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SP23: Theoretical reflections around the role of fieldwork in linguistics and linguistic anthropology: Contributions of Indigenous researchers from southern Mexico
This is an English translation of an earlier Special Publication in Spanish:
Cruz Cruz, Emiliana, ed. 2020. Reflexiones teóricas en torno a la función del tra- bajo de campo en lingüística-antropológica: Contribuciones de investigadores indí- genas del sur de México. Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication 22.
These six articles, all fruit of the work of Indigenous researchers, come to us at an important moment, feeding the existing debates on "fieldwork" led by Indigenous researchers in the social sciences generally. Yet the volume Theoretical reflections around the role of fieldwork in linguistics and anthropology: Contributions of Indigenous researchers from southern Mexico is a pioneering study into the critiques, discourses, and limitations associated with fieldwork and research in the places where we live and where our families live. This critical edge must be considered when thinking about fieldwork and research in general.
Translators' introduction
SP23 Front Matter
SP23 Cover
SP23 Whole Volume
Cultural glossary for the translations
Ethical principles in linguistic fieldwork methodologies–According to whom?
Abstract: This article seeks to establish a dialogue between the methodological proposals that have been put forward for linguistic fieldwork and the growing experiences of Indigenous linguists. It is well known that the theorizing of the methodologies that dictate linguists' interactions in their communities of study is carried out from a perspective foreign to both the language and the community. These methodologies are designed for and guided by non-Indigenous academics,…
Between the academy and the community: The trickster who dances at the party and shows her tongue
Abstract: Explored here are the complexities and challenges that arise from my experience as an Indigenous researcher. As a linguist and anthropologist, I move between both academic and community spaces. During the last two decades, a good part of my research has focused on the documentation and revitalization of Indigenous languages, in particular the Chatino languages. This article addresses my experience as an Indigenous researcher navigating these two spaces with…
"And what are you getting out of this?" Experiencing fieldwork in your community of origin: From reflection into emotional healing
Abstract: In this essay I share my fieldwork experience as a Zapotec researcher trained in anthropological and linguistic methodologies. I suggest that fieldwork is experienced differently by colleagues of non-Indigenous origin based on ethical, political and internal relationships that cross my academic projects and my personal life.
Activism and research for the promotion of literacy in Chatino: Experiences and reflections from fieldwork
Abstract: In this article, as an insider researcher, I explore my experiences during fieldwork. I discuss personal emotions related to linguistic discrimination and internalization of speakers' negative attitudes toward their language. Also, I discuss the local power relations in the community social network to which my family belongs, and the violence I experience as a woman. As a local researcher I unveil the realities and adversities that I face doing…
Between insiders and outsiders: When an indigenous researcher conducts studies in her own community
Abstract: This work presents the experiences of an Indigenous researcher carrying out linguistic and ethnographic studies within her own community. A growing number of Indigenous peoples are venturing into documentation, description and promotion of their languages of origin. As a field, linguistic documentation and linguistic description were created by and for members of academic institutions that were historically distant from collaborative work with the speakers of Indigenous languages. The author's…
Sk'an jtsatsubtastik ko'ontontik: Dialogues, challenges, and complexities of being a Tsotsil researcher
Abstract: The article reflects on the experiences of a researcher of Tsotsil origin trained in the fields of linguistics and anthropological linguistics, who lives in the same territorial space of the study community. Specifically, it examines the implications and challenges of being a woman, a Tsotsil and a researcher, who, on the one hand, delves into the social and community spaces that are exclusive to men, and on the other,…
SP24: Phonetic fieldwork in southern New Guinea
Kate L. Lindsey & Dineke Schokkin
ISBN-13: 978-0-9979673-2-6
SP24 Full volume
Introduction: Phonetic fieldwork in southern New Guinea
1. The phonetics of Southern New Guinea languages: an overview
Nicholas Evans
Abstract: This article provides an overview of the phonologies of Southern New Guinea languages, based on the six languages in this special issue plus two others for which JIPA illustrations have recently been published –Yelmek (Yelmek-Maklew family), Ngkolmpu, Nmbo and Nen (Yam family), Idi and Ende (Pahoturi River), Bitur (Marind-Anim branch of Trans-New Guinea) and Urama (Kiwaian branch of Trans-New Guinea). It surveys overall inventory sizes (maximal 28 consonants and 8 vowels, in Nmbo, minimal 13 consonants plus 5 vowels in Urama), and the most important segment types characteristic of the region, including retroflexion in Idi and Ende, labial-velar stops (Nen, Nmbo), rounded stops (Nmbo), relatively large liquid inventories (Pahoturi River) and prenasalised stop phonemes (Ngkolmpu, Nen, Nmbo).
2. A phonetic description of Yelmek
Tina Gregor
Abstract: This paper provides a first description of the phonetics and phonology of a language from the Yelmek-Maklew family, a language family without a genealogical link to any other language family in New Guinea or elsewhere. The variety under consideration in this paper is used by people from the village of Wanam, located in the Papuan Province on the Indonesian side of New Guinea. Wanam is the northernmost of the four villages attributed to the Yelmek branch of the family (ISO 639-3:jel, glottocode: yelm1242). The variety in question has 13 consonant phonemes and 7 vowel phonemes. The vowel inventory includes a phonemic schwa, which is distinct from the epenthetic schwa that is used to split illicit consonant cluster. Noteworthy suprasegmental features include the absence of word-level stress and the fact that interrogative and declarative utterances have the same basic pitch contour.
3. Phonetics and Phonology of Ngkolmpu
Matthew J. Carroll
Abstract: This paper describes the phonetics and phonology of segments in Ngkolmpu, a language spoken in the Merauke region of Indonesian Papua. The language is a member of the the Tonda-Kanum branch of the Yam family and displays a fairly typical segmental inventory for a Yam language with some notable exceptions. There are sixteen phonemic consonantal segments. As commonly found in Papuan languages, the primary manner distinction of stops is between voiceless oral stops and prenasalised stops. Rather unusually, both the plain oral stops and the prenasalised stops are voiceless for the oral period of the articulation. There are seven phonemic vowels and one epenthetic vowel whose distribution is phonotactically determined.
4. The phonetics of Nmbo (Nɐmbo) with some comments on its phonology (Yam family; Morehead district)
Eri Kashima
Abstract: This paper presents aspects of the phonetics and phonology of the Nmbo language as spoken by the Kerake tribe peoples of southern Western Province, Papua New Guinea. The paper is primarily concerned with the phonetics of consonants and vowels, but also presents description and audio examples of stress and clausal intonation patterns.
