Tasmanian Languages

I have a new paper out today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Biology). It’s based on a project that I’ve been working on for some time now (most of it, though not this paper, is joint work with my student Tyler Lau). I’ve been aware of the Tasmanian wordlist data in Plomley (1976) for many years, of course, but it was only after getting more familiar with computational phylogenetics that ideas for work with the dataset came up.*

The paper has some (now) fairly standard phylogenetic analyses using tools that will be familiar to most people who know this area. NeighborNets are now a common sight in historical linguistics, and Bayesian frameworks for tree building are also increasingly well known (if not always accepted). But admixture models are less well known, so let me explain a bit about them here. One criticism commonly leveled at work that straddles evolutionary biology and linguistics is that the tools are adopted wholesale, without regard for whether they are appropriate for analyzing linguistic data; I would like to avoid that claim here.

Media coverage of new language report

Some links:

I wrote a post on Crikey’s language blog Fully [sic] on the report, and an op-ed for The Conversation. There’s been some great commentary from Australian linguists on the topic, including Greg Dickson and Felicity Meakins.

Great digital tools

Nick Thieberger has a great post on new digital tools in the humanities (bleeding over into linguistics). It’s been a while since I’ve done any trawling for new programs and it looks like there are plenty of new things available for lots of different types of projects. Some are a big enigmatic for my liking. NewRadial, for example is ‘data analysis for the humanities,’ but exactly what that entails isn’t exactly clear. Catma looks kind of useful though. I can imagine using it to tag texts for interesting grammatical features, for example. Text Analysis Markup System is another program in the same vein.

I couldn’t quite see the point of voyant-tools, though it does produce pretty word graphics. Nodex looks like it might be a handy network mapping tool (e.g. for mapping loanword data). It’s windows-only though, I see. OpenHeatMap is a simpler version of google’s fusion tables. Lots of bibliographical software here, including some nice plugins for Zotero. And here’s a list of transcription tools.

Enjoy!

Outstanding grammars from Australia

One of the disadvantages of the wonderful book fetching service at Yale is that I seldom browse the stacks these days. This means I I’m sometimes rather behind on new library acquisitions (I wish there was a way for them to notify me every time they buy something with call number PL7XXX…). But I was there yesterday afternoon to look up a reference and the shelves were looking less depleted than usual. Most of the Australian grammars that I don’t already own seem to live in my lab most of the time, so it’s pretty easy to see what’s there. They were the first few volumes of the series “Outstanding Grammars from Australia.” This is a new Lincom series of of Ph.D. theses which were written at ANU since the 1970s, but never previously published.

I have very mixed feelings about this series. Several of these dissertations were pretty much unobtainable unless one went to ANU linguistics’ library or AIATSIS and spent a long time with a large stack of change (or a digital camera). So it’s great to have them more widely available, especially, for example, Hosokawa’s thesis on Yawuru, since there isn’t much published on the language apart from a few articles.

However, I question the publishing model. These are essentially photocopies of the original theses. They appear to have no additions or editorial marking of any kind. If one is going to the trouble to reissue these works, why not make them available electronically, through ANU’s ePress, through its dissertation archive, through AILEC, Language Description Heritage‘s digital library, or somewhere else searchable and accessible, rather than a commercial publisher charging US$100 or more for a bound photocopy?

Aboriginal Languages Project for ABC Open

[cross-posting]

The Eastern States Aboriginal Languages Group is working with Suzanne Taylor of ABC Open Wodonga running a project called “Our Mother Tongue”. The intention of the project is to raise awareness of Languages and language programs in the general public. Initially the project is being piloted in Victoria with films being made about three Victorian languages and radio programs and promos being run on regional stations across Victoria through NAIDOC and the following weeks.

Next week Suzanne will be meeting with the ABC Open powers that be to advocate for the project to run nationally. This would mean that for the next year the 50 ABC Open producers around Australia would each produce stories about their local languages and programs.

It would be great if you could have a look at the films and drop a line or two of feedback down the bottom of the blog. Sharing and cross posting the stories are also appreciated. Comments about how you’d like to see a story like this made in your region, or the region you work in, will particularly help Suzanne in her pitch for National uptake.

Two films made so far are below:

http://open.abc.net.au/openregions/vic-albury-wodonga-27gx6gw/posts/our-mother-tongue-wiradjuri-02vw8hr

http://open.abc.net.au/openregions/vic-albury-wodonga-27gx6gw/posts/our-mother-tongue-woiwurrung-01ce3zi

Here is an extended article Suzanne wrote for ABC Sydney on the Wiradjuri program:
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2012/07/04/3538590.htm?site=sydney

Thank you very much for your time in this regard

Carolyn Barker

for

Faith Baisden

Eastern States Aboriginal Languages Group

http://easternstateslanguages.org.au/

Endangered Languages Catalogue is Out

Point your browsers right now to endangeredlanguages.com and check out your favourite language. It’s definitely a work in progress, but it’s nicely presented and I hope it will provide a realization of just how precarious so many languages are.

I prepared a FAQ for the Australian section that explains some of the choices of for including languages, as well as other things to do with Australia. It got overlooked in the original launch, so I’m copying it here. It will hopefully answer some of the questions that linguists and the general public will immediately ask when they see data like this.

Another thing I need to say, since it also didn’t make it into the launched database, is that there *is* source material in the underlying database for language names, speaker numbers, work on the language, and so forth. In fact, there’s a huge bibliography behind this project that the ElCat team compiled over the last year. Linguistic aficionados will recognize data from ethnologue.com, as well as other sources. Hopefully that will be more clearly acknowledged before too long.

