Ep. 37: Linguistic Fieldwork with Claire Bowern

31st Aug 202231st Aug 2022 ~ Field Notes ~ Leave a comment

Welcome to a new season of Field Notes! This month, Claire Bowern is on the pod for Season Four’s inaugural episode. Claire Bowern is a historical linguist whose research is centered around language change and language documentation in Indigenous Australia. She received her BA in LInguistics and Classics from the Australian National University, and her PhD in linguistics from Harvard University. She works with speakers of endangered languages, with archival sound and print materials, and uses computational and phylogenetic methods. She is currently the editor of the journal Diachronica. She is a professor in Linguistics at Yale University, and is also the author of Linguistic Fieldwork: A Practical Guide (2008).

Things mentioned in this episode:

Bardi language
Pama–Nyungan language
Ngalia language
Australian Aboriginal English
Australian Kriol
River in Kullilli (with Toby Adams)
Kullilli Ngulkana
Field Notes Ep 19: Dreamtime Narratives & Language Sustainability with Dorothea Hoffmann
MalakMalak language
Cherokee language
CHIRILA
Claire on Twitter: @anggarrgoon

Listen to this episode 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.

Photo caption: Nancy Isaac (dec. 2004) and Claire Bowern in 2001, working on Bardi oral history at One Arm Point. Note the minidisc recorder on Claire’s left!

Episode 36: Quechua Language Documentation & Revitalization with Gladys Camacho Rios

31st Mar 202231st Mar 2022 ~ Field Notes ~ Leave a comment

Today’s episode is the final episode of Season Three! This season focused exclusively on linguists working on their own native and/or heritage languages. Thank you to all listeners and patrons for making this third season so successful. In this episode, Gladys Camacho Rios discusses her work on her native language, South Bolivian Quechua. Gladys works with elderly monolingual Quechua speakers in rural Bolivia. She is a PhD candidate in Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. She previously earned two MA degrees; one in Latin American Studies from New York University in 2016 and a MA in Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin in 2019.

Gladys Camacho Rios in a daily conversation with the oldest monolingual speaker of South Bolivian Quechua variety in Uma Piwra rural town. The spontaneous conversation takes places during fieldwork in Uma Piwra, Cochabamba, Bolivia. The topic of the conversation is about crops located by the river. (Uma Piwra, September 2020)

Things mentioned in this episode:

South Bolivian Quechua
Quechuan languages
Aymara language
Gladys on Twitter: @chhullunka
Linguistics Summer School Bolivia (LSSB)
LSSB Facebook

Training new native speakers of South Bolivian Quechua (SBQ) on the use of equipment to carry out video documentation in their towns of origin. As part of my documentation project, my goal is to train younger SBQ speakers to document and describe the dialectology of monolingual forms. The SBQ speakers involved in this training are committed to documenting the speech of monolinguals in their towns of origin. To date 8 speakers have received training in the use of equipment, how to record metadata, how to back up data, how to use ELAN to transcribe their data. One of them is currently pursuing the first year of the PhD in Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. (Cochabamba, December 2020)

Episode 35: Azamgarhi Language Documentation with Maaz Shaikh

1st Feb 20221st Feb 2022 ~ Field Notes ~ Leave a comment

Today’s episode is with Maaz Shaikh, a Junior Research Fellow pursuing his Ph.D. at the Centre for Linguistics, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, India. Maaz is an emerging linguist having research interests primarily in language documentation and description, along with language revitalization, phonology, morpho-syntax, and historical linguistics. Last year, Maaz successfully defended his M.Phil. thesis at JNU on his heritage language Azamgarhi—a unique Indo-Aryan language, of which he is a semi-speaker. In this episode we will hear from Maaz on his experiences and opinions of “documenting” a language as an “insider” to the community. Besides his areal interests of his native Indo-Aryan region, he is also now documenting Zangskari, an endangered language of Ladakh (India).

Maaz, while eliciting Azamgarhi wordlist with a few women consultants in the Bairidih village of Azamgarh. In the Azamgarhi speech community, like many conservative and traditional Muslim communities in general, women generally do not expose their bodies, including the face, to non-mahram (i.e., an unrelated male person). Hence, the woman informants are cropped out from the photo at their request. (January 25, 2020).

