On beginning the study of the tone system of a Dene (Athabaskan) language: Looking back

In this paper I review the methodology that I used in beginning my early fieldwork on a tonal Athabaskan language, including preparation through reading and listening, working with speakers, organizing data, and describing and analyzing the data, stressing how these are not steps or stages, but intersect and interact with each other. *This paper is in the series How to Study a Tone Language, edited by Steven Bird and Larry HymanNational Foreign Language Resource Cente

Sounds in grammar writing

While there has been much written on writing grammars in recent years, relatively little has been written on the place of sounds and their patterning in grammar writing. In this chapter I provide an overview of some of the challenges of writing about sounds, and discuss the kinds of information on sounds that are generally included in grammars. I then address what a grammar might ideally include on the sounds of a language, advocating the inclusion of sound files to augment the usual topics, increasing both the scientific merit and the human value of the grammar.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Noun Compounds in Dene

Recent work on Athapaskan languages, including Dene, has focussed mainly on the verb (e.g. Kari 1973, Kari 1979, Rice 1976). While this is not surprising, due to the complex nature of the verb structure and the morphophonemics involved in the verb, other categories in Dene are of interest also. In this paper, I will explore properties of compound nouns in Dene. I will show that semantic, phonological, and morphological properties of compounds converge to define two distinct types of compounding in Dene. In part 1 of the paper, compound nouns are exemplified. Part 2 is a discussion of basic word formation and phonological processes in Dene. In part 3, the two types of compound nouns found in Dene are described along with their defining characteristics

Reflections on documenting the lexicon

The lexicon presents unique challenges in language documentation. This reflection reviews some of those challenges, focusing on two major areas, what I have learned over time about what is important to document and the creation of dictionaries. Throughout I stress the value of considering the lexicon broadly, and, in the situation that linguists are involved, of working closely with speakers and community members in all stages of decision making, from what to document to how to spell, to how to represent meanings. N. Scott Momaday writes of words as medicine, and this is important to keep in mind in lexical documentation—one is engaging with worldview. The responsibility then of documenting the lexicon is large, and the stakes are high, given how words give deep insight into ways of being.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Dependencies in phonology: hierarchies and variation

Dependencies in phonology: hierarchies and variatio

Language Documentation in the Americas

In the last decades, the documentation of endangered languages has advanced greatly in the Americas. In this paper we survey the role that international funding programs have played in advancing documentation in this part of the world, with a particular focus on the growth of documentation in Brazil, and we examine some of the major opportunities and challenges involved in documentation in the Americas, focusing on participatory research models. *This paper is in the series Language Documentation in the Americas edited by Keren Rice and Bruna FranchettoNational Foreign Language Resource Cente

Introduction

National Foreign Language Resource Cente