Fieldwork and Language Documentation

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".

Survey updates for January 2019

February 2, 2019

Some new updates from the Survey of California and other Indian Languages regarding activities for 2019 so far:

Chris Beier & Lev Michael archived an initial 13 file bundles related to Iquito (Zaparoan; Peru), including over 8 hours of audio recordings of 59 texts from the early years of their research (2002-2005). Zach O'Hagan added 63 file bundles from 2018 fieldwork to his collection on Caquinte (Arawak; Peru), including over 39 hours of audio and video recordings of stories, interviews, elicitation, and other interactions. Vivian Wauters (MA 2012), now a graduate student in horticultural science at the University of Minnesota, archived 22 file bundles related to Arabela (Zaparoan; Peru), including over 36 hours of audio recordings of elicitation and some texts, field notes, and a FLEx database. Three boxes of lexical file slips (here, here, and here) of Atsugewi (Palaihnihan; California) created by Len Talmy (PhD 1972) have been digitized and are available. An unpublished manuscript on historical Tucanoan linguistics, written by Alva Wheeler (PhD 1970) as a term paper for a seminar taught by Mary Haas, has been digitized and is available. Jorge Rosés (Alberta) & Erin Hashimoto (Alberta) archived "Time-aligned Annotations of Makah Narratives" (Wakashan; Washington), which combines speakers Ralph LaChester and Mabel Robertson's (1965) recordings of the language made with William Jacobsen (PhD 1964) with handwritten transcriptions of them, making them more accessible to users in ELAN and SayMore.

BLS workshop on countability distinctions

February 1, 2019

Coming up next week is a workshop on Countability Distinctions, organized by Emily Clem, Virginia Dawson, Amy Rose Deal, Paula Floro, Peter Jenks, Tyler Lemon, Line Mikkelsen, Tessa Scott, and Yi-Chi Wu. The workshop will feature two plenary talks, one each on Friday Feb 8 and Saturday Feb 9:

Suzi Lima (Toronto): A typology of the count/mass distinction in Brazil and its relevance for count/mass theories David Barner (UC San Diego): Quantification in Context is Multidimensional

In addition, there will be talks on mass/count related phenomena in Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Kipsigis, Hungarian, Romanian, and English. All are welcome. Check out the full schedule here!

Linguistics events this week (Feb 1-8, 2019)

February 1, 2019

In and around the linguistics department in the next week:

Syntax and Semantics Circle - Friday Feb 1 - Dwinelle 1303 - 3-4:30pm
Round Robin Lecture in Hispanic Linguistics - Friday Feb 1 - 5125 Dwinelle - 1-2pm Jhonni Carr (Berkeley): Spanish in Los Angeles Urban Signage: Language Attitudes and Linguistic Communities Phorum - Monday Feb 4 - 1303 Dwinelle - 12-1pm
Gopala Anumanchipalli (UCSF), Josh Chartier (UCSF, Berkeley), & Edward Chang (UCSF): Synthesizing speech directly from the human brain Language Variation and Change reading group - Wednesday Feb 6 - 5303 Dwinelle - 11a-noon Fieldwork Forum - Wednesday Feb 6 - Dwinelle 1229 - 11-12:30PM
Meg Cychosz (Berkeley): TBA SLUgS - Thursday Feb 7 - Dwinelle 1229 - 5-6pm
Game night, plus informal tutoring afterwards from 6-7pm BLS Workshop: Countability Distinctions - Friday Feb 8 and Saturday Feb 9 - Dwinelle 370
Schedule available here!

Survey updates

January 31, 2019

The Survey of California and Other Indian Languages has just sent along some updates on its activities in Fall 2018:

Kenny Baclawski archived 67 file bundles related to his 2014 and 2015 fieldwork on Cham (Austronesian; Vietnam), including audio recordings of texts, and of elicitation on grammar and sociolinguistic variation. Karee Garvin archived 32 file bundles related to her 2017 fieldwork on Nafaanra (Senufo; Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire), inclulding audio recordings of phonetic, lexical, grammatical, and narrative elicitation, and field notes. Edwin Ko archived 17 file bundles related to his 2018 fieldwork on Crow (Siouan; Montana), including audio recordings of elicitation and texts, and photographs. Amalia Skilton archived 625 gigabytes (here, here, and here) of audio and video recordings of Ticuna (isolate; Peru, Colombia, Brazil), spanning fieldwork from 2015 to the present. Included are transcriptions of some 3 hours of conversation, 3 hours of interviews, and 8 hours of traditional monologic texts.

Stay tuned for more Survey updates from this new year!