Fieldwork and Language Documentation

Survey updates

February 28, 2019

Some updates from the Survey of California and other Indian Languages:

Tessa Scott archived 34 file bundles related to Ndengeleko (Bantu; Tanzania), from her fieldwork in 2017 and 2018. The audio recordings consist primarily of elicitation (accompanied by scanned and typed field notes), with four short texts and discussions with speakers of consent for the project. George Kamau (BA 1962) was discovered to be the language consultant for Prof. William Shipley's winter-spring 1962 field methods course on Kikuyu (Bantu; Kenya), then listed as 220B "Linguistics Laboratory." His recordings are items 002-005 here. In 1959 Mr. Kamau was part of the first cohort of 81 Kenyans brought from Nairobi to various universities in the US as part of a series of airlifts sponsored by the African American Student Foundation. The goal was to educate a generation of young Kenyans for post-British rule. Barack Obama, Sr. was part of the same cohort. Last week it was reported that Prof. Wallace Chafe, at Berkeley from 1962 to 1986, passed away on February 3. Recordings from the second field methods course he taught here, on Dakota (Siouan; US) in fall-winter 1963-4, are items 012 and 013 here.

Survey updates

February 14, 2019

Some updates from the Survey of California and other Indian Languages:

Over 60 hours of audio recordings and almost 600 pages of field notes of Romani (Indo-European), dating from 1964 to 1972 and originally produced by Guy Tyler in collaboration with 36 different consultants, were accessioned in 27 file bundles. Julia Nee archived 2 file bundles of storybooks in Teotitlán del Valle Zapotec (Otomanguean; Oaxaca): Beniit con xpejigan ("Benita and Her Balloons") and images of one based on Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? A text in Nez Perce (Sahaptian; Idaho), "Gusty Wind and Sunshine," from the papers of Hans Jørgen Uldall, affiliated with Berkeley in the early 1930s, was scanned and made public.

Open house colloquium

February 27, 2019

This Monday we will have a series of presentations by current graduate students in the colloquium spot -- 3:10-5pm, 370 Dwinelle:

Alice Shen: Pitch cues in the perception of code switching Amalia Skilton:Speaker and addressee in spatial deixis: Experimental evidence from Ticuna and Dutch Emily Clem:The cyclic nature of Agree: Maximal projections as probes Myriam Lapierre:Two types of [NT]s in Panãra: Evidence from production and perception

Amazonianist and Celtic conferences

February 25, 2019

March 15-17 will see not one but two conferences of interest for, and organized by, department members:

Third biennial Symposium on Amazonian Languages (SAL3)
March 16-17; 1229 Dwinelle Hall
Program here! The 41st California Celtic Conference
March 15-17, 2019; 370 Dwinelle Hall
Program here!

International Mother Language Day

February 21, 2019
This year's International Mother Language Day was on Thursday Feb 21. In celebration, participants in the Designated Emphasis in Indigenous Language Revitalization organized a board where people can post positive thoughts, greetings, and messages in their mother language, along with a table where people can explore resources for learning more about the indigenous peoples whose lands we live and work on, and get information about indigenous language revitalization and the DE.

Cal @ ICLDC

February 21, 2019

This year's International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation (ICLDC) kicks off next week in Mānoa, Hawaiʻi, and features numerous presentations by Berkeley faculty, staff, students, and alumni:

Julia Nee: Communication Based Instruction and Evaluation of Language Revitalization Anna Berge (PhD '97) and Edwin Ko: Interactive Maps, Place, and Context...

Linguistics events this week (Feb 15-22, 2019)

February 15, 2019

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

Linguistics & Near Eastern Studies special lecture - Friday Feb 15 - 254 Barrows Hall - 2pm
Lutz Edzard (University of Erlangen-Nürnberg): The morphosyntax of compounding in Semitic Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 15 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm
Peter Jenks (Berkeley): Anaphoric definites as anchored definites Ling 47 ("Communication Disorders") special event - Friday Feb 15 - Dwinelle 1229 - 4pm
Viewing and discussion of the documentary When I Stutter Fieldwork Forum - Wednesday Feb 20 - Dwinelle 1303 - 11-12:30PM
Practice talks for ICLDC: Julia Nee (Berkeley): Communication Based Instruction and Evaluation of Language Revitalization; Anna Berge (Alaska Native Language Center) and Edwin Ko (Berkeley): Interactive Maps, Place, and Context Philosophy Dept Work in Progress Talk - Wednesday Feb 20 - Moses 301 - noon-1
Amy Rose Deal (Berkeley): Factivity and uncentered attitudes Climate care tea/coffee hour - Friday Feb 22 - 3401 Dwinelle - 2-3pm
Discussion of goal setting Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 22 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-5pm
Jorge Hankamer (Santa Cruz) & Line Mikkelsen (Berkeley): CP complements to D

Schwarz publishes in Journal of Phonetics

February 14, 2019

Congrats to Martha Schwarz, whose first-authored paper Realization and representation of Nepali laryngeal contrasts: Voiced aspirates and laryngeal realism (with Morgan Sonderegger and Heather Goad) has just been published by Journal of Phonetics! You can read it here.

Linguistics events this week (Feb 8-15, 2019)

February 8, 2019

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

BLS Workshop: Countability Distinctions - Friday Feb 8 & Saturday Feb 9
Join us for talks including keynotes by Suzi Lima (Toronto) and David Barner (UCSD)! The complete program is available here. Phorum - Monday Feb 11 - 1303 Dwinelle - 12-1pm Georgia Zellou, Michelle Cohn, & Bruno Ferenc Segedin (UCD): Talking Tech: How does voice-AI influence human speech? Linguistics Colloquium - Monday Feb 11 - 370 Dwinelle - 3:10-5pm
Larry Hyman: The Fall and Rise of Vowel Length in Bantu Fieldwork Forum - Wednesday Feb 13 - Dwinelle 1303 - 11-12:30PM
Andrew Garrett, Dmetri Hayes, and Ronald Sprouse: TBA SLUgS - Thursday Feb 14 - Dwinelle 1229 - 5-6pm
Viewing of Atlantis Linguistics & Near Eastern Studies special lecture - Friday Feb 15 - 254 Barrows Hall - 2pm
Lutz Edzard (University of Erlangen-Nürnberg): The morphosyntax of compounding in Semitic Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 15 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm
Peter Jenks: TBA

Bardagil Mas in Brazil

February 7, 2019
Postdoc Bernat Bardagil Mas is currently in Brazil for fieldwork with Mỹky and Panará until mid-March. He sends the following update on his activities there: February 11-15: he will co-teach a language course for indigenous teachers with Aline da Cruz at the Federal University of Goiás (Núcleo Takikahakỹ de Formação Superior de Professores Indígenas) February 15: he will give an invited talk at the Núcleo de Tipologia Linguística at the University of Brasilia, "As línguas jê e a exponência do caso ergativo" March 12: he will give an invited talk at the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, in Belém, "A morfologia do caso nas línguas jê" Recently published by Bernat, in collaboration with Charlotte Lindenbergh, is a Linguistics in the Netherlands paper entitled "Realigning alignment - The completeness typology applied to case marking in Jê languages".