Fall 2018 Schedule
2018.08.23 Welcome back!
Join us as we spend our first meeting of the year introducing ourselves and discussing any fieldwork that we have been doing. Whether or not you were recently in the field, join us in welcoming our new colleagues and sharing some light snacks.
2018.08.30 Erica Carson Jr. (Redwood Valley Rancheria)
k'edi wa:dim (Walk Well): Reflections on Learning and Teaching Northern Pomo
In this talk, Erica Carson Jr., a member of the Redwood Valley Rancheria, discusses experiences from her personal journey learning and teaching Northern Pomo, a dormant language of Mendocino County, California.
2018.09.06 California Language Archive 'Archiveathon'
Join us for an hour and a half of archiving fun! We will be accompanied by Ronald Sprouse, Andrew Garrett, Edwin Ko, Zachary O'Hagan, and Julia Nee, among other experienced users of the California Language Archive (CLA), to talk about and answer any questions related to the process of archiving. If you already have a collection, bring your data along and start putting it into the Pre-Archive; we'll answer any questions you have along the way. If you haven't used the CLA before, we'll be there to explain what it's all about and help you set up a collection if you are interested.
2018.09.13 No meeting
2018.09.20 No meeting
2018.09.27 Martha Schwarz (UC Berkeley)
A Kumal Fieldwork Report + Discussion
This week, I’ll report on some of the phenomena I investigated in Kumal (an Indo-Aryan language of Nepal) this summer. I’ll introduce you to the field site, and then present some facts on agreement especially in sentences with non-canonically case-marked subjects, in which verbs appear to variably agree with either subject, object, or even interlocutor. In the second part, I hope to open a discussion about something I have struggled with while doing fieldwork — namely establishing a role as both a guest and a fieldworker, especially when your consultants are also your hosts. I’m curious to hear from others: what are your living arrangements while doing fieldwork? How does that influence the dynamics? Have you ever made a conscious decision to change this?
2018.10.04 Saul Schwartz (UC Berkeley)
The Afterlife of a Formerly Endangered Language: Producing Chiwere as Cultural Heritage
This talk is based on my collaborative ethnographic research on Chiwere language documentation and revitalization. Chiwere is a "dormant" Siouan heritage language for three federally-recognized Iowa and Otoe-Missouria tribes based in Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. In this talk, I describe how language activists seek to invest Chiwere with cultural significance for community audiences and thereby give the language an afterlife as linguistic and cultural heritage, even though it is no longer used for everyday communication. I take an ideological and social constructivist approach to the relation between language and culture, focusing on how particular discourses and practices linked to language documentation and revitalization produce the idea that Chiwere has cultural significance. My first set of examples involves a local morphological speech genre in which activists challenge word-for-word semantic transparency between Chiwere and English and instead analyze Chiwere words into their component morphemes in order to reveal ancestral cultural knowledge and practice. My second set of examples center on the cultural politics of obscenity in Siouan languages. Some activists believe that Chiwere and other Siouan languages lack a vocabulary that corresponds to the English category of "bad words." They tie this linguistic difference to a traditional view of bodies and sexuality that is distinct from that of the dominant Christian society. In both sets of examples, activists present linguistic differences between Chiwere and English, which they then map onto cultural differences between the traditional Chiwere-speaking elders of previous generations and the surrounding settler colonial society. In this way, Chiwere's cultural value is made socially available for community audiences who rarely if ever encounter Chiwere as a communicative code in the course of everyday life. I conclude with some thoughts on how this linguistic anthropological line of inquiry might be of interest to documentary linguists who find themselves navigating the complicated social, cultural, and political currents of language revitalization movements.
2018.10.11 Screening of Dizhsa Nabani - Living Language
*Note this meeting is held in the Matrix Conference Room (8th floor of Barrows Hall)(link is external).
4:00 - 5:30pm Screening of Dizhsa Nabani - Living Language
5:30 - 6:00pm Q-and-A session with faculty and students in the Indigenous Language Revitalization Designated Emphasis
2018.10.18 Andrew Garrett (UC Berkeley)
*Note this meeting is part of the GAIL talk series which will take place on Wednesday 18th, October at 6pm at Leanne Hinton's house. For information about how to get there, please email scoil-ling@berkeley.edu(link sends e-mail).
