DOBES Summer School - Lectures: Abstracts

International Summer School on

Language Documentation: Methods and Technology

within the programme

Documentation of Endangered Languages (DoBeS)

of the Volkswagen Foundation

University of Frankfurt / Main

1st - 11th of September, 2004

Seminar abstracts

In this seminar, an overview over the central aspects of general phonetics will be given. After a brief introduction of what phonetics is all about, and in what respect it differs form linguistics and particulary phonology, the three central areas of phonetics will be presented. We will look at the question of how speech is produced (articulatory phonetics), how it is transmitted (acoustic phonetics), and how it is perceived (auditory phonetics). The part on articulatory phonetics comprises a brief look at the inventory of the IPA alphabet, complemented by selected speech samples from various languages. The anatomy and physiology of the respiratory, phonatory and articulatory system will be described and the physics of sound generation in the vocal tract is adressed. In the acoustic phonetics section, we will learn how speech signals can be displayed (oscillogram, spectrogram) and which acoustic parameters can be extracted to characterize specific speech sounds. Here we will also have a short look at the freely availible programms for acoustic analysis (Praat, Wavesurver, Emu). At last some psychophonetic phenomena concerning the perception of sound will be presented in the auditory phonetics section.

Reinhold Greisbach is currently acting chair at the Institute of Phonetics, JWG-University Frankfurt/Main, Germany. His major research interests focus on experimental methodology in phonetics, the phonetics of German, forensic phonetics, the orthographic-phonetics relation and most recently on the phonetics of non-European languages.

Praat is a freely available program for speech analysis developed at the University of Amsterdam by Paul Boersma and David Weenink. It is available for most operating systems (Windows, Macintosh, several flavors of Unix) and is still very actively maintained and improved. Some of the things you can do with Praat:

In this seminar some of the basic types of analyses and manipulations that Praat offers will be discussed. Participants will also have the opportunity to practically work with the program.

Paul Trilsbeek studied Sonology at the conservatory in The Hague, the Netherlands. After his study he worked as a music technologist at the Music Mind Machine project, at the University of Nijmegen, where he was responsible for the technical support of the project. There he also created some web based demo’s and interfaces for applications developed within the group. Currently he is employed at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen. His activities there include Macintosh computer support, web development and handling technical issues regarding material for the DOBES archive.

The current state and the future of language archives will be presented in the seminar.

The documentation of languages has several dimensions all of which are of great importance:

For each of these activities we can identify technical methods, standards, tools and frameworks that are relevant, the sum of which we may call technologies. Due to technological developments we now almost exclusively work in the digital domain, i.e. all information is stored in the form of digital patterns.

For digital technologies there are many advantages such as excellent reproducibility, however, there are also big limitations such as the limited lifetime of our storage media. In this respect the documentation work needs to address the problem of how to ensure that the material can be read in a few hundred years.

The seminar will give an overview of all the technologies that are necessary to support the various activities when documenting languages. It will present the newest recording techniques and software tools for langauge archiving and analysis. It will also draw attention to other Summer school lectures, seminars and tutorials where this technical knowledge can be extended.

In this seminar, I shall first distinguish utterance-level prosody, or intonation, from lexical prosody, or stress and tone. It is important to bear in mind that these often interact. This means that a researcher working on the prosody of a language must be aware of both aspects. I shall then discuss which linguistic functions intonation can fulfil, and the means which languages might use to express these functions (accentuation, phrasing etc.). Although the focus is mainly on linguistic aspects of intonation, I shall show that it is not possible to ignore emotional and attitudinal aspects, since they may be expressed using the same means (e.g. accent type).

With respect to field work, I shall discuss ways in which a certain degree of control can be exercised over the intonation without foregoing too much naturalness, and give examples of work on the prosody of languages from typologically different backgrounds.

There will be an opportunity to analyse small data sets during the course and as homework between the two sessions.

