Being an Ethical Researcher

Mitchell Rolls’ ‘polemical paper’ on Why I don’t want to be an Ethical Researcher. (Australian Humanities Review, Jan03).

via AAASNet

Cutting and Breaking

The semantic categories of cutting and breaking events: a cross-linguistic study
Asifa Majid, Melissa Bowerman, Miriam van Staden, James S. Boster

Cognitive Linguistics 18/2: 133-152

This special issue of Cognitive Linguistics explores the linguistic encoding of events of cutting and breaking. In this article we first introduce the project on which it is based by motivating the selection of this conceptual domain, presenting the methods of data collection used by all the investigators, and characterizing the language sample. We then present a new approach to examining crosslinguistic similarities and differences in semantic categorization. Applying statistical modeling to the descriptions of cutting and breaking events elicited from speakers of all the languages, we show that although there is crosslinguistic variation in the number of distinctions made and in the placement of category boundaries, these differences take place within a strongly constrained semantic space: across languages, there is a surprising degree of consensus on the partitioning of events in this domain. In closing, we compare our statistical approach with more conventional semantic analyses, and show how an extensional semantic typological approach like the one illustrated here can help illuminate the intensional distinctions made by languages.

Language Contact and Deliberate Change

Sarah Thomason, University of Michigan. Journal of Language Contact 1. Discusses cases where speakers have deliberately engineered correspondences and evaluates the potential harm for reconstruction.

Linguistic Indulgence

Many papers in Language Description, History and Development : Linguistic indulgence in memory of Terry Crowley Edited by Jeff Siegel, John Lynch and Diana Eades are on Australian languages.

2. A desiderative complement construction in Warrwa.
William B. McGregor
27-40
3. Noun incorporation in Rembarrnga discourse.
Graham R. McKay
41-52
4. A revised view of the verbal suffixes of Yugambeh-Bundjalung
M.C. Sharpe
53-68
16. Complex predication and the coverb construction
Mengistu Amberber, Brett Baker and Mark Harvey
209-219
19. Nganyaywana revisited: Lessons from Terry Crowley’s work on New England languages
Paul Black
255-265
20. Divergent regularity in word-initial truncation in the Arandic languages
Harold Koch
267-280
32. The Crowley corrective: An alternative voice for language endangerment
Michael Walsh
431-437
34. Funeral liturgy as a strategy for language revival
Rob Amery and Dennis O’Brien
457-467

(Hat-tip: David Nash)

Grant opportunity

Aboriginal community organisations can apply for one-off grants worth up to
$25,000 to protect and teach Aboriginal languages.

Minister for Aboriginal Affairs Paul Lynch said for Aboriginal people,
language is a direct link to their identity, land and country, reflecting
their unique way of looking at the world.

Applications for close on Friday, May 25. For more information or to get an
application form visit www.alrrc.nsw.gov.au or call 9219 0700.

http://www.alrrc.nsw.gov.au/

2003 Paradisec Conference

From Transient Languages and Cultures, the proceedings of the 2003 PARADISEC workshop on Researchers, communities, institutions and sound recordings. There are many papers directly and indirectly relevant to fieldwork with Indigenous Australian languages.

Archiv- und Publikationsserver der Universität Erfurt

List of archived papers at http://www.bibliothek.uni-erfurt.de/target/assiduelink.html, including

Christian Lehmann: Documentation of endangered languages  (PDF-Dokument)

Juliane Lindenlaub: Text typology : A compilation of parameters  (PDF-Dokument)

Johannes Helmbrecht und Christian Lehmann: Hocąk - English / English - Hocąk. Learner’s dictionary  (PDF-Dokument)

ELF Request for Proposals

For more information see the announcement at http://www.endangeredlanguagefund.org/request.html

Language Documentation and Conservation: New Journal

Email from Nick Thieberger:

I am writing to announce a new journal called Language Documentation and Conservation (http://www.nflrc.hawaii.edu/ldc) from the University of Hawai’i. This is an online peer-reviewed journal and the first issue will appear in mid-2007. You are encouraged to subscribe to the journal (which costs nothing) here: http://www.nflrc.hawaii.edu/ldc/subscribe.html.

I am the technology editor and am hoping you will want to contribute articles on methods for language documentation which may include (but not be limited to) software and hardware tools, techniques and workflows. These articles can be in the form of reviews of particular tools, announcements about new tools or methods for linguistic analysis associated with language documentation. We want to explore the possibilities offered by an online journal, for example in allowing larger datasets to be made available for corroboration of claims made in paper journals.

The deadline for the first issue is late March so please consider submitting that article that has been sitting around waiting for the right forum.

Sustainable Data from Digital Fieldwork

Conference held at the University of Sydney.

• Conference page is here.
• Conference review at ELAC.
• DSpace collection of papers resulting from the workshop.