All posts by LivingTongues

We are a non-profit research institute dedicated to documenting endangered languages around the world. Since 2005, Living Tongues Institute has reached more than one hundred endangered language communities in fifteen countries. Our researchers have also created dozens of Living Dictionaries to support these languages, and provided valuable digital skills training to dozens of local collaborators.
Events, Gregory D. S. Anderson, India, Language Documentation, Luke Horo, Projects

Presentations at SEALS 2023 in Thailand

It has been a busy year so far for us at Living Tongues Institute! In May, we presented three cutting-edge research papers on Munda linguistics at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (SEALS 2023) in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Here is the full program.

Members of Living Tongues’ Munda research team traveled from the US and India to attend the conference. We include some pictures of our team below.

Luke Horo, Pamir Gogoi, Bikram Jora, Aman Singha, Ria Borah Sonowal, Kelsey Bialo and Gregory Anderson collaborated on a joint paper entitled “Prominence in Mundari disyllables and inflected polysyllabic nouns.”

ABSTRACT: In this paper, we describe our preliminary findings from an ongoing study of intonation in Mundari, an Austroasiatic language spoken by some two million people in at least four dialects. Here we present a comparative analysis of the system of prominence attested in two such dialects, viz. Hasadaʔ and Naguri. We use as a basis for this preliminary study disyllabic forms of any function and polysyllabic nouns that are inflected for a variety of case, possession, etc. categories. Previous descriptions of Mundari prominence are impressionistic. Such claims of trochaic patterns (Cook 1965), quantity sensitivity (Sinha 1975) or a maximal 3-syllable word (Osada 1992) do not hold up to acoustic instrumental analyses nor are supported statistically. Our analysis is the first such grounded in modern phonetic methodology. Recent instrumental analyses of Sora (Horo, Sarmah and Anderson 2020) and Assam Santali (Horo and Anderson 2021), supported by statistical data, suggest these sister languages of Mundari rather consistently shows prominence cued by intensity, duration and/or fundamental frequency on the second syllable. In this report we offer new statistical and instrumental analyses of Mundari focusing for this study on disyllables and inflected polysyllabic nouns. We compare these findings with the claims made in the literature about the language, as well as with the findings from the more recent studies on related languages. This includes the role of quantity sensitivity (if any) in determining patterns of prominence, what the acoustic cues of prominence in Mundari are and how they conspire to encode the prominent syllable, and whether the maximal phonological word is three syllables or not. All data are taken from field notes.

Pamir Gogoi, Luke Horo, Ria Borah Sonowal, Aman Singha, Bikram Jora, Kelsey Bialo and Gregory Anderson presented a joint paper entitled “Acoustic analysis of Glottal Stops in Mundari.”

ABSTRACT: This study analyzes the phonetic realization of glottal stops in Mundari, an Austroasiatic language. Like most Austroasiatic languages, Mundari has a phonemic glottal stop, which has not yet been instrumentally analyzed. In Assam Sora, a lect of Sora related to Mundari, glottal stops have three different phonetic realizations- including, a complete vocal fold closure, a complete closure accompanied by creaky phonation and a voiced glottal stop (Kalita et al., 2016). In this study, we investigate if the glottal stops in Mundari are acoustically similar to Assam Sora. Surface realization of glottal stops vary cross-linguistically; often realized partially by exhibiting laryngealization instead of a complete stop and these characteristics may vary based on the context (Garellek, 2013). Also, changes in F0, amplitude and spectral measures of source features are some of the widely observed correlates of glottal stops (Hillenbrand et al.,1996; Kalita et al., 2016). However, it has been observed that in naturally spoken continuous speech, these features do not strongly correlate to the realization of glottal stops (Ashby & Przedlacka, 2014). Therefore, in this study we measure changes in F0, amplitude and spectral features both in continuous speech and isolated segments in Mundari.

Gregory Anderson and Opino Gomango co-wrote the following paper that was presented at SEALS 32: “Synchronic and diachronic approaches to the Sora TAM system.”

ABSTRACT: Sora indexes several TAM categories in its verbal system which functionally overlap in complex ways. In Sora, there are at least three different templatic suffixal positions where indices of TAM categories can be found and we are probably dealing with at least two different diachronic layers–older elements tightly bound with the verb stem and before pronominal, with more recently grammaticalized markers after such pronominal markers. More details available in the SEALS 32 abstract booklet. 

