[lg policy] Another Kind of Language Expert: Speakers

Sat Jun 6 21:21:48 UTC 2009

Good points. It's not just up to one person. But usually, the primary person to pass on the language is the young child's mother, no? I'm Canadian, my mom is Russian, my dad Norwegian. I know far more Russian than Norwegian. Isn't that what you'd expect? 

Stan

On Sat, 6 Jun 2009 08:51:03 +0100
 Anthea Fraser Gupta <A.F.Gupta at leeds.ac.uk> wrote:
>And big brothers and sisters? grandparents? uncles and aunts?
>
>Anthea
>*     *     *     *     *
>Anthea Fraser Gupta (Dr)
>School of English, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT
><www.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/afg<http://www.leeds.ac.uk/english/staff/afg>>
>*     *     *     *     *
>
>________________________________
>From: lgpolicy-list-bounces at groups.sas.upenn.edu [lgpolicy-list-bounces at groups.sas.upenn.edu] On Behalf Of Janet Fuller [jmfuller at siu.edu]
>Sent: 06 June 2009 06:51
>To: Language Policy List
>Subject: Re: [lg policy] Another Kind of Language Expert: Speakers
>
>What about when fathers are passing the language on to their children? ;)
>
>On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 4:16 AM, Stan-sandy Anonby <stan-sandy_anonby at sil.org<mailto:stan-sandy_anonby at sil.org>> wrote:
>When can we consider a language revival program to be successful? I think Fishman would say we can breathe easier when mothers are passing the language onto their children. Intergenerational transmission is the natural way for people to learn a language. Is that happening in Maori? In Wampanoag? Either way, both cases are astonishing.
>
>Stan Anonby
>
>On Mon, 1 Jun 2009 17:08:42 -0400
> Harold Schiffman <hfsclpp at gmail.com<mailto:hfsclpp at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i38/38linguisticsside.htm
>>>>From the issue dated June 5, 2009
>>
>>
>>Another Kind of Language Expert: Speakers
>>By PETER MONAGHAN
>>
>>As linguists search for ways to preserve at least a record of
>>endangered languages, they increasingly are enlisting native speakers
>>to help them in their work. Since 2003, Peter Austin's
>>endangered-languages program at the University of London's School of
>>Oriental and African Studies has run a master's program to train about
>>16 students each year, whose eventual goal is to document an
>>endangered language. Some 20 SOAS students have done that by
>>undertaking doctoral work in the United States or Germany.
>>
>>But Austin's program is also going out to the communities where
>>endangered languages are spoken. Last summer, program linguists held a
>>training course in Ghana to provide East African language activists
>>with equipment and training. Austin told them about successful earlier
>>efforts. He described, for instance, helping to persuade the state
>>government of New South Wales, in his native Australia, to institute
>>grade-school programs that teach Aboriginal children songs and stories
>>in their fading local languages. "Part of the task is simply
>>sensitizing people to the possibilities," he says.
>>
>>Increased collaboration with native speakers reflects a growing
>>recognition that "languages are owned by their native speech
>>communities, as a kind of intellectual property," says K. David
>>Harrison, of Swarthmore College. (His and colleagues' fieldwork was
>>the subject of the documentary film The Linguists, which was
>>enthusiastically received at last year's Sundance Film Festival.)
>>
>>The last speakers of a language are often the most linguistically
>>gifted members of their communities, and thus well suited to academic
>>training, notes Nicholas Evans, a linguist at Australian National
>>University. More's the pity that few universities will enroll them,
>>citing their lack of formal academic credentials, he says. He objects
>>that while candidates may enter Ph.D. programs with little or no
>>knowledge of the languages they will study, the potential of expert
>>speakers of languages rarely opens academic doors.
>>
>>Collaborations with native speakers become more and more crucial given
>>that "you wouldn't want to be sending your students into some of the
>>environments where documentation is needed," many of which are
>>dangerous because of wars or civil strife, says Suzanne Romaine, a
>>professor of English language at the University of Oxford.
>>
>>Sometimes native speakers can be found closer to home. "Here in
>>London, we've got dozens of African and Asian languages that there is
>>virtually no documentation on," says Austin. One of his students, for
>>example, discovered that a housemate, an economics student at the
>>London School of Economics and Political Science, spoke a little-known
>>Tibeto-Burman language. (Austin warns that hardened field linguists
>>will scoff that taking a London bus to your site, rather than jungle
>>trails, "is not real linguistics: It's not hairy-chested enough.")
>>
>>Crucial to any language-revival project, of course, is that speakers
>>want it to happen. Many do. In Hawaii and New Zealand, for example,
>>immersion programs are thriving — "language nests" that allow students
>>from preschool through college to take some of their studies in native
>>languages. Under a master-apprentice program set up in 1993 by the
>>Berkeley linguist Leanne Hinton, young American Indians in California
>>have spent many hours with elders, learning what they can about 50
>>survivors of the more than 100 languages that were spoken in the state
>>at the time of white settlement.
>>
>>Among a few astonishing cases of people's reviving their own languages
>>from seeming extinction is one in eastern Massachusetts. Beginning in
>>the 1990s, language activists and a linguist-in-training from the
>>Wampanoag tribe, working with a famed MIT linguist, the late Kenneth
>>L. Hale, resuscitated their language. It had not been spoken or
>>written for well over 100 years. To revive it, they used historical
>>documents dating back to the 1600s, surviving stories, and comparisons
>>with surviving languages, and taught it to a few children who were
>>still capable of using it creatively, as children naturally do when
>>learning any language.
>>
>>But such efforts are extraordinary: They are so dependent on a small
>>number of extremely gifted and motivated activists that they are
>>unlikely to be widely emulated.
>>
>>http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review
>>
>>
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