27.4145, Review: Lang Doc; Socioling: Henderson, Essegbey, McLaughlin (2015)

[The LINGUIST List via LINGUIST]

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-4145. Mon Oct 17 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.4145, Review: Lang Doc; Socioling: Henderson, Essegbey, McLaughlin (2015)

Moderators: linguist at linguistlist.org (Damir Cavar, Malgorzata E. Cavar)
Reviews: reviews at linguistlist.org (Anthony Aristar, Helen Aristar-Dry,
                                   Robert Coté, Michael Czerniakowski)
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
                       Fund Drive 2016
                   25 years of LINGUIST List!
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Clare Harshey <clare at linguistlist.org>
================================================================


Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2016 10:03:05
From: Adewumi Erin [ademakai at gmail.com]
Subject: Language Documentation and Endangerment in Africa

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36165437


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-5097.html

EDITOR: James  Essegbey
EDITOR: Brent Mykel Henderson
EDITOR: Fiona  Mc Laughlin
TITLE: Language Documentation and Endangerment in Africa
SERIES TITLE: Culture and Language Use 17
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Adewumi Anthony Erin, University of Jos

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

The book, Language Documentation and Endangerment in Africa, edited by James
Essegbey, Brent Hendersen and Fiona Mc Laughlin, contains twelve chapters
written by different seasoned scholars with vast experience in linguistic
fieldwork. The volume is divided into two broad sections, with Chapters One to
Eight discussing general issues relating to language endangerment and
documentation. The final four chapters discuss how to document particular
domains or how to use documentary data to address specific issues. In the
words of the editors, “linguists engaged in documentation activities with
African languages offer insights on language endangerment and documentary
linguistics that might not be seen as clearly through an Australo-American
lens” (p. 1). All the papers are incisively written and provide insights into
the specifics of language endangerment and documentary linguistics in Africa.

The editors give a very detailed introduction that previews the contents of
the different papers and highlights the major focus of the book. In their
words, “research on applied language documentation has so far been skewed
towards the (post-colonial) linguistic situations found in Australia and the
Americas,… [and they hope that] by offering these papers all in one volume the
reader will gain some insights into ways in which language endangerment and
documentation efforts in Africa might be quite distinct from other contexts”
(pp. 1-2). They also give a detailed list of sources that are invaluable for
further studies.

Chapter One is written by Felix K. Ameka and titled “Unintended consequences
of methodological and practical responses to language endangerment in Africa”.
Ameka’s paper argues that some of the practices involved in language
documentation, like orthography design, literacy, development of pedagogical
material and standardization, despite their good intentions, unintentionally
tend to undermine the goal of recording, stabilizing and maintaining the very
linguistic diversity that we wish to preserve. It concludes by suggesting that
documenters should not create more losses for science and posterity and  that
they question some of the assumptions and ideologies that shape their methods
and products to minimize the unintended consequences of their activities.

Chapter Two, titled “Different cultures, different attitudes. But how
different is the ‘African situation’ really?” by Gerrit J. Dimmendaal
discusses the author’s experience in the documentation of the Tima language in
South Sudan. In spite of the community’s interest and enthusiasm in
revitalizing their language, with the consequent production of primers, a
dictionary, and picture book at the end of the project, Dimmendaal believes
that revitalization of the language is a lost cause, mostly because of
financial constraints. The paper concludes by discussing how the teaching of
endangered languages in schools through low-tech, uni-sensory initiatives such
as primers or storybooks can never replace the family or other social networks
outside the school as a vehicle of language transmission. It suggests that
“documenting an endangered language as part of the intangible cultural
heritage of mankind should therefore remain the primary aim of documentation
projects, rather than revitalization” (p. 55).

In Chapter Three, Friederike Lüpke, in her paper, “Ideologies and typologies
of language endangerment in Africa”, looks at the bias in assessing the
vitality of African languages based on American and Australian ideals. She
gives a few unfounded assumptions about African languages and their patterns
of interaction. The paper aims at providing some preliminary reasons why a
relatively small number of African languages are being documented and their
relative lack of influence in shaping the endangerment agenda. The paper
concludes by suggesting that a more objective approach would be to use
detailed sociolinguistic and ethnolinguistic research as a prerequisite to
linguistic description and documentation.

Bruce Connell in his paper, “The role of colonial languages in language
endangerment in Africa” (Ch. 4), sheds light on the relative role, or lack
thereof, of colonial languages as instruments of endangerment to indigenous
African languages. The paper uses several surveys of language use in Africa
from Ethiopia, Cameroon, Botswana, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of
Congo, Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire as empirical evidence to support his ideas.
He believes that the loss of domains of use of a language is evidence that the
language is losing ground. Connell states that prestige  is accorded to
colonial languages like English and French as unifying languages for
administrative purposes against the backdrop of globalization and the
consequent lack of prestige that many indigenous African languages suffer;
this level of prestige suggests that European languages cannot be written off
as a threat to African languages, though several African minority languages
are endangered by other larger African languages.