Yurok rhotic vowels and vowel harmony
Spoken in NW California, the Yurok language (Algic) has no remaining elder first-language speakers, but has an active language revival program with good second-language speakers and some young first-language speakers. In phonology, Yurok is well known for a vowel harmony process whereby non-high vowels (a, a:, e, o, o:) may become rhotic (ɚ, ɚ:) in words that contain a rhotic vowel. According to prior descriptions (e.g. Robins 1958), high vowels (i i: u u:) are unaffected. In this presentation, I will discuss the domain of harmony and the matter of high vowels. I will show that some Yurok speakers had rhotic high vowels that are the result of vowel harmony and even underlying rhotic high vowels that trigger vowel harmony. The work reported here is based on legacy data (notes and recordings) as well as more recent (2001-2007) recordings, and was partly collaborative with language teachers in the context of Yurok Tribe language workshops. This talk will be broadcast to Yurok language teachers and activists.
2018.10.25 Sean Brown (Owens Valley Paiute/Nüümü), Vince Medina (Muwekma, mak-'amham), Line Mikkelsen (UC Berkeley, "serineq qaammallu"), Lou Montelongo (Eastern Band of Cherokee, “Di-de-yo-hv-sgi”), and Beth Piatote (Nez Perce, Antikoni)
*Note this meeting is held in 554 Barrows Hall.
The Many Lives of Indigenous Languages
This event celebrates the many lives of indigenous languages through short presentations and concludes with refreshments and a QA session about the newly created Designated Emphasis in Indigenous Language Revitalization at UC Berkeley.
2018.11.01 Catalina Torres (University of Melbourne)
Laboratory phonology in the South Pacific: Word prominence in Drehu (New Caledonia)
Methods from laboratory phonology have substantially helped advance our understanding of phonetics and phonology. However, these methods have been implemented on a restricted number of languages, mostly spoken by populations in industrialised countries, neglecting so a large number of populations and languages, especially in remote areas. In this talk, two experiments investigating prominence marking in Drehu will be presented. Drehu, like many other languages from the Melanesian linkage, represents an understudied language regarding its phonetics and prosody. Impressionistic descriptions of its phonology (Lenormand 1954, Tryon 1968) state the language has word initial stress. New findings on Drehu word prominence as well as advantages and limitations in the study of prosody through the lens of laboratory phonology will be discussed.
2018.11.08 Kate Lindsay (Stanford)
Sociolinguistic Field Methods in Papua New Guinea
To what extent can the results of variation studies in large-scale speech communities be extended to small-scale speech communities? Many sociolinguistic differences would lead us to reject the "uniformitarian principle" that allows us to extrapolate across space and time (Labov 1972), for example: rates of linguistic change, rates and types of multilingualism, and conditions of language acquisition are all different between WEIRD and small-scale societies like in southern New Guinea. In this talk, I will discuss how I planned, collected, analyzed, and interpreted a sociolinguistically annotated corpus of Ende, a Pahoturi River language of southern New Guinea, taking into account the unique characteristics of this community. Together, we can discuss the advantages and difficulties for engaging in this type of research in small-scale speech communities.
2018.11.13 Haley De Korne (University of Oslo)
*Note this meeting is at a different time and place: Tuesday from 4:00 - 5:30pm and in Dwinelle 1229.
Language reclamation as a socio-political practice: Strategies of engagement in multilingual environments
What does it take to alter current processes of language endangerment and displacement? What can meaningfully support speech communities who experience discrimination and struggle to revitalize and reclaim their unique ways of communicating? There are multiple possible responses to these questions, ranging from addressing political and economic inequalities, to changing education systems, and shifting monolingual societal paradigms. In this talk I will draw on ethnographic and action research on the teaching and learning of Isthmus Zapotec (diidxazá) in Oaxaca, Mexico (2013- 2018) in order to examine language reclamation strategies as socio-political practices which may be pursued by a wide range of social actors. I will discuss the inherently multilingual nature of language reclamation environments and the implications this has for reclamation initiatives, in particular education initiatives. Additionally, I will present a repertoire of language advocacy strategies through which diverse social actors are engaging in language reclamation, highlighting the importance of factors of time, place, visibility and historicity in these strategies.