Martine Grice holds the chair in Phonetics at the University of Cologne. She was awarded an MA from Reading University and a PhD from University College London, both in Linguistics. Her main research interest is intonational phonology, focussing on the structure of tonal representations and their phonetic correlates. As part of an effort to establish the descriptive primitives of intonation theory she has carried out a number of instrumental and experimental studies on varieties of Italian, German and English. More recently she has been looking to complement this work by examining dialectal and typological evidence from other languages.

Gestures are pervasive in communication across cultures as integral parts of linguistic practices of speech communities. They play a central role in everyday interaction as well as in more tightly scripted communicative events like story tellings, religious rituals, and legal practices. Gestures come into play where cultural taboos prohibit speech. Speech communities have culture-specific gestural repertoires at their disposal, which serve as an expressive resource in tandem with language. Specific linguistic domains like demonstrative systems can often not be adequately understood without taking into account the accompanying gesture systems. Moreover, the analysis of gestures can reveal aspects of cognition.

The documentation of gestural repertoires and their interrelation with communicative practices should therefore be an important component of a comprehensive documentation of language and culture that aims at preserving intellectual values. In addition to informing the rapidly growing field of gesture studies, adequate primary data on gestures can be utilized for analyses in the fields of ethnography of communicative events, the organization of interaction (conversation analysis) and the interplay of language and cognition.

This seminar aims to provide the field-worker with the theoretical background as well as with the necessary knowledge about practical issues of data collection and analysis. Hence, the seminar will be divided into two parts.

The first part of the seminar provides an introduction to the central topics in gesture research relevant for issues in language documentation. The main topics addressed are: culture-specific gestural repertoires, the interplay of gestures and linguistic practices (e.g. lexicalization patterns, demonstrative systems and pointing gestures), the role of gestures in interaction, and gestures and spatial cognition.

The second part of the seminar focuses on practical issues of data collection, video recordings, elicitation techniques, annotation and analysis of gesture. It will be exemplified how to describe and annotate gestures and how to perform formal and functional analysis of gestures.

Mandana Seyfeddinipur is a PhD candidate in the Language and Cognition Group of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen (The Netherlands). Her major research interests are pragmatics, conversation analysis, gestures in interaction, cognitive linkage of gesture and speech, language production and self-monitoring, gesture and speech disfluencies. She has conducted fieldwork in Germany and Iran investigating the use of conventionalized speech accompanying gestures in interaction. Currently she is working on gestures and disfluencies in self-monitoring.

The study of oral traditions has been an important part of cultural anthropology since the early days of the discipline (e.g. in the work of Boas, Malinowski). But the documentation and analysis of oral performances in traditional situations has gained new dimensions with the introduction of various modern recording techniques. Since the beginnings of the "ethnography of speaking" in the sixties numerous in-depth studies of speech genres and their cultural contexts have been carried out around the world, not only collecting corpora of oral texts (like narratives, songs, ritual chants, shamanic incantations, etc.) but also documenting the performative context, i.e. the accompanying acts, gestures, audience reactions etc., which are crucial to understand the "meaning" of the words uttered.

The class will first give a short introduction to the background of oral tradition studies and then focus on the major theoretical issues which have emerged in the last decades. Among these are: the distinction between ordinary and ritual languages, the classification of speech genres, the concepts of performance, formality, contextualization/ entextualization, ethnopoetics, ethnorhetorics, or (post)modern orality. Further we will look at methodological problems, i.e. the question how to capture the richness of oral performances, and how to present it adequately. Especially on the second day we will draw on the experiences of DOBES researchers working under different cultural and political conditions.

