This Friday, LINGUIST List is hosting two special events:

Friday, 4/13, 11 am – 1 pm: The LL-MAP Scholar’s Workbench Workshop will introduce attendees to using the LL-MAP interface and Scholar’s Workbench tool, including tutorials on how to map your own data.  The workshop is open to the public, and will be held at Eastern Michigan University’s Halle Library, room 111.  If you’d like to attend, please register here:

http://llmap.org/llmap-flyer

Friday, 4/13, 1:30 pm: ILIT faculty affiliate Dr. Maƚgosia Ćavar will be presenting a talk at LINGUIST List entitled On the influence of L1 on L2 perception: The case of tenseness contrast in American vowels.  This will also be open to anyone– if you’re in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area, you’re invited to attend!  For those unfortunate readers who can’t make it to Michigan, we’ll be recording Dr. Ćavar’s talk and making it available online.

We hope to see you on Friday!

http://linguistlist.org/store

The LINGUIST List Amazon store has made its debut!  Users can browse linguistics books by category, as well as essential electronics like audio recorders and hard drives.  Best of all, every purchase you make through the LINGUIST List Amazon store contributes a small donation to LINGUIST, at no additional cost to you!

Update: We now have stores for several countries; save money on shipping by shopping the store closest to you!

USA: http://astore.amazon.com/linguistlist-20
Canada: http://astore.amazon.ca/linguistlistc-20
Germany: http://astore.amazon.de/linguistlistd-21
France: http://astore.amazon.fr/linguistlistf-21
United Kingdom: http://astore.amazon.co.uk/linguistlist-21

We do not yet have stores in Japan, China, Italy or Spain, simply because we
have not yet received permission to open a store in these countries. But
we will certainly add them when the opportunity arises.

Happy shopping, and thank you for supporting LINGUIST List!

The LINGUIST List has offered summer internships to linguistics students since 2007, when our now-Associate Project Manager Matt Lahrman was the first-ever LINGUIST intern (how far and how quickly he rose!).  Ever since, LINGUIST List has chosen a few  promising students from around the world to join us for a summer, learn about linguistic technologies, and gain firsthand experience working on LL projects.  Internships are one of the programs we fund with the money raised during Fund Drive – so thank you, LINGUIST List donors, for helping us bring these interns on board!

We’re delighted to tell you that this year we’ll be hosting an unprecedented nine summer interns due to additional funding from the National Science Foundation.  Our first intern joined us on Monday, and the 2012 internship cohort will continue arriving until June; stay tuned for an upcoming post introducing this year’s LINGUIST interns!

What have past LINGUIST List interns said about their experiences?  Here’s a sampler:

“I really like the people here. We’re all interesting, smart people and we genuinely like to be here together. Also, we get to work on great projects.” -Danielle St. Jean, 2009 summer intern and subsequent LINGUIST editor

“The intern program at LINGUIST allows you to explore and develop your interests, and find ones you never knew you had.” -Danniella Hornby, 2010 summer intern and current LL Publications Editor

“I greatly valued the camaraderie between workers in the office and having the chance to bounce ideas off of each other in each of the projects. I also enjoyed the problem solving aspect of my work, specifically the foresight and creativity necessary to digitize complex maps.” -Christine Evans, 2011 summer intern and current Fulbright scholar

If you missed your chance to intern this summer, never fear: you’ll get a chance next year. The call for 2013 interns will go out this fall; see the 2012 call for interns here.

Remember the LingQuest Graduate Tournament, wherein schools around the world contended for the honor of Top Donor of Fund Drive 2012?  You may recall that the University of Washington took top honors, with an astonishing $4205 in donations; the University of South Carolina wowed us with their enthusiasm and their 34 individual donors.

We’re pleased to give you a sneak peek of their prizes– to the University of Washington goes the prestigious Golden Pig Award, and the University of South Carolina will receive the coveted School Spirit Award!  Behold, in all their glory, the first annual LINGUIST List award plaques:

Congratulations, UW and USC!  We salute you and thank you for your support (especially grateful are our interns, who you’ve helped fund!).  Perhaps these can be the first in a long line of trophies to line your walls…

In preparation for the 2012 Language Mapping Workshop, the LL-MAP team realized that we needed an answer to the question–”How do I use the most basic features of the LL-MAP Map Viewer?” As a quick (and visual) answer to this question, the team has created the Quick Reference Guide to LL-MAP!

First unveiled at our workshop, now you can enjoy it too! This incredibly useful guide features numbered boxes designating the most important parts of the LL-MAP interface and a key to the features listed in these boxes. By following the order listed on the map and using the map key on the next page, users can now easily and quickly navigate the LL-MAP interface and grasp the most essential features of LL-MAP.