5. Phonetics and phonology of Idi
Dineke Schokkin, Volker Gast, Nicholas Evans, & Christian Döhler
Abstract: This paper provides a first description of the phonetics and phonology of Idi (Pahoturi River; ISO 639-3: idi, glottocode: idii1243) as spoken by about 1,000 people in the villages of Dimsisi and Sibidiri, located in the Morehead District of Western Province, Papua New Guinea. Idi has a fairly large inventory of 21 consonant phonemes and 8 vowel phonemes. As with other languages spoken in the region, the two central vowels show a hybrid status and could be analysed as sometimes phonemic and sometimes epenthetic. Other noteworthy characteristics are the presence of vowel harmony, voiced and voiceless retroflex plosives/affricates, nasality as a "floating" feature, and coarticulated labial-velar plosives, although the latter most likely originated as loan phonemes from Nen.
6. The phonetics of Bitur
Phillip G. Rogers
Abstract: This paper offers a description of the phonetics of Bitur, a language spoken by less than a thousand people in Western Province, Papua New Guinea. With just thirteen consonants and five vowels, the phoneme inventory of Bitur is fairly typical of a Papuan language and yet relatively small in its more immediate geographic and genealogical contexts. The consonants of Bitur represent five manners of articulation and span four places of articulation. Prenasalized stops are noticeably absent, despite their prevalence in the region and among related languages. The low central vowel /a/ assimilates in height to nearby mid and high vowels, and it provides a means to distinguish high vowels from approximants. The Bitur syllable consists minimally of a vowel nucleus with simple onsets and codas allowed. Vowel length is not contrastive, but it seems to be the most salient prosodic feature of the Bitur word. As the first substantial phonetic description of a Lower Fly language— the least-known language group in Southern New Guinea—this paper represents an important contribution to our understanding of Papuan languages.
7. A phonetic sketch of Urama
Jason Brown, Alex Muir, & Robbie Petterson
Abstract: This paper provides a phonetic sketch of Urama (Glottocode: uram1241), one of the varieties of the Northeast Kiwai group (iso code: kiw). Urama's consonant and vowel inventories, with 12 and 5 members respectively, are characteristic of Papuan languages generally. Vowel length is contrastive, but may be in the process of being lost. Urama exhibits a pitch accent system, but only a few words are found in which tone alone distinguishes meaning.
Notes from the Field: Wisconsin Walloon Documentation and Orthography
Kelly Biers & Ellen Osterhaus, pp. 1-29
Wisconsin Walloon is a heritage dialect of a threatened language in the langue d'oïl family that originated in southern Belgium and expanded to northeastern Wisconsin, USA in the mid-1850s. Walloon-speaking immigrants formed an isolated agricultural community, passing on and using the language for the next two generations until English became the dominant functional language. Although younger generations today have not learned the language, there remain enough Walloon speakers as well as Belgian descendants interested in their linguistic heritage to have generated community support for a Walloon documentation and conservation project. In this paper, we report on the results of over three years of collaboration between university researchers, students, and community members to document, study, and promote the language for the benefit of both scholars and community. We provide a description of the language, collaborative documentation efforts, and the development of community resources, including a phonetically-accessible Walloon orthography. We conclude with an outlook on future work with an eye toward increased community-led efforts.
What's your sign for TORTILLA? Documenting lexical variation in Yucatec Maya Sign Languages
Josefina Safar, pp. 30-74
In this paper, I discuss methodological and ethical issues that arose in the process of documenting lexical variation in Yucatec Maya Sign Languages (YMSLs). YMSLs are indigenous sign languages used by deaf and hearing people in Yucatec Maya villages with a high incidence of deafness in the peninsula of Yucatán, Mexico. The documentation of rural sign languages such as YMSLs shares many characteristics with research on urban sign languages as well as spoken minority languages, but it also comes with a range of specific challenges. Elicitation materials, research procedures, and ethical decisions need to be adapted to specific local and cultural requirements while trying to maintain a level of comparability with previous studies. I will illustrate this process of negotiation by providing a detailed account of how I developed stimulus materials for lexical elicitation, obtained informed consent from the participants, and established ways of collaboration with community members in the Yucatec Maya Sign Language Documentation Project. Furthermore, I will present first results about lexical variation in YMSLs.
Living Language, Resurgent Radio: A Survey of Indigenous Language Broadcasting Initiatives
David Danos & Mark Turin, pp. 75-152
For a demise that has been predicted for over 60 years, radio is a remarkably resilient communications medium, and one that warrants deeper examination as a vehicle for the revitalization of historically marginalized and Indigenous languages.
Radio has not been eroded by the rise of new media, whether that be television, video, or newer multimodal technologies associated with the internet. To the contrary, communities are leveraging the formerly analogue medium of radio in transformative ways, breathing new life into old transistors, and using radio for the transmission of stories, song, and conversation. In this contribution, we highlight effective and imaginative uses of radio for Indigenous language reclamation through a series of case studies, and we offer a preliminary analysis of the structural conditions that can both support and impede developments in Indigenous-language radio programming.
The success of radio for Indigenous language programming is thanks to the comparatively low cost of operations, its asynchronous nature that supports programs to be consumed at any time (through repeats, podcasts, downloads, and streaming services) and the unusual, even unique, quality of radio being both engaging yet not all-consuming, meaning that a listener can be actively involved in another activity at the same time.
Ticuna (tca) language documentation: A guide to materials in the California Language Archive
Amalia Skilton, pp. 153-189
Ticuna (ISO: tca) is a language isolate spoken in the northwestern Amazon Basin (Brazil, Colombia, Peru). Ticuna has more speakers than almost all other Indigenous Amazonian languages and – unlike most languages of the area – is still learned by children. Yet academic linguists have given it relatively little research attention. Therefore, to raise the profile of this areally important language, I offer a guide to three collections of Ticuna language materials held in the California Language Archive. These materials are extensive, including over 1,396 hours of recordings – primarily of child language and everyday conversations between adults – and 33 hours of transcriptions. To contextualize the materials, I provide background on the Ticuna language and people; the research projects which produced the materials; the participants who appear in them; and the ethical and permissions issues involved in collecting them. I then discuss the nature and scope of the materials, showing how the content of each collection motivated collection-specific choices about recording, transcription, organization in the archive, and metadata. Last, I outline how other researchers could draw on the collections for comparative analysis.
