I will again be holding a summer ‘grammar boot camp’ at Yale this summer. The dates will be from Wednesday, June 28 to July 26, 2017. (Note that these dates overlap with the LSA Institute at the University of Kentucky.) The idea is to have up to four advanced undergraduate students work intensively on existing high-quality archival field notes and recordings with the aim of producing a publishable sketch grammar. Students will receive a stipend and travel expenses to come to Yale.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates program; as such, applicants are limited to US citizens or permanent residents. Students who will have graduated in Spring 2017 are eligible to apply. The targeted cohort is undergraduates who will have just finished either their junior or senior year.
The materials to be worked on will be from an Australian Aboriginal language from Western Australia and will include both print materials and audio files. It is probable that the ‘print’ materials will already be digitized and in Toolbox.
Students will meet once a day as a group with me to discuss analyses and writing. They will spend the rest of the time working with the materials in the Linguistics department. They will receive regular detailed feedback on the analysis and writing. Familiarity with Australian languages is not required but I would expect that successful applicants would do some reading of grammars of related languages prior to the start of the boot camp.
Applications for the boot camp are now open. The deadline for applications is January 31, 2017, and applicants will be notified of the result in mid-February.
To apply, please send the following materials electronically:
. a letter of application, describing your experience in linguistics, including research experience, experience with language documentation and relevant software, your future plans, and why you’d like to join the boot camp.
. a writing sample, such as a linguistics term paper
. course transcript (this can be an unofficial transcript)
Please send materials as file attachments to bootcamp@pamanyungan.net, cc’ed to claire.bowern@yale.edu. Applications will be acknowledged within 2 days – if you don’t get an acknowledgment, please let me know.
Please also arrange for one or two letters of recommendation/support from faculty to be sent to the same email addresses, also by January 31.
Students will need to show some evidence of prior research experience (e.g. through an RA-ship or by having a senior thesis in progress) and some familiarity with language documentation procedures (e.g. through having taken a field methods class or equivalent, such as having attended CoLang or a LSA Institute class). Applicants will need to show attention to detail and ability to focus on a project for a sustained period. Students will need to be able to travel to New Haven for the entire period of the boot camp and should expect to work solely on this project during that time, including some evenings and weekends.
Please forward to anyone you think would be interested and feel free to contact me with any questions.
Anggarrgoon 