2018.11.15 Kate Hedges and Leanne Hinton (UC Berkeley) *Note this meeting is part of the GAIL talk series
The Konkow Project
The Konkow Maidu Cultural Preservation Association (KMCPA) is creating a searchable database and website to help language learners and researchers better utilize the Konkow materials of Russell Ultan, who did fieldwork on language in the 1960’s. His recordings, dissertation and student papers are in the Survey and online. We also have two stories with sentence by sentence translations that were provided to the Association by the Long Now Foundation. The team consists of Kate Hedges (secretary of KMCPA and the person developing the online database and website), Leanne Hinton (handling the linguistic analysis) and Todd Gettleman (in charge of inputting the language data and working with the team on the creation of lesson, exercises and language games for language learners.
Leanne and Kate will present the components of the database and website. Leanne will also report on the complex pronominal system of Konkow, which is one of the requirements of the DEL grant* funding this project.
*Our thanks to the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
2018.11.22 Happy Thanksgiving - No meeting!
2018.11.29 Julia Nee (UC Berkeley)
Zapotec language revitalization: Fostering inter-generational language transmission
Teotitlán del Valle Zapotec (TdVZ) is an endangered language spoken in southern Mexico. Over the past few years, I have worked with community members and the local government to offer Zapotec language camps for kids ages 5-12 in Teotitlán. In each class, students spend about an hour in the classroom learning vocabulary and phrases related to a particular communicative goal, then they are taken on an excursion to use the language they’ve learned in context with native Zapotec speakers. The idea is that this format will encourage the use of Zapotec between students and native speakers in contexts beyond the classroom. So far, camps were offered in summer 2017 and 2018; another camp is scheduled for winter 2019. In this talk, I’ll present an overview of the communication-based instruction used in the curriculum as well as some of the specific activities that have been used in the class. We’ll also consider some of the issues that arise in attempting to create “authentic” materials for language revitalization when none yet exist. I’ll also share the results of the pilot evaluation of the camp, which shows that students are bringing the materials that they create in class home and are using them outside of the classroom to practice their Zapotec knowledge. Finally, I’ll present the plans for the winter 2019 Zapotec camp and strategies for its evaluation.
2018.12.06 Quirina Geary (UC Davis/Amah Mutsun Tribal Band)
A Collaborative Effort: The Case of Mutsun
For over a century, academics and tribal communities have had working relationships to document endangered languages. This talk engages in the broader conversation of methodologies in language documentation and revitalization using the successful model of collaboration between non-native professional academics and the Mutsun tribal community. I will share the multiple measures used in the decision-making and problem-solving processes including conflict resolution.
Spring 2019 Schedule
2019.01.30 Ronald Sprouse (UC Berkeley)
Talk about recording equipment
Notes from the meeting may be found below:
Considerations for field recordings: https://berkeley.app.box.com/notes/392467026246
Recording equipment used by UC Berkeley linguists: https://berkeley.app.box.com/notes/390110359786
2019.02.06 Meg Cychosz (UC Berkeley)
Daylong recording methods and child learners: New challenges in linguistic fieldwork
How does the linguistic environment interact with human development? To answer this question, I have been working with bilingual children who are learning Quechua and Spanish in southern Bolivia. The project incorporates a relatively new methodological tool in child development and human speech research: daylong audio recordings. This talk will focus on these aspects of my research - work with children and daylong recording methods - as both are still fairly rare in linguistic fieldwork. Together we will learn about the benefits and challenges of this type of data collection.
2019.02.13 Andrew Garrett, Dmetri Hayes, and Ronald Sprouse (UC Berkeley)
Toward a 'pretty good' lexical service
2019.02.20 6th International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC) practice talks
"Communication Based Instruction and Evaluation of Language Revitalization"
Julia Nee
This project examines the development, implementation, and evaluation of a summer language revitalization camp for children in the Zapotec-speaking community of Teotitlán del Valle, Mexico in summer 2018. I analyze evaluation methods (socio-linguistic interviews and naturalistic day-long recordings) for course outcomes and describe effective aspects of the course.