Language use and attitudes as indicators of subjective vitality: The Iban of Sarawak, Malaysia
Su-Hie Ting, Andyson Tinggang, & Lilly Metom, pp. 190-218
The study examined the subjective ethnolinguistic vitality of an Iban community in Sarawak, Malaysia based on their language use and attitudes. A survey of 200 respondents in the Song district was conducted. To determine the objective ethnolinguistic vitality, a structural analysis was performed on their sociolinguistic backgrounds. The results show the Iban language dominates in family, friendship, transactions, religious, employment, and education domains. The language use patterns show functional differentiation into the Iban language as the "low language" and Malay as the "high language". The respondents have positive attitudes towards the Iban language. The dimensions of language attitudes that are strongly positive are use of the Iban language, Iban identity, and intergenerational transmission of the Iban language. The marginally positive dimensions are instrumental use of the Iban language, social status of Iban speakers, and prestige value of the Iban language. Inferential statistical tests show that language attitudes are influenced by education level. However, language attitudes and use of the Iban language are not significantly correlated. By viewing language use and attitudes from the perspective of ethnolinguistic vitality, this study has revealed that a numerically dominant group assumed to be safe from language shift has only medium vitality, based on both objective and subjective evaluation.
Playing with Language: Three Language Games in the Gulf of Guinea
Ana Lívia Agostinho & Gabriel Antunes de Araujo, pp. 219-238
We present a description and an analysis of three related language games in Africa's Gulf of Guinea: Fa d'Ambô's Fa do Vesu, Lung'Ie's Faa di Vesu, and São Tomé and Príncipe Portuguese's P-language. We show how these language games can be used to investigate the linguistic features of their main languages and as learning resources for second language learners. First, we defend the common origin of these language games and that they emerged from contact with Portuguese settlers' Língua do Pê's varieties. Second, we discuss phonological issues, such as syllable structure, focusing on the loci of onglides, offglides, syllabic nasals, and word prosody. Finally, we discuss how these ludlings can help speakers, learners, and linguists perceive phonological properties as well as the contribution of describing and analyzing language games for language documentation.
#KeepOurLanguagesStrong: Indigenous Language Revitalization on Social Media during the Early COVID-19 Pandemic
Kari A. B. Chew, pp. 239-266
Indigenous communities, organizations, and individuals work tirelessly to #KeepOurLanguagesStrong. The COVID-19 pandemic was potentially detrimental to Indigenous language revitalization (ILR) as this mostly in-person work shifted online. This article shares findings from an analysis of public social media posts, dated March through July 2020 and primarily from Canada and the US, about ILR and the COVID-19 pandemic. The research team, affiliated with the NEȾOLṈEW̱ "one mind, one people" Indigenous language research partnership at the University of Victoria, identified six key themes of social media posts concerning ILR and the pandemic, including: 1. language promotion, 2. using Indigenous languages to talk about COVID-19, 3. trainings to support ILR, 4. language education, 5. creating and sharing language resources, and 6. information about ILR and COVID-19. Enacting the principle of reciprocity in Indigenous research, part of the research process was to create a short video to share research findings back to social media. This article presents a selection of slides from the video accompanied by an in-depth analysis of the themes. Written about the pandemic, during the pandemic, this article seeks to offer some insights and understandings of a time during which much is uncertain. Therefore, this article does not have a formal conclusion; rather, it closes with ideas about long-term implications and future research directions that can benefit ILR.
Community Archiving of Ethnic Groups in Thailand
Siripen Ungsitipoonporn, Buachut Watyam, Vera Ferreira, & Mandana Seyfeddinipur, pp. 267-284
This article presents the research process of the project "The Ethnic Group Digital Archive Project: Promoting the protection and preservation of language and culture diversity in Thailand". This project involved the development of a local digital archive website for the ethnic groups of Thailand to archive, preserve, and transmit their knowledge of languages and cultures to their younger generations and those interested. The core objective of this digital archive development was the implementation of the archive website with uncomplicated accessibility and simple and interesting design that serves the language documentation purpose. The digital archive output includes collections from 18 ethnic groups in Thailand, containing 385 bundles of legacy and fieldwork data obtained by means of video, audio, text, image, and ELAN file. Despite the low number of researchers working on language documentation and archiving, the research team managed to expand both national and international networks working in this particular field of study. This serves as an opportunity for scholars and speaker communities in Thailand to recognize the importance of local knowledge preservation and transmission, and the availability of the digital archive is a practical way to support sustainable data preservation and accessibility in the future.
Virtual Frisian: A comparison of language use in North and West Frisian virtual communities
Guillem Belmar & Hauke Heyen, pp. 285-315
Social networking sites have become ubiquitous in our daily communicative exchanges, which has brought about new platforms of identification and opened possibilities that were out of reach for many minoritized communities. As they represent an increasing percentage of the media we consume, these sites have been considered crucial for revitalization processes. However, the growing importance of social media may also pose a problem for minoritized languages, as the need for communication with a wider audience seems to require the use of a language of wider communication. One way in which this apparent need for a global language can be avoided is by creating virtual communities where the minoritized languages can be used without competition, a virtual breathing space.
This study analyzes language practices of eight communities: four North Frisian and four West Frisian virtual communities. The analysis focuses on the languages used in each community, the topics discussed, as well as the status of the minoritized language in the community. A total of 1,127 posts are analyzed to determine whether these communities function as breathing spaces, the factors that may foster or prevent the emergence of these spaces, and the similarities and differences between these two sociolinguistic contexts.
Collecting and annotating corpora for three under-resourced languages of France: Methodological issues
Delphine Bernhard, Anne-Laure Ligozat, Myriam Bras, Fanny Martin, Marianne Vergez-Couret, Pascale Erhart, Jean Sibille, Amalia Todirascu, Philippe Boula de Mareüil, & Dominique Huck, pp. 316-357
In contrast to French, the vast majority of regional languages of France can be considered as under-resourced. In this article, we present the results of a research project aiming to produce annotated resources for three regional languages of France: Alsatian, Occitan, and Picard. These languages cover three different language families (Germanic and two subfamilies of Romance, Oïl and Oc languages) and different sociolinguistic situations. Yet, they all face issues common to many under-resourced languages: lack of human and financial resources and presence of geolinguistic variation. The originality of this project is that it brought together researchers from different fields (sociolinguistics, descriptive linguistics, dialectology, natural language processing, digital humanities) to work together towards the common goal of developing annotated corpora for Alsatian, Occitan, and Picard. This created a favorable and stimulating working environment which could not have been achieved had different research groups worked independently, each on a single language. This article details the annotation process, with a special focus on the delimitation of the tokens and the definition of the part-of-speech tags.