While we worked tirelessly in preparation for this workshop to enumerate all aspects of LL-MAP in our help pages, we have now highlighted the most essential features of LL-MAP in our Quick Reference Guide so that you can start using LL-MAP now. Haven’t used LL-MAP before? Start using the Quick Reference Guide and you’ll be up to speed in no time. And if you’ve already been viewing the maps in this wonderful project,  you may want to use the Quick Reference Guide to make sure you aren’t missing out on any of the great features that LL-MAP offers for your research or teaching needs.

The Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat), a joint project by the LINGUIST List and the University of Hawai’i Manoa, launched as part of the Endangered Languages Project, developed by Google.

(www.endangeredlanguages.com)

The ELCat project aims to compile the most reliable, up-to-date source of information about the world’s endangered languages.  For more information on the ELCat research project, visit the LINGUIST List ELCat project page or the University of Hawai’i's ELCat project page.

We’d love to hear feedback from users!  Send your questions or comments to elcat [at] linguistlist [dot] org.

The Endangered Languages Project, home of LINGUIST List and University of Hawai’i's Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat) project, has been getting far more press than we here at LINGUIST are accustomed to.  We’re very excited at the prospect of so much attention to the issue of language endangerment, and are hoping it will raise public awareness and involvement in documentation and preservation efforts.  Below, in no particular order, are some of the articles we’ve run across in media outlets around the world.  If you find an article on the project that we’ve missed, feel free to leave a comment!

U.S.-based Newspapers and Media Outlets:

• CNN: “Google fights to save 3,054 dying languages”
• LA Times: “Google.org helps keep endangered languages alive”
• Washington Post: “Google fights for endangered languages”
• Marketplace (NPR): “Google chips in to preserve endangered languages”
• Time Magazine: “Google Joins Fight to Save Nearly 3,000 Endangered Languages”
• MSNBC: “Google backs online project to preserve endangered languages”
• CBS News: “Google launches Endangered Languages Project”
• Fox News: “New Google project helps preserve dying languages”
• The Atlantic: “The Disappearing Languages of Asia”

(Many more articles after the cut – click “Continue Reading”)

This summer, we’re lucky enough to have nine terrific interns joining us here at LINGUIST List Headquarters.  This happens to be the largest group of interns that LINGUIST List has ever hosted (compared to 3-4 in past years), and we couldn’t be more pleased that they’re here.  So far, they have proven themselves to be excellent mapmakers, language family tree builders, endangered language researchers, lexicon digitizers, and inventors of goofy puns– not to mention that they’re also a group of really smart, dedicated, delightful people.

Who are these exceptional students, you may ask, possessed of talent and ambition sufficient to join the LINGUIST ranks?  

Good question.  Meet our 2012 interns:

Andrew Peters

Junior, Carleton College

Major: Linguistics

“I’m a junior linguistics major at Carleton College, interested in all aspects of linguistics, but particularly phonology and language acquisition. Though born and raised in Minnesota, I came to Ypsilanti straight from Kyoto, Japan, where I studied Japanese linguistics at Doshisha University. Outside of school, I enjoy making and listening to music, watching movies, hiking, and running.”

Caela Northey

Junior, University of Wisconsin Madison

Majors: Linguistics, Computer Science

“As a double major in computer science and linguistics, I am thrilled to be an intern this summer at the LINGUIST List! My main interests in computer science are software development and natural language processing, and my linguistic interests include phonology and historical linguistics. I’d like to one day attend graduate school at the beautiful Edinburgh University, but until then the class I am most excited to take next semester is Modern Irish Language. If I weren’t studying CS/Linguistics, I would be pursuing a career as either a ceramicist, pastry chef, or professional video game tester.”

Calvin Cheng

Recent BA graduate, UCLA

Majors: Linguistics, Spanish

“As a bumbling undergraduate student at UCLA, I started my career in linguistics without really knowing what I was getting myself into. I originally imagined that it would give me the opportunity to learn to speak lots of Romance languages (which I was obsessed with for a while) and compare the orthographic cognates between Catalan and Italian; little did I know that it would entail practicing implosives to keep myself amused while sitting in LA traffic or raising some guy named John (who seems to be the obsession of syntacticians) to the spec-of-TP position. Though my understanding of linguistics has changed and continues to do so, I remain undiscouraged in the pursuit of deepening my understanding of the field. I am thus especially excited to be interning at LINGUIST List, where, through my involvement with the LL-MAP and MultiTree projects, I continue to not only expand my knowledge of the discipline and of specific languages but also gain a hands-on understanding of some of the technologies that can be used to organize language data.”

EmemObong Udoh

PhD Student, University of Nigeria, Nsukka

Focus: Language Documentation, Phonology, Morphology

“Hi! Quite nice meeting you. I am EmemObong Udoh, Nigerian. I have a Bachelor’s degree in Linguistics from the University of Uyo, Nigeria. After some ‘heres’ and ‘theres’ in the Nigerian labour market, I decided to go back to my Alma Mata to enroll in a Masters Language Documentation class which I completed in January 2010. After graduation, I became an Assistant Lecturer in my department with interests in phonetics/phonology and morphology. I hope to start my PhD by October 2012 in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

I can’t really tell you everything about myself here, but straight to the point! I became interested in LINGUIST List following my Language Documentation background. I am currently working here as a 2012 summer intern on the MultiTree project and, if permitted, some this and that stuff on ELCat and LL-MAP which are also quite interesting to me. Already, I’ve met a set of very nice people at LINGUIST and will be missing them in early October. Cheers!”

