Help with documentation

[Joana Jansen]

 Dear Dale and all,

 You could also look at lists of language functions to see if there are 
 conversations or interactions they bring up. The lists I am most 
 familiar with are for the purpose of structuring and building 
 curriculum, and include things like “ask to be handed a specific 
 object”, “give an evaluation of something", "make a prediction", 
 "express degrees of possibility". Not all may be relevant to your 
 situation. Here are two lists. There are more on esl-related websites.

 http://pages.uoregon.edu/nwili/curriculum-assessment
 Scroll down to Functions Definitions List

 www.ode.state.or.us/teachlearn/standards/elp/files/langfunc.pdf

 Best wishes in this work!

 Joana Jansen
 jjansen at uoregon.edu




 On Sat, 2 Apr 2011 21:34:10 -0700, Dale McCreery wrote:
> Hello ILAT,
>
> I have a question for all of you.  First, some background.
>
> For the last two months I've been working documenting the 
> Sgüüx̱s
> language, or South Tsimshian so that they can eventually teach it 
> locally.
>  By the end of April I will have worked through a Coast Tsimshian
> dictionary looking for cognates, and will have gone through the 
> Dictionary
> Development Process template from SIL recording not just vocabulary, 
> but
> everything that I can think of in terms of ways of expressing 
> concepts
> without specific vocabulary, work-arounds for things that aren't 
> common,
> different ways to use words, etc.  As we work we're also getting an 
> idea
> of groups of vocabulary, and common ways of saying things, and trying 
> to
> expand on those.
>
> That said, even though I suspect that by the end of the month we'll 
> have
> as much of the vocabulary of the language, both roots and set phrases 
> etc)
> as the elder will be able to give us with the methods we're using, I 
> feel
> there's a gap in our documenting that we need to fill if at all 
> possible.
>
> While we've been able to get quite a few of what I call conversation
> scripts - the normal way to introduce yourself, the whole 
> conversation,
> the way to give and accept gifts, a lot of set phrases for speeches, 
> and
> things like that, I think that there are so many other conversations 
> that
> we really have missed, and just from our conversations in English I 
> get
> the impression that a lot of these common social encounters are 
> handled
> quite differently by speakers of Tsimshian.
>
> So - Is there something like a massive list of common types of social
> interactions, or a textbook I could find that would teach me how to
> recognize them in a language, and how to go about documenting them? 
> Sort
> of like a list of semantic domains, but for conversations?
>
> We only have one speaker left, and she is 97, so I really want to 
> make the
> absolute best use of our time recording together.
>
> Thank you all in advance for any advice you might have!
>
> Dale McCreery