In Chapter Five, titled “Can a language endanger itself: Reshaping the
repertoires in urban Senegal”, Fiona Mc Laughlin presents a case study of how
Wolof has existed side-by-side with French for over three hundred years and
how this interaction has given rise to a new repertoire or urban variety of
Wolof. This variety is marked by numerous loanwords from French and she
suggests that the extent of the borrowing might actually be endangering the
Wolof language.

In Chapter Six, James Essegbey (“Is this my language? Developing a writing
system for an endangered language community”) looks at how the attempt to
standardize the languages of most endangered linguistic communities tends to
destroy variation, since they do not have a literary history. He lists some of
the problems faced by documenters such as ensuring that orthography is not
forced on a linguistic community that has no aspirations for classroom-type
literacy, the danger of eliminating variation in an attempt at standardization
and the occasional need to provide alternatives to orthography design, like
audio-visual material. The paper suggests that documenters should focus more
on orthographic transcription which ensures a good sound-letter correspondence
but allows speakers to write as they speak. Essegbey proposes ways in which to
develop an orthographic transcription for vernacular languages that ensures
that norms which are not recognizable and acceptable to speakers are not
forced on them.

Peter Rohloff and Brent Henderson, in their paper “Development, language
revitalization, and culture: The case of the Mayan languages of Guatemala, and
their relevance for minority African languages” (Ch. 7) use their experience
working with a Mayan non-governmental organization (NGO), Wuqu’ Kawoq: Maya
Health Alliance, in the kaqchikel-speaking areas of Guatemala. Against the
backdrop of the UNESCO prediction that 50% of the world’s languages might soon
disappear, they propose a collaborative effort where the specific lines of
inquiry based on experiences in the Guatemalan language context might serve to
open new horizons for policy within the African language context. They suggest
the provision of development services, especially in healthcare, in
linguistically and culturally responsible ways as a more effective language
maintenance strategy. They advocate for social development through language,
which involves building social institutions that use some of these minority
languages to address the social disadvantages that speaking these languages
might cause. For example, they propose the setting up of health centers that
would use these minority languages to ensure that their speakers access
quality health-care.

Chapter Eight, which is titled “Some challenges of language documentation in
African multilingual settings” by Emmanuel Ngué Um looks at some of the
challenges involved in language documentation by contrasting the differing
linguistic situations of the Leti and the Bakola linguistic groups in
Cameroon. He suggests that without proper prior sociolinguistic information,
language documentation efforts may fail to address the true situation in
multilingual settings. He suggests that a proper understanding of the power
dynamics of language repertoires within a society is necessary in the African
setting.

In Chapter Nine, Mark Dingemanse, in his paper “Folk definitions in linguistic
fieldwork” discusses the importance of folk definitions as a valuable form of
language documentation, using a study of ideophones in the Siwu language
spoken in Akpafu and Lolabi in eastern Ghana. He shows how folk definitions
can capture and bring to light cultural background knowledge that may remain
obscure using other more conventional methods, and how this information may be
used. He discusses three strategies used by native speakers for explaining
ideophones. These include a description of everyday situations in which they
could be used, the production of complex moves of speech together with
illustrative gestures to clarify meaning, and the use of related and
contrasting expressions as semantic anchoring points to delimit the meaning of
the defined item. In essence, Dingemanse sees the use of folk definitions as
an important record in documentation that preserves a crucial part of native
speaker knowledge, and he advocates for more involvement of native-speaker
consultants in linguistic fieldwork.

Brent Henderson, in his paper “Out of context: Documenting languages in
immigrant and refugee communities” (Ch. 10), draws attention to how human
migration and displacement due to war or disaster is neglected in the
literature as causes of language endangerment, particularly in Africa.
Considering the huge number of displaced persons in the world and against the
backdrop of the theoretical bias in standard approaches to field methods and
documentation of working with immigrant or ex-situ communities in language
documentation projects, he argues in favor of carrying out documentation
projects with displaced communities under certain circumstances, using the
case of the Chimiini Somali immigrants in London, Atlanta and Mombasa as a
reference point. Chimiini is a Bantu language spoken in a single town on the
southern Somali coast whose ancestral home of Brava was decimated  during the
Somali civil war in the late 1980s; at that time more than half of its people
were given United Nations (UN) refugee status and relocated to the United
States, United Kingdom and Kenya. Henderson offers some methodological
insights and challenges in doing documentation work with immigrant communities
and asserts that the goals or concerns of ex-situ documentation do not differ
fundamentally from those of conventional documentation.