Jacob Collard

Freshman, Swarthmore College

Major: Linguistics

“When I was a freshman in high school, I picked up several books on linguistics for reading during summer vacation. This sparked my interest in foreign languages and the scientific study of languages, and I have since devoted a significant portion of my time to teaching myself linguistics and foreign languages, and I have become particularly fascinated by endangered language documentation and conservation. More recently, I have also begun studying computer science, and many other subjects and hobbies are constantly finding their ways into my interests and hobbies.”

Monica Lesher

Recent BA graduate, Eastern Michigan University

Major: English Linguistics, German Language and Literature

“I grew up in Michigan and attended Eastern Michigan University for my undergraduate studies, earning a B.A. in English Linguistics and German Language and Literature. Last spring and summer I studied at the Justus-Liebig Univeristät in Gießen, Germany. I hope to continue my studies in linguistics in the future as well as continue to travel and learn new languages along the way.”

Seng Lee

Recent BA graduate, University of Virginia

Major: Linguistics

“I am a recent U.Va. graduate who jumped at the chance to work in my own field during the summer. Having — eventually — gotten over my swoons at the prospect of doing so at an organization as well-established as the LINGUIST List, I then proceeded to thoroughly relish the prospect of using my powers for good (which sounds much catchier than ‘using my education to help facilitate others’ studies’). Some of my too-many linguistic interests are language in contact situations and in interaction with social gender. I also appreciate language as a tool of daily communication and medium of creative endeavor: outside linguistics, I enjoy SFF, transformative works, and dabbling with various arts.”

Svetlana Tchistiakova

Recent BA graduate, UCLA

Major: Linguistics

“I graduated from UCLA with a major in linguistics and a minor in Russian Language in December 2010.  I am insatiably interested in most linguistics topics, although my previous studies have been centered around Slavic languages, Icibemba (Bantu) vowel phonology, and language acquisition.  I am very excited and fortunate to now have the chance to put what I learned as an undergrad into practice here at the LINGUIST List!”

Tenzin Tsundu

Freshman, Berea College

Major: Business

“I am currently studying at Berea College, a small liberal arts college in Kentucky, and just completed my first year in college.  I am a Tibetan-American that emigrated from Nepal in 2000, when I was 7 years old.   Since immigrating to the United States I have mainly lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  I found out about the LINGUIST List internship from my sister who was also an intern here at LINGUIST List a couple of years back.  I am going to help on the LL-MAP project and also help with finances by reconciling accounts.  In my free time, I love to be active by playing sports and going on hikes.”

Welcome to the LINGUIST List crew, 2012 interns!

The LL-MAP project has  been a hub of activity this summer. Our team of graduate students conducted internal training workshops in May and June to train incoming interns on mapmaking using Global Mapper and the LL-MAP uploader, and our team has been pumping out fascinating language maps all summer.

Several important sources were scanned , georegistered, vectorized, and styled into new digital map resources. Examples include the entire Linguistic Survey of India from 1903, a host of maps in the Pacific such as this example  in Indonesia, and Powell’s report from 1890 of the American Indian languages.

In June, LL-MAP was also featured at two workshops. I had the honor of presenting the LL-MAP Scholar’s Workbench at the Language Documentation 3 conference at the University of Bolzano in Bolzano (Bozen), Italy. The topic of this year’s conference was Language Mapping, and I showed attendees how to use LL-MAP for language research and how to begin making their own maps in the Scholar’s Workbench. LL-MAP was also the central topic in a workshop on language mapping taught by Anthony Aristar, Helen Aristar-Dry, and Joshua Thompson at the CoLang 2012 Institute hosted by the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.

LINGUIST List is excited to announce that beginning September 21, the Endangered Languages Project website will be operated by LINGUIST List/ILIT.  We’re looking forward to working closely with the First Peoples’ Cultural Council, who have taken on leadership of the ELP Advisory Committee, and with the dedicated and talented members of the Advisory Committee.  Keep an eye out for a number of improvements and new features on the ELP site in the coming weeks; we’re eager to continue making the site ever more useful and engaging for linguists, language communities, and the public.

ELP users should take a look at the site’s new Terms of Service, effective 9/21.  And, as always, we want to hear your feedback on the site!  Contact elcat (at) linguistlist (dot) org with any suggestions, questions, or comments you may have.

