Dokumentation bedrohter Sprachen / Documentation of Endangered Languages

Bewilligungen / Grants 2009

Hunter-gatherers and semantic categories: an interdisciplinary workshop on theory, method and documentation

21.03.2010 - 25.03.2010 in Köln Umgebung

Max-Planck-Institut für
Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen
Language and Cognition Group
Dr. Asifa Majid
NIEDERLANDE

Max-Planck-Institut für
Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen
Language and Cognition
Research Fellow
Dr. Niclas Henric Burenhult, Ph.D.
NIEDERLANDE

Radboud University, Nijmegen
Faculty of Social Sciences
Cultural Anthropology
Prof. Dr. Thomas Widlok
NIEDERLANDE

Ansprechpartner:
Max-Planck-Institut für
Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen
Language and Cognition Group
Dr. Asifa Majid
Postfach 310
6500 AH Nijmegen
NIEDERLANDE
Tel.: +31 24 3521 273
Fax: +31 24 3521 213
Homepage: http://www.mpi.nl/people/majid-asifa

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Two languages of the Papuan Tip Cluster (Continuation of the project: Towards the documentation of Saliba-Logea, an endangered language of Papua New Guinea)

Bewilligung: 24.06.2009  Laufzeit:  2 Jahre

Papua New Guinea hosts over 800 different languages and is well known for its great linguistic diversity. Throughout much of Papua New Guinea, shift to the dominant languages English and Pidgin is well under way and many languages are already severely threatened. Target of this documentation project are Saliba and Logea, two Western Oceanic languages of the Papuan Tip cluster spoken in Milne Bay Province (estimated number of speakers 2,500). The project started in 2004. The planned second phase builds on the achievements of the first phase and on the infrastructure the project has set up. For the archived corpus to be a resource that is as accessible and useful as possible to other researchers and to future generations of probably non-fluent speakers, the lexicon database and the quality of the text translations will be essential. That is why in the project's one year final phase the Australian-German team will extend and improve the existing draft lexicon and provide more fine-tuned translations for a larger part of the Saliba-Logea corpus.

Monash University, Clayton
School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics
Linguistics Program
Dr. Anna Margetts
AUSTRALIEN

Monash University, Clayton
School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics
Linguistics Programm
Dr. Carmen Dawuda
AUSTRALIEN

University of Melbourne
School of Languages & Linguistics
French, Italian and Spanish Studies
Prof. Dr. John Hajek
AUSTRALIEN

Ansprechpartner:
Monash University, Clayton
School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics
Linguistics Program
Dr. Anna Margetts
Clayton campus, Wellington Road
Clayton, Victoria 3800
AUSTRALIEN
Tel.: +61 3 9905 2290
Fax: +61 3 9905 5437
Homepage: http://arts.monash.edu.au/linguistics/staff/amargetts.php

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Documenting biocultural diversity in the languages of Vurës and Vera'a (Fortsetzungsvorhaben)

Bewilligung: 24.06.2009  Laufzeit:  2 Jahre

Vanua Lava is an island of only 334 sq.km with a population of approximately 2,000 inhabitants in the Republic of Vanuatu, and yet this small island was, until recently, home to four actively spoken languages. Two of these languages are now on the verge of extinction, the other two languages are target of this documentation project which started in 2006. The two languages of this study are spoken within an hour's walk of each other and yet they are considerably different. Vera'a is the more endangered with approximately 200 - 300 speakers, residing mainly in the one village of the same name. Vurës is a considerably larger language with around 1,000 speakers. That is why Vera'a is not only endangered due to contact with English, French and the pidgin Bislama, but also to some extent by Vurës itself. In the extension phase of the project the team will focus on the transcription, translation, further annotation and archiving of recorded data material to complete the corpus in the electronic archive at the Max-Planck-Insitute in Nijmegen.