Ronald Schaefer and Francis Egbokhare in their paper “Archaelogical
inspiration and historical inference: Directions for Edoid linguistic studies”
(Ch. 11) discuss how the use of synchronic data can highlight potential
historic inferences. They look at how asymmetric assignment of inflectional
morphology to lexemes in Emai helps explain the origins of the speakers and
their earlier inclusion in the Edoid group. They argue for a widespread
lexical investigation to perhaps establish a more northerly homeland for the
Edoid group. They also show different ways to account for the asymmetric
assignment of inflectional morphology to lexemes involving farming and herding
lifestyles.

Frank Seidel, in his paper “Describing endangered languages: Experiences from
a PhD grammar project in Africa” sheds light on the fact that most PhD
programs are too short for students to produce comprehensive and in-depth
grammars; he draws from his experience of doing fieldwork and writing a
descriptive grammar of Yeyi, a Bantu language spoken in Botswana and Namibia,
for his PhD thesis in Cologne. His discussion covers the organizational
framework and design of the PhD project, the fieldwork and the considerations
that led to the production of a grammatical description as a PhD thesis. He
situates his work in the context of the newly emerging discipline of
documentary linguistics and provides some suggestions about the way PhD
documentary projects should be carried out.

EVALUATION

This volume provides interesting new insights into the issue of language
endangerment in Africa. It is a must-read for researchers working on
endangered languages and documentation projects, especially within Africa, and
would provide interesting insights for other researchers. The papers within
this book would serve as an effective reference material for both
undergraduate and post-graduate students who intend to work on documentation
projects. The book  also provides new ways of thinking and gives advice on
numerous pitfalls to avoid.  It seeks to provide a fresh perspective on the
discourse on language endangerment and documentation, treating it from an
Africanist perspective; it is assumed that, despite the fact that Africa is
said to possess a third of the world’s languages, numerous of which are
endangered, the literature does not properly reflect the African situation. 

The book is very readable and written in a conversational style,  although
good understanding of basic linguistic terminology is essential for proper
understanding of its contents.  Its emphasis on data-driven research is very
commendable; and there is a strong connecting thread between all the papers in
the book. They are all well-researched and based on practical fieldwork; and
they reflect the theme of the book in discussing a wide range of issues
pertinent to the study of African languages, like methodology, culture,
ideology and typology of endangerment, the role of colonial languages in
endangerment, the sociolinguistic situation of selected African languages,
orthography design, language development and revitalization, challenges of
documentation and so on.

Section 1 of the book effectively discusses documentary linguistics from a
purely African perspective. Lüpke, in chapter three, for example, disputes Mc
Laughlin’s (2008) position that endangerment in Africa involves a wholesale
shift of indigenous populations to the colonial languages. She argues for a
better consideration of the African sociolinguistic situation before
undertaking any studies on language endangerment within Africa. She also gives
reasons why Fishman’s (1991) position on language endangerment and the
criteria established by UNESCO for determining endangerment should not
strictly be applied to the African situation, citing a monolingual bias in
them as against the multilingual reality faced in Africa. 

Similarly, Ngué Um in Chapter Eight provides a clear illumination on the
complexity of the African linguistic setting by questioning the mainstream
methodological and theoretical frameworks on language documentation. His work
on the differing sociolinguistic situations of the Leti and Bakola in Cameroon
clearly disputes the prevalent and simplistic view which matches languages in
a one to one correspondence with human groups. His arguments against some of
the criteria developed by Brenzinger et al (2003) for determining the vitality
of languages, like the narrowing of domains of use, non-transmission to the
next generation, the lack of descriptive material and so on, seems to be valid
based on his extensive research on these two linguistic groups. The Bakola are
tagged as critically endangered, while the Leti are said to be extinct
(Ethnologue, 2016) using the criteria developed by Brenzinger et al. His
research clearly shows that a proper understanding of the sociolinguistic
reality of the speakers of minority languages in multilingual areas and the
possible strategies employed by them is a prerequisite to research on
endangered languages in Africa. Though the Leti have seemingly lost their
language and adopted the language of their neighbors, they still strongly
guard their identity and proudly emulate those who struggle to speak the
language. On the other hand, the Bakola language is spoken by scattered pygmy
communities that are usually not more than fifty in number. They always adopt
the language and culture of their dominant neighbors and seem to have lost
their language, but research has shown that this is merely a façade because
all of them are highly proficient in their language and language transmission
rates are very high. Looking at the two cases, his caution on the need for
funding bodies to see documentation as a multifaceted area that encompasses
both Linguistics and cultural studies is sound advice.