An impressive fourty-four new trees were added to the MultiTree database this summer, from language groupings including SinoTibetan, Niger-Congo, Khoisan, Tai-Kadai, Trans New Guinea, Austronesian, Indo-European, and language families in the Americas. The details of the new trees are given below, with comments from Monica Lesher, one of the summer interns who worked on the MultiTree project. 

AMERICAS:

Four trees from Edward Sapir were added to the MultiTree repository. Sapir represents an early generation of language classification and published countless works on historical linguistics and classification from the early to mid-20th century. While his conclusions in the classification of indigenous languages of the Americas are not completely accepted today,  his work was a big step forward in the study of American indigenous languages.

Algonkin-Wakashan: Sapir 1968

Aztec-Tanoan: Sapir 1949

Penutian: Sapir 1949

Hokan-Siouan: Sapir 1949

All of the following trees correspond to a map published in 1937 by Segun Krickeberg, under the direction of Wigberto Jimenez Moreno. This map portrays Jimenez Moreno’s classification of languages of South America, as well as those he considered to be isolates. Jimenez Moreno is well-known as an early scholar of indigenous languages of the Americas. (A corresponding LL-MAP map is in the works.)

Aruacana: Krickeberg & Jimenez Moreno 1937

Aimara: Krickeberg & Jimenez Moreno 1937

Araguaco: Krickeberg & Jimenez Moreno 1937

Caribe: Krickeberg & Jimenez Moreno 1937

Charrua: Krickeberg & Jimenez Moreno 1937

Chibcha: Krickeberg & Jimenez Moreno 1937

Diaguita: Krickeberg & Jimenez Moreno 1937

Ges: Krickeberg & Jimenez Moreno 1937

Guaycuru: Krickeberg & Jimenez Moreno 1937

Pano: Krickeberg & Jimenez Moreno 1937

Quechua: Krickeberg & Jimenez Moreno 1937

Puelche: Krickeberg & Jimenez Moreno 1937

Tehuelche: Krickeberg & Jimenez Moreno 1937

Tucano: Krickeberg & Jimenez Moreno 1937

Tupi-Guarani: Krickeberg & Jimenez Moreno 1937

Lyle Campbell and Veronica Grondona are very well known for their work on indigenous languages of the Americas. The following Chibchan tree is the first from one of their most recent works, and it was begun while the source was still in preparation (used with permission of the authors).

Chibchan: Campbell, Grondona 2012

OTHER TREES:

Several trees for Asian language groups were completed.

Sino-Tibetan: Shaffer 1955

A tree of Chinese dialects was created from a massive work on the dialects of Chinese languages by Wurm and Yongquan:.

Chinese (dialects): Wurm, Yongquan 1987

David Bradley is an editor of the section of Atlas of the World’s Languages titled “East and South-East Asia.” This source is exceptionally detailed and researched, and it outlines not just Bradley and Alan Sanders’ (another contributor to the section) classification, but also many alternative classifications of languages of the Mon-Khmer family. 

Mon-Khmer: Bradley 2007

The Sino-Tibetan tree from “East and South-East Asia” in the Atlas of World Languages was also created. David Bradley and Alan Sanders are the contributors in this section, and this particular article is extremely in-depth and well-researched.

Sino-Tibetan: Bradley 2007

Austro-Thai: Benedict 1975

George Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India was without a doubt the first major documentation of the peoples and languages of then-British territory India. Finished in 1891 and published shortly thereafter, Grierson’s work, while far from what most scholars today would call linguistically accurate, was conducted at a time when linguistics was not itself considered a field of study apart from anthropology. A linguistic study of this kind was scarce at the time of its publication, and it is quite impressive with its minute details and in-depth analysis of the Indian cultures and languages of the late 19th century. (Note: There are 32 maps in LL-MAP that correspond to this tree. Each map is linked in its credits to the tree in MultiTree and can be found in LL-MAP by searching for “Linguistic Survey of India.”)

Aryan (subtree of Indo-European): Grierson 1903 (Linguistics Survey of India)

Mon-Khmer, subtree of Austro-Asiatic: Thomas 1966

Two Tai-Kadai hypotheses were added as trees:

Tai-Kadai: Diller 2008 (Diller  is an authority on Tai-Kadai languages and was in correspondence with Calvin Cheng , the intern who made this tree.)

Tai-Kadai: Ethnologue 2009

Here at the LINGUIST List, we’re dedicated to providing useful services for the linguistics community. You may already be familiar with EasyAbstracts, a free service offered by LINGUIST to help conference organizers to accept and review abstracts online—but now we’d like to introduce you to EasyReg, the new registration facility which allows conference organizers to set up online registration and payment: www.linguistlist.org/confservices/EasyReg/index.cfm

Among other things, EasyReg allows:

·      Payment by credit card (Visa and Mastercard only)

·      Customization of form fields to collect exactly the registration information you need

·      Search and download of all registration and payment information

·      Modification of the page design to include the conference logo and color scheme

Furthermore, EasyReg is:

·      Already set up and web-based — requires NO installation

·      Secure – the EasyReg payment gateway is PCI compliant

·      Integrated with conference information previously posted on LINGUIST List

But don’t take our word for it—the EasyReg demo feature allows conference organizers to try out the site before committing. The demo feature makes it possible to navigate EasyReg as either an organizer or an attendee, from the first step of signing up to the very last step of paying for registration. EasyReg allows you to organize a conference that is stress-free for you and your attendees. And the best part? All of the services that EasyReg offers are absolutely free to the conference organizer, though a small service fee is added to each registration payment. With EasyAbs and EasyReg, LINGUIST List has made organizing a successful conference easier than ever.

