The second episode of Season 3 is with Hilaria Cruz from the University of  Louisville. Hilaria is a native speaker of Chatino, an endangered Zapotecan language, spoken in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico and by Chatino who have migrated to the Southeastern United states including Durham, North Carolina, Atlanta, Georgia, and Huntsville, Alabama. She has collected and archived more than one hundred hours of audio recordings of naturalistic speech in formal and informal settings. She is currently researching  the Chatino concepts of the dead in four Eastern Chatino communities. Hilaria and her sister, Emiliana Cruz, created an orthography for the Chatino language and in 2018 created a monolingual children book series to be used as language teaching materials. 

This live show was recorded as part of LingFest, a program of online linguistics events aimed at a general audience, on Saturday, April 24, 2021. Access to the unabridged video live stream is available on the Field Notes Patreon.

Things mentioned in this episode

• Hilaria’s Chatino deposit at AILLA & ELAR
• Chatino language family
• Zacatepec Chatino
• Tataltepec Chatino
• Zenzontepec Chatino
• Teojomulco Chatino
• Chatino children’s books to purchase & download
• Chatino verbs on Wiktionary
• “Documenting Sign Language Structure and Language Socialization in the San Juan Quiahije Chatino Signing Community” ELAR deposit by Lynn Hou & Kate Mesh
• “Gesture, Speech and Sign in Chatino Communities” ELAR deposit by Kate Mesh
• Hilaria on the Vocal Fries Podcast & Lingthusiasm Podcast

Listen here, or on your favorite podcast app! Field Notes is available on  Apple Podcasts app (iPhone), Google Play Music (Android), Google Podcasts app (Android), Stitcher, Spotify, Podbean, Podcast Republic, Castbox, Player FM, and several other apps via RSS.

Welcome to Season 3 of Field Notes! Field Notes episodes will now be released monthly. This season will feature one insider linguist each month. If you would like to hear more Field Notes content, you can now support Field Notes on Patreon! 

This special first episode features Professor Nancy Kula studied phonology for her PhD at the University of Leiden. She has an MA in Linguistics from SOAS, University of London, and a BA in Education with African Languages and Linguistics from the University of Zambia. Following her PhD, she held a post-doctoral position in Leiden and at SOAS for three years and now works at the University of Essex since 2007. She has worked on many topics in phonology including tone and intonation and theoretically works on element theory. She is also interested in Language Policy as it applies to education in multilingual contexts and is currently running a project covering Botswana, Tanzania and Zambia. She has published in international linguistics journals, has edited a number of volumes and serves on international editorial boards.

Things mentioned in this episode:

• Nancy’s profile at The Uni of Essex 
• Bemba language
• Bantu language family
• Nancy on Twitter @nancyckula & @bringing_in
• Nancy’s work on ResearchGate & academia.edu
• Field Notes Episode 5 with Khairunnisa on Insider Researcher Language Documentation on Sasak
• Field Notes Episode 11 with Alex Garcia on Monolingual Fieldwork in The Philippines

Field Notes will be holding its first ever live show at LingFest! Field Notes host & producer Martha Tsutsui Billins will chat with special guest Professor Hilaria Cruz on her work with her native language Chatino, an endangered Zapotecan language spoken in Oaxaca, Mexico. This live show will explore endangered language documentation and revitalization, particularly from the Insider Researcher perspective. No prior linguistics or language documentation knowledge required to attend. Questions from listeners are welcome and will also be discussed.

This event is open to all. Registration and attendance is free, but if you would like to support Field Notes, you can now do so on Patreon! Please register here, to sign up to receive the zoom link to attend. Registration will CLOSE 24 hours prior to the start of the live show (April 23 1:00 PM PDT). Registration is now closed. Stay tuned for the next Field Notes live show by following us on Twitter @lingfieldnotes. Thank you for supporting the pod!

Event will take place on April 24th at 1:00 PM PDT. Convert to your local time zone here.