Things mentioned in this episode:

Maaz recording a narrative from Mr. Maqsood Khan, a native Bhojpuri speaker and also a fluent Azamgarhi speaker (very rare case), while Mr. Zakir Hussain, a native Azamgarhi speaker, also listens sitting besides Maaz at Mr. Zakir Hussain’s P. G. Rahmaniya College in Ropanpur village of the Mau district. (November 22, 2020)

A scenic view of the banks of a tributary (Pharaī in Azamgarhi) of the Ghāgrā river from the (Pharaī) Chāndpūr village situated in the Maū district. Chandpur, a desolated area until a couple of hundred years ago when some people from Fatehpur village (some 10 km away) settled there, is the last Azamgarhi speaking village on the eastern realm of Azamgarhi. Interestingly, the Azamgarhi variety spoken there differs considerably from that in Fatehpur. (November 22, 2020)

Episode 34: Ana D. Alonso Ortiz on Zapotec Language Documentation & Revitalization

30th Dec 2021 ~ Field Notes ~ Leave a comment

This month’s episode is with Ana D. Alonso Ortiz, a Zapotec researcher and translator from Oaxaca, Mexico. Ana is an Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director of the Amerindian Studies and Bilingual Education master’s program at the University of Queretaro. Her research focuses on the language description and language revitalization of Yalalag Zapotec, specifically promoting the language by working with child language acquisition.

She is currently developing a language course of Zapotec as a Second Language. Ana has worked on the production of educational materials in Zapotec in coordination with the Dill Yel Nbán Collective, a group of Zapotec scholars who seek to promote the Zapotec language. Ana received her PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2021.

Ana researching the acquisition of positional verbs in bilingual children of Zapotec-Spanish
Villa Hidalgo Yalalag, 2021

Things mentioned in this episode:

Episode 33: Azeb Amha on Afroasiatic language documentation & description

27th Nov 2021 ~ Field Notes ~ Leave a comment

This month’s episode is with Dr. Azeb Amha from the University of Leiden. Azeb is a linguist with interest in the morphology and syntax of Afroasiatic languages, linguistic typology and in the interdisciplinary fields of anthropological linguistics and sociolinguistics. She has worked extensively on the documentation of languages in Ethiopia, inclunding Oyda, Wolaitta and Zargulla. She is an ELDP grant recipient, and a depositor with Dobes and the Endangered Languages Archive.

Zargulla Documentation team 2017 at K’ak’e. From left to right: Aboye Alade, Birtukan Abebe, Birtukan Bunkula, Shibiru Shiteno, Wudnesh Petros, Teshome Gezahegn, Asmelash Michael, and Azeb Amha (standing at the back).

Things mentioned in this episode:

Oyda language
Aramaic language
Wolaitta language
Amharic language
Semitic language family
Omotic language family
Cushitic language family
Zargulla language deposit at ELAR:Documentation of house construction and terrace farming in Zargulla, an endangered Omotic language

Zargulla Documentation team 2019 at Genbo. From left to right: Teshome Gezahegn, Michael Mina, Amarech Bunkula, Asmelash Michael and Amare Abebe

Episode 32: Michael Karani on Arusa Ideophone Documentation & Description

26th Oct 202128th Oct 2021 ~ Field Notes ~ Leave a comment

This month’s episode is with Michael Karani from the University of Dar es Salaam. Michael teaches linguistics and communication studies at Dar es Salaam. He holds a BA and an MA in Linguistics from the University of Dar es Salaam and a PhD in African Languages from Stellenbosch University. Michael conducted fieldwork for his native language, Arusa, which is a Maasai dialect spoken in Arusha, northern Tanzania, where he studied the Arusa verb system during his MA studies. For his PhD research he investigated verb morphology and argument structure in the Parakuyo dialect, another Maasai dialect spoken in northern and coastal areas in Tanzania.

In this episode, we discuss Micheal’s current research with Dr Alexander Andrason (Stellenbosch University) on Arusa ‘expressive grammar’, particularly ideophones, interjections and gestures.

Michael Karani posing with Arusa speakers just after an initiation ceremony that took place in Kilindi where Karani collected recordings of stories and songs in a fieldwork in 2016

Things mentioned in this episode:

Michael Karani seated with Arusa speakers during a field work in 2016

Episode 31: Catalan Language Normalization with Guillem Belmar

29th Aug 2021 ~ Field Notes ~ Leave a comment

This month’s episode is with Guillem Belmar from UC Santa Barbara. Guillem focuses his research on language revitalization strategies as well as documentation of endangered or minoritized languages. He has worked on language promotion for many European languages and runs the #europeminoritylanguages project on social media. He is currently involved with the project Maintaining Indigenous Languages within Immigrant Oaxacan Communities in the United States.

