment and the development of modern documentary linguistics engendered a renewed and redefined focus on archiving and an embrace of digital technology. A third period took shape in the early twenty-first century, where technological advancements and efforts to develop standards of practice met with important critiques. Finally, in the cur- rent period, conversations have arisen toward participatory models for archiving, which break traditional boundaries to expand the audiences and uses for archives while involving speaker communities directly in the archival process. Following the article, we provide an annotated bibliography of 85 publications from the literature surrounding archiving in documentary linguistics. This bibliography contains cornerstone contributions to theory and practice, and it also includes pieces that embody conversations representative of particular historical periods. -
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The Carl Beck Papers in Russian & Zdeněk V. David East European Studies Johann Gottfried Herder Number 1807 and the Czech National Awakening: A Reassessment The Carl Beck Papers in Russian & East European Studies Number 1807 Zdeněk V. David Johann Gottfried Herder and the Czech National Awakening: A Reassessment Zdeněk V. David is a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C., where he previously served as Librarian. Educated as a historian (Ph.D. Harvard 1960) he had also taught Russian and East European history at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) and Princeton. His book, Finding the Middle Way: The Utraquists’ Liberal Challenge to Rome and Luther was published in 2003. A Czech translation is now under preparation. With the late Robert Kann he is coauthor of the Peoples of the Eastern Habsburg Lands, 1526–1918 (1984). In addition, David has published articles on the history of Utraquism, the Jews in Czech historiography, and the philosophy of Thomas G. Masaryk. Currently, he is preparing a book on the philosophical and religious sources of the National Awakening in Bohemia, 1773–1848. No. 1807, September 2007 © 2007 by The Center for Russian and East European Studies, a program of the University Center for International Studies, University of Pittsburgh ISSN 0889-275X Image from cover: Johann Gottfried Herder by F. Tischbein. License: public domain. The Carl Beck Papers Editors: William Chase, Bob Donnorummo, Ronald H. Linden Managing Editor: Eileen O’Malley Editorial Assistant: Vera Dorosh Sebulsky Submissions to The Carl Beck Papers are welcome. Manuscripts must be in English, double-spaced throughout, and between 40 and 90 pages in length. -
Language Preservation and Development: the Role of the Library
Journal of Library and Information Sciences Vol. 2, No. 1; March 2014 23 Language Preservation and Development: The Role of the Library Olaifa, Taye Paul1 Abstracts Language is an extremely important tool in any society. Its’ indispensability nature always necessitates the continuous development. Apart from using language for communication, language is also used for education. In fact, without language, there is no education. A library is one of the tools that thus preserves and keep language for education. The objective of this paper is to examine the role libraries play in the preservation and development of languages in any society. This paper explains how the library functions as “language bank” by preserving the linguistically documented/recorded information, ideas, history etc. The paper laid much emphasis on the crucial roles of libraries in preserving languages, especially the endangered ones. Keywords: Library, Language, Language preservation, Endangered Languages 1. Introduction Language is an indispensable tool for human communication and national development. There is hardly any human activity that does not make use of language. There can never be development in a society without language. Language is the key sustenance of both the society and the people. This is further affirmed by Eva Engholm as sited in Nwadike (2003:13) that: Language is the key to the heart of the people. If we lose the key, we lose the people. If we treasure the key and keep it safe, it will unlock the door to untold riches, riches that cannot be guessed it from the other side of the door. Language in any human society is expected to be preserved and rated with the highest priority and attention from both the government and individuals. -
Purism, Variation, Change and 'Authenticity'
This is the accepted version of an article published by Cambridge University Press in European Review. Published version available from: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1062798717000400 Accepted version downloaded from SOAS Research Online: http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/25200/ Purism, variation, change and ‘authenticity’: Ideological challenges to language revitalisation Julia Sallabank SOAS University of London Abstract 1 This paper is based on recent research into the small, highly endangered language Giernesiei 2 (Guernsey, Channel Islands). Language documentation has found unexpectedly rich variation and change in Giernesiei usage, not all of which can be accounted for by regional and age-related factors. At the same time, our research into language ideologies and efforts to maintain and revitalise Giernesiei have revealed deep-seated purist or ‘traditionalist’ language attitudes which resist and deny language change. This nostalgic view of language and culture can hyper-valorise ‘authentic’ traditions (arguably reinvented: Johnson 2013) and can lead to reluctance to share Giernesiei effectively with younger generations who might ‘change the language’, despite an overt desire to maintain it. This mismatch between ideologies and practices can be seen at language festivals, in lessons for children, and in the experiences of adult learners who were interviewed as part of a British Academy-funded project. I present a taxonomy of reactions to variation in Giernesiei, which confirms and extends the findings of Jaffe (2008) in Corsica. I also discuss recent revitalisation efforts which try to bring together older and ‘new’ speakers and promote the role of adult learners and ‘re-activate’ semi-speakers. The findings support the view that full evaluation of language vitality should include documenting the processes and ideologies of language revitalisation (Sallabank 2012; Austin and Sallabank 2014).