Today’s episode is with Shobhana Chelliah, a Distinguished Research Professor of Linguistics and Associate Dean at the University of North Texas (UNT).  Shobhana is a documentary linguist interested in creating descriptions that expand typological discovery, primarily of the Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in Manipur state, India. Her publications include The Grammar of Meithei (Mouton 1997) and the Handbook of Descriptive Linguistic Fieldwork (co-authored with Willem de Reuse, Springer 2010) and the recently-published Springer Brief titled Why Language Documentation Matters. Along with John Peterson, she is the series editor for Brill’s Studies in South and Southwest Asian Languages. She is an Associate Editor of the journal Himalayan Linguistics and is on the Editorial Board of the journal Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics and is on the Advisory Board for the Journal South Asian Languages. She is also the founding director of the Computational Resource of South Asian Languages Archive.

Things mentioned in this episode

• Formalism
• Meitei (Manipuri) language
• Lamkang language
• Tibeto-Burman language family 
• Boro–Garo languages
• Dimasa language
• Kokborok language
• Computational Resource for South Asian Languages (CoRSAL) Archive
• Hakha Chin language
• Shobhana’s website

Correction: The two Lamkang scholars who visited UNT were Daniel Tholung and Shekarnong Sankhil.  This episode referenced Swamy Ksen, who is a Lamkang language expert Shobhana and her team works with in Manipur.

This episode marks the Season Two finale with Professor Pius Akumbu, who is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Bamenda, Cameroon and an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Hamburg since January 2019. He received his PhD in Linguistics from The University of Yaounde 1, in Cameroon. His research focuses on the documentation and description of Grassfields Bantu languages of Cameroon, including his mother tongue, Babanki. Additionally, Pius researches multilingualism in Cameroon as well as language planning and policy in Africa. He is an ELDP grant recipient, and a depositor at the Endangered Languages Archive. He is also a member of the KPAAM-CAM project. 

Things mentioned in this episode:

• Babanki language
• Multimedia Documentation of Babanki Ritual Speech (ELAR deposit)
• KPAAM-CAM project
• Njem (Njyem) language
• Cameroonian Pidgin English
• ELDP
• Firebird Foundation
• Foundation For Endangered Languages
• Endangered Language Fund
• Pius Akumbu’s website
• Babanki literacy classes and community-based language research by Pius Akumbu (2018)
• Episode 13: Jeff Good on Facilitating Language Documentation in Cameroon

Today’s episode is with Willem de Reuse. Willem specializes in the description of Native American languages, particularly Siouan and Athabaskan languages. He wrote his PhD dissertation on the Siberian Yupik language. He has published on morphological theory, language contact, and historical phonology and philology. He has taught at the University of Chicago, the University of Iowa, Ball State University, and the University of Arizona. His current position is at The Language Conservancy, and he also is affiliated with The University of North Texas. He is the Review Editor of the International Journal of American Linguistics, and he has written the Handbook Of Descriptive Linguistic Fieldwork (2011) with Shobhana Chelliah. He is currently conducting fieldwork in Arizona working with speakers of Apache. 

Things mentioned in this episode:

• The Language Conservancy
• Apache language
• Navajo language
• Lakota language
• Hopi language
• Hän Athabaskan language
• Central Siberian Yupik language
• Siouan languages
• Athabaskan languages
• Zulu language
• The world’s languages in crisis by Michael Krauss (1992)
• On endangered languages and the importance of linguistic diversity by Ken Hale (1998)

Today’s episode is with N. Haʻalilio Solomon, an Instructor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa at Kawaihuelani Center for Hawaiian Language. Haʻalilio is also a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Linguistics at UH at Mānoa. He is a translator for ‘ōlelo Hawaiʻi with Awaiaulu and Hoʻopulapula, and his studies involve language documentation and revitalization, as well as linguistic ideologies and attitudes surrounding ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi. He is the author of the forthcoming book chapter Rescuing Maunalua: Shifting Nomenclatures and the Reconfiguration of Space in Hawaii Kai.