For years, LINGUIST List has been keeping its readers informed about conferences, publications, jobs, and more in the world of linguistics.  We’re excited to announce that we’ve added another topic to that list: linguistic summer schools and training courses.

Over the years, the volume of summer school submissions has increased dramatically, and in response to this demand, The LINGUIST List has created yet another tool to get information out to our readers. The Summer School and Training Course Registry allows you to post announcements about summer schools you may be hosting or other types of short-term courses you might be offering. This will allow for year-round announcements for any type of learning experience you are offering.

This new area of the website will give you a place to post and find detailed information about summer school and training opportunities. Announcements will include information like:

• Registration instructions
• Classes offered
• Financial aid (if any) available

The search function will allow users to search forsummer schools by linguistic subfield and subject languages. Each announcement will also receive its own mailing list issue and listing on our website.

You can see the registry by visiting the following URL:

http://linguistlist.org/summerschool/

The LINGUIST List is proud of the resources and services we are able to make available to our readers. We are constantly trying to think of new ways to help our users and create useful tools to get information out, and we hope that you will find the Summer School and Training Course Registry to be a helpful addition to the LINGUIST List.

The LL-MAP team is happy to announce the completion of the digital adaptation of the Linguistic Survey of India map collection. This important series of maps was a survey of the languages of British India, conducted in the first several decades of the 20th century by the British Raj and directed by Irish linguist George A. Grierson. The maps show the locations of dialects, languages, and language families in India, phonetic and morphological distribution, and language contact information. In our digitized versions, we have included the maximal language coding possible (i.e., if a name could refer to either a language or a subgroup, we include codes for both).

LL-MAP resources are freely available for public use. For information on how to use the LL-MAP interface, please visit the Online Help Section of the LL-MAP website or email the LL-MAP team at llmap-contact@linguistlist.org.

Many thanks to our former intern, Andrew Peters, who put in a substantial amount of time last summer getting these maps scanned, georegistered, vectorized, uploaded, and styled. Andrew designed this set of maps to be interoperable, so that the different language families can be easily distinguished when several maps are layered together in the LL-MAP interface. In the map credits, Andrew also identified several other sets of maps that may be of comparative interest. 

The maps that make up this set include:

Linguistic Survey of India: Assamese Dialects

 Linguistic Survey of India: Austro-Asiatic & Pronominalized Himalayan Languages

 Linguistic Survey of India: Balochi Language

 Linguistic Survey of India: Bara Languages and Dialects

 Linguistic Survey of India: Bengali Dialects and Sub-Dialects

 Linguistic Survey of India: Bhil Dialects and Khandesi

Linguistic Survey of India: Bihari Dialects and Sub-Dialects

Linguistic Survey of India: Central Pahari Languages and Dialects

Linguistic Survey of India: Dardic Influence

 Linguistic Survey of India: Dardic Languages

Linguistic Survey of India: District of Sonthal Parganas

Linguistic Survey of India: Dravidian Languages

 Linguistic Survey of India: Eastern Hindi Dialects and Sub-Dialects

Linguistic Survey of India: Ghalchah Languages

Linguistic Survey of India: Indo-Aryan Languages

Linguistic Survey of India: Kachin Dialects

Linguistic Survey of India: Kashmiri Language

Linguistic Survey of India: Lahnda or Western Panjabi Dialects and Sub-Dialects

Linguistic Survey of India: Languages in which L is the characteristic letter of the past participle

Linguistic Survey of India: Marathi Dialects

Linguistic Survey of India: Munda Languages and Dialects

 Linguistic Survey of India: Naga Languages and Dialects

Linguistic Survey of India: Pashto and Ormuri Languages

Linguistic Survey of India: Punjabi Dialects and Sub-Dialects

Linguistic Survey of India: Rajasthani Dialects and Sub-Dialects 

Linguistic Survey of India: Relative Positions of Munda, Complex Pronominalized Himalayan, & Indian Languages Connected with Mon-Khmer

Linguistic Survey of India: Siamese-Chinese Languages

Linguistic Survey of India: Sindhi Language

Linguistic Survey of India: Tai Languages

Linguistic Survey of India: Tibeto-Burman Groups

Linguistic Survey of India: Western Hindi Dialects and Sub-Dialects 

Linguistic Survey of India: Western Pahari Languages and Dialects

The ELCat team will be holding office hours at the International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC) at the Hawai’i Imin International Conference Center on the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa campus. We will be in the Kaniela Room on Friday from 12-1pm. Come visit and find out what the ELCat team and the Endangered Languages Project (ELP) have been up to. We will be there to answer your questions and offer assistance if you want to help out with the project.

