Reflections on diversity linguistics: Language inventories and atlases

This contribution gives a short overview of “language inventorying”: research aiming at creating comprehensive catalogues and atlases of all the languages in the world, which has seen a boost with the renewed interest in linguistic diversity triggered by the awareness of language endangerment in the 1990s. By focusing on the development of the ISO standard 639 and SIL’s Ethnologue, the main advances and issues in this area are discussed. The overview concludes by presenting the major alternative resources, in particular Glottolog.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Expedições alemães que fundaram a etnologia da Amazônia

Resenhas: KRAUS, Michael. Bildungsbürger im Urwald: Die deutsche ethnologische Amazonienforschung (1884–1929). Marburg: Curupira, 2004. 539 p.: il. ISBN 3-8185-0397-4.Rezension zu: KRAUS, Michael. Bildungsbürger im Urwald: Die deutsche ethnologische Amazonienforschung (1884–1929). Marburg: Curupira, 2004. 539 p.: il. ISBN 3-8185-0397-4

Languages, ‘Languoids’, and ISO-codes for Language Diversity and Variation

There is a strong need to uniquely and unequivocally refer to languages and similar entities – not only by linguists concerned with language diversity, but also by institutions such as language repositories, OLAC, LinguistList, WALS, Wikipedia, UNICODE, etc. ISO 639, possibly the most used ISO standard of all, has been answering this need in many domains. When ISO 639 3 was established based on SIL’s Ethnologue (Lewis et al. 2015), it was widely taken up, despite criticism (e.g. Epps et al. 2006) and inaccuracies and problems persisting until today (Hammarstöm 2015). In the future there will also be a growing need for identification of language varieties. A first proposal for ISO 639-6, covering linguistic varieties, has been discarded as clearly inadequate. There are several alternatives, in particular the Glottolog, which uses a new terminological conception around the term ‘languoid’. Based on the author’s background in language documentation, and on his participation in ISO/TC 37/SC 2/WG 1 (responsible for ISO 639), this contribution offers an insider’s view on the discussion about ISO 639 and related work dealing with linguistic diversity, focusing on the following points: • Even if arguably best combined with other catalogues such as Glottolog, ISO 639 is too important for diversity linguists not to care about and not to get more involved. • Many of the criticisms in Morey et al.’s paper and similar recent notes (e.g. by Haspelmath) are based on mis¬conceptions of the role of ISO and Ethnologue. • The term ‘languoid’ may well be a useful cover term for languages, language varieties and perhaps language families, but the theoretical conception offered by Cysow and Good (2013) to underpin this term (and the related notions ‘doculect’ and ‘glossonym’) is inadequate as a conception to formalize the notion of ‘language’. • An appropriate way of cataloguing and coding languoids crucially needs an answer to the question what names like ‘English’ or codes like ‘eng’ actually refer to. Here, a conception of languages and similar entities as sets, allowing for fuzzy and overlapping borders, is offered. • The topology of ‘languoids’ is empirically more complex than what can be covered by the traditional triad ‘family’ – ‘language’ – ‘dialect’ (more general: ‘variety’), implying we should expand and refine our model, not abandon these terms. • A more appropriate framework for identifying linguistic variation (accepted as the basis for a new working item in ISO TC 37) is outlined. References Cysouw, Michael & Jeff Good (2013). Languoid, Doculect, Glossonym: Formalizing the notion "language". Language Documentation and Conservation 7. 331-359. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/4606 See also a Blog contribution: Cysouw, Michael (2014-01-04). Languoid, Doculect and Glossonym: Formalizing the Notion 'Language'. Diversity Linguistics Comments. http://dlc.hypotheses.org/623 Epps, Patience (2006). In opposition to adopting Ethnologue's language codes for ISO 639-3. SSILA Bulletin 246. Hammarström, Harald (2015). Ethnologue 16/17/18th editions: A comprehensive review. : Language 91/3, 723-737 Haspelmath, Martin (2013-12-04). Can language identity be standardized? On Morey et al.'s critique of ISO 639 3. Diversity Linguistics Comments. http://dlc.hypotheses.org/610 Lewis, M. Paul, Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2016. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Nineteenth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com. Morey, Stephen & Post, Mark W. & Friedman, Victor A. (2013). The language codes of ISO 639: a premature, ultimately unobtainable, and possibly damaging standardization. Handout of a talk given at the PARDISEC RRR Conference, December 2013. http://www.academia.edu/4725536/The_language_codes_of_ISO_639_A_premature_ultimately_unobtainable_and_possibly_damaging_standardization Version for publication is in preparation. Nordhoff, Sebastian & Hammarström, Harald & Forkel, Robert & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) (2013). Glottolog 2.2. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. http://glottolog.org Accessed 2016-08-31

Charting Vanishing Voices: A Collaborative Workshop to Map Endangered Oral Cultures

