At this week’s Fieldwork Lab meeting, Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada and Erin Hashimoto will give a presentation entitled “Using Legacy Text Collections for Student Training and Linguistic Research”. Details follow. Fieldwork Lab meets on Thursdays at 4:00pm. Contact Carol-Rose Little if you would like to attend.
Title:
Using Legacy Text Collections for Student Training and Linguistic Research
Presenters:
Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada
Assistant Professor, Indigenous Languages Sustainability
University of Alberta
Erin Hashimoto
MA Student
University of Victoria
Abstract:
In language documentation, the “Boasian trilogy”—which has come to be seen as the gold standard— refers to a grammar, a dictionary and a text collection. While grammars and dictionaries have received substantial attention in the literature over the last 30 years, text collections remain understudied. Yet legacy texts—broadly understood here to include narratives, procedural texts, songs, etc. collected in the past—constitute invaluable sources of language and culture for many Indigenous communities. In this talk, we focus on the potential of legacy text collections in student training and linguistic research through a case study on the mobilization of such a collection for Makah (Wakashan, Washington State, USA). To conclude, we also briefly explore the potential benefits of such work for communities.