The ELCat team is also participating in the meeting about the ISO 693 standard (Language Codes). We will be offering input on methods to correct and modify the unambiguous identification of languages, language families, language varieties and similar entities. These updates are becoming more and more important: the wealth of digital resources in small and hitherto lesser known languages grows, and the importance of multilingual global communication increases every day. Different initiatives worldwide are planning to contribute to an improved setting of the ISO standard. But this can only be successful if many specialists from all over the world participate. All linguists interested in improving the situation of language codes are invited to attend the pre-conference workshop meeting. Please join us, learn about the plans, and discuss and enrich our proposals! The meeting will be on Wednesday, Feb 27th from 3:00pm-5:00pm in the Ling conference room in Moore Hall 575 at the University of Hawaii Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii.

Aloha!

The MultiTree team has been at it again! They have been planting, shaping, and pruning 21 trees this semester. Not just any type of tree: language trees.

The goal of the MultiTree project is to provide a freely-accessible online library of trees representing language relationships that have been proposed scholars. The team takes these theories and digitizes them to create a visual representation. What is great about this digitization project is that it allows you to interact with each tree and watch as each hyperbolic tree moves and adjusts according to which language you would like to view. Since last fall, the team has completed trees representing 21 language family hypotheses and has also updated 160 language codes. All of these improvements have helped to make the MultiTree project grow and bloom with each passing month.

If you are interested in seeing some of the trees that the MultiTree team has created recently, you can view them at the links below. Please note that we do not interpret or analyze each language hypothesis; we simply create a digital representation of each hypothesis according to its author. (And stay tuned for some companion maps to be released by the LL-MAP project soon!)

Sorbische Dialekten, subtree of Indo-European: Faßke, Jentsch, Michalk & Mětšk 1965 

Austronesian: Murdock 1964

Mayan: Gatschet 1895, according to Campbell 1973

Mayan:  Campbell & Kaufman 1985 

Mon-Khmer, sub-tree of Austro-Asiatic: Thomas 1973 

Pwo Karen dialects, sub-tree of Sino-Tibean: Philips 1996 

Editor’s Note: Our ELCat Team Leader, Anna Belew, attended a workshop and conference in Cameroon during the summer of 2012. This article was taken from our archives.

Ever since I started studying documentary linguistics, my passion has been working with African languages. Something about the Niger-Congo family just charms me. All those noun classes! The verbal infixes! The incredible multilingualism found in so many African speech communities! It’s dreamy. It was thus with no little delight that I learned I’d been accepted as a participant in the first Workshop on Sociolinguistic Documentation in Sub-Saharan Africa, held in conjunction with the 7th World Congress of African Linguistics (WOCAL), at the University of Buea, Cameroon in August 2012.

The documentation workshop took place over the three days prior to WOCAL and was one of the most enriching academic experiences I’ve ever had. Organized by Dr. Jeff Good (University at Buffalo) and Dr. Tucker Childs (Portland State University), it brought together linguists from all over Africa, Europe, and North America to address some really interesting questions. The workshop’s primary aim was, as stated on the workshop website, “understanding how we can adequately document the sociolinguistic contexts of Sub-Saharan African languages.” While “traditional” documentation usually focuses on describing a language’s phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon, there hasn’t been as much work (yet!) on how to document the sociolinguistic setting of a language. This includes some Big Questions: What’s the best way to document patterns of multilingualism? How can we document language attitudes and prestige? Which methodologies give the most accurate data? What special ethical concerns might arise in sociolinguistic documentation? How can this type of research help inform effective language policy in Africa? My working group tackled an intriguing question: What factors determine the “market value” of an African language? That is, why do people choose to use particular languages in particular situations, and how do we study that? Answers to questions like these can help us understand why some languages (Swahili, Hausa) thrive and grow, while others (Twendi, N|uu) are seriously endangered. The workshop produced plenty of lively discussion and a lot of excellent ideas, and I can’t wait to see the projects that will come out of it.

Working Group 3 of the Sociolinguistic Documentation Workshop

The next five days, WOCAL proper, were no less thrilling. I don’t care if I sound like a dork calling an academic conference “thrilling” —it was thrilling. Linguists from over 60 countries, from every populated continent, coming together to share their work on African languages. The great minds of African linguistics, in the flesh, giving amazing presentations and making small talk over the refreshment tables. Seeing old friends, meeting new ones, and learning about what it’s like to be a linguist in Senegal, Botswana, the Netherlands, or Brazil. What could be better?

