<div>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.</div>
<div> </div><div>Just a few thoughts that might assist you in your important work and I'll be interested in seeing other commentary on these issues.</div><div> </div><div>Bernadette A. SantaMaria</div><div>Cultural Advisory Board Member</div>
<div>White Mountain Apache Tribe</div><div>Fort Apache, AZ<br><br></div><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 8:24 AM, Susan Penfield <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:susan.penfield@gmail.com" target="_blank">susan.penfield@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;padding-left:1ex;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid" class="gmail_quote">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. <div>
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 -- </div>
<div><br></div><div>Just my two cents,</div><div>Susan<div><div class="h5"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 7:31 AM, Lindsay Marean <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:lmarean@bensay.org" target="_blank">lmarean@bensay.org</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;padding-left:1ex;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid" class="gmail_quote">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.<br>
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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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Again, thank you for your many and carefully considered responses to my questions!<br>
<br>
Lindsay<br>
<br>
On 8/27/12 12:39 PM, Lindsay Marean wrote:<br>
<blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;padding-left:1ex;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid" class="gmail_quote">
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.<br>
<br>
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?<br>
<br>
Best regards,<br>
Lindsay<br>
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</font><em><font face="georgia,serif"><strong>Susan D. Penfield, Ph.D.</strong><br>
</font></em><font face="georgia,serif"><br>Research Coordinator,</font></div>
<div><font face="georgia,serif">CERCLL, Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language and Literacy<br>CONFLUENCE, Center for Creative Inquiry</font></div><div><font face="georgia,serif">University of Arizona<br>
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