Things mentioned in this episode: 

• ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi
• KTUH radio station (Haʻalilio’s show is on Sundays 3-6 pm HST)
• Pūnana Leo 
• Hawaiian Cultural Renaissance 
• Mai Loko Mai O ka ‘I‘ini: Proceeding from a Dream by William H. Wilson and Kauanoe Kamana
• International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation(ICLDC) 
• The Hawaiian Corpus Project
• Kaipuleohone Language Archive

This week’s episode is with Sheena Shah, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Hamburg in Germany. She is currently working on a 2-year project documenting siPhuthi.  Sheena has conducted linguistic fieldwork on a number of languages in Southern Africa, including several indigenous click languages. Sheena’s mother tongue is Gujarati and for her Ph.D., she worked with Gujarati diaspora communities in London, Johannesburg, and Singapore.

Things mentioned in this episode:

• siPhuthi language
• N/uu language
• Gujarati language
• N/uu reader
• Sheena on Twitter: @DrSheenaShah
• ASPECTS OF TONE AND VOICE IN PHUTHI (Ph.D. Dissertation by Simon Scurr Donnelly)
• Diversity in Academia on Instagram: @diversityinacademia

Today’s episode is with Andrew Harvey and Richard Griscom from Leiden University. Andrew and Richard have just returned from their most recent field trip to Tanzania and in this episode they discuss their current projects (documenting Gorwaa, Hadza and Ihanzu) and teamwork in the field.

Andrew Harvey is a research fellow at Leiden University. He completed a Bachelor’s Degree at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, a Master’s Degree at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and a PhD at SOAS, University of London. He has conducted work with Gorwaa, Hadza, and Ihanzu speaker communities and has received funding for projects through the Endangered Languages Documentation Program, as well as the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research. The title of his currently funded research is, “Gorwaa, Hadza, and Ihanzu: Grammatical Inquiries in the Tanzanian Rift Valley Area.” His interests include the languages of the Tanzanian Rift, their documentation and description, their formal morphosyntax and the histories and cultures of their speaker communities.

Richard T. Griscom is a post-doctoral researcher at Leiden University. He obtained his bachelor’s and PhD degrees from the University of Oregon. Richard’s research focuses on language documentation, fieldwork methodology, and functional-typological linguistic description and theory, with a special emphasis on the languages of East Africa. Over the past five years, he has been working with the Asimjeeg Datooga and the Hadzabe, both endangered minority language communities of northern Tanzania. He is a recipient of two grants from the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme and is a depositor at the Endangered Languages Archive. 

Things mentioned in this episode:

• What if…? Imagining non-Western perspectives on pragmatic theory and practice by Felix Ameka & Maria Terkourafi   
• Gorwaa language
• Hadza language
• Datooga language
• Ihanzu language
• Firebird Foundation
• Endangered Languages Documentation Programme 
• Water filter
• The Rift Valley Research Network
• The Gorwaa Noun Phrase: Toward a Description of the Gorwaa Language (Andrew’s ELAR deposit)
• Documentation of Isimjeeg Datooga (Richard’s ELAR deposit)
• Andrew’s website      
• Richard’s website     
• Andrew on twitter: @andrewdtharvey
• Richard’s Twitter: @richardgriscom

Today’s episode is with Dr. Dorothea Hoffmann, a documentary linguist who has worked in remote parts of Northern Australia with speakers of MalakMalak, Jaminjung and Kriol. In North America, She has been involved in language revitalization projects for the Acoma, Ute, Stoney Nakoda, Ho-Chunk and Cowlitz tribes, and First Nations. She is affiliated with the University of Oregon as an Honorary Research Associate and also works as a Linguistic Project Manager for The Language Conservancy. In addition to her linguistic research, Dorothea also is one half of the team that runs a venture called 180forward – an eco-tourism and education business based in New Mexico and the Pacific Northwest.

In this episode, we discuss how as researchers we should be striving not only to help sustain the languages we work with but to go further and aim for regeneration and to help empower and create new speakers. Doro also explains a bit about Dreamtime narratives in MalakMalak, which are traditional creation stories which, among other things, connect speakers to not only their language but also the land.

Things mentioned in this episode:

• MalakMalak language 
• Matngala language
• Jaminjung language (Ngaliwurru)
• Kriol language
• Language in Time and Space
• Dorothea’s website
• The Language Conservancy
• Dreamtime
• Spatial Language