Endangered Language Activism

Summer Internships in Phonetics (2023)

Calling all linguistics students! Are you passionate about phonetics and under-studied languages? At Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, we are welcoming two cohorts of phonetics interns in July-August 2023. Apply by June 16th, 2023.

  • Our summer internships are part-time, remote positions where interns can set their own schedules. This is an unpaid position. Each internship lasts for four weeks. Each internship cohort requires a time commitment of 15-20 hours per week.
  • The two available cohorts of phonetics interns are:
    July 5th to August 2nd, 2023
    August 1st to 29th, 2023.
  • Previous experience working with Praat experience is required for this internship.
  • The language we are working on is Mundari, a Munda language from India. We will provide you with all the necessary files and transcription data to work on it. This is part of a larger research project entitled “Words, phrases, and sentences at the interface of phonology and morphosyntax.”
  • Interns may be located anywhere in the world, and must attend one Zoom meeting per week for one hour (schedule forthcoming). They must have access to a laptop with the Praat software on it, and access to the Internet for the Zoom meetings and uploading files. Praat is a free software. Working on Praat files can be done offline.
  • Living Tongues phonetician Dr. Luke Horo will be supervising this internship, along with our colleagues on the phonetics team in India. Living Tongues Program Director Anna Luisa Daigneault will coordinate the meetings and provide guidance along the way. Dr. Gregory D. S. Anderson will also assist on the research side. We will have a Slack channel available where we can respond to questions anytime. 


Application process:

Send your resume and cover letter to Anna Luisa Daigneault at:
annaluisa@livingtongues.org

  • Apply by June 16th, 2023.
    Please describe in detail your past experience using Praat (describe past projects)
  • Let us know which cohort dates work best for you.
  • Please label all files clearly in the following format:
    FirstName_LastName_Summer2023_Resume
    FirstName_LastName_Summer2023_Letter    Thanks for reading!
Climate Change, Digital Resources, Living Dictionaries

Congrats to the team who built the Nukuoro Living Dictionary!

Congrats to Nukuoro language expert Johnny Rudolph, linguist Emily Drummond from UC Berkeley, and the entire support team who helped build the Nukuoro Living Dictionary over the years!

Nukuoro speakers Johnny Rudolph (right) and Ruth Rudolph (left). 
Johnny Rudolph (right) interviewing Curtis Charley (left)
Nukuoro speaker Mina Lekka (left), linguist Emily Drummond (middle), and researcher Lydia Ding (right)
Screenshot of the search results for “fish” in the Nukuoro Living Dictionary

At over 6k entries, it is a cultural & linguistic treasure. In particular, this dictionary contains a wide variety of terms related to marine life and local ecological knowledge.

Explore it here:
https://livingdictionaries.app/nukuoro/entries/list

Nukuoro is a Polynesian Outlier language spoken on Nukuoro Atoll, an outlying island of Pohnpei State, Federated States of Micronesia. By recent estimates, there are about 1,200 speakers of Nukuoro worldwide, with Nukuoro communities on Nukuoro Atoll, Pohnpei, Guam, and various places in the United States (Drummond & Rudolph 2021).

While Nukuoro is the primary language of use on Nukuoro Atoll, diaspora communities are facing increased influence from regionally dominant languages like Pohnpeian and English. Many Nukuoro community members under 30 feel more comfortable speaking other languages, or do not identify as Nukuoro speakers at all.

As rising sea levels threaten the sustainability of life on the atoll, diaspora communities will continue to grow, putting greater pressure of majority languages on the Nukuoro-speaking community. The Nukuoro Living Dictionary was created in part to support maintenance of the Nukuoro language outside of Nukuoro Atoll.

Photos are included with permission, and are courtesy of Emily Drummond. 
Endangered Language Activism

Living Tongues was featured on The Weather Channel!

Languages are being lost due to a wide array of factors, including colonization, globalization, cultural assimilation, migration and urbanization. Climate change, deforestation, rising sea levels and environmental contamination are drivers of displacement and migration, which in turn causes language shift towards dominant languages.

Thanks to The Weather Channel for featuring our work on Living Dictionaries on the Pattrn show. Living Tongues Program Director Anna Luisa Daigneault was interviewed by Stephanie Abrams and Jordan Steele. She outlined the connections between climate change and endangered languages, and gave an example of a weather word from the Apatani language (spoken in India).