[Lingtyp] Question about helpful design of a comparative, multilectal grammar

[Jorge Rosés Labrada]

Dear Rasmus,

In case you haven't come across the work of Naomi Nagy, she is someone
who's been thinking about the issue of a "sociogrammar" for a long time.
Here's a reference to one of her articles on this topic:

   - Nagy, N. 2009. The challenges of less commonly studied languages:
   Writing a Sociogrammar of Faetar. In J. Stanford & D. Preston, eds.
*Variation
   in Indigenous Minority Languages*. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
*Impact* series,
   vol. 25. 397-417.

I am very much interested in this topic as I am documenting a language with
a lot of dialectal and intergenerational variation (namely, Piaroa, an
Amazonian language of Colombia and Venezuela) so if people reply off-list,
would you be so kind as to send a summary of the responses to the list?

Best,
Jorge

-------------
Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada
Assistant Professor, Indigenous Language Sustainability
Department of Linguistics
University of Alberta
Tel: (+1) 780-492-5698
jrosesla at ualberta.ca

*The University of Alberta acknowledges that we are located on Treaty 6
territory, **and respects the history, languages, and cultures of the First
Nations, Métis, Inuit, **and all First Peoples of Canada, whose presence
continues to enrich our institution.*

On Fri, Jun 15, 2018 at 9:02 AM, Rasmus Bernander <rasmusbernander at gmail.com
> wrote:

> Dear members of the Lingtyp list,
>
> I’m currently involved in a project called “Linguistic Variation as an
> Indicator of Historical Relations and Language Contact: A Comparative
> grammar of four Mara Bantu languages (Tanzania)”. The project is funded by
> Koneen Säätiö and led by Dr. Lotta Aunio, Department of Languages,
> University of Helsinki. As implied in the title, the project aims at
> offering a linguistic description of four closely related (yet structurally
> versatile) Bantu varieties, Ikoma, Nata, Isenye and Ngoreme (known
> collectively as the Western Serengeti languages).  More information about
> the project can be found at this homepage: https://blogs.helsinki.fi/
> mara-project/
>
> We are struggling a bit with the question about the ideal way of designing
> the linguistic description. We would like to ask you ”Humans who read
> grammars”, i.e. you researchers who make typological (and/or comparative
> and/or specific theoretical) work and thus have great experience in reading
> grammars as well as extracting information from grammars: What would you
> consider being the most helpful and straightforward way to organize the
> structure of a multilectal grammar of this kind? We would prefer to find
> a way to systemize the data in a manner where we don’t have to prioritize
> one variety over the others and where we can also present the subsystems of
> the non-main varieties in a coherent way. It seems that some grammars use
> color/symbol coding for different varieties. Do you consider that helpful?
> Or do you have other, similar ideas on how one would succeed in creating a
> really clear and comprehensible comparative grammar?
>
> Many thanks in advance!
>
> /Rasmus Bernander
>
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>
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