Finally, many thanks to everyone who gave me feedback earlier in the year. I did submit changes based on your comments, however it seems that many of those changes are not reflected in the current dataset; the changes are still being worked through. Same deal with all the resources I was sent; I’m sorry that so few of them appear to have made it into the launched version, but they are there and should hopefully appear soon. The map data is, however, mostly my responsibility: so if it’s wrong, do tell me directly or submit a comment on the site.

FAQ:

Who compiled this list?

The Australian section was a joint effort between the LinguistList and Claire Bowern, using data from many sources. Claire’s work was funded by NSF grant 844550 “Pama-Nyungan and Australian Prehistory”, though any opinions expressed in those parts of the site do not reflect opinions of the NSF.

I thought Australian languages were just dialects. Why are so many languages listed?

There are 27 different language families in Australia, and about 380 languages. (By way of comparison, Europe has about 250 languages in 4 families.) Some of the languages are quite similar to each other, while others are as different from each other as Chinese and Hebrew, or English and Japanese.

Some languages have no speakers listed – why are they “endangered”? Aren’t they “dead”?

For some languages, we haven’t been able to confirm speaker numbers. In other cases, there isn’t anyone who has grown up speaking the language, but there are still people who identify with the language, and who are working to revitalize their languages.

What does it mean to say a language is “sleeping”?

Some languages aren’t spoken daily anymore, but there are community groups who are working to bring their languages back into use. Some of those communities refer to their languages as “sleeping” rather than “dead”, since those languages are still an important part of the life and identity of the community, even if they aren’t regularly used.

Why are so many Australian languages endangered?

There are a lot of reasons, many of which date back to the early years of European settlement. Introduced diseases killed many Aboriginal people, along with hunger from reduced access to hunting grounds. In some cases, it’s because of massacres. At the Mindiri massacre at Kooncherie Point in the mid-1880s, well over 100 people were killed, including most of the speakers of Wadikali, Pirlatapa, Yarluyandi, and Malyangapa. Later, other groups were disproportionately affected by Stolen Generations policies [link: http://www.nla.gov.au/oh/bth/]. Social and economic reasons have also led to many Aboriginal people shifting to English, Kriol [link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Kriol_language], and other Aboriginal languages.

My language is strong! Why are you calling it “endangered”?

There are many different ways that a language can be endangered. Because the number of speakers of Aboriginal/TSI languages is small overall, it doesn’t take much for some languages to come under threat. Children find it hard to resist the pressure from the media, schools and the internet to switch to speaking English most of the time. Once children have made that switch, the language is severely endangered.

Some communities don’t realize at first that their languages are under threat. For example, they might think that the language is healthy because it’s still used in the community, but it might be only the elders who are using it – that’s a sign that the language is endangered.

We recognize that some languages in the catalogue are still strong, that children are learning them and they are actively used in the community, and we want to support that work. Let us know what you’re doing, and we’ll make sure we update the catalogue.

Where can I find out more information about Aboriginal/TSI languages?

New South Wales: http://ab-ed.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/go/aboriginal-languages

http://sydney.edu.au/koori/ [Koori Centre, Universirty of Sydney]

Victoria: http://www.vaclang.org.au/

Western Australia: www.klrc.org.au/languages

wangkamaya.org.au

South Australia: http://www.apps.sa.edu.au/aln.htm

General: http://www.paradisec.org.au/blog/FAQs/

http://www.fatsilc.org.au/images/pdfs/NILS-Report-2005.pdf [a recent report on language use in Aboriginal Australia]

http://batchelorpress.com/

austlang.aiatsis.gov.au

I want to learn an Aboriginal language: where can I find more information?

For starters:

http://www.ngapartji.org/ for Pitjantjatjara

http://iadpress.com/ publishes books on Aboriginal languages

http://www.adelaide.edu.au/kwp/ for the Kaurna language of the Adelaide Region

http://learnline.cdu.edu.au/yolngustudies/ Charles Darwin University’s Yolŋu Studies unit

I want to find out more about my language – where do I go?

Try ozbib.aiatsis.gov.au for published sources, and mura.aiatsis.gov.au for the archives of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (they have a lot of unpublished information about language and culture).

I’m a speaker of an Aboriginal/TSI language and I’d like to work with a linguist – who should I contact?

Submit a comment on the language with your contact details and we’ll put you in touch with local people – we’d love to hear from you!

The Documenting and Revitalizing Indigenous Languages (DRIL) Program team may be able to help you: http://www.rnld.org/node/71#DRIL, or http://www.rnld.org/node/42#training

Or if you live in South Australia the Mobile Language Team may be able to help: http://hss.adelaide.edu.au/linguistics/mlt.html

My mum/dad/grandparents speak some Language and I’d like to record them. Do you have any advice?

Have a look at the links at rnld.org, or the tutorials at http://www.youtube.com/user/clairebowern

We have good ideas for helping maintain Aboriginal/TSI languages but it needs some funding and support – where can we get it from?

If you live in an area with an Indigenous language centre, ask them. The Federal Government funds some language work through the Indigenous Language Support program: http://www.arts.gov.au/indigenous/ils

TextStat

One of the great things about co-teaching is all the stuff you learn from your co-instructor. Arienne gave a nice demo today of TextStat, a flexible concordance program from the Dutch studies dept at the Freie Universitaet Berlin. It’s free, and available for Windows, PC, and Linux.

Its major advantage is that it will read Word and OpenOffice files. That is, you don’t need to format the input text in any special format before it’s imported into the program. It will also retrieve web pages.

As programs go, it’s pretty simple. It does wordlist generation and concordancing, and you can view citations in context or in list format. But that’s already pretty useful. It’s very memory-light and doesn’t take up much space on the hard drive. Installation is easy (just unzip the archive on windows). If you want high-powered concordance software, NLP tools are for you, but if you want an easy way to see what’s in your data, this is definitely the way to go.