This presentation was given at the World Oral Literature Project 2012 workshop Charting Vanishing Voices: A Collaborative Workshop to Map Endangered Oral Cultures.Language endangerment is by now a well-known topic, and language documentation one well-established academic discipline that aims at addressing this urgent issue. Language documentation in the modern sense is concerned with creating lasting records of language in the natural environment by building annotated multi-media corpora, among other resources. A crucial point here is to ensure that the data are archived in a sustainable way – they ought to be available and usable for years and decades to come, as the basis for further research, educational projects or language revitalisation activities. Generally there is yet little awareness of the fact that the data about endangered languages are endangered themselves. This talk presents the activities and solutions being developed at The Language Archive at the Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen that aim at providing tools and an infrastructure that supports the creation and long-term archiving of precious language data

Psycholinguistik

5.1 Einführung in den Forschungsbereich Die Psycholinguistik ist der Bereich der Linguistik, der sich mit dem Zusammenhang zwischen menschlicher Sprache und dem Denken und anderen mentalen Prozessen beschäftigt, d.h. sie stellt sich einer Reihe von essentiellen Fragen wie etwa (1) Wie schafft es unser Gehirn, im Wesentlichen akustische und visuelle kommunikative Informationen zu verstehen und in mentale Repräsentationen umzusetzen? (2) Wie kann unser Gehirn einen komplexen Sachverhalt, den wir anderen übermitteln wollen, in eine von anderen verarbeitbare Sequenz von verbalen und nonverbalen Aktionen umsetzen? (3) Wie gelingt es uns, in den verschiedenen Phasen des Lebens Sprachen zu erlernen? (4) Sind die kognitiven Prozesse der Sprachverarbeitung universell, obwohl die Sprachsysteme derart unterschiedlich sind, dass sich in den Strukturen kaum Universalien finden lassen

A Fonologia do Awetí

O trabalho apresenta as principais propriedades fonológicas do Awetí (Tupí). O Awetí tem seis vogais orais e nasalidade vs. oralidade distintiva em pelo menos uma sílaba de cada palavra; em outras sílabas o contraste é neutralizado (harmonia nasal). Entre as quinze consoantes predominam as de articulação apical; as fricativas e a lateral têm uma posição marginal no sistema. A posição do acento lexical é usualmente previsível, ele recai sobre a última vogal da raiz, com poucas exceções. A harmonia nasal é o fenômeno suprassegmental mais saliente. Na fonotática encontramos a estrutura básica [C1] [V1 [C2]] V2 [C3] e descrevemos estatisticamente as frequências de padrões (poli)silábicas e a distribuição dos fonemas. Finalmente analisamos alguns processos potencialmente morfo-fonológicos, em particular a ocorrência ou não da lenição das consoantes finais, e a assimilação da partícula /mɛ̠/. Estes dois fenômenos, bem como a harmonia nasal, são analisados fazendo uso de uma teoria fonológica ‘declarativa’ de dois níveis (sem derivações): um nível fonético e um fonológico o qual permite, ao lado dos fonemas tradicionais, unidades mais abstratas (arquifonemas como as consoantes finais como /P/ = {bilabial}, as vogais ‘neutras’ – sem o traço de oralidade/‌nasalidade –, e unidades abstratas como /°/ = {oclusiva, oral}, e /~/ = {nasal})

A ortografia da língua Awetí

Este trabalho descreve e fundamenta a ortografia da língua Awetí (Tupí, Alto Xingu/mt), com base na análise da estrutura fonológica e gramatical do Awetí. A ortografia é resultado de um longo trabalho colaborativo entre os três autores, iniciado em 1998. Ela não define apenas um alfabeto (a representação das vogais e das consoantes da língua), mas também aborda a variação interna, ressilabificação, lenição, palatalização e outros processos (morfo‑)fonológicos. Tanto a representação escrita da oclusiva glotal, quanto as consequências ortográficas da harmonia nasal receberam uma atenção especial. Apesar de o acento lexical não ser ortograficamente marcado em Awetí, a grande maioria dos afixos e partículas é abordada considerando o acento e sua interação com morfemas adjacentes, ao mesmo tempo determinando as palavras ortográficas. Finalmente foi estabelecida a ordem alfabética em que dígrafos são tratados como sequências de letras, já a oclusiva glotal ⟨ʼ⟩ é ignorada, facilitando o aprendizado do Awetí. A ortografia tal como descrita aqui tem sido usada por aproximadamente dez anos na escola para a alfabetização em Awetí, com bons resultados obtidos. Acreditamos que vários dos argumentos aqui levantados podem ser produtivamente transferidos para outras línguas com fenômenos semelhantes (a oclusiva glotal como consoante, harmonia nasal, assimilação morfo-fonológica, etc.)

Public access to research data in language documentation: Challenges and possible strategies

The Open Access Movement promotes free and unfettered access to research publications and, increasingly, to the primary data which underly those publications. As the field of documentary linguistics seeks to record and preserve culturally and linguistically relevant materials, the question of how openly accessible these materials should be becomes increasingly important. This paper aims to guide researchers and other stakeholders in finding an appropriate balance between accessibility and confidentiality of data, addressing community questions and legal, institutional, and intellectual issues that pose challenges to accessible dat

Prospects for e-grammars and endangered languages corpora

This contribution explores the potentials of combining corpora of language use data with language description in e-grammars (or digital grammars). We present three directions of ongoing research and discuss the advantages of combining these and similar approaches, arguing that the technological possibilities have barely begun to be explored.National Foreign Language Resource Cente