How many hours of recorded speech? - more context

[BSantaMaria]

As a fluent speaker and being able to interact daily with relatives and
others in our language (but not with many youngr speakers), I agree that
daily conversational knowledge is key to learning a language but aside from
the considerations the amount of conversations are the important ones of
learning other aspects of speaking a native language.  With ours and
probably others, the gender (& sometime whether elder or younger) of the
speaker makes a difference in the ways they use language and I don't know
whether those speech decisions would come across specifically in daily
conversations especially to a "non-fluent ear".  This is where a fluent
speaker's input might be of assistance in reviewing the conversations for
these nuanced differences in speech patterns between both genders. There
are some ways of speaking that mainly older people use in our language too
and those are usually in reference to dispensing cultural knowledge,
descriptions of sacred knowledge, sacred stories/narrations, songs, etc.
In another way, a learner cannot just take a word from hearing an elder
talking about certain topics and use it in every day language even if it
seems apt, thereby, the "insider's" fluency and knowledge also makes a
difference.

Just a few thoughts that might assist you in your important work and I'll
be interested in seeing other commentary on these issues.

Bernadette A. SantaMaria
Cultural Advisory Board Member
White Mountain Apache Tribe
Fort Apache, AZ

On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 8:24 AM, Susan Penfield <susan.penfield at gmail.com>wrote:

> Compiling this information could be very valuable for many folks on all of
> these lists -- thank you for raising the question and for offering to do
> that.
> As to the Master-Apprentice -- I concur -- a great way to get samples of
> every-day speech -- However, even more valuable might be a documentation of
> the whole Master-Apprentice process, including the speech --
>
> Just my two cents,
> Susan
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 7:31 AM, Lindsay Marean <lmarean at bensay.org>wrote:
>
>> I'm grateful for the many responses I'm receiving to my questions, which
>> I've posted to three different listservs that deal with endangered language
>> documentation and revitalization.  In a few days I'll compile the responses
>> from all three lists (ILAT, RNLD, and ENDANGERED-LANGUAGES) and make them
>> available to others who may be interested in reading them.
>>
>> Meanwhile, although I think the question of "what is sufficient?" is
>> broadly relevant to language documentation, I'd like to provide a little
>> more information about my own situation.
>>
>> I have an MA in linguistics, a few years of fieldwork experience, and
>> some additional training in language documentation.  I'm working on my own
>> heritage language, a North American indigenous language that I've been
>> studying for 13 years.  Our few remaining fluent speakers are in high
>> demand as teachers and consultants for summer language camps,
>> master-apprentice programs, community and distance language classes, and
>> research and documentation projects.  Recently we have decided to make
>> documentation of natural speech one of our priorities.  However, "as much
>> as you possibly can for as long as you possibly can" seems too naive an
>> approach for us to take, because our documentation time comes at the
>> expense of other projects that are also important.  We also don't want to
>> leave our language underdocumented by neglecting a particular area of
>> language use or by simply not recording enough.
>>
>> If you write a descriptive grammar or compile a dictionary, there's a
>> point where you can say that you are "finished enough" to publish (of
>> course there will be aspects of the grammar the you didn't touch on or
>> fully account for, and your dictionary will be missing lots of words) and
>> move on to a new project.  We won't stop recording our elders once our
>> documentation project is over, but we'd like an idea of when we can
>> consider our collection "big enough" to shift our focus to other priorities.
>>
>> Again, thank you for your many and carefully considered responses to my
>> questions!
>>
>> Lindsay
>>
>> On 8/27/12 12:39 PM, Lindsay Marean wrote:
>>
>>> I'm helping to document a language with few first-language speakers
>>> living.  We want to record them speaking naturally (and transcribe and
>>> translate the recordings), and we hope to use this documentation as the
>>> basis for more language description in the future.
>>>
>>> I'm looking for people's opinions, experiences, and citations - how many
>>> hours of recorded speech are minimally "enough" to most likely represent
>>> the grammar of the language?  Are there particular discourse types that we
>>> should be certain to record, besides narratives and conversations?
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>> Lindsay
>>>
>>
>
>
> --
>
> **********************************************************************************************
> *Susan D. Penfield, Ph.D.
> *
> Research Coordinator,
> CERCLL,  Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language and Literacy
> CONFLUENCE, Center for Creative Inquiry
> University of Arizona
> Fax: (520) 626-3313
> Websites:
> CERCLL: cercll.arizona.edu
> Confluence Center:  www.confluencecenter.arizona.edu
>
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