The Utility of Orthographic Design for Different Users: The Case of the Approved Dagbani Orthography
Fusheini Angulu Hudu, pp. 358-374
This paper presents a critical assessment of the utility of the orthography of Dagbani (a Gur language of Ghana) in the documentation, linguistic research, and literacy acquisition of Dagbani. While written literature on Dagbani dates to over a century, it was only in 1997 that the only known documented orthographic rules of the language, the Approved Dagbani Orthography (ADO), was put together. Its stated goal was to address inconsistencies that existed in the orthographic rules at the time. It has since largely served this goal and has remained a resource for linguists engaged in language documentation and linguistic research as well as adult and young learners acquiring literacy in Dagbani in formal and informal settings. The paper discusses the influence of the orthography in the understanding of aspects of Dagbani linguistics and the challenges that remain with its use in modern-day multimodal communication. It shows that while the ADO has impacted literacy, documentation, and research on Dagbani linguistics, aspects of the design of the orthography have limited its potential impact and have given room for the emergence or maintenance of co-orthographic practices used for electronic communication and in the documentation of names in non-native official circles.
The Conundrum of Friulian Language Vitality
Simone De Cia, pp. 375-410
Italy is characterized by a considerable amount of language variation. Only a few spoken vernaculars enjoy institutional support and are officially recognized as minority languages. Among these, Friulian is one of the largest in terms of number of speakers. In the past decade, the assessment of Friulian language vitality has yielded discordant conclusions. The aim of the present paper is to shed light on Friulian's vitality by providing an informed discussion of the findings of the three most recent studies on the topic, namely De Cia (2013), Coluzzi (2015), and Melchior (2015). As a framework for discussion and means of synthesis among the different claims put forward on Friulian's vitality, I will make reference to the nine factors of language vitality proposed by UNESCO (2003): each factor describes six possible sociolinguistic scenarios, which reflect six different levels of language vitality. Despite its official status and institutional support, Friulian lacks young native speakers and is used more and more infrequently in a limited number of social settings. The overall picture suggests that a marked process of language shift from Friulian to Italian is taking place. National and regional authorities should take immediate action to ensure the future survival of the minority language.
Collaborative Fieldwork with Custom Mobile Apps
Mat Bettinson & Steven Bird, pp. 411-432
Mobile apps have the potential to support collaborative fieldwork even where web connectivity is unreliable or unavailable. To explore this potential, we developed portable network infrastructure and custom-made field tool apps. We deployed this solution in remote communities in the far north of Australia, in connection with co-located cooperative language work. Throughout a series of visits, we worked with community members to iterate the designs, optimising their suitability for the tasks and the context. We found that custom toolmaking provides the benefits of digital collaboration tailored for the specific needs of the environment and community. However, we argue that it is activity design – not the technology itself – that must be foregrounded, placing fieldworkers in the driving seat of innovation in digital fieldwork practice.
The Role of Input in Language Revitalization: The Case of Lexical Development
William O'Grady, Raina Heaton, Sharon Bulalang & Jeanette King, pp. 433-457
Immersion programs have long been considered the gold standard for school-based language revitalization, but surprisingly little attention has been paid to the quantity and quality of the input that they provide to young language learners. Drawing on new data from three such programs (Kaqchikel, Western Subanon, and Māori), each with its own particular motivation, objectives, and pedagogical practices, we examine a key component of this revitalization strategy, namely the amount and type of lexical input that children receive. Our findings include previously unknown facts about the number of words that children in these programs hear per hour, the ratio of word tokens to word types, and the skewed frequency distribution of the particular words that make up the input. We discuss our findings with reference both to comparable measures for first language acquisition in a home setting and to their relevance for pedagogical strategies in the classroom.
Mapping Urban Linguistic Diversity in New York City: Motives, Methods, Tools, and Outcomes
Ross Perlin, Daniel Kaufman, Mark Turin, Maya Daurio, Sienna Craig, Jason Lampel, pp. 458-490
Communities around the world have distinctive ways of representing language use across space and territory. The approach to and method of mapping languages that began with nineteenth-century European dialectology and colonial boundary making is one such way. Though practiced by relatively few linguists today, language mapping has developed considerably from its roots yet remains stymied by problems of ideology, representation, and data quality. In this paper, we argue that digital language mapping in hyperdiverse cities can both contribute to overcoming these problems and bring visibility and resources to communities using Indigenous, minority, and primarily oral languages. For these communities, official surveys like the census are often inadequate, leaving a gap that communities, linguists, and mapping experts working in partnership can address. Urban language mapping as a field should make space for Indigenous, minority, and primarily oral languages through geospatial visualization – in terms that the communities themselves recognize and with a public policy agenda. As a case study, we present our ongoing efforts with LANGUAGEMAP.NYC to map the most linguistically diverse urban center in the world: New York City.
Automatic Speech Recognition for Supporting Endangered Language Documentation
Emily Prud'hommeaux, Robbie Jimerson, Richard Hatcher, Karin Michelson, pp. 491-513
Generating accurate word-level transcripts of recorded speech for language documentation is difficult and time-consuming, even for skilled speakers of the target language. Automatic speech recognition (ASR) has the potential to streamline transcription efforts for endangered language documentation, but the practical utility of ASR for this purpose has not been fully explored. In this paper, we present results of a study in which both linguists and community members, with varying levels of language proficiency, transcribe audio recordings of an endangered language under timed conditions with and without the assistance of ASR. We find that both time-to-transcribe and transcription error rates are significantly reduced when correcting ASR for language learners of all levels. Despite these improvements, most community members in our study express a preference for unassisted transcription, highlighting the need for developers to directly engage with stakeholders when designing and deploying technologies for supporting language documentation.
Using YouTube as the Primary Transcription and Translation Platform for Remote Corpus Work
Alexander Rice, pp. 514-550
This paper presents a remote corpus work model that was developed between an outside researcher and community collaborator to continue transcription/translation work at a distance with previously collected material in response to the travel restrictions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic. The paper describes, in detail, the corpus work model, which is based on Ryan Pennington's (2014) SayMore-FLEx-ELAN workflow and uses YouTube as the primary transcription/translation platform. The paper also describes the pros, cons, and specific situational context in which this model has proven useful so that other documentation teams in similar contexts might benefit. In addition to simply providing a method of doing corpus work remotely, the model also provides a way to maintain community capacity building at a distance.
Between Stress and Tone: Acoustic Evidence of Word Prominence in Kurtöp
Gwendolyn Hyslop, pp. 551-575
Classic typologies within prosody tend to treat 'tone' languages as being diametrically opposed to 'stress' languages. However, Hyman (2006) highlights several languages that can have both, including Seneca, Fasu, and Copala Trique. As language documentation advances and our acoustic methodologies in the field are further refined, we have seen this list continue to expand. The aim in this article is to further this research trajectory by presenting the correlates of stress in Kurtöp, a tonal Tibeto-Burman language. Kurtöp has a word-level tone system, in which high versus low tone is required on the first syllable of every word. Stress, or prosodic word-level prominence, is realised on the first syllable of a root. Thus, stress and tone usually occur on the same syllable; they are only separated from each other when the negative prefix triggers movement of the tone to the initial syllable, leaving a stressed but toneless second syllable. Based on data collected in the field from three speakers, this article shows that the primary correlate of stress is duration, not pitch, intensity, or expansion of vowel space.
SP21: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Language Documentation
Edited by Susan D. Penfield
Introduction: Interdisciplinary Research in Language Documentation Susan D. Penfield
Interdisciplinarity in areal documentation: Experiences from Lower Fungom, Cameroon Jeffrey Good
Child language documentation: A pilot project in Papua New Guinea Birgit Hellwig
Domain-driven documentation: The case of landscape Niclas Burenhult
Endangered Language Documentation: The challenges of interdisciplinary research in ethnobiology Jonathan Amith
Whole Volume
SP22: Reflexiones teóricas en torno a la función del trabajo de campo en lingüística- antropológica: Contribuciones de investigadores indígenas del sur de México
Editora: Emiliana Cruz Cruz
SP20: Collaborative Approaches to the Challenges of Language Documentation and Conservation
Edited by Wilson de Lima Silva & Katherine J. Riestenberg
Note that embedded audio/video media are no longer playable inline in LD&C articles. All articles and associated media files are stored together in our repository, and readers can access and listen to/view media online.
Notes from the Field: Inagta Alabat: A moribund Philippine language, with supporting audio
Jason William Lobel, Amy Jugueta Alpay, Rosie Susutin Barreno, & Emelinda Jugueta Barreno, pp. 1-57
Arguably the most critically-endangered language in the Philippines, Inagta Al- abat (also known as Inagta Lopez and Inagta Villa Espina) is spoken by fewer than ten members of the small Agta community on the island of Alabat off the northern coast of Quezon Province on the large northern Philippine island of Lu- zon, and by an even smaller number of Agta further east in the province. This short sketch provides some brief sociolinguistic notes on the group, followed by an overview of its phoneme system, grammatical subsystems, and verb system. Over 800 audio recordings accompany the article, including 100 sentences, three short narratives, and a list of over 200 basic vocabulary items.
Nearly half a century has passed since Philippine educator Teodoro Llamzon discovered the Remontado language, which would be introduced to the world in a master's thesis written by his student Pilar Santos. Although data from the wordlists they collected have been included in subsequent publications by several other authors, no one had revisited the language community, let alone collected any additional data on this highly-endangered language, prior to the current authors. This article presents updated information on the language community, the current state of the language, and a revised description of the various grammatical subsystems of the language, including its verbal morphology. Also included are over 400 audio recordings illustrating basic aspects of the phonology as well as the various functor sets and verb forms, and a short text for comparison with other similar language sketches.
SP19: Documentation and Maintenance of Contact Languages from South Asia to East Asia
Edited by Mário Pinharanda-Nunes and Hugo C. Cardoso
2019 ISBN 978-0-9973295-6-8
In the time spanning from Himmelmann's (1998) seminal article, the practice of language documentation has understandably developed a discernible focus on endangered, minority, and lesser described languages.
As a result of the realization of the global pervasiveness of language endangerment, these associated endeavours have significantly expanded their vitality and visibility in recent years. However, contact languages have been to some extent absent from discourses on language endangerment, but also from institutional initiatives to counter the situation. In practice, contact languages have also been and continue to be the object of language documentation, description, and revitalization efforts, as demonstrated in this special volume with concrete reference to the regions of South, Southeast, and East Asia.
SP18: Archival Returns: Central Australia and Beyond
Edited by Linda Barwick, Jennifer Green, and Petronella Vaarzon-Morel
Co-published with Sydney University Press
SP17: Language and Toponymy in Alaska and Beyond
Papers in Honor of James Kari
Edited by Gary Holton & Thomas F. Thornton
It is difficult to imagine place names research in Alaska without the work of James Kari. Through his tireless field work and advocacy, Dr. Kari has collaborated with speakers of all of Alaska's Dene languages to help build a comprehensive record of Dene geographic knowledge. When Jim came to Alaska in 1972, the documentation of Dene languages was fragmentary at best, and the only records of Native place names were those found inaccurately spelled on maps and gazetteers. Now nearly a half a century later we are surrounded by Native names—from K'esugi Ridge in Susitna Valley to Troth Yeddha' on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus. The increased visibility of Alaska Native place names today is due in no small part to Jim's efforts. His work has inspired a generation of scholars, including the contributors to this volume, and continues to set the standard for toponymy research in Alaska and beyond.
A print version of this volume, in paper with sewn binding, will be published by the Alaska Native Language Center Press in July 2019.
SP16: Methodological tools for linguistic description and typology
Edited by Aimée Lahaussois and Marine Vuillermet
This volume is an outcome of a collaborative multi-year research project on Questionnaires for linguistic description and typology. For the purposes of the project, we use Questionnaire (with a capital Q) as a general term to cover any kind of methodological tool designed to elicit linguistic expressions, including word lists, visual stimuli, descriptive templates, field manuals, and the like. This volume thus brings together articles about written questionnaires and visual stimuli, which due to their epistemological differences are rarely considered together, and treats them as sub-types of the large category of methodological tools that help linguists carry out descriptive and comparative work.
SP15: Reflections on Language Documentation 20 Years after Himmelmann 1998
Edited by Bradley McDonnell, Andrea L. Berez-Kroeker & Gary Holton
University of Hawai'i Press
This volume reflects on key issues in the field of language documentation on the 20 year anniversary of Nikolaus Himmelmann's seminal article "Documentary and descriptive linguistics" in the journal Linguistics. Himmelmann's central argument that language documentation should "be conceived of as a fairly independent field of linguistic inquiry and practice" has prompted major theoretical and practical shifts, helping to establish documentary linguistics as a genuine subfield of linguistics. Now 20 years later we are able ask: how has this new field evolved? Continue reading →
Notes from the Field: Remontado (Hatang-Kayi): A Moribund Language of the Philippines
Jason William Lobel & Orlando Vertudez Surbano, pp. 1-35
SP14: A Descriptive Grammar of Shilluk
By Bert Remijsen & Otto Gwado Ayoker
This special publication of Language Documentation & Conservation presents descriptive analyses on topics in the grammar of Shilluk, a Nilo Saharan language spoken primarily in South Sudan. A salient characteristic of Shilluk is that it is rich in fusional morphology. That is, stem-internal changes, particularly in terms of tone and vowel length, have a high functional load in the paradigms of verbs and nouns. From 2008 onwards, we have built up a detailed understanding of these contrasts and their role in the grammar. Accountability is a central concern in documentary and descriptive linguistics, and it is one that has determined the design of this publication in various ways. One way we are ensuring that our description is accountable is by including sound examples. We do this because the phenomena themselves are sounds; transcriptions based on the sounds are hypotheses. Aside from making the work more accountable, sound examples embedded in publications make the phenomena more accessible, reducing the threshold between the reader and an unfamiliar language.
This grammar represents a long-term project. It will be published in instalments.
The endangered state of Negidal: A field report
Brigitte Pakendorf & Natalia Aralova, pp. 1-14
Negidal is a Northern Tungusic language closely related to Evenki with two recognized dialects, Upper and Lower Negidal. This nearly extinct language used to be spoken in the Lower Amur region of the Russian Far East by people whose traditional way of life was based on fishing and hunting. While the number of remaining active speakers of Upper Negidal was more or less known, the current state of Lower Negidal was still uncertain. We here report on a trip to ascertain the state of Lower Negidal and give a precise assessment of the linguistic situation of both dialects. While the Upper dialect is still represented by seven elderly female speakers, varying in proficiency from fully fluent to barely able to produce a narrative, not a single active speaker of Lower Negidal is left. The language will therefore probably be extinct in the next decade or two. Continue reading →
SP13: Documenting Variation in Endangered Languages
Documenting Variation in Endangered Languages
Kristine A. Hildebrandt, Carmen Jany & Wilson Silva
ISBN10: 0997329505
The papers in this special publication are the result of presentations and follow-up dialogue on emergent and alternative methods to documenting variation in endangered, minority, or otherwise under-represented languages. Recent decades have seen a burgeoning interest in many aspects of language documentation and field linguistics and there is also a great deal of material dealing with language variation in major languages.
In contrast, intersections of language variation in endangered and minority languages are still few in number. Yet examples of those few cases published on the intersection of language documentation and language variation reveal exciting potentials for linguistics as a discipline, challenging and supporting classical models, creating new models and predictions.
SP12: The Social Cognition Parallax Interview Corpus (SCOPIC)
Edited by Danielle Barth and Nicholas Evans
ISBN 0-9973295-1-3
The Social Cognition Parallax Interview Corpus (SCOPIC) provides naturalistic but cross-linguistically-matched corpus data with enriched annotations of grammatical categories relevant to social cognition. By 'parallax corpus' we mean 'broadly comparable formulations resulting from a comparable task', to avoid the implications of 'parallel corpus' that there will be exact semantic equivalence across languages. The problem with that, from a semantic typologist's point of view, is that it can only be achieved by privileging the semantic structure of the source language in the translations, and that it prevents us from studying the fundamental question of how languages – or the formulation practices of speech communities – bias the expression of particular categories in language-specific ways.
This volume will grow incrementally with new chapters added between 2017 and 2022.
LD&C 10th Anniversary Articles
LD&C possibilities for the next decade
Nick Thieberger, pp. 1–4
The Founding of Language Documentation & Conservation
Kenneth L. Rehg, pp. 5–9
Language Vitality among the Mako Communities of the Ventuari River
Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada, pp. 10–48
SP10: African language documentation: new data, methods and approaches
Edited by Mandana Seyfeddinipur
Over the past 20 years, language documentation activities have been increasing all over the world. Major funding initiatives in Germany (Dokumentation Bedrohter Sprachen (DoBeS) funded by Volkswagen Stiftung), the UK (Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP) funded by Arcadia) and the US (Documentation of Endangered Languages (DEL) funded by the National Science Foundation) have enabled more and more scholars and students to conduct fieldwork and to document languages for which little or no documentation exists. Continue reading →
Chirila: Contemporary and Historical Resources for the Indigenous Languages of Australia
Claire Bowern, pp. 1–44
Here I present the background to, and a description of, a newly developed database of historical and contemporary lexical data for Australian languages (Chirila), concentrating on the Pama-Nyungan family (the largest family in the country). While the database was initially developed in order to facilitate research on cognate words and reconstructions, it has had many uses beyond its original purpose, in synchronic theoretical linguistics, language documentation, and language reclamation. Creating a multi-audience database of this type has been challenging, however. Some of the challenges stemmed from success: as the size of the database grew, the original data structure became unwieldy. Other challenges grew from the difficulties in anticipating future needs, in keeping track of materials, and in coping with diverse input formats for so many highly endangered languages.
SP11: Mutsun-English English-Mutsun Dictionary, mutsun-inkiS inkiS-mutsun riica pappel
The Mutsun-English English-Mutsun Dictionary
By Natasha Warner, Lynnika Butler and Quirina Geary
Mutsun is a Costanoan language (part of the Utian language family) from California in the area around the modern towns of San Juan Bautista, Hollister, and Gilroy. The last fluent speaker of Mutsun, Mrs. Ascension Solarsano, died in 1930. Because of her work and the work of earlier native Mutsun speakers with early linguists, there is a large written corpus of Mutsun. This dictionary was compiled by analyzing that documentation. The dictionary is written to be useful both for language revitalization and for linguistic research.
Download the whole volume
SP09: Language Documentation and Conservation in Europe
Edited by Vera Ferreira and Peter Bouda
Europe is a continent with low linguistic diversity and the number of minority and endangered languages is reduced in comparison to other parts of the world. Consequently, Europe is not in the focus of the researchers working on language documentation. Apart from some "major" minority languages in Europe (Catalan, Galician, Breton, Welsh, Basque, etc.), several of the European endangered languages are not known in detail (even in the academia) or documented in a concise and comprehensive way. Primary data on these languages, reflecting their everyday use, is almost non-existent. Moreover, the linguistic diversity in Europe is also unknown to the general public.
On Training in Language Documentation and Capacity Building in Papua New Guinea: A Response to Bird et al.
Joseph D. Brooks, pp. 1–9
In a recent article, Bird et al. (2013) discuss a workshop held at the University of Goroka in Papua New Guinea (PNG) in 2012. The workshop was intended to offer a new methodological framework for language documentation and capacity building that streamlines the documentation process and accelerates the global effort to document endangered languages through machine translation and automated glossing technology developed by computer scientists. As a volunteer staff member at the workshop, in this response to Bird et al. I suggest that it did not in the end provide us with a model that should be replicated in the future. I explain how its failure to uphold fundamental commitments from a documentary linguistic and humanistic perspective can help inform future workshops and large-scale documentary efforts in PNG. Instead of experimenting with technological shortcuts that aim to reduce the role of linguists in language documentation and that construct participants as sources of data, we should implement training workshops geared toward the interests and skills of local participants who are interested in documenting their languages, and focus on building meaningful partnerships with academic institutions in PNG.
Documentary Linguistics and Computational Linguistics: A response to Brooks
Steven Bird, David Chiang, Friedel Frowein, Florian Hanke & Ashish Vaswani, pp. 10–11
SP08: The Art and Practice of Grammar Writing
ISBN-13: 978-0-9856211-4-8 (2014)
Edited by Toshihide Nakayama and Keren Rice
Vol.8 (2014)
In addition to our normal offering of excellent articles, in Volume 8 we have published three sets of themed articles: Language Documentation in the Americas edited by Keren Rice and Bruna Franchetto; The Role of Linguists in Indigenous Community Language Programs in Australia edited by John Henderson; How to Study a Tone Language edited by Steven Bird and Larry Hyman.
This volume also marks the retirement of our founding editor, Ken Rehg. It was his vision that established LD&C with resources from the NFLRC and University of Hawai'i and it has gone from strength to strength, always with the benefit of his guidance. The editorial team at LD&C wishes him a long and happy retirement
SP07: Language Endangerment and Preservation in South Asia
ISBN 978-0-9856211-4-8 (2014)
Edited by Hugo C. Cardoso
The Sociolinguistic Situation of the Manila Bay Chabacano-Speaking Communities
Marivic Lesho and Eeva Sippola, pp. 1–30
This study is an assessment of the vitality of the Manila Bay Chabacano varieties spoken in Cavite City and Ternate, Philippines. These Spanish-lexified creoles have often been described as endangered, but until now there has been no systematic description of how stable the varieties are. The evaluation of the vitality of Manila Bay Chabacano is made based on participant observation and interviews conducted in both communities over the past nine years, using the UNESCO (2003) framework. Comparison between the two varieties shows that the proportional size of the speech community, degree of urbanization, and proximity to Manila account for differences in the vitality of the creoles. In rural Ternate, Chabacano is more stable in terms of intergenerational transmission and the proportion of speakers to the overall community. In the more urban Cavite City, most speakers are of the grandparental generation, but the community is more organized in its language preservation efforts. This study sheds light on two creole varieties in need of further documentation and sociolinguistic description, as well as the status of minority languages in the Philippines. It also offers a critical assessment of a practically-oriented methodological framework and demonstrates its application in the field.
Language Management and Minority Language Maintenance in (Eastern) Indonesia: Strategic Issues
I Wayan Arka, pp. 74–105
SP06: Microphone in the Mud
LD&C Special Publication No. 6
By Laura Robinson (with Gary Robinson)
Subcontracting Native Speakers in Linguistic Fieldwork: A Case Study of the Ashéninka Perené (Arawak) Research Community from the Peruvian Amazon
Elena I. Mihas, pp. 1–21
In light of a growing need to develop best practices for collaboration between the linguist and community researchers, this study provides orientation points on how to engage native speakers in linguistic fieldwork. Subcontracting native speaker-insiders is a variety of empowering collaborative field research, in which trained collaborators independently make audio and video recordings of fellow speakers in the research community, with subsequent transcription and translation of the collected texts. Using fieldwork in the Peruvian high jungle communities of Ashéninka Perené (Kampan, Arawak) as a case study, this paper examines practicalities of subcontracting such as identifying potential subcontractors, negotiating and signing an agreement, training to use practical orthography and equipment, and evaluation of the end-product.
Participatory Methods for Language Documentation and Conservation: Building Community Awareness and Engagement
Christina Lai Truong and Lilian Garcez, pp. 22-37
SP05: Melanesian Languages on the Edge of Asia: Challenges for the 21st Century
Melanesian Languages on the Edge of Asia: Challenges for the 21st Century
Edited by Nicholas Evans & Marian Klamer
SP04: Electronic Grammaticography
Electronic Grammaticography
Edited by Sebastian Nordhoff
SP03: Potentials of Language Documentation: Methods, Analyses, and Utilization
Potentials of Language Documentation: Methods, Analyses, and Utilization
Edited by Frank Seifart, Geoffrey Haig, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann, Dagmar Jung, Anna Margetts, and Paul Trilsbeek
LD&C, vol. 5 (2011)
Integrating Documentation and Formal Teaching of Kari'nja: Documentary Materials as Pedagogical Materials
Racquel-María Yamada, pp. 1–30
In response to the loss of more traditional modes of transmission and decreased contexts of use, members of many endangered language communities have begun revitalization programs that include formal teaching. Linguistic documentation of these languages often occurs independently of revitalization efforts and is largely led by outsider academics. Separation of documentation and revitalization is unnecessary. In fact, the two endeavors can readily support and strengthen each other. This paper describes the process of concurrently creating formal teaching materials and a documentary corpus of Kari'nja, an endangered Cariban language of Suriname. Activities described embody the Community Partnerships Model (CPM), a methodological approach to linguistic fieldwork that is collaborative and speech community-based. The work described herein represents a small portion of an ongoing documentation, description, and revitalization program.
Puana 'Ia me ka 'Oko'a: A Comparative Analysis of Hawaiian Language Pronunciation as Spoken and Sung
Joseph Keola Donaghy, pp. 107-133
Why Revisit Published Data of an Endangered Language with Native Speakers? An Illustration from Cherokee
Durbin Feeling, Christine Armer, Charles Foster, Marcellino Berardo, and Sean O'Neill, pp. 1-21
In this paper we show that much can be gained when speakers of an endangered language team up with linguistic anthropologists to comment on the documentary record of an endangered language. The Cherokee speakers in this study examined published linguistic data of a relatively understudied grammatical construction, Cherokee prepronominals. They commented freely on the form, usage, context, meaning, dialect, and other related aspects of the construction. As a result of this examination, we make the data of Cherokee prepronominals applicable to a wider audience, including other Cherokee speakers, teachers, language learners, and general community members, as well as linguists and anthropologists.
Trust me, I am a Linguist! Building Partnership in the Field
Valérie Guérin and Sébastien Lacrampe, pp. 22-33
SP02: Fieldwork and Linguistic Analysis in Indigenous Languages of the Americas
ISBN 978-0-8248-3530-9 (2010)
Fieldwork and Linguistic Analysis in Indigenous Languages of the Americas
Edited by Andrea L. Berez, Jean Mulder, and Daisy Rosenblum
Download full version in PDF.
vol. 3, no. 1
Kaipuleohone, the University of Hawai'i's Digital Ethnographic Archive
Emily E. Albarillo and Nick Thieberger, 1-14
The University of Hawai'i's Kaipuleohone Digital Ethnographic Archive was created in 2008 as part of the ongoing language documentation initiative of the Department of Linguistics. The archive is a repository for linguistic and ethnographic data gathered by linguists, anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, and others. Over the past year, the archive has grown from idea to reality, due to the hard work of faculty and students, as well as support from inside and outside the Department. This paper will outline the context for digital archiving and provide an overview of the development of Kaipuleohone, examining both concrete and theoretical issues that have been addressed along the way. The creation of the archive has not been problem-free and the archive itself is an ongoing process rather than a finished product. We hope that this paper will be useful to scholars and language workers in other areas who are considering setting up their own digital archive.
Research Models, Community Engagement, and Linguistic Fieldwork: Reflections on Working within Canadian Indigenous Communities
Ewa Czaykowska-Higgins, 15-50
Static Palatography for Language Fieldwork
Victoria B. Anderson
This article describes how to do static palatography, a way to collect articulatory records about speech sounds that can be used either in the field or in the laboratory. Palatography creates records of the contact pattern of the tongue on the roof of the mouth during an utterance, and when the actual dimensions of the palate are known, can be a rich source of data about articulatory strategies. This paper (1) instructs the reader about the tools and methods needed to collect palatograms (records of contact on the roof of the mouth) and linguograms (records of contact on the tongue); (2) shows how to collect three-dimensional information about the size and shape of a speaker's hard palate; (3) illustrates how to incorporate these three types of records into life-size, anatomically accurate midsagittal diagrams of speakers' articulations; and (4) demonstrates how palatograms can be measured (and how linguograms can be categorized) in order to statistically compare articulatory strategies across speech sounds and/or across speakers.
Diglossia, Bilingualism, and the Revitalization of Written Eastern Cham
Marc Brunelle
SP01: Documenting and Revitalizing Austronesian Languages
Documenting and Revitalizing Austronesian Languages
Edited by D. Victoria Rau and Margaret Florey
Endangered Sound Patterns: Three Perspectives on Theory and Description
Juliette Blevins
In this essay, I highlight the important role of endangered language documentation and description in the study of sound patterns. Three different perspectives are presented: a long view of phonology, from ancient to modern traditions; an areal and genetic view of sound patterns, and their relation to theory and description; and a practical perspective on the importance of research on endangered sound patterns. All perspectives converge on a common theme: the most lasting and influential contributions to the field are those with seamless boundaries between description and analysis.
Solar Power for the Digital Fieldworker
Tom Honeyman and Laura C. Robinson
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Yr. 7 and 8: A comprehensive review of this area of the school has been submitted to the Board of Trustees. The use of a data wall has been an effective tracking mechanism with this team and priority learners are being well-supported through programmes such as STEPS (Literacy) and ALIM (Mathematics).
Yr. 9 and Year 10: REACH continues to be a mechanism for tracking student progress. To date the data is comparable to previous years. High priority learners have been identified for additional support via the Deans of Yr. 9 and 10.
Level One NCEA: Academic tracking indicates that we should have a very high achievement rate for NCEA Level 1. Currently 30% of the cohort have achieved their Level 1 NCEA and another 27% are within 10 credits of gaining their certificate. We should have over half of the cohort achieving their certificate before leaving for externals examinations.
Level Two NCEA: More than 85% of our students have already gained NCEA Level Two. Most of the remaining students in the cohort are within 15 credits of gaining the certificate .
Level Three NCEA: Just under 40% of our Year 13 students have already gained NCEA Level Three. Another 38% are within 15 credits of gaining Level Three. The Ministry target is for 85% of school leavers to gain NCEA Level Two (currently our achievement rate is over 90%).
The Derived Grades Exams were completed by Wednesday 19 September and results are due out to families in the first week of the study break/holidays. The short examination period has been effective in reducing the amount of time lost in courses with portfolio-based external assessments or completely internally assessed courses.
End of Year reports will be completed by the end of Week 2 in Term 4 and will be sent home during Week 3.
Student options for 2019 have been entered via the student portal. This has been extremely successful and all students with missing options have been followed up.
The viability of a number of courses is currently being investigated by the Senior Leadership Team in consultation with the Head of each Faculty.


Artisan Costumier makes and sells theatrical quality period costumes and accessories, we also sell vintage period costumes, footwear and accessories from the Opera, Stage and Screen.
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We hope you enjoy our website and if you require more information then take a moment to drop us a line.
Click on visit ebay listing button which takes you directly to the costume for sale on our ebay site.
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text:
Warehouse F
Thomas Young
The Unseen Enemy
A Man Who Knew Everything
A book by Andrew Robinson titled "The Last Man Who Knew Everything" is a biographical document about the life of Thomas Young, an amazing character who lived from 1773 to 1829 and literally appeared to have knowledge about any subject brought before him.
During his lifetime, Young wrote 63 articles for Encyclopedia Britannica. The topics ranged from Bridge to scientific matters. He published papers on how the eye focuses, theorized that light traveled in waves, was instrumental in cracking the code that unlocked the script on the Rosetta Stone and coined the term Indo-European to describe the family of languages spoken throughout most of Europe and northern India.
Born a child prodigy in England, Young became a practicing physician, but also had a wide range of other interests, mostly involving science and mathematics.
Young is not the only person marked by historians for his remarkable knowledge. Others that have been subjects of biological works include Joseph Leidy (1823-1891) and Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680). The vast library of achievements by such people as these are so spectacular that they tend to stand out from even the gifted genius line of humans who can be found in nearly all segments of society.
There is a theory that overachievers like Young may have different kinds of brains, perhaps lacking the cavity that separates the left the right hemispheres. Thus they have the remarkable gift of total brain functioning, which some believe may be the evolved state in which humans should all be heading.
Young, for example, was said to have accomplished the Latin, Greek, French, Italian, Hebrew, Arabic and Persian languages by the age of 14. He attended Cambridge, went on to study medicine in London, Edinburgh and Gottingen. His first interest was in sense perception, discovered how the eye focuses by changing the shape of the lens, discovered the cause of astigmatism and helped initiate the three color theory of perception.
Young also proved, through his famous double-slit experiment, that light was a transverse wave motion and that wave lengths determined the perception of color.
After a Napoleon expedition discovered the Rosetta stone in 1814, Young used the markings on it to help decipher the ancient hieroglyphic writing of ancient Egypt.
Among his other accomplishments, Young described the characteristics of elasticity which has since been known in science as Young's modulus.
In addition to his work in medicine, Young served as Professor of Natural Philosophy at Royal Institution, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, served as its Foreign Secretary and was Secretary of the Board of Longitude and Superintendent of the Nautical Almanac. He published numerous books and papers.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl