RNLD Twitter - Siraya grammar and lexicon

[Bill Poser]

Really? In most cases I am familiar with, significant contributions are
made by a few members of the community, lesser contributions by others, and
no contribution at all by many if not most. How many people contribute
information depends in considerable part on how many people retain
knowledge of the language. Where community members do part or even all of
the linguistic work, it is again generally one or a few. I can see projects
with very broad involvement for languages that are still spoken by most
community members, but for endangered languages? I'd be very interested in
hearing about documentation projects for endangered languages in which most
community members participated.

On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 1:49 PM, Xavier Barker <
meibitobure.gaunibwe at gmail.com> wrote:

> Why offer it at a 'reduced' price rather than no price at all?  I can't
> imagine much of a book being put together without the members of the
> community's involvement.  Surely all the contributors are entitled to a
> copy gratis, not just the ones sticking their names on the cover.
>
>
> On 23/12/2011, at 7:57 AM, Matthew Dryer wrote:
>
>  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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