I gave a talk at WOCAL. Full disclosure: it was my very first talk at a professional conference. I was asked to give a presentation and a poster on the Catalogue of Endangered Languages, specifically the Africa section of the catalogue, which I’m the team leader for here at LINGUIST List. It was an honor to be invited to speak a bit about our research process, the goals of the Catalogue, and the broader Endangered Languages Project. It’s a project that tends to inspire strong opinions, and I’m glad I got the chance to engage with a range of questions and concerns from scholars; their feedback will help us make the Catalogue even more accurate and useful to linguists.

It’s tough to pick favorites out of all the amazing talks I attended, but I’ll give summaries of a few that were of particular interest to me. The late Dr. Maurice Tadadjeu, a pioneering advocate for mother-tongue education in Cameroon, presented a plenary address on the Écoles Rurales Électroniques en Langues Africaines (ERELA)  project. ERELA works to make computers available in rural schools and provides resources for teachers to integrate computer and internet technology into their curricula. Here’s the cool part: students are taught in their native language, and the software they use is localized into their language. This means that kids can, for example, learn to use MS Word with an Ewondo interface, writing Ewondo documents—much more effective than trying to teach them to use software in a language they don’t speak (like English). A related project, Going Kompyuta, works with ERELA to translate software into less-resourced languages.

Another excellent talk by Drs. Goedele de Clerck and Sam Lutalo-Kiingi, both Deaf linguists, presented the state of sign language research and development in Africa. A pointed illustration of the lack of resources for the African Deaf community: the talk was given entirely in International Sign Language, but as no sign language interpreters had been available to work the conference, the non-signing audience had to follow as best they could by reading the slides. Rarely have I been more aware of the privilege I generally enjoy as an English speaker, whose native language is an academic lingua franca. Experiencing lack of access to information due to a language barrier (in this case, not being a signer) reminded me not to take that privilege for granted. 

Other favorites: SIL Tanzania’s Suzanne Kruger gave a thought-provoking talk on the ethics of obtaining informed consent in cultures whose notions of individual consent differ from Western ones; the University of Buea’s own Charles Tiayon discussed the intersection of professional translation and language endangerment; the DoBeS Bakola documentation project team spoke about the difficulties of pinning down what language you’re supposed to be documenting when varieties diverge and mixing is rampant; Mark Dingemanse (MPI) presented some recent research on ideophones (one of the most interesting topics in linguistics—look it up right now if you haven’t studied ideophony yet); and Moad Hajjam of the Université Mohammed 5 Rabat presented a sociolinguistic study of attitudes towards Moroccan Arabic (Darija) in Moroccan hip hop. And, of course, there were dozens of other incredibly interesting and impressive presentations of which I couldn’t hope to scratch the surface in a short newsletter article. Suffice it to say that I learned a ton and enjoyed myself thoroughly.

It wasn’t entirely academic fun, though. I’ll let you in on a secret: WOCAL had the best dance parties. And the best ndole (stewed leafy greens and fish). And the most interesting, welcoming, and brilliant people. And the best views of Mount Cameroon breaking through the clouds in all its stunning enormity, as one stands in the foggy gardens of UB’s campus, surrounded by strange noisy birds. I think I’ve left a tiny chunk of my heart in Buea. I exchange it gladly for the wealth of ideas and experiences I took with me.

Several theories exist as to the geographic origin of Finnish and the other Uralic languages. One such theory, proposed this morning, is that they originated when Klingon ships landed somewhere around the Ural Mountains region and the bend of the middle Volga. This groundbreaking theory was proposed by linguist and Starfleet communications officer Nyota Uhura during her linguistic research in Finland. Uhura stated that “this proves the validity of language contact from other worlds before Earth’s first confirmed contact with extraterrestrials.”

The Klingon insignia marks where it is believed a Klingon ship crashed in 2000 B.C.

In a recent archaeological dig, researchers uncovered a Klingon bat’leth dating back to the second millennium B.C. On the bat’leth were engravings that matched carvings on ancient Finnish pottery. This finding led to a resurgence in historical linguistic analysis of the origins of Finnish, an analysis that suggests a Proto-Klingo-Uralic language existed.

The next step in Uhura’s research is to determine if Finnish speakers and Klingons share a common ancestor. It can be argued that after a crash landing on Earth, Klingons migrated northward and absorbed into a native Finnic-speaking population, giving rise to the modern Finns.

As a concluding remark, Uhura mentioned that “I expect Federation-Klingon research relations to improve as we embark on this endeavor to learn more about our shared past. Qapla’!”

[Editor's note: For any readers unfamiliar with the holiday falling upon April 1 in some cultures, see April Fools' Day.]

The past couple of weeks has been a busy time for our students. Not only are they completing their final exams, but they also recently presented their research to the public at the graduate research fair and the undergraduate symposium at Eastern Michigan University. Congratulations to Caylen Cole-Hazel, Brent Woo, Justin Petro, Sultan Asiri, Andrew Lamont, and Sarah Fox. Their presentation abstracts are included below. If you wish to know more about their work, send an email to linguist@linguistlist.org and we will put you in contact with them.

