UNIVERSITÄT BIELEFELD FAKULTÄT FÜR LINGUISTIK UND LITERATURWISSENSCHAFT LEARNING EGA A LINGUISTIC FRAME OF REFERENCE FOR P RIMERS FOR ENDANGERED LANGUAGES Magisterarbeit im Fach Anglistik vorgelegt von Sophie Salffner Bielefeld, März 2004 Gutachter Prof. Dr. Dafydd Gibbon Prof. Dr. Werner Kummer CONTENTS Introduction .............................................................................................................1 1. Introducing Ega ..............................................................................................5 1.1. The Ega language ..........................................................................................5 1.2. The Ega people and their sociolinguistic situation........................................10 1.3. Ega endangerment........................................................................................21 1.4. Motivational scenarios for learning Ega .......................................................26 2. Language documentation ..................................................................................29 2.1. Teaching and language documentation.........................................................29 2.2. Language documentation vs. description......................................................31 2.3. Objectives in language documentation .........................................................35 2.4. Issues in documentary linguistics .................................................................35 2.5. Formats used in documentary linguistics......................................................39 2.6. Quality criteria.............................................................................................41 3. Linguistic description of a primer for an endangered language......................45 4. Constraints on primer making..........................................................................47 4.1. Teaching objectives .....................................................................................47 4.2. Target groups...............................................................................................48 4.3. Constraints due to the situation of the language............................................49 4.4. Constraints due to the people involved.........................................................50 4.5. External constraints......................................................................................51 5. Content of the primer – linguistically speaking................................................51 5.1. Usage or Pragmatics ....................................................................................52 5.2. Vocabulary or Semantics .............................................................................57 5.3. Syntax..........................................................................................................69 5.4. Morphology.................................................................................................70 5.5. Phonetics and phonology .............................................................................71 5.6. Orthography and orthography development .................................................72 5.7. Summary of general principles for primer-making .......................................80 6. Content – primer-relevant Ega .........................................................................82 6.1. Pragmatics/Usage in Ega..............................................................................82 6.2. Ega vocabulary/semantics............................................................................86 6.3. Ega syntax ...................................................................................................87 i 6.4. Ega morphology ..........................................................................................90 6.5. Ega phonetics and phonology.......................................................................93 6.6. Ega orthography ..........................................................................................93 7. Structure of the primer .....................................................................................93 7.1. Microstructure .............................................................................................94 7.2. Macrostructure.............................................................................................95 7.3. Mesostructure..............................................................................................95 8. Layout of the primer .........................................................................................96 8.1. Potential modalities......................................................................................96 8.2. Potential media ............................................................................................96 9. Application to Ega teaching materials ..............................................................98 9.1. An Ega orthography.....................................................................................98 9.2. A unit in an Ega textbook...........................................................................106 10. Conclusion and Outlook..................................................................................109 10.1. Summary of results ................................................................................109 10.2. Problems and open issues.......................................................................109 10.3. Outline of future avenues of work ..........................................................110 11. Bibliography ....................................................................................................111 12. Appendix.............................................................................................................. i ii TABLES Table 1: Ega consonant inventory..................................................................................8 Table 2: Ega vowel inventory........................................................................................8 Table 3: Examples for Ega verbal morphology............................................................10 Table 4: Transmission of ethnicity...............................................................................13 Table 5: Ega marriages and ethnicity...........................................................................14 Table 6: Language contexts for Ega/Dida families.......................................................16 Table 7: Contexts of Ega usage among children and adults..........................................20 Table 8: Gnama children and their interest in reading and writing their language in relation to the language spoken at home...............................................................27 Table 9: Differences between language documentation and language description ........33 Table 10: Approaches to primer making ......................................................................81 Table 11: Overview over Ega greeting formulae..........................................................83 Table 12: Ega greeting formulae template ...................................................................84 Table 13: Ega noun phrase template ............................................................................87 Table 14: Ega determiners...........................................................................................88 Table 15: Agreement between noun and numeral ........................................................89 Table 16: Ega modified noun phrases I........................................................................89 Table 17: Ega modified noun phrases II.......................................................................90 Table 18: Ega word order in declarative sentences.......................................................90 Table 19: Potential Ega compound noun......................................................................91 Table 20: Ega noun prefixes ........................................................................................91 Table 21: Noun prefixes – declension patterns.............................................................92 Table 22: Equivalences between lexicon and primer constituents ................................94 Table 23: Ega vowels and proposals for their grapheme counterparts ........................100 Table 24: Ega consonants and proposals for their grapheme counterparts ..................100 Table 25: Ega tones and proposals for their grapheme counterparts ...........................102 iii GRAPHICS Figure 1: Map of the Ivory Coast...................................................................................5 Figure 2: Language usage among Ega adults in Gnama ...............................................18 Figure 3: Language usage among Ega children in Gnama............................................18 Figure 4: Language documentation and its logistical structure.....................................30 Figure 5: Textlinguistic model of the structure of a document .....................................46 Figure 6: Distribution of competences in primer design...............................................51 Figure 7: Linguistic interdependences within a writing system ....................................74 Figure 8: A picture for the primer..............................................................................107 iv INTRODUCTION Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 2. Everyone