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Thanks for Trond's feedback. Some follow-up commentaries on Trond's
comments.<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="midCD5A2B9D-B37C-4201-82A6-5FA272FF1925@hum.uit.no"
type="cite">
<div>
<div>The natural follow-up question here is to what extent the
younger forest enets are interested in participating in revitalisation
work, or, rather, what kind of revitalisation they would be interested
in.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
Frankly speaking, there is no interest at all in the language in the
generation younger than 40. A young Forest Enets girl has been showing
constant interest in the "culture" of her mother but not in the
language and although she sings once a Forest Enets songs on folklore
festivals in Dudinka and Noril'sk this is actually all she knows about
the language. Interest in whatever aspect of Forest Enets culture and
langauge is present only in Dudinka and the Forest Enets intelligentsia
itself is using the old Boasian "salvage anthropology" metaphors of
documenting everything one still remembers. In Potapovo nothing like
this can be encountered...<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="midCD5A2B9D-B37C-4201-82A6-5FA272FF1925@hum.uit.no"
type="cite">
<div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin-left: 18pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: -18pt; line-height: 150%;"><span
style="font-family: Symbol;"><span style=""><span style="" times=""
new="" roman="" ;="" font-style:="" font-variant:="" font-weight:=""
font-size:="" 7pt;="" line-height:="" font-size-adjust:="" none;=""
font-stretch:="" normal;=""><font class="Apple-style-span"
face="Helvetica" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">Language endangerment has
resulted in the emancipation of native speakers who no longer see
themselves as “something” to be studied. Whereas this trend has started
in other parts of the world already in the late 1970s this
understanding has arrived in </span></font><ST1:COUNTRY-REGION
w:st="on"><ST1:PLACE w:st="on"><font class="Apple-style-span"
face="Helvetica" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="font-size: 11px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"
style="line-height: 16px;">Russia</span></span></font></ST1:PLACE></ST1:COUNTRY-REGION><font
class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><span
class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">
by now. <br>
</span></font></span></span></span></p>
</blockquote>
(Side note: The emancipation probably has other causes.) It would be
interesting hering more about to what extent this understanding "has
arrived", i.e., to what extent speakers and descendants of speakers
really are perpared to change their behaviour, and in what way. <br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
Trond, language planning for indigenous languages of Russia was
something centralized during the period of the Soviet union which meant
involvement of Leningrad and Moscow (experimental primers etc). It is
no surprise that literacy for Nganasan and Forest Enets (and for
several other languages too) started only after the collapse of the
USSR as it obviously became easier to publish anything, especially
locally. But for compiling one needs published materials and perhaps a
linguist or two to assist which at least the Nganasans had. Besides,
the overall starting point for Nganasan was much better than for
Enets...<br>
In the Enets case, Labanauskas in Dudinka became active and started
publishing some primary materials before finally Sorokina did the same
but it was the "periphery" which started to the work on its own...<br>
<br>
A short note on my quotation from Heath...<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="midCD5A2B9D-B37C-4201-82A6-5FA272FF1925@hum.uit.no"
type="cite">
<div>Here, there is a misunderstanding. The "long grammatical
studies" referred to in the Australian case are not "modern grammars"
in the sense of "reference grammars", they are treatises of the type
"is there a VP in Dyirbal or not" (or, equally irrelevant, "the history
of Mansi vowels"). If descendants of next generations' forest enets
would like to restore their ancestors' language (like Cornishmen do),
they would need both texts, dictnionary, AND a reference grammar. <br>
</div>
</blockquote>
Of course technical statements, <i>is language X non-configurational,
split-ergative</i> or <i>allows raising to object </i>is something
that native speakers are not interested in (<i>including has Dyirbal VPs</i>)...
<br>
I don't think that I have misunderstood or misused this particular
Australian example. Whereas the involvement of general approaches to
Australian languages has been of course very intensive and Australian
languages have played a decisive role in the formation of linguistic
thought since the late 1960s, it is a fact
that any well documented Australian language has a much more
sophisticated grammar published than most of the Uralic languages (I'm
not so sure about text collections and dictionaries...). What I want to
say is: <b>Grammar writing for Australian languages is quite usual,
apart from producing "long grammatical studies"...<br>
</b><br>
<blockquote cite="midCD5A2B9D-B37C-4201-82A6-5FA272FF1925@hum.uit.no"
type="cite">Now, language revitalisation certainly is more than
computers (languages are preserved by being spoken), and linguistics
certainly is more than computer linguistics. Rather than trying to
give a coherent picture of the "new" role of the linguist, I have
mentioned one tiny part of it, along with the observation that in order
to be able to rewrite the grammar as an automaton, I will need a
comprehensive generative grammar (in the classical meaning of the word,
which is "explicict grammar") of the language in question.
<div><br class="khtml-block-placeholder">
</div>
</blockquote>
Well, in a nutshell Trond has subsumed the discussion of documentary
linguistics from the last 10-15 years and many things proposed here a
actually already standards (of course varying). Just to reformulate a
central factor: for dynamic communities with a will to preserve their
language computers have to be integrated. BUT linguists can't reverse
language attitudes within the community and even the best parser,
speller, corpus can't prevent language death if the community does not
use them or does not know how to use them. Functional literacy of
indigenous languages of the Russian North and Far East translates as a)
having a primer b) having a collection of folklore c) having a small
dictionary d) having a newspaper (which actually few people read) and
PCs are not yet standards (especially not in the tundra) and neither is
internet...<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="midCD5A2B9D-B37C-4201-82A6-5FA272FF1925@hum.uit.no"
type="cite">
<div>With the observation that the classical uralic diciplines of
language history, extensive dictionaries and text editions actually may
be of interest to the speech community (admittedly provided that it is
communicated back to them after the fieldwork), and that grammars may
be relevant, albeit indirectly, as basis for other activities, I
conclude in a slightly more optimistic tone than did Florian. To me it
seems we do have something to report back to the language communities,
and we might as well starting doing just that.</div>
</blockquote>
Again, return your findings is the magic word which is something quite
usual (of course Trond correctly said that his should be done in a
format and language known to the community). During an informal meeting
with the Forest Enets intelligentsia in early March in Dudinka I handed
them over a set of CDs which contained all my sound recordings
(featuring of course their relatives in the village) and a CD with
scanned articles (PDF) on their language and ethnology (I spotted some
drastic gaps in Dudinka concerning literature during my stay in Feb
2006). Whereas this was quite natural to me, it evoked a big sensation
among any of the indigenous people in Dudinka as I was the first one
who did this. For them researchers are people who come unexpectedly,
stay for a short period collecting information and leave (never to be
seen again). The fact that I already left them something was highly
appreciated. I think already the fact that nowadays one speaks about
consultants and no longer about informants makes clear that a linguist
and a community member are a joint-venture! <br>
<br>
I'll finish with a general comment for the whole list that I consider
most urgent for others who think about returning their findings and
depositing their materials locally within the boundaries of the Russian
Federation. DO NOT deposit your findings exclusively at local museums
or cultural institutions as they will archive these materials in the
usual way NOT MAKING IT AVAILABLE TO ANYBODY. Make sure that several
copies are distributed among local community members which actually
need these materials. My personal experience with Russian Archives
shows that archives are still meant to be graves, once you put
something into an archive you won't be able to get anything out...<br>
<br>
Best wishes,<br>
<br>
Florian Siegl<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.ut.ee/~flos">www.ut.ee/~flos</a><br>
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