RNLD Twitter - Siraya grammar and lexicon

[Matthew Dryer]

A number of years ago, when Richard Rhodes published his dictionary of 
Eastern Ojibwa with Mouton de Gruyter, he made an arrangement, as I 
understand it, with Mouton to make copies available to members of the 
community at a much reduced price.  Perhaps this is something that 
should be done more regularly.

Matthew Dryer

On 12/18/11 10:36 PM, Greg Dickson wrote:
> A good point to raise Peter.
>
> In my experience of working in Northern Australia with Aboriginal 
> languages and language workers, grammars are generally pretty 
> indecipherable anyway, without a decent amount of training and support 
> to help language workers unpack what's in them.
>
> As for dictionaries, the one that I thought community language workers 
> responded best to was the Rembarrnga Dictionary compiled by Adam 
> Saulwick. It has illustrations and a nice layout and with minimal 
> morpho-phonemic processes, the Rembarrnga language suits the 
> dictionary format better than some other languages I've worked with. 
> It was $50 a pop so not crazy-expensive, but still - most Rembarrnga 
> speakers wouldn't have known about where/how to get a copy, let alone 
> be able to afford one and what's worse is that the Art Centre that 
> produced has sold them all and doesn't seem interested in printing any 
> more!  So while this was a resource community members found useful, 
> accessibility was still a problem.
>
> The issue remains a difficult one... I feel that if you have a few 
> people working on the ground in language communities who can share the 
> information that is contained in grammars and dictionaries in a 
> meaningful way, then you're doing more than a book on a shelf can do. 
> Furthermore, if producers of such materials have involved community 
> members in their production, then you've already make good headway 
> even before publication. A good training program, support for 
> community language work and/or involvement in resource production will 
> counter the expense or inaccessibility of published resources, in my 
> opinion.
>
> You can't really tell from the outside anyway - some linguists may 
> have an expensive publication but disseminate dozens of PDFs or 
> printouts to community for free. Others may have a great publication 
> but move on to another language or job and become inaccessible to 
> community members.
>
> My two cents on an important issue...
>
> Cheers,
> Greg.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> On 19/12/2011 9:41 AM Peter Keegan wrote:
>
> From  RNLD Twitter
>
> >A new grammar and lexicon of #*Siraya* 
> <https://twitter.com/#%21/search?q=%23Siraya> language of Taiwan has 
> been published. Great news for those revitalising
> >Siraya 
> http://www.degruyter.de/cont/imp/mouton/detailEn.cfm?id=IS-9783110252958-1 
> <http://t.co/f7SzxO8i>
>
> This is excellent news for those of us that are Austronesians and/or 
> Austronesianists.
>
> But I can't help but wondering that, at USD $195 (eBook same price) 
> and written in English, whether or not
> that this is really going to be of much use to Siraya speakers and 
> those interesting in revitalizing Siraya.
>
> Can anyone provide me with an example of a recent grammar/lexicon 
> produced by a Linguist
> that is accessible and that indigenous people actually find useful ?
>
> regards,
>
> Peter J Keegan (Auckland, New Zealand)
>
>

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