Graduate students posing after the research fair. FStarting from back left to front left: Mohammad Mahzari, Haroon Alsager, Justin Petro, Ousmane Cisse, Mohamed Beina, Sarah Fox, Sarah Asiri, Sultan Asiri, and Brent Woo

Some of our staff also attended the recent 18th Mid-Continental Phonetics and Phonology Conference (Mid-Phon), held at the University of Michigan. Aspiring linguist Caylen Cole-Hazel felt that “there were several talented presenters with stirring appeals to the imagination and other cognitive faculties… I liked these presentations because of their progressive appeal and exploration of thought-provoking issues in linguistics.”

Abstracts for Student Research Presentations:

Gender Effect in Code Alternation through Text Messages of Saudis

Sultan Asiri

Abstract: Code alternation has become a noticeable linguistic factor in Arabic text messaging owing to the growth in learning languages. This study aims to investigate the gender effects on Arabic-English code switching by analyzing a number of text messages of some Saudi participants. It also aims at figuring out which gender uses code alternation most in text messaging and measuring the frequency of the topics used through code switching for each gender. The subjects are 6 Saudi males and females from diverse levels of education. The paper concludes that female participants are applying code alternation more than male participants. It also reveals that the Arabic-English code alternation is applied through the extensive use of the system of writing Arabic with Latin alphabets or what is widely known as Arabizi. 

The Influence of Gender on Language Shift

Andrew Lamont

Abstract: This poster presents data on the role gender plays in the outcome of minority or endangered languages threatened with shift to a dominant code or linguicide on three levels: micro-internally, macro-internally, and externally. The endangered language Yanyuwa obligatorily morphologically genders its speakers, stigmatizing its use for the few remaining speakers of the wrong style. The gendering of Taiap fueled its male speakers’ switch to Tok Pisin avoiding the “feminine” home code. A Hungarian-German bilingual community in Germany whose female members shifted strictly to German to alleviate themselves of the “peasant” status of Hungarian. These cases illustrate self-inflicted wounds which ease dominant language infiltration in a divide-and-conquer fashion. Further, they suggest the permeability at various linguistic strata to gender.

Out of the Past: A Diachronic Corpus-Based Analysis of English Prepositions

 Justin Petro

Abstract: Unlike most English prepositions, the word “out” is not able to assign Case to its object in most utterances, requiring the insertion of the preposition of to satisfy the Case Filter (Chomsky 1981), e.g. He climbed out of the rubble (where *out the rubble is ungrammatical). However, out appears to be able to apply Case to certain objects, as evidenced by sentences like He walked out the door. Given that Case assigning prepositions such as up once required of-insertion as well (McRacken 2012), there is evidence that out is in the process of diachronic shift from the lexical category Adverb to Preposition. Further analysis of historical records, text corpora, and native speaker intuitions are presented to bolster these claims. This work will shed important light on the nature of language change and its consequences for syntactic theory.

Genetic Determinism and Grammar: When Language and Biology Collide

Caylen Cole-Hazel

Abstract: Language is contemporarily accepted as a mechanism that is inherent to human beings. Through taking a critical look at the purported genetic components of language in relation to mental grammar offers a chance to elucidate factors of language that are currently restricted to traditional empirical interpretation. Contrasting gene-based language hypotheses with traditional socio-cultural theory allows for a heightened understanding of the implications and repercussions of linguistic interpretation, and probes both the imagination and intellect in the search for linguistic understanding.

It’s all Whopperjawed: A Case Study of the Maumee Dialect

Sarah Fox

Abstract: This presentation describes the phonetic features that characterize the English dialect spoken in the speech community of Maumee, Ohio, focusing especially on the pronunciation of English vowels. It investigates the extent to which speakers in the Maumee speech community share these features and determines whether the Northern Cities Sound Shift (NCS) has established itself within Maumee. As evidenced by its history, Maumee was once isolated in terms of both diseases and geographical features such as the Black Swamp and the Maumee River. This isolation points to the possibility that Maumee could be a dialectal isolate. If Maumee is in fact an isolate, then the NCS is not as permeable as it was thought to be in the past.

Zero Copula in Russian

Brent Woo

Abstract: Russian is a zero copula language. The copula (the linking verb “is” in “John is happy”) is not pronounced in the present tense and it governs the nominative Case on the predicate. However, the copula is overt in the past and future tenses and it governs the instrumental Case on the predicate. This Case difference is not compatible with current conceptions of Case Theory. Investigation of evidence from modern Russian suggests that the zero copula is a lexical item separate from the overt copula and this research proposes an analysis explaining the predicate Case alternation that accords with the theoretical assumptions of X-bar theory and Case Theory. The overt copula is to be treated as a small clause raising verb and the zero copula is the sole member of a new category of silent verbs that assigns nominative Case to its complement.

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