Universität Kiel
Seminar für Allgemeine und
Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft
Prof. Dr. Ulrike Mosel
Olshausenstraße 40
24098 Kiel
Tel.: 0431 880 2414
Fax: 0431 880 7405
Homepage: http://www.linguistik.uni-kiel.de/mosel_kontakt.htm

University of Newcastle
Faculty of Education and Arts
School of Humanities and Social Science
Department of Linguistics
Dr. Catriona Malau
University Drive
Callaghan NSW  2308
AUSTRALIEN
Homepage: http://www.newcastle.edu.au/school/hss/areas/linguistics.html

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Languages of Southwest Ambrym

Bewilligung: 24.06.2009  Laufzeit:  3 Jahre

The project aims at the documentation of the languages of the West and South of the island of Ambrym in the South Pacific. Ambrym is the fifth-largest island of the Republic of Vanuatu (formerly known as the New Hebrides). Its highest elevations are two neighbouring active volcanoes, but in fact the island is one large volcano raising about 3000 m from the sea bottom. Currently, it is even unclear how many languages are spoken due to dialect chaining. Preparatory research provided evidence for the existence of three to five separate languages for the North, West and South of Ambrym. The languages are small, with about 6000 speakers in total, and they are becoming increasingly endangered due to the growing use of the lingua franca, Bislama, and the levelling-out of language and dialect differences. There is a specific threat to the languages of Ambrym because of its active and sometimes very destructive vulcanoes. The documentation will comprehend the languages' lexicon and grammar  and the use of these languages in informal conversation, storytelling, and in the context of ritualized activities such as songs, dances, court cases, religious services, and in the unique art of sand drawing. It intends to capture the striking dialectal variety of these languages by systematic investigation of local differences.

Zentrum für Allgemeine
Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie
und Universalienforschung, Berlin
Prof. Dr. Manfred Krifka
Schützenstraße 18
10117 Berlin
Tel.: 030 20192 401
Fax: 030 20192 402
Homepage: http://amor.rz.hu-berlin.de/%7Eh2816i3x/lehrstuhl.html

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The Kurumba Languages of the Nilgiris in South India

Bewilligung: 24.06.2009  Laufzeit:  3 Jahre

The aim of the project is to collect, archive and make available a long lasting and multipurpose multimedia documentation of the language and culture of the Kurumbas in South India. The Kurumbas live in small groups dispersed on the slopes and in the forest areas encircling the Nilgiris. This mountainous massif rises abruptly and culminates in a hilly plateau ranging from 2000 - 2600 m in elevation, bordered by dense, tropical forest extending to its foothills. The whole Nilgiri area is sparsely inhabited by very small and mobile tribal groups, depending mainly on the environment for subsistence. The urgency of the documentation is motivated by the fast disruption of the traditional social ties and ways of life. The project will document the Kurumba language spoken by four distinct groups of people: the Jenu Kurumba, the Alu Kurumba, the Cholanaika and the Mullu Kurumba. The French-Indian-German project will give priority to the linguistic and ethnographic features linked to the natural environment, the tribal mode of life and the specific Nilgiri cultural traditions. For instance, a search for 'honey collection' will give access to videos showing how different groups practice it, to the audio files and annotated texts of the narratives and songs related to this activity, to the vocabulary connected to this theme.

Universität München
Fakultät für Kulturwissenschaften
Institut für Ethnologie und Afrikanistik
Prof. Dr. Frank Heidemann
Oettingenstraße 67
80538 München
Tel.: 089 2180 9623
Fax: 089 2180 9602
Homepage: http://www.kulturwissenschaften.uni-muenchen.de/einrichtungen/f12_department1/index.html

CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Département SHS (Sciences humaines et sociales)
Laboratoire des langues et civilisations à
tradition orale (Lacito - UMR 7107)
Dr. Christiane Pilot-Raichoor
8, rue Guy Moquet
94800 Villejuif
FRANKREICH
Tel.: +33 1 49 58 37 78
Fax: +33 1 49 58 37 79
Homepage: http://lacito.vjf.cnrs.fr/index.htm

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Multi-media documentation of the Oyda language