Section 2, which discusses how to document particular domains or how to use
data from some domains to address specific issues, is very practical in its
approach. For example, Dingemanse, in Chapter Nine, demonstrates the
importance of folk definitions as a tool for language description and
documentation. This research clearly shows that in contrast to Moshi (1993),
ideophones have clear semantic content if native consultants are actively
utilized during the documentation process. Though prior studies in cognitive
anthropology have used native consultants to reveal native knowledge,these
methods seem to have lost prominence (Weinreich 1962; Casagrande & Hale 1967;
Perchonock & Werner 1969; Franklin 1971).

Similarly, Henderson’s position, in Chapter Ten, which argues for the
relevance of ex-situ documentation of migrant communities, is a fresh
perspective in documentary linguistics. This perspective is supported by
Bowern (2010) and Ström (2009). The common view in the literature that
immigrant communities might not present perfect models of the language is
negated by the fact that most language communities in Africa are already in a
contact situation due to the high level of multilingualism. This contact
already promotes adding loanwords and new structures to the languages.
However, where possible, in-situ documentation should remain the preferred
choice.

Seidel’s work on the Yeyi language in Chapter Twelve is highly recommended for
those who intend to work on the grammatical description of an African
language, especially as part of a PhD program. The experience shared in his
paper about the steps to take before the grammatical description of a language
can be considered is invaluable. His focus on data-driven collaborative PhD
projects is highly commendable, considering the lack of reliable data on
African languages.

Overall, the book is concisely written and looks at the issue of language
endangerment and documentation from a purely African perspective. The
methodological and theoretical concerns in the book are a perfect complement
to Brenzinger (1998), though the focus of Brenzinger is more on language
endangerment than documentation.

REFERENCES

Bowern, Claire. 2010. Fieldwork in language contact situations. In Hickey, R.
(ed.), The Handbook of Language Contact, 340- 358. Oxford: Blackwell.

Brenzinger, M., Yamamoto, A., Miyaoka, O., Sakiyama, O., Smeets, R. & Zepeda,
O. 2003. Language Endangerment and Vitality. Paris: UNESCO Expert Meeting on
Safeguarding Endangered Languages.

Brenzinger, Matthias. (ed.). 1998. Endangered Languages in Africa. Köln:
Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

Casagrande, Joseph B. & Hale, Kenneth. 1967. Semantic relationships in Papago
folk definitions. In 
Hymes, D. & Bittle, W. E. (eds.), Studies in Southwestern Ethnolinguistics:
Meaning and History in the Languages of the American Southwest, 165- 193. The
Hague: Mouton.

Fishman, Joshua A. 1991. Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical
Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages. Bristol: Multilingual
Matters.

Franklin, Karl J. 1971. Some comments on eliciting cultural data.
Anthropological Linguistics 13(7): 339- 348.

Lewis, M. Paul, Gary F. Simons, & Charles D. Fenig (eds.). 2016. Ethnologue:
Languages of the World (19th edition). Dallas, Texas: SIL International.

Mc Laughlin, Fiona. 2008. The ascent of Wolof as an urban vernacular and
national lingua franca in Senegal. In Globalization and Language Vitality:
Perspectives from Africa, Vigouroux, C. & Mufwene, S. S. (eds.), 142- 170.
London: Continuum.

Moshi, Lioba. 1993. Ideophones in KIVunjo-Chaga. Journal of Linguistic
Anthropology 3(2): 185- 216.

Perchonock, Norma & Werner, Oswald. 1969. Navaho systems of classification:
Some implications for ethnoscience. Ethnology 8(3): 229- 242.

Strom, E. M. 2009. The situation of Ndengeleko, a coastal Tanzanian language
(P10). In Matando, M., Mc Laughlin, F. & Potsdam, E. (eds.), Selected
proceedings of the 38th annual conference on African linguistics, 229- 241.
Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.

Weinrich, Uriel. 1962. Lexicographic definitions in descriptive semantics. In
Householder, F. W. & Saporta, S. (eds.), Problems in


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Adewumi Erin is a lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and Nigerian
Languages, University of Jos, Nigeria. He has special interest in working with
endangered minority languages, especially in the middle belt region, in
Nigeria. He is currently engaged in a documentation project of several of such
languages.





------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
                       Fund Drive 2016
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
            http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

        Thank you very much for your support of LINGUIST!
 


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-27-4145	
----------------------------------------------------------
Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated
from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships:
          http://multitree.org/