Finnegan, R. 1992. Oral Traditions and the Verbal Arts. A Guide to Research Practices. London: Routledge

Gaenszle, Martin. 2002. Ancestral Voices: Oral Ritual Texts and their Social Contexts among the Mewahang Rai in East Nepal. Münster, Hamburg, London: LIT Verlag

Kuipers, Joel. 1990. Power in Performance. The Creation of Textual Authority in Weyewa Ritual Speech. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press

Raheja, Gloria G. & Ann Grodzins Gold. 1994. Listen to the Heron's Words: Reimagining Gender and Kinship in North India. Berkeley etc.: University of California Press

Martin Gaenszle is "Privatdozent" of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and is presently employed at the Institute of Linguistics at the University of Leipzig as a member of the DOBES team working on Chintang and Puma in eastern Nepal. He has previously done field work in Nepal and Northern India, and has published books and articles dealing with issues of ethnicity, local representations of history, oral traditions, and ritual practice.

The seminar will focus on the preparation of teaching material for languages in the process of literalization with examples from Bolivia.

Bolivia is one of the most ethnically and linguistic diverse countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Since colonial times, Spanish has been the dominant official language, but since 1999 the government has also acknowledged Quechua, Aymara, Guarani and over 33 other Bolivian indigenous languages as co-official, especially in the sector of education.

The Education Reform Law of 1994, which is a comprehensive reform package, includes bilingual education as a national policy, building on previous pilot projects to teach non Spanish-speaking children first to read and write in their mother tongue (Aymara, Quechua or Guarani) before transitioning them to Spanish.

In the seminar we will analyse the strategies applied in this process, with a special focus on language engineering in Quechua teaching materials for primary schools and teacher training seminars improving reading and writing capacities. Examples of recent textbook production, grammars and dictionaries in Bolivian Quechua will be provided.

Dr. Phil in General Linguistics and Pedagogy, University of Hamburg, PH.D thesis: Longitudinal study about language use (Quechua and Spanish) and attitudes in Ayacucho, Peru, 1982

Lecturer at Hamburg University since 1982 as well as in several Latin American Universities.

Recent research project: “Multilingual Literacy Practices in Bolivia and Uganda”, at the SFB Multilingualism and Language Contact, University of Hamburg on” from 1999-2002, sponsored by the DFG.

Large experience in language policy and language planning in Bolivia Peru, Ecuador, as well as in educational planning and evaluation (projects and programs) as independent consultant in educational reform projects.

Special interest: languages in education , bilingual intercultural primary education in Latin America, language contact, standardization processes and language policies.

After a short introduction that outlines a typology of grammars in terms of content, size, users, structure and linguistic approach, the seminar discusses the practical aspects of writing a grammar including

The seminar does not propose a particular model of grammar writing, but presents problem solving strategies irrespective of theoretical background or languages of interest.

Ulrike Mosel holds the chair of General and Comparative Linguistics at the University of Kiel, Germany. After she had concluded her studies of Semitic languages at the University of Munich with a PhD thesis on Classical Arabic grammaticography, she specialised on the languages of the South Pacific with a focus on linguistic typology, grammaticography and lexicography. Her books include a syntax of Tolai, a Samoan reference grammar (together with Even Hovdhaugen), and a sketch grammar of Saliba. She supervised twelve PhD theses on descriptive grammar and typology and wrote with Samoan teachers a Samoan grammar for teachers and a Samoan monolingual school dictionary. Currently she is working on the documentation of the Teop language in Bougainville (Papua New Guinea).

Film is created in the mind. Eventually in the mind of the viewer but before that in the mind of the producer. The course deals with what has to be considered before the camera is switched on. By means of film examples and practical exercises we will address topics such as shot sizes, camera angles, camera movements and picture

composition. Based on that we will demonstrate how to break down a movement or a scene into several settings in order to avoid the mysterious problem of “crossing the line”.

Addressing these topics is not only important for practical reasons but is also supposed to sharpen the participants' awareness of the fact that film is not only a mere record of reality but that it also always generates its own reality in some respects. This puts a lot of responsibility on the producer.

Thomas Völker is author and filmproducer. He started his career with making documentaries and features for television. Currently he mainly produces fictional and non-fictional formats for business communication and professional education. He has been working as freelancer for more than 15 years.

Bernd Terstegge is Dipl. Designer and university teacher for film and animation at the Faculty for Communication Design at the University of Essen/Duisburg. He also works as a video-editor for broadcast, business communication and documentaries.

The seminar conveys all technical information to work with the camera:
First, all relevant details of the video camera and all necessary equipment will be further explained. Second, the most
important functions will be exemplified by a demonstrations camera and video beamer. Conditions for a high-quality
sound recordings are explained and general tips and tricks for the work with audio- and video equipment are given.
The recordings that were made by the participants are analysed together.

After an internship as camera and sound assistant, Jochen Cholin completed his professional training at a TV
production company in Cologne. Subsequently, he worked as freelancer EB-cameraman and as instructor. Afterwards,
he was employed for a few months in the technical staff of the DOBES project at the Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen,
The Netherlands. Thereafter, Jochen Cholin worked in the production and post-production of advertising films for an
advertising film production company in Düsseldorf. He worked for all public and private broadcasting stations across
Europe. Moreover, Jochen Cholin works on his own film production. In 2003, he began the study of social pedagogy
with media pedagogy as his major field of study.

For the vast majority of endangered languages there are no standardized orthographies. The development of a practical orthography can be a good way for field-working linguists to support the speech communities and to “give back” some of his or her knowledge about the language to the speech community. The focus of this seminar will be on practical issues concerning decisions that have to be made in the construction of orthographic systems that are useful for the speakers of unwritten endangered languages. For this purpose, we will discuss some case studies that are reported in the literature and some of my own experiences in the Miraña communities in South Colombia. The factors that play a role in the construction of a practical orthography discussed in this seminar include:

- learnability for speakers literate in the dominant language (using conventions of dominant language writing system)

- identifying function of writing system (making a difference to orthographies of other (dominant) languages)

Frank Seifart is a member of the DoBeS team “Documenting the Languages of the People of the Center (North West Amazon)” and a PhD candidate at the Language and Cognition Group of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen (The Netherlands). His major research interests are in Amazonian languages, morphosyntactic typology in general, the typology of systems of nominal classification in particular, language contact, tones, and language documentation theory and practice. He has done fieldwork in various indigenous communities in the North West Amazon, in particular the Miraña communities in South Colombia.

The seminar will address the following topics from within the field of ethnomusicology:

Audio visual engineering, Technical and descriptive standards, Field research manual, Improving the efficiency of existing sound and audio visual collections, Development of user friendly management methods in sound archives

Musical cultures of East and South East Asia (generally)/ East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Eritrea) and South West Africa (Namibia) / Europe (Madeira Archipelago and Acores, Portugal, Czech Republik, Slovakia, Macedonia, Bulgaria)

Class and Gender aspects, Urbanity and modernity, Selfunderstanding of ethnic and social minorities, Popular music in regional and global systems of values, History of musical authenticism, Music and tourism, Biographies of musicians

Systematic presentation and internal differentiations in changing societies, construction technologies in contexts of traditional ensemble music, social and historic transformations/ migration of musical instruments, current development of the market for musical instruments

Orders of sound relations, Development of sound and movement conceptions, traditional notation systems and modern techniques of memorization, computer processings of sound structures and of metric and rhythmic variants, language and intonation.

Gisa Jähnichen is actually working as a Professor of Musicology at the Universities of Paderborn and Frankfurt / Main. Her teaching experiences comprise lecturerships at the University of Vienna, the University of Applied Science in Emden, the Free University of Berlin, the Dongdok University, Vientiane (Laos), the University of Addis Abeba (Ethiopia), and the Humboldt-University of Berlin. She has experiences as an advisor and expert for research projects in Laos, Vietnam, Portugal, Kenia, Namibia, Ethiopia, covering over 20 years of field work in Asia and Africa.