Bewilligung: 24.06.2009  Laufzeit:  3 Jahre

Oyda is an endangered Omotic language in south-west Ethiopia. It is spoken by some 14,000 people and faces pressure from surrounding dominant languages and changes in the internal organization of the strongly hierarchical Oyda society with three distinctive social strata divided along ethnic and occupational lines: 1) the Mala, who constitute ruling families; 2) the Tsoma, who represent different clans and are occupationally farmers; 3) the Mana, consisting of potters and smiths only. The latter are marginalized. The social stratification has consequences in language use, threatening the continuity of the language. The proposed research intends to build a multi-media documentation of the language and part of the cultural aspects. For the latter the project will document one of the important traditional practices of reciprocal labour exchange, known in Oyda as haile. The multimedia documentation will cover different genres (descriptive, narrative, procedural, etc.) recorded in the language area by observing the day-to-day life of the society. The project is carried out by the Ethiopian linguist Amha from Leiden University together with the German scholar Bernhard Köhler in cooperation with two Ethiopian colleagues from Addis Ababa Universtiy.

Leiden University
Leiden University Centre for Linguistics
Department of African Languages and Cultures
Dr. Azeb Amha
Postfach 9515
2300 RA Leiden
NIEDERLANDE
Tel.: +31 71 5272 782
Fax: +31 71 5277 569
Homepage: http://www.lucl.nl/

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Inyman Kalmu: Languages of the Cobourg Region, North Australia, Phase II

Bewilligung: 24.06.2009  Laufzeit:  1 Jahr

Fewer than one hundred Iwaidja speakers remain, and even this figure includes many who have an attenuated knowledge of their language. The steady and remorseless death of senior speakers has been sweeping away much unique knowledge encoded in the languages of the Coburg region, Northern Territory, Australia. For this reason, working as much as possible with these last speakers while they remain alive is imperative, and motivates the continuation of primary language data collection. Iwaidja is a language of specific linguistic interest which at the same time poses significant difficulties for lexicography, word-class theory, and grammatical relations, while analyzing and annotating the recorded speech. It emerged during the project phase I that Iwaidja has an unusually 'verby' lexicon, at least on morphological criteria. Verbs form around 40% of the lexicon so far recorded, and are regularly used for concepts where English or German would use nouns, particularly in relational terms such as kin terms. In the project's one year final phase the principal investigator Bruce Birch completes the transcription, translation, annotation and archiving of data in close cooperation with knowledgeable Iwaidja senior elders.

Australian National University, Canberra
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
Department of Linguistics
Coombs Building
Prof. Dr. Nicholas Rollo David Evans
AUSTRALIEN

University of Sydney
Sydney Conservatorium of Music
PARADISEC Performance Studies
Transient Building F12
Prof. Dr. Linda Barwick
AUSTRALIEN

Katholische Universität
Eichstätt-Ingolstadt
Fakultät für Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft
Englische Sprachwissenschaft
Dr. Robert Mailhammer

Australian National University, Canberra
Research School of Humanities
College of the Arts and Social Sciences
Sabine Höng
AUSTRALIEN

University of Melbourne
Faculty of Arts
School of Languages and Linguistics
Arts Centre building
Bruce Birch
AUSTRALIEN

Ansprechpartner:
Australian National University, Canberra
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
Department of Linguistics
Coombs Building
Prof. Dr. Nicholas Rollo David Evans
Australian Capital Territory
Canberra 0200
AUSTRALIEN
Tel.: +61 2 61250028
Fax: +61 2 61251463
Homepage: http://rspas.anu.edu.au/people/personal/evann_ling.php

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Making Movima visible: documenting a linguistic isolate in the Moxos cultural complex