In this episode we discuss Guillem’s work with his native language, Catalan, as well as Basque and Frisian. Guillem shares with us his experience working with minority languages in Europe, including his work on New Speaker motivation and language policy and planning.

Guillem giving a lecture at the Sorbian Seminar in Leipzig on using intelligibility in language revitalization

Next month Field Notes will be taking a short break, if you’d like to hear more from the pod, check out the Field Notes Patreon.

Things mentioned in this episode:

Episode 30: Pedro Mateo Pedro on Mayan Language Research & Revitalization

30th Jul 2021 ~ Field Notes ~ Leave a comment

This month’s episode is with Pedro Mateo Pedro from University of Toronto.

Pedro is a native speaker of Q’anjob’al, a Mayan language of Guatemala. His research focuses on the documentation and description of Mayan languages, specifically language acquisition, Mayan languages in contact and dialectal variation.

Pedro received his PhD in linguistics at the University of Kansas in 2010 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. Pedro has taught at universities in Guatemala, Mexico and the United States.

Additionally, Pedro has worked on the production of educational materials in Mayan languages in coordination with different institutions in Guatemala, such as the Ministry of Education and the Academy of Maya Languages of Guatemala (ALMG in Spanish). In 2019, Pedro received an award as a distinguished professor at the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, Campus Altiplano.

Pedro documenting the acquisition of Chuj with two native speakers of Chuj: Nicolás Alonzo (left) and Jorge Pérez (right). ~2011, San Mateo Ixtatán, Huehuetenango, Guatemala.

Things mentioned in this episode

Pedro with two Kaqchikel speakers, Magda Sotz’ and Filiberto Patal, conducting a workshop on the teaching method of Mayan languages. In the workshop there were speakers of different Mayan languages, e.g., Kaqchikel, K’iche’, Q’eqchi’, Poqomchi’, Mam, Tz’utujil, Q’anjob’al, and other Mayan languages. ~2018. Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, Campus Altiplano.

Episode 29: Jaime Pérez González on Tseltal & Mocho’ language documentation in Mexico

24th Jun 202122nd Jul 2021 ~ Field Notes ~ Leave a comment

This month’s episode is with Jaime Pérez González is a Tseltal (Maya) researcher, writer, and translator from Tenango, Ocosingo, Chiapas, Mexico. He is a PhD candidate in Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned his master’s in American-Indian Linguistics at the Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS, Mexico). His MA thesis Predicados expresivos e ideófonos en tseltal won the 2013 Wigberto Jiménez Moreno Prize, awarded by Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) for the best master’s thesis in linguistics. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Hispanic Language and Literatures at the Michoacan University of San Nicolas de Hidalgo (UMICH, Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico).

Since 2008, he has worked on different Tseltal language documentation projects as a collaborator and as a research assistant, and as a researcher. Among the topics he has worked on during these projects are Dialectology and Lexicography (building dictionaries). He started to work on Mocho’ (a cousin Mayan language) in 2015, and he is currently the Principal Investigator of the project “Documentation of Mocho’ (Mayan): Language Preservation through Community Awareness and Engagement” sponsored by the Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP). His research goes from Descriptive Linguistics, Language Documentation and Language revitalization. He has written about fieldwork methodologies, and he is currently working on a Descriptive Grammar of Mocho’.

Things mentioned in this episode:

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.

Episode 28: Ryukyuan Language Documentation with Michinori Shimoji

19th May 202117th Jun 2021 ~ Field Notes ~ Leave a comment

Today’s episode is with Michinori Shimoji, an Associate Professor of Linguistics at Kyushu University in Japan. He has a PhD from the Australian National University (ANU). He has published extensively on fieldwork-based descriptions of Ryukyuan languages, particularly Irabu Miyako, which is his father’s native language. His research focuses on empirical and inductive generalizations of linguistic systems and structures, with a particular emphasis on typological generalizations. With Patrick Heinrich and Shinsho Miyara, he is the editor of the Handbook of the Ryukyuan Languages History, Structure, and Use (2015). He is also the editor of An Introduction to Ryukyuan Languages (2011), along with Thomas Pellard.

*toorgoo:* a twin-shaped pair of huge ponds. Serving as the stage in a number of Irabu stories and fables, toorgoo is regarded as an inspirational spot for Irabu people.

Things mentioned in this episode: