A query...

[Daniel L. Everett]

Andrew,

There is no easy way around the tenure problem. One might propose:


1. pre-tenure faculty (not PhD students!) should truncate this kind  
of project, unless they have something in writing from their  
university guaranteeing them that it will award tenure for data-bases  
in progress, etc. - - these folks could save the data-base/on-line  
aspects until after they have tenure.

2. tenured faculty - no excuses. Do it the long way.

I have read many grammars that I am skeptical about at points. But I  
have no way of checking it out, unless I actually visit the people  
and do my own field research (which in phonology I have done - i.e. I  
have visited villages and spent a few days recording and analyzing  
phonological data, especially prosody, because the claims I had read  
seemed unlikely. For example one language/people that I still want to  
visit or would like sound files of is the Arawan language, Culina,  
for which Pike - many, many years ago - claimed that there were no  
syllables. Since the dictionary of Culina has words that look like  
all the other Arawan languages (and I have done fieldwork on all of  
those) I am betting that Culina has CV and CVV syllables (not the V  
and CV that some claim) like all the other Arawan languages. If the  
data were on-line, it would help resolve this mystery - just to take  
a random example).

Dan

On Oct 24, 2006, at 11:09 AM, Andrew Koontz-Garboden wrote:

> I wonder, Dan, what you have to say about the tenure point made by
> Claire.  Assuming the goal is to achieve the best possible
> documentation of a language, then we'd definitely like people who have
> invested tons of time and energy in them to get promoted.  If the
> kinds of activities you outline actually undermine this goal, then it
> seems to me that one can't actually argue in favor of them providing
> the best documentation of a language, since these activities would
> ultimately lead to the academic demise of young scholars.
>
> Of course, one can say that what needs to be done is to get tenure
> committees to consider these kinds of activities.  In the short term,
> though, this doesn't seem like much of a solution---if Claire does
> what you suggest, odds are really good she won't get tenure, no?  And
> that would be a very bad thing for the documentation of Bardi...
>
> Or, perhaps the solution is for young scholars simply not to work on
> endangered languages or to do fieldwork at all?  I don't like that
> "solution" either...
>
> Andrew
>
> --
> Andrew Koontz-Garboden
> Department of Linguistics
> Margaret Jacks Hall, Bldg. 460
> Stanford University
> Stanford, CA 94305-2150
>
> andrewkg at csli.stanford.edu
> http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~andrewkg/