Documenting Endangered Languages

1. Documenting Endangered Languages Claire Bowern Rice University and CRLC, ANU bowern@rice.edu http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~bowern (talk slides will be available from anggarrgoon.org)

2. Overview • Documentation and Description • Documentation in action • Types • Tools • (Illustrated with Yan-nhaŋu work)

3. Why endangered languages? • Last chance for data • Perhaps only one chance for data • Many languages are endangered • Techniques particularly developed by linguists working on these languages • BUT, points apply to non-endangered languages too.

4. What is documentation?

5. What is documentation? • Consider the following linguistic artifacts:

6. Multilingual translations Language Artifacts

7. Letters and Lessons Artifacts

8. Ritual Objects Artifacts

9. Items produced by linguists… Artifacts

10. Sound recordings Artifacts

11. Points to note • Different audiences • Accidental vs Planned • “Raw” vs value-added • More or less durable Documentation |

12. Description vs Documentation • Himmelmann (1996): • Description: grammars, dictionaries, articles, etc • Documentation: a record of the language; some attempt to be “exhaustive”, or at least “representative” • Systematising the creation of records (not leaving the artifacts to chance) • Descriptions can be produced from documentations, but not vice versa. Documentation and Description

13. Why worry about the primary materials? After all, it’s the PhD/article/grammar that earns the linguist tenure/DETYA brownie points/a job. Documentation and Description

14. Why worry? • Production of better theory/description • Raw materials are useful in themselves • (e.g. data recorded for ref grammar may be useful for phonetics) • Need to be able to go back to the primary materials (e.g. for corpus work) • Ethical considerations – for endangered language communities. Documentation and Description

15. A ‘documentation’ of a language Documentation in Practice

16. What goes into a documentation? • Type of materials and their media (how it’s recorded) • Genres of language (what’s recorded) • Extent and purpose of analysis (what’s done with it) • Quantity of all of the above • Project: THE SPEAKERS (illustrated with Yan-nhaŋu) Documentation in Practice

17. (Brief intro to Yan-nhaŋu) • “Salvage” documentation project (recording as much as possible in a form that’ll be useful to a maximal audience) • Few previous records • Capell’s wordlist – NOT Yan-nhaŋu! • Bentley James: draft dictionary and texts, with a focus on marine resource management • Few speakers • 2-year project funded by ELDP (Hans Rausing Project) Documentation in Practice

18. Documentation in Practice

19. The documentation team: • Yan-nhaŋu speakers and community members, in particular: • Laurie Baymarrwaŋa, Ŋamarrkuḻi (Ŋarritjan), Margaret Nyuŋunyuŋu, Laurie Milinditj, Rayba Nyaŋbal, Rita Gularrbanga. • Linguists, Anthros, others: • Bentley James (ANU), Salome Harris • Claire Bowern (Rice/ANU) • Vica Papp, Michelle Morrison (Rice) Documentation in Practice

20. Why? • Little record of the language (of concern to speakers) • Part of active movement to increase profile of Yan-nhaŋu at Milingimbi • My historical research on Yolŋu (Yan-nhaŋu important and conservative) Documentation in Practice

21. Documentary Materials • Audio • Video • Text • Photographs • (Old records and new) Documentation in Practice

22. Yan-nhaŋu Materials • Concentration on text and audio (with some video and photos) • Level of comfort with video (of researcher and consultants) • Usefulness of outcomes (easier to process and to use in community) • Video: weaving, manikay. Documentation in Practice

23. Materials: Documentation in Practice

24. Yan-nhaŋu • Elicitation • Texts • Semi-planned materials (e.g. MPI stimulus materials (video description), frog stories • Manikay, Buŋguḻ (Songs, dancing) • Vernacular definitions, Culturally important vocabulary • (Little conversation) • Non-linguistic documentation Documentation in Practice

25. Samples of stimulus materials and fieldwork tools Documentation |

26. MPI video clip Documentation in Practice

27. Frog story Documentation in Practice

28. Analysis/Derivatives • Time-aligned transcripts • E.g. using Elan • Linked materials • Import/Export b/w Shoebox and Elan • Interlinearised materials Documentation in Practice

29. Elan Documentation in Practice

30. Documentation in Practice

31. Materials • Community materials • Descriptive materials • Learner’s Guide • Dictionary Documentation |

32. Documentation |

33. Metadata • ‘data about data’ • Emphasis on documenting the documentation • Important to know what’s been recorded, from whom, genre, extent of transcription and analysis, etc • Materials in a format that others might be able to use Documentation in Practice

34. Documentation in Practice

35. Summary and Discussion

36. Some Features of Documentation: • Not just language (also songs, cultural practices, ethnoclassification, etc) • Multimedia/Digital • Metadata • Archiving provisions (NOT field notes in shoebox under the bed) Documentation: Summary

37. Problems • A huge job! • Places (unreasonable) demands on the linguist, who has to be a sound engineer, botanist, anthro, community coordinator, web designer, etc, as well as Indiana Jones-type linguist. • Requires a huge amount of time to do a proper job. (e.g. tape transcription; 2 mins of transcription per hour) • Huge reliance on dedicated speakers and community Documentation: Summary

38. Problems, cont • the uselessness of knowing the right answer to the wrong question. (Ursula Le Guin) • A large corpus might not contain the relevant data • Or, it might contain it but the answer might not be findable • Some problems only soluble with elicitation. Documentation: Summary

39. For more information: • ELDP (http://www.hrelp.org) • Essentials of Language Documentation (Gippert, Himmelmann and Mosel, eds) • Linguistic Fieldwork: A Practical Guide (Bowern) • Tools: • Elan: (http://www.lat-mpi.eu/tools/elan/) • Praat: (http://www.praat.org) • Toolbox: (http://www.sil.org/computing/toolbox/) Documentation: Summary