Monolingual fieldwork in and beyond the classroom: The Logooli experience at UCLA

Serendipitous discoveries are a hallmark of linguistic fieldwork, especially when it is conducted primarily in the target language. The linguist who listens and converses in the target language is privy to many unanticipated exchanges. Despite this, the primary mode of data collection in graduate linguistic field methods courses is usually translated elicitation. Few field methods instructors train students in the acquisition of competence in the target language. This means that even if a novice fieldworker believes in the value of target language competence, s/he likely has had little guidance in techniques for acquiring this, nor practice in monolingual elicitation. It is a pity that most field methods instructors cling to translation from English: monolingual elicitation is an enjoyable, memorable, and efficient framework for a graduate field methods course, especially in the early stages. The monolingual approach gives students a much more realistic introduction to the challenges, frustrations, and joys of linguistic fieldwork than does a controlled contact language elicitation model. The first quarter of the 2014-15 UCLA field methods course was taught using monolingual methods. This paper uses two transcripts from sessions from this course to show the potential of monolingual methods to gather large amounts of target language data quickly

Non-spatial setting in Nungon

The Finisterre-Huon Papuan language Nungon, like related languages, shows fusion of tense marking with number marking. Nungon is remarkable among Finisterre-Huon languages for an aspectual distinction conflated with evidentiality, and for the development of a formally marked realis Remote Future tense inflection with a formally unmarked irrealis counterpart. This paper presents the entire Nungon verbal inflectional system, including tense, aspect, status, subject and object indexing, referent tracking, and evidentiality

Editorial : acquisition of clause chaining

Research on the acquisition of complex syntax has largely overlooked a special type of complex sentence, found in hundreds of languages outside Western Europe: the clause chain. A clause chain contains as few as one and as many as 20 or more “medial” clauses, with verbal predicates that are under-specified for tense and other categories, and a single “final” (finite) clause, with a verbal predicate that is fully-specified for tense and, often, other categories. “Medial” clauses relate syntactically to other clauses in the chain without being subordinated to them. In some languages, each clause in a chain must indicate in advance whether the subject of the next clause will be the same as or different from that of the current clause, through “switch-reference” marking (Haiman and Munro, 1983; van Gijn and Hammond, 2016). Unlike English complex sentences, clause chains’ distribution is partially predictable in that it is often associated with description of temporally sequential events or actions

Let\u27s Speak Bom! The First Bom Primer: A Graphic Introduction to the Bom Language of Sierra Leone

A graphic introduction to the Bom language of Sierra Leone, based on the stories of Bom community elders. Compiled and illustrated by Hannah Sarvasy, with editorial assistance from Tucker Childs

Split Number in Nungon

"Mixed" or "top and second" number systems (Dixon 2012:52, Corbett 2000:120-121), in which different number systems occur in different parts of a language's grammar, are not unusual in Papuan languages. The Animacy Hierarchy (Corbett 2000:56; Smith-Stark 1974) dictates that if a grammar involves more than one number system, the system that includes more number distinctions should function higher on the hierarchy (Corbett 2000:121). Papuan languages of the Finisterre branch of the Finisterre-Huon language group (Madang and Morobe Provinces, Papua New Guinea) are unusual in that number system splits may be found, not only along the Animacy Hierarchy, but between different sets of pronouns, and even between different verbal tense markings. This paper describes the number system splits in the Finisterre Papuan language Nungon and gives historical explanations for the splits between pronoun sets and some of the splits between tenses

The narrative past inflection in Sesotho child and child-directed speech

This study investigates a low-frequency verbal inflection called the “narrative past” in child and child-directed speech in the Bantu language Sesotho. Since the function of the Sesotho narrative past is not well-described, this study aimed to illuminate both function and acquisition trends in the Demuth Sesotho Corpus (Demuth, 1992). The narrative past form has been assumed to be under-specified for tense, comparable in function to the better-known Swahili -ka- inflection. The Swahili form, in turn, has been said to function in “clause chains” that are functionally and structurally similar to such chains in Papuan and other languages. We expected that, if the Sesotho narrative past is indeed functionally similar to Swahili -ka-, its distribution in child-directed speech and acquisition by children may pattern similarly to tense-less verb forms in non-Bantu clause chaining languages such as the Papuan language Nungon, where such verb forms can comprise over 20% of all verb tokens in child-directed and child speech at age 3;3. This study thus examined the conversational interactions of four children acquiring Sesotho in a village setting, aged 2;1–4;7. All 492 tokens of the narrative past form were coded for syntactic and discourse categories. Results show that the Sesotho narrative past generally occurs in much “looser” discourse chains than the clause chains of languages like Nungon; for Sesotho, other turns or elements can intervene between narrative past-framed mentions of previously-introduced topics. Further, the Sesotho narrative past has very low frequency in both child and child-directed speech, representing <3% of all verb tokens for both registers. There is possible evidence that one of the target children uses the Sesotho narrative past in increasing proportions as his linguistic sophistication increases, but there is no significant corresponding proportional increase in child-directed speech. Thus, in function and distribution, in both child-directed and child speech, the Sesotho narrative past form differs greatly from tense-less forms in more canonical clause chaining languages

