Fieldwork vocab tool for mac

This Mac visual dictionary looks like quite a useful thing for collecting vocabulary on fieldwork. (I haven’t downloaded it or tried it but will do so if it’s still around when I next teach field methods.)

PDF database

I have no idea if this is legal, but pdf downloads.com seems to have a rather extensive collection on fieldwork materials.

Fieldwork and the movies (2): Stargate

Some time ago I published a somewhat postmodern analysis of Indiana Jones as fieldworker. Continuing in that vein, or next model for linguistic fieldwork comes from Stargate. Daniel Jackson is a fieldworker after my own heart. Not only is a detailed knowledge of historical linguistics vital to the success of his field research (“oh, it’s just a dialect related to Middle Egyptian”); he also illustrates the difficulties of monolingual field research and the possibilities of personal entanglements of a dubious ethical nature. He speaks a lot of languages, most of which are ultimately useless for the task which puts him in the most danger. He comes up with magical analyses from highly corrupted data, and he somehow doesn’t seem to notice that he’s working with a bunch of nutters. Finally, he is also keenly aware of local capacity building.

Telstra Art Awards

There’s a virtual exhibition! Enjoy.

Tetun resources: Dili Institute of Technology

The Dili Institute of Technology has put up a set of language learning materials for Tetun (one of the two national languages of Timor Leste). Here’s the page. Looks great!

Abandoned…

Sorry I’ve temporarily abandoned you, dear reader. In the meantime, you can read about ethics codification while I work on the infrastructure for a whizz-bang project.

Linguistic Annotation Wiki

I’d somehow missed this before, so maybe others have too: the Linguistic Annotation Wiki. Enjoy!