"Interactive Maps, Place, and Context"
Anna Berge (Alaska Native Language Center) and Edwin Ko (UC Berkeley)
"The Konkow Maidu Website Project"
Kate Hedges, Todd Gettleman and Leanne Hinton
2019.02.27 No meeting (ICLDC)
2019.03.06 Edwin Ko & Tyler Lemon (UC Berkeley)
Active-Stative Agreement and Multiple Exponence in Crow
2019.03.13 Jenna Burrell (UC Berkeley)
Which digital tools and design methods best enhance cultural revitalization efforts?
In cultural revitalization efforts, what types of digital tools are appropriate? What methods for deciding how, when, and where to leverage digital technology best respect tribal sovereignty, leadership and governance structures, and support possibilities to not simply design for but design with these communities? How can digital design skills be extended to community members to disrupt processes that reconsolidate power over cultural materials into the hands of technologically skilled outsiders? I will discuss a still nascent journey between UC-Berkeley students and faculty and members of the Manchester/Point Arena and Kashaya Bands of Pomo Indians from the Sonoma/Mendocino county region to pursue digital technology projects aligned with their cultural revitalization goals. Our project is intended to (a) help bridge physical distance between these communities and UC-Berkeley based archives of pertinent linguistic resources and multimedia cultural materials, (b) enliven archival materials to realize the community’s self-defined goals and (c) find the best opportunities for digital technology application that enhances these aims. I will discuss a number of ideas that have shaped directions for our emergent project thus far including: indigenous data sovereignty, land-centered literacies (Noelani Goodyear-Ka’opua), and Linda Tuhiwai Smiths’ outline for an ‘indigenous people’s project.’
2019.03.20 No meeting
2019.03.27 No meeting (spring break)
2019.04.03 Lance Twitchell (University of Alaska Southeast)
haa_dachxanxi_saani_kageiyi_yis.pdf
2019.04.04 Tasha Hauff (UC Berkeley)
*Note this meeting is part of the GAIL talk series which will take place on Thursday, April 4th at 6PM at Leanne Hinton's house. For information about how to get there, please email scoil-ling@berkeley.edu.
The Product of all our Hard Work: a Case Study in improving Lakota Language Education in K-12 Classrooms
Native communities are spending great time energy and resources to revive the state of their languages, to get them spoken in their communities, and to ensure that next generations have access to the values, ideas, worldviews, and other gifts their language contain. One of the methods Native communities use to do this is by teaching their languages as a subject in existing K-12 institutions. Based on interviews and two years of participant observation, this talk examines the limits and possibilities recent tribal-wide efforts to improve the K-12 Dakota/Lakota language programming in K-12 schools on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. While D/Lakota language had been taught, minimally, in these institutions for decades, major efforts to reform language education in this capacity started in 2006. These efforts included partnering with a non-tribal non-profit, developing language curriculum and classroom materials, coordinating among nearly all the K-12 institutions on the reservation, and developing teacher-training programs. The tribe has spent over a decade designing and implementing various improvement projects, which included a collaboration with the Lakota Language Consortium, yet there has been little documented progress. Nevertheless, Standing Rock’s story presents important lessons for tribes looking to revitalize Native language through schools and offers important lessons for teacher preparation programs looking to foster culturally and linguistically revitalizing pedagogy. Finally, while the results of these efforts to improve K-12 language education have not been as great as anticipated, the projects, partners, and programs developed to reach these goals have become the cornerstone of the larger language revitalization movement at Standing Rock that extends beyond the K-12 institutions and out in to the community more widely.
2019.04.10 Beth Piatote (UC Berkeley)
Writing for Readers: Creative Work and Revitalization
2019.04.12 Craig Cummings (unicode.org) - Departmental Talk
Adding Languages to Computers and Mobile Devices
In some contexts having a written form of a language gives the language validity and political legitimacy that it might not otherwise have. This ‘valorization’ effect extends to computer operating systems too. For instance, having a Cherokee font and keyboard on the Apple Macintosh was important to the Cherokee community in Oklahoma.
One step beyond fonts and keyboards is to have localization and internationalization data, so an operating system can function in the language. This includes many types of data including days of the week, names of months, and any bits of language which the operating system should show to the user. In this presentation, Craig will discuss computer software and human language support -- including topics of Unicode, software internationalization, and software localization. He'll also go through steps required to add a human language for support on computers and mobile devices. By the end of this presentation you should know how to add a language to the Unicode centralized database of languages available to software creators.
berkeleylinguisticsdeptg11ncldr.pdf