Singing the individual : name tunes in Oyda and Yopno

Music beats spoken language in identifying individuals uniquely in two disparate communities. In addition to their given names, which conform to the conventions of their languages, speakers of the Oyda (Omotic; SW Ethiopia) and Yopno (Finisterre-Huon; NE Papua New Guinea) languages have “name tunes,” short 1–4 s melodies that can be sung or whistled to hail or to identify for other purposes. Linguistic given names, for both communities, are often non-unique: people may be named after ancestors or contemporaries, or bear given names common to multiple individuals. But for both communities, name tunes are generally non-compositional and unique to individuals. This means that each new generation is likely to bring thousands of new name tunes into existence. In both communities, name tunes are produced in a range of contexts, from quotidian summoning and mid-range communication, to ceremonial occasions. In their use of melodies to directly represent individual people, the Oyda and Yopno name tune systems differ from surrogate speech systems elsewhere that either: (a) mimic linguistic forms, or (b) use music to represent a relatively small set of messages. Also, unlike some other musical surrogate speech traditions, the Oyda and Yopno name tune systems continue to be used productively, despite societal changes that have led to declining use in some domains

Vowel acoustics of Nungon child-directed speech, adult dyadic conversation, and foreigner-directed monologues

In many communities around the world, speech to infants (IDS) and small children (CDS) has increased mean pitch, increased pitch range, increased vowel duration, and vowel hyper-articulation when compared to speech directed to adults (ADS). Some of these IDS and CDS features are also attested in foreigner-directed speech (FDS), which has been studied for a smaller range of languages, generally major national languages, spoken by millions of people. We examined vowel acoustics in CDS, conversational ADS, and monologues directed to a foreigner (possible FDS, labeled MONO here) in the Towet dialect of the Papuan language Nungon, spoken by 300 people in a remote region in northeastern Papua New Guinea. Previous work established that Nungon CDS entails optional use of consonant alteration, special nursery vocabulary, and special morphosyntax. This study shows that Nungon CDS to children aged 2;2–3;10 lacks vowel hyper-articulation, but still displays other common prosodic traits of CDS styles around the world: increased mean pitch and pitch range. A developmental effect was also attested, in that speech to 2-year-olds contained vowels that were significantly longer than those in speech to 3-year-olds, which in turn had vowels of similar duration to those in Nungon ADS. We also found that Nungon FDS vowel triangles, measured from monologues primarily directed to a non-native speaker, were significantly larger than those of either CDS or conversational ADS, indicating vowel hyper-articulation. The Nungon pattern may align with the patterns of vowels in Norwegian IDS, CDS, and FDS, where hyper-articulation is found in FDS, but not CDS or IDS. The languages of the New Guinea area constitute 20% of the world's languages, but neither an acoustic comparison of vowels in CDS and ADS, nor an acoustic study of FDS, has previously been completed for any language of New Guinea. The function of an FDS style in a small, closed community like those of much of New Guinea may differ from that in larger societies, since there are very few non-native speakers of Nungon. Thus, this study uses monologues recorded with a foreign researcher as interlocutor to study Nungon FDS

Word learning in the field : adapting a laboratory-based task for testing in remote Papua New Guinea

Adapting laboratory psycholinguistic methods to fieldwork contexts can be fraught with difficulties. However, successful implementation of such methods in the field enhances our ability to learn the true extent and limitations of human behavior. This paper reports two attempts to run word learning experiments with the small community of Nungon speakers in Towet village in the Saruwaged Mountains, Papua New Guinea. A first attempt involved running a cross-situational task in which word-object pairings were presented ambiguously in each trial, and an explicit word learning task in which pairings were presented explicitly, or unambiguously, in each trial. While this quickly garnered a respectable 34 participants over the course of a week, it yielded null results, with many participants appearing to show simple patterned responses at test. We interpreted the null result as possibly reflecting the unfamiliarity of both the task and the laptop-based presentation mode. In Experiment 2, we made several adjustments to the explicit word learning task in an attempt to provide clearer instructions, reduce cognitive load, and frame the study within a real-world context. During a second 11-day stay in the village, 34 participants completed this modified task and demonstrated clear evidence of word learning. With this success serving as a future guide for researchers, our experiences show that it may require multiple attempts, even by experienced fieldworkers familiar with the target community, to successfully adapt experiments to a field setting

Bridging constructions

Many descriptive grammars report the use of a linguistic pattern at the interface between discourse and syntax which is known generally as tail-head linkage. This volume takes an unprecedented look at this type of linkage across languages and shows that there exist three distinct variants, all subsumed under the hypernym bridging constructions. The chapters highlight the defining features of these constructions in the grammar and their functional properties in discourse. The volume reveals that: Bridging constructions consist of two clauses: a reference clause and a bridging clause. Across languages, bridging clauses can be subordinated clauses, reduced main clauses, or main clauses with continuation prosody. Bridging constructions have three variants: recapitulative linkage, summary linkage and mixed linkage. They differ in the formal makeup of the bridging clause. In discourse, the functions that bridging constructions fulfil depend on the text genres in which they appear and their position in the text. If a language uses more than one type of bridging construction, then each type has a distinct discourse function. Bridging constructions can be optional and purely stylistic or mandatory and serve a grammatical purpose. Although the difference between bridging constructions and clause repetition can be subtle, they maintain their own distinctive characteristics