Descriptive linguistics

‘Microphone in the Mud’ by Laura Robinson

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Lingoblog continues to provide you with suggestions for your summer readings on various linguistic topics. This week we have found a book about fieldwork.

As a linguistic fieldworker you typically travel to a remote place to live with a tribe, you are adopted into the community and you learn a language in order to document and describe it. So you take on many different roles. First and foremost, you’re a linguistic researcher, trying to uncover patterns in an underdescribed or perhaps completely undescribed language. You’re also a data archivist, ethnologist, technician and administrator, just to name a few: fieldwork involves the collection and storage of high-quality data in an ethical manner, typically with ample administrative and bureaucratic hurdles to overcome.… ↪

2019 – International Year of Indigenous Languages

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2019 – International Year of Indigenous Languages

2019 – Internationaal Jaar van de Inheemse Talen

2019 – Internationalt år for indfødte sprog

2019 – Ôma askiy kâ-miyawâtamihk iyiniw-pîkiskwêwina misiwêskamik

2019 – Hur gatung haba ba pinang ajimi gi’e palika kakanap taang unavera

On the 28th of January, the start of the International Year of Indigenous Languages (IYIL) will take place. IYIL is an initiative by the United Nations and is organised by UNESCO. International Years are organised yearly, with the goal of creating awareness for a particular issue of current importance to earth and/or mankind, and to allow and mobilise people to take action for a certain cause. Already in 2016 did the UN decide that 2019 would … ↪

Describing ​NisseEngelsk​: A Brief Memoir

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Nisser the Julekalender behind the scenes

A supplement to the Lingoblog-article The language of The Julekalender by Mickey Blake, the original writer of the background study for the article.

How the time flies! It seems almost impossible that it’s been over twelve years since I visited Carsten Knudsen at his home in Risskov to obtain a copy of the script from “The Julekalender” and ask him about the creation of “N​isseEngelsk​”. Little did I know that day how much work I was setting myself up for!

Peter Bakker had been hoping for years that some brave student with no clue as to what they were getting themselves into would write a description of the fictitious language, and he found his patsy – er, star

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Fieldwork in a maroon community in Brazil – an interview with Ana Paulla Braga Mattos

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[This blog post is part of a three-way interview between Kristoffer Friis Bøegh, Jeroen Willemsen and Ana Paulla Braga Mattos.]

Ana Paulla Braga Mattos is a PhD-researcher at Aarhus University. She conducted fieldwork on Kalunga, an Afro-Brazilian Portuguese variety spoken in the state of Goiás in Brazil. She has one publication about Kalunga coming out soon with the De Gruyter series on Colonial and Postcolonial Linguistics, and another paper comparing Kalunga and other language varieties from the Portuguese-speaking world submitted. She is currently writing about sentential negation in Kalunga Portuguese. We interviewed her in Aarhus about her experiences as a fieldworker.

Could you briefly summarise your descriptive project and the fieldwork you conducted?

I did fieldwork in the state … ↪

Fieldwork in Saint Croix – an interview with Kristoffer Friis Bøegh

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[This blog post is part of a three-way interview between Kristoffer Friis Bøegh, Jeroen Willemsen and Ana Paulla Braga Mattos.]

Kristoffer Friis Bøegh is a PhD-researcher at Aarhus University. He conducted fieldwork on Crucian, an English-based creole language spoken on St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands. He has published on creoles and African languages and is currently analysing his field data. We interviewed him in Aarhus about his experiences as a fieldworker.

Could you briefly summarise your descriptive project and the fieldwork you conducted?

I went to St. Croix, which is one of the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, to study the local English-lexifier creole language, locally known as Crucian. My project is part of an ongoing effort … ↪

Fieldwork in Nusa Tenggara Timur – an interview with Jeroen Willemsen

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[This blog post is part of a three-way interview between Kristoffer Friis Bøegh, Jeroen Willemsen and Ana Paulla Braga Mattos.]

Jeroen Willemsen is a PhD-researcher at Aarhus University. He conducted fieldwork on Reta, a Papuan language spoken in Eastern Indonesia. Besides his work on Reta, he has published on the function and development of applicatives and serial verbs, and is currently writing a descriptive grammar of Reta. We interviewed him in Aarhus about his experiences as a fieldworker.

Can you briefly summarise your descriptive project and the fieldwork you conducted?

I went to the Nusa Tenggara Timur region of Eastern Indonesia to describe a language called Reta. It’s mainly spoken in two small villages in the south of the … ↪

Description, theory and linguistics as a science – an interview with William B. McGregor

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Professor William B. McGregor is an Australian-born linguist who works at Aarhus University in Denmark. He has published various books on linguistic theory and Australian languages, which include Semiotic Grammar (1997), Verb classification in Australian languages (2002), The Languages of the Kimberley, Western Australia (2004), Linguistics: An Introduction (2009, 2015 second edition) and Sign Languages of the World: A Comparative Handbook (2015, coeditor with Julie Bakken Jepsen, Goedele A. M. De Clerck and Sam Lutalo-Kiingi). He has written extensively on a wide range of topics which include optional case marking, zero-markers, Australian historical linguistics and Shua syntax. He is also the author of various grammatical descriptions of Australian languages including Warrwa, Gooniyandi and Nyulnyul.

I interviewed him in Aarhus about … ↪