Life in Communities

Given the widely recognized danger the world’s languages face at the present time, there has been a major expansion of language documentation and linguistic description, which requires what has been traditionally referred to as linguistic fieldwork. We generally prepare our students to undertake this work through field methods courses but “[w]hile we generally do a very thorough job of teaching how to elicit and analyze data, we often forget to tell them that there is a personal and practical side to fieldwork that can very well derail their research if they are not prepared for it.” (Macauley, 2004:194). The overall goal of this workshop is, therefore, to familiarize the students with the personal and practical dimensions of fieldwork.2015 NSF/BCS 1500841: CoLang 2016: Institute on Collaborative Language Research – ALASKA Alaska Native Language Cente

The Mako language: Vitality, Grammar and Classification

This dissertation focuses on the documentation and description of Mako, an indigenous language spoken in the Venezuelan Amazon by about 1000 people and for which the only available published material at the start of the project were 38 words. The main goals of the project were to create a collection of annotated ethnographic texts and a grammar that could serve as a starting point for both language maintenance in the community and for further linguistic research. Additionally, the project sought to assess the language’s vitality in the communities where it is spoken and to understand the relationship of Mako to the two other extant Sáliban languages, namely Piaroa and Sáliba. This research has thus led to an assessment of language vitality in the Mako communities of the Ventuari River, a comprehensive description of the Mako language—heretofore undescribed—, and an evaluation of the genetic relationship between the three Sáliban languages. Aside from facilitating the study of other members of the Sáliban family and reconstruction of the common ancestral language, the description of Mako also contributes to the typology of Amazonian languages and to our understanding of the pre-history of this area of the Orinoco basin. The products of this project also have the potential to be mobilized in language literacy efforts in the Mako communities

Language Vitality among the Mako Communities of the Ventuari River

Mako [ISO 639-3: wpc], a Sáliban language spoken along the Ventuari River in the Venezuelan Amazon, has been variably reported as (critically) endangered and threatened. These reports, however, are based on second-hand information and/or self-reported census data. In this article, I present a vitality assessment of Mako that relies on first-hand fieldwork data from 20 communities in the Middle Ventuari River area. The analysis of the data -- collected through interviews, community censuses, and participant observation between 2012 and 2014 -- shows that the situation is not as dire as previously reported and that the language is very vital in its local context. I also show that the place of Mako in the regional and national contexts put it in a vulnerable position and that steps should be taken to ensure its presence in new domains of use. Methodologically, I show the importance -- and argue in favor -- of including data from long-term participant observation in analyses and reports of linguistic vitality because of the access this methodology provides to tacit knowledge about language use and attitudes. This work thus contributes both to our understanding of language vitality among the Mako communities and to discussions of best practices in language vitality assessments.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

OS ACERVOS E A DOCUMENTAÇÃO LINGUÍSTICA

This article is derived from a conference at the ABRALIN ao vivo, held online, in 2020. The goal is to discuss the benefits and challenges associated with archiving in language documentation considering our accumulated knowledge as scholars who are deeply involved in administering, contributing to, and drawing on language archives, with an emphasis on the indigenous languages of Latin America. We focus in particular on the relevance of language archiving in Brazil, and its significance for scholars, community members, and other stakeholders.Este artigo é oriundo de uma conferência na ABRALIN ao vivo, realizada online, em 2020. O objetivo é discutir os benefícios e desafios associados à documentação e criação de acervos linguísticos considerando nosso conhecimento acumulado como pesquisadores profundamente envolvidos na administração e manutenção de acervos de línguas, com ênfase nas línguas indígenas da América Latina. Focamos na relevância de acervos linguísticos no Brasil e sua importância para a comunidade acadêmica, membros de comunidades indígenas e outras partes interessadas

Review of Language documentation: Practice and values

National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Body and body-part configurations in Piaroa (Jodï-Sáliban)

Presentation at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE 2020

Monolingual field methods: Applying Everett's (2001) 'Monolingual field research' to field training

I will argue in favor of monolingual field training with more than one language consultant. Discussion will be based on Everett’s (2001) “Monolingual field research” and will focus on how Everett’s ideas were successfully applied to a field training course at InField 2010. Class elicitation examples, props, and anecdotes will be used

LOS MARCADORES DE PERSONA DEL MAKO: UNIVERSALIDAD, AREALIDAD Y/O HERENCIA GENÉTICA

El presente artículo brinda una descripción preliminar del sistema de marcadores de persona del mako, lengua sáliba hablada por alrededor de 1200 personas en el Estado Amazonas (Venezuela). El sistema de marcadores de persona del majo incluye cuatro grupos de marcadores: los marcadores nominales de posesión, dos grupos de marcadores verbales de sujeto y los marcadores verbales de objeto. Entre los rasgos más sobresalientes del sistema se encuentran: 1) la igualdad de forma entre los marcadores nominales de posesión y uno de los grupos de marcadores verbales de sujeto y 2) la existencia de dos grupos distintos de marcadores verbales de sujeto. El posible orige de dichos rasgos es investigado desde una perspectiva universal, areal y genética