Language documentation has contributed innovative methodologies and powerful tools for linguistic research on endangered languages. It shifted the mindset that working with just one or two consultants outside of their speech community using a single method (namely elicitation) is not adequate. Use of diverse and innovative methods and well-grounded methodologies; extensive community participation both in multi-modal recording/collecting of data and in processing it, are essential aspects of language documentation. This webinar will demonstrate the positive results of such collaboration with community and practical challenges this might bring.
SPEAKERS
DR. FELIX AMEKA
Felix is a linguist working on the intersection of grammar, meaning and culture, and the description and documentation of languages in their multilingual ecologies. His empirical specialisation is on West-African languages. He is currently professor of Ethnolinguistic Diversity and Vitality at Leiden University and teaches in the departments of Linguistics, African Languages and cultures, and African Studies. In recognition of his pioneering work on cross-cultural semantics and his long-standing research ties with Australian universities, he was elected as a Corresponding Fellow to the Australian Academy of Humanities in 2019. He is also an elected Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (2015), and of Academia Europaea (2021).
After undergraduate training at the University of Ghana, Legon, Felix received his PhD in 1991 from Australian National University for a dissertation on the semantic, functional, and discourse-pragmatic aspects of the grammar of Ewe. Felix has made seminal contributions to the cross-linguistic study of interjections, editing a highly influential special issue on 'the universal yet neglected part of speech'. Felix has pioneered research on the interaction of grammar, culture, and social structure, using the framework of Natural Semantic Metalanguage to elucidate cultural scripts and interactional resources. A long-term research associate at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Felix has led a large-scale comparative project on the semantics of locative predicates and contributed to cross-linguistic work on the expression of motion and separation events. With Alan Dench and Nick Evans, he co-edited an influential collection on the art of grammar writing.
Felix is concerned with the training of young scholars interested in carrying out language documentation and description with a broad ethos of collaboration and reciprocal engagement with speaker communities. In 2008, he initiated and has (co-)organised several Summer Schools for training language documenters in Africa and elsewhere since then with support from the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP), Volkswagen Stiftung (VW Foundation) and the US National Science Foundation (NSF).
Felix is editor of the Journal of African Languages and Linguistics together with Azeb Amha. Since 2015, Felix is President of the World Congress of African Linguistics.
DR. MANDANA SEYFEDDINIPUR
Mandana grew up in Germany. She studied linguistics and Persian studies at the Free University of Berlin and graduated with a Master's degree. She received her doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics at Radboud University Nijmegen from 2000 to 2005. Her dissertation was entitled Disfluency: Interrupting speech and gesture. She then worked as a Marie Curie postdoctoral work Stanford University from 2006 to 2009
After another short stay at the Max Planck Institute, Mandana moved to SOAS University of London in 2010, where she became head of the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme. In 2014 she became head of the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR), which deals with the digital preservation of endangered languages and makes digital collections of endangered languages digitally accessible worldwide. In July 2021, the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP) moved to the Berlin Brandenburgische Academy of Sciences with Mandana as its Director.
DR. AZEB AMHA
Azeb is a researcher at the African Studies Center, Leiden University. Her research focuses on language-culture interface, descriptive linguistics and language documentation. She has extensive experience in language documentation and in working with speech community. Azeb wrote the first grammar of the Maale language (The Maale Language 2001). She led a collaborative documentation project on the Oyda language (2009-2013). Since 2016, Azeb is working on a multi-modaldocumentation of Zargula, an endangered language that is spoken in South-west Ethiopia. Through analysis of Wolaitta, one of her L1 languages, Azeb contributed to projects that aimed at developing methodological advances in language description and documentation, namely the CorpAfroas and CorTypoprojects linked to LLACAN (CNRS, Paris). Azeb wrote several articles on the grammar and typology of Omotic languages, and three co-edited books. Since 2004, Azeb is co-editor of the Journal of African Languages and Linguistics.
IDA SODOKE ASSEM
Ida is a PhD student of linguistics in the University of Ghana, Legon. She has an MPhil in Applied Linguistics and a BA in Akan from University of Education, Winneba (UEW) and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), respectively. Ida was a teaching and research assistant in KNUST from 2012-2013, and also in UEW in 2016. She also worked as a part-time field researcher for Associates for Change (AFC), an NGO in Accra, from 2017- 2019. She is presently a Lecturer in Communication Studies at the University of Professional Studies (UPSA), Accra. Ida has a research interest in the use of language in context, language and culture and language documentation; particularly, the documentation of endangered cultural practices. For her PhD research, Ida is currently working on the documentation of endangered indigenous cuisines and their associated linguistic expressions among the Akan and Ewe ethnolinguistic groups in Ghana. Ida is a 2019 AFSOAS Scholarship recipient for an intensive language documentation training program hosted by the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme at SOAS.
KENNETH BODUA-MANGO
Bodua-Mango Kenneth is a PhD candidate at the University of Ghana, Legon. He graduated from the University of Ghana, Legon in 2009 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Linguistics. He did a mandatory one-year national service as a teaching and research assistant at the Department of Linguistics, University of Ghana, Legon. In 2010, he won a scholarship from the Norwegian Government under the quota scheme to pursue an MPhil programme in Linguistics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim and graduated in 2012. As part of the requirements for the MPhil programme in Linguistics at NTNU, he wrote a corpus-based thesis on Coordinators in Safaliba; a Gur (Mabia) language spoken in the Savanah Region of Ghana. From September 2015 to October 2018, he worked as an Assistant lecturer at the Department of Gur-Gonja Education, University of Education Winneba, teaching General Linguistics and Gonja. Kenneth is currently a Tutor of linguistics at the Accra College of Education.
Kenneth is a 2019 AFSOAS Scholarship recipient for an intensive language documentation training program hosted by the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme at SOAS. He is also a recipient of the Volkswagen Foundation Travel Scholarship to attend the Lagos Summer School in Digital Humanities (LSSDH-2021) held from 9th - 15th May 2021.
MODERATOR
NACCIEM NIKKAH
Naciem holds an MA in the History of Art and Archaeology from SOAS and a BFA in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute. She recently finished her PhD in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on the dialogue between literary and visual language in Persian manuscripts, especially the single-page album-style paintings of post-fifteenth-century Persian and Persianate societies.
Naciem lives in San Francisco and works as an independent researcher. Previously, she was a research assistant at the British Museum, taught at San José State University, and worked as an independent curator in Northern California.