Bewilligung: 24.06.2009  Laufzeit:  2 Jahre

This project is a continuation of the DobeS project "Documenting Movima, an unclassified language of the Moxos region (Bolivia)" which has been running since May 2006. The aim of the project is a multimedia documentation of Movima, an unclassified language spoken in and around the old missionary town of Santa Ana del Yacuma in the subtropical lowlands of Amazonian Bolivia. Movima is seriously endangered: it is not transmitted to children anymore, and most of the active speakers are over 60 years old. The number of fluent speakers is estimated to be less than 500. The dominant language in the region is Spanish, and all Movima speakers are bilingual. In order to archive as much as possible of their linguistic and cultural inheritance, speech data of the largest possible diversity are recorded. The linguistic annotation of these data is a central aspect of the project's final phase in order to complete the Movima corpus in the DobeS archive in Nijmegen. As in phase I the linguist Dr. Haude teams up with the cultural anthropologist Silke Beuse who will finish her doctoral thesis on "Spatial Perception - Memory - Identity: the example of Movima". The project will be carried out in close cooperation with the EUROBABEL research project "Referential Hierarchies in Morphosyntax: description, typology, diachrony".

Universität Köln
Philosophische Fakultät
Institut für Linguistik
Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft
Dr. Katharina Haude
Postfach
50923 Köln
Tel.: 0221 470 4518
Fax: 0221 470 5947
Homepage: http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/ifl/asw/institut/mitarbeiter_frames_d.html

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A multi-media documentation of two endangered Bantu Languages of Cameroon: Bubia and Isubu

Bewilligung: 24.06.2009  Laufzeit:

Universität Köln
Institut für Afrikanistik
Prof. Dr. Anne Storch

University of Buea
English Department
Dr. Roselyne Jua Mai
KAMERUN

University of Buea
Department of History
Dr. Canute Ambe Ngwa
KAMERUN

Ansprechpartner:
Universität Köln
Institut für Afrikanistik
Prof. Dr. Anne Storch
Meister-Ekkehart-Straße 7
50923 Köln
Tel.: 0221 470 2708
Fax: 0221 470 5158
Homepage: http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/afrikanistik/mitarbeit/storch.html

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Documentation of Bakola of Cameroon

Bewilligung: 24.06.2009  Laufzeit:  3 Jahre

Bakola is a language spoken in Southern Cameroon by marginalized communities of forest foragers (commonly called "Pygmies"). Their traditional lifestyle consists of exploiting the forest and trading with the farmer communities. However, the forests of the Bakola region have been highly compromised over the years. The Bakola are increasingly sedentary and are beginning the process of assimilation with the farming communities. As a result of this situation, the Bakola speakers experience partial or complete language shift to the languages of their neighbors. The goals of this project are to document the Bakola language and culture comprehending an extensive multimedia dictionary and a representative text collection of language use. Video recordings will sample cultural events of many kinds, include performances and rituals. The specialized vocabulary will focus on the relationship with their environment. The data selected will also be relevant for studies in various fields such as cultural and social anthropology, ethnomusicology, and ethnobotany. Under the supervision of Professor Mous, the actual research will be conducted by Emmanuel Ngue Um, Daniel Duke and Nadine Borchardt.

Leiden University
Leiden University Centre for Linguistics
Faculty of Humanities
Languages and Cultures of Africa
Prof. Dr. Maarten Mous
Postfach 9515
2300 RA Leiden
NIEDERLANDE
Tel.: +31 71 527 22 42
Fax: +31 71 527 7569
Homepage: http://www.hum.leiden.edu/lucl/organisation/members/mousmpgm.html

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Documentation of Cashinahua

Bewilligung: 24.06.2009  Laufzeit:  1 Jahr

The essence of this project consists in the documentation of Cashinahua, an Amazonian language spoken on the Brazil-Peru border. Cashinahua culture is progressively disappearing. Traditional expressions such as 'rites of passage' (tchidin, katcha nawa), traditional chants, and musical instruments are no longer being performed. The language is dying out. The new generation speaks Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish, the national official languages of their countries, neglecting their own language. In the project's phase I starting in 2006, an extensive corpus of new and older linguistic and cultural material was accumulated, two workshops for indigenous teachers were held and part of the corpus material prepared for publication and partially published. In the one-year final phase the French-German team (Eliane Camargo, Philippe Erikson and Sabine Reiter) aims to complete the data corpus with newly recorded speech and other material newly made available to the project by the Berlin anthropologist Barbara Keifenheim and hopefully also by the ethnographer Kenneth Kensinger, who lived with the Cashinahua from 1955 until 1963. The Cashinahua community themselves had expressed a strong wish for the integration of data from these two people, and at the same time this will broaden the diachronic dimension in the data.

Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre
Anthropologie, Leipzig
Abteilung für Linguistik
Prof. Dr. Bernard Comrie
Deutscher Platz 6
04103 Leipzig
Tel.: 0341 3550 301
Fax: 0341 3550 333
Homepage: http://email.eva.mpg.de/~comrie/

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2-Year Project Extension "A linguistic and anthropological documentation of Tima"

Bewilligung: 24.06.2009  Laufzeit:  2 Jahre

The documentation of Tima (tàmáá dùmùrík), a target language spoken in the Nuba Mountains in Sudan, was started in 2006. At that time, the Tima people explicitly indicated that they preferred not to have an anthropologist taking part in the documentation project. An anthropologist studying their culture in the 1990s so far has failed to report on his research results. However, during the course of the present documentation project, the Tima community changed its mind and regained trust and confidence in Western researchers.  In the project's two years follow-up, the linguistic and anthropological documentation will be combined in topics like culture-specific geographical knowledge (Tima toponyms, landscape terms, route descriptions etc.). A general anthropological description will be added to the data corpus and the linguistic documentation - including the building up of the dictionary - will be completed. The Tima-team consists of Gerrit Dimmendaal, Meike Meerpohl and Gertrud Schneider-Blum (all University of Cologne), and the Sudanese scholars Suzan Alamin, Abeer Bashir and Abdelrahim Mugaddam (all University of Khartoum).

Universität Köln
Philosophische Fakultät
Institut für Afrikanistik
Prof. Dr. Gerrit Jan Dimmendaal
Postfach
50923 Köln
Tel.: 0221 470 2708
Fax: 0221 470 5158
Homepage: http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/afrikanistik/mitarbeit/dimmendaal.html

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Pots, plants and people: an interdisciplinary documentation of Baïnouk knowledge systems

Bewilligung: 24.06.2009  Laufzeit:

School of Oriental and African Studies
(SOAS), University of London
Department of Linguistics
Endangered Languages Academic Programme
Dr. Friederike Lüpke
GROSSBRITANNIEN

University Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar
Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire
Département de Botanique et Géologie
Dr. Mathieu Guèye
SENEGAL

University Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar
Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines
Département d'Histoire
Dr. Moustapha Sall
SENEGAL

Ansprechpartner:
School of Oriental and African Studies
(SOAS), University of London
Department of Linguistics
Endangered Languages Academic Programme
Dr. Friederike Lüpke
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square
London  WC1H 0XG
GROSSBRITANNIEN
Tel.: +44 20 78984581
Fax: +44 20 78984349
Homepage: http://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff31356.php

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Summer School: Saami Language Documentation and Revitalization (SLDR)

28.07.2009 - 07.08.2009 in Sápmi, Finnland

Universität Kiel
Seminar für Allgemeine und
Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft
Prof. Dr. Ulrike Mosel

Humboldt-Universität Berlin
Philosophische Fakultät II
Nordeuropa-Institut
Skandinavistik, Sprachwissenschaft
Prof. Dr. Jurij K. Kusmenko

University of Tromsø
Center for Advanced Study in Theoretical
Linguistics
Dr. Bruce Morén
NORWEGEN

Carleton University, Ottawa
Institute of Cognitive Science
School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies
Dr. Ida Toivonen
KANADA

Universität Freiburg
Philologische Fakultät
Institut für Vergleichende Germanische Philologie
und Skandinavistik
Michael Rießler

Ansprechpartner:
Universität Kiel
Seminar für Allgemeine und
Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft
Prof. Dr. Ulrike Mosel
Olshausenstraße 40
24098 Kiel
Tel.: 0431 880 2414
Fax: 0431 880 7405
Homepage: http://www.linguistik.uni-kiel.de/mosel_kontakt.htm

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Schriftgröße