The Tangkhulic Tongues - How I Started Working on Endangered Languagesref/public/MortensenTL.pdf · 2014-09-24 · Tangkhulic Tongues DavidR. Mortensen Introduction My Background

TangkhulicTonguesDavid R.Mortensen

IntroductionMyBackgroundTangkhulField MethodsEncounteringKachaiWorking onHuishuA SecondCoupleEast TusomSorbung

LessonsLearned

The Tangkhulic TonguesHow I Started Working on Endangered Languages

David R. Mortensen

September 18, 2014



LessonsLearned



LessonsLearned

Overview

A bit about my early background, with relation todocumentation of endangered languages.How I happened on to documenting an endangeredlanguage (Kachai).How this led to work on another, much moreendangered, language (Huishu).How that led to more extensive work on two otherendangered languages, both of which were previouslyundescribed (East Tusom and Sorbung).The morals of this story.



LessonsLearned

Theoretical and Area Interests

Areal interest in Southeast Asia.Previously carried out work on “Sinospheric”languages, especially Hmong.Prior to Tangkhulic, did a very small amount of workon a more “Indospheric” language, Hakha Lai.

Theoretical interests:PhonologyMorphologyHistorical linguistics/language changeTypology



LessonsLearned

Previous Work on Minority Languages

My main language, prior to my work on Tangkhulic,was Hmong.

A minority language of China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand(and also the US, Australia, France, French Guiana, etc.)Threatened in some countries, but not endangered.Large speaker population for a minority language.Children learning the language in many communities.

Hmong served as a “gateway drug” to work onendangered languages.



LessonsLearned

Previous Work on Minority Languages (cont.)

Why did I start working on Hmong?I was assigned to learn Hmong while working as amissionary during my late teens and early twenties.I turned out to be a rather poor missionary, but a muchbetter linguist.

After working as a missionary, and finishing myundergraduate degree, I entered the MA/PhD programin Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley,a fact which is pivotal in our story.



LessonsLearned

Field Methods on Tangkhul

Linguistics graduate students at UC Berkeley arerequired to take a two-semester course in LinguisticField Methods.I was excited to take this course because I wasinterested in field linguistics.I was especially excited that the language to beinvestigated, when it was my turn to take the course,was a Tibeto-Burman language of North Eastern India.

I had been working as a Graduate Student Researcherfor STEDT (the Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionaryand Thesaurus), a research project that concentratedprimarily on Tibeto-Burman languages.I was also interested in tone, and I knew that TBlanguages of North Eastern India sometimes had veryinteresting tonal patterns.



LessonsLearned

Field Methods on Tangkhul (cont.)

As a field methods class, we started working with agraduate student of theology who was a speaker ofTangkhul, a language spoken near the border ofManipur, India and Burma (Myanmar).Tangkhul is not endangered.

It has about 142,000 speakers, according to a recentcensus.It is used in education.

What is it like typologically?Tonal (three tones); moderately complex syllablestructure.Agglutinative; primarily suffixing;nominative-accusative alignment.Verb final.



LessonsLearned

Map of Ukhrul District



LessonsLearned

Old Tangkhul Naga Men Enjoy a Rice Beverage



LessonsLearned

An Accidental Discovery

One day, my elicitation partner and I were workingwith our consultant.We asked her the word for ‘spider’.

She answered, “ʃimconpʰəron.”Then she corrected herself: “No, that’s my language.”

We asked, “What do you mean ‘my language’? Isn’tTangkhul your language?”She explained that each village in the Tangkhul areahad it’s own language variety. The language of Ukhrultown (Standard Tangkhul) was used as a lingua franca.Her native language was called Kachai (after hervillage), and was spoken only there (and by a fewexpatriate families).I immediately took up the project of documentingKachai, which had not been documented previously.



LessonsLearned

Map of Kachai



LessonsLearned

Language Endangerment in Ukhrul District

The “village dialects” of the Tangkhul ethnicity hadbecome endangered for a variety of reasons.

They never had a large number of speakers since theywere typically confined to a single village or cluster ofvillages.Most were probably never spoken by more than 1,000individuals.Conversion to Christianity (primarily the AmericanBaptist Denomination) brought Standard Tangkhul toeach village as a language of worship and literacy.The same forces brought English to each village as thelanguage of the international Baptist community.Incorporation of the Tangkhul area into the state ofManipur brought Meithei (Manipuri) as a language ofgovernment and education.On a larger scale, incorporation into the nation of Indiabrought Hindi as a language of military, government,and commerce.



LessonsLearned

Kachai and Limitations

I worked on Kachai and Ukhrul simultaneously. Theywere closely related, but not nearly so closely relatedas to be considered dialects of one language.

I worked on Ukhrul to complete course responsibilities.I worked on Kachai because it was previouslyundocumented and apparently endangered.

This had the disadvantage of limiting the amount oftime I could spend on either one.My consultant’s time was also limited.Our work on Kachai consisted mostly of collectinglexical material and working on some basicmorphosyntax.



LessonsLearned

A Spousal Referral

My consultant was married to a Tangkhul man.She mentioned that he spoke a “dialect” that was verydifferent from Kachai or Standard Tangkhul.Although he was very busy—he worked in a Christianministry in inner-city Oakland—he made time to meetwith me often enough for me to elicit a substantialword list.I also found that his language, Huishu, was even moreendangered than Kachai.I found him to be an excellent speaker of his nativelanguage (something that cannot always be countedon), but he was too pressed for time to meet with meoften.



LessonsLearned

An Additional Consultant

Fortunately, the Huishu consultant’s younger brotherwas in town for some of the summer during which Iwas working most intently on Tangkhulic languagedocumentation.Tangkhulic is the name that I settled on for the group oflanguages closely related to Tangkhul and spoken bymembers of the Tangkhul ethnicity.This additional consultant was not as strong a speakerof Huishu as the first, but the data I gathered from himwere nonetheless useful.



LessonsLearned

Map of Huishu



LessonsLearned

Phonological Discoveries

Around the same time that I was working on Huishuand Kachai, I was learning a lot about the historicalphonology of Tibeto-Burman.I noticed something unusual: in Huishu there wereunexplained /k/’s at the ends of syllables after whatshould historically have been high vowels (/i/ and /u/,mostly).Changes like this go against the usual direction forsound changes and, while not entirely unknown, arequite rare.I eventually published a major article about thisphenomenon, drawing most heavily on data fromHuishu.Moral: there are things you are only likely to learn byworking with an endangered language.



LessonsLearned

Exotic Kansas City

My first three consultants could only meet with me fora limited amount of time.However, they were aware of another Tangkhultheology student and his wife who were living inKansas City.I was able to secure a small grant which allowed me totravel to Kansas, stay for part of a summer, and paythis other couple to work as consultants.This couple was also from two different villages andspoken two different languages natively.

She spoke East Tusom.He spoke Sorbung.

Although data from closely related languages wascollected by British military officers in the earlynineteenth century, neither of these languages hadbeen documented up to that point.



LessonsLearned

A Phonological Outlier

Tusom is notable for its many phonologicalinnovations:

Aspirated stops became affricates at many places ofarticulation.High vowels became fricatives.Final stops are lost.Final nasals become vowel nasalization.Etc.



LessonsLearned

Map of East Tusom



LessonsLearned

At the Border

Sorbung is notable because it does not seem to be amember of the Tangkhulic group at all, even though itsspeakers consider themselves to be ethnic Tangkhuls.It sits at the southern border of the Tangkhul area, nearthe so-called “Old Kuki” groups.Although it is quite distinct, it has more in commonwith these “Old Kuki” languages than it does with theTangkhulic languages.



LessonsLearned

Map of Sorbung



LessonsLearned

A Phonological Description

I ultimately published a phonological description ofSorbung, in collaboration with a student. That articlewas the first published description of this endangeredlanguage.The description also included an extensive word listand notes on the genetic position of the Sorbung withTibeto-Burman.I have sufficient data to publish similar phonologicaldescriptions of Tusom, Kachai, and Huishu as well.I feel I owe it to the consultants who sacrificed theirtime to work with me to publish meaningfuldescriptions based upon our work together.



LessonsLearned

Some Lexical Items

Kachai Huishu Tusom Sorbung‘dog’ ʔahwi ʔahuk y ʔʉʉ‘eat’ kəpʰəðu kətse kəzi saa‘animal’ ʔasu ʔase ʃi saa‘five’ pʰəŋɐ pʰəŋi pʃiŋia rəŋaa‘die’ kəsɐ kətik kətsɯ tʰii‘shoot’ kəkop kaʔkʰe kəkəɯ kaap‘far’ kətu kəke kəɬi ʃoo‘water’ tuŋði ʔaruk ntsy cʉʉ



LessonsLearned

Languages Where You Least Expect Them

If you are looking for endangered languages, you willfind them; where you find them will often defy yourexpectations.Many people would not expect that previouslyundocumented languages could be found in the UnitedStates.You might be prepared to believe that there wereendangered languages spoken by immigrants in theSan Francisco Bay Area.You are less likely to guess that speakers ofundocumented and endangered languages could befound at a theological seminary in Kansas City, Kansas.



LessonsLearned

Why Not Go to India?

At the time I was performing active field work onTangkhulic languages, it was very difficult to travel toManipur.There is a longstanding insurgency (one of the longestcontinuous insurgencies in the world) in Nagaland andManipur.Tangkhuls are actively involved in this insurgency.The Indian government had many reasons to preventvisitors from entering Ukrhul district, in particular.Now, however, the situation has greatly improvedand there is no obstacle to engaging in fieldwork inTangkhul villages.



LessonsLearned

Employ Best Practices in Documentation

One mistake I made while doing mydocumentation work on Tangkhulic languages wasfailing to employ best practices.Technological best practices

Use high quality recording equipment for audio:headworn microphone, solid state recorder, orequivalent.Use standard, open formats for text data and lexicaldatabases.

Methodological best practices.Always repeat the elicited form back to the consultantuntil they are satisfied that it is correct, then proceed.This makes elicitation take much longer, but ensuresbetter transcriptions.Make complete transcriptions (including tone) whilethe consultant is available.



LessonsLearned

Greatest Regrets

The documentation that I produced was not idealfor language maintenance or revitalization.

The data was not made readily available to the relevantspeech communities.The form of the data was not appropriate for teachingor learning the languages.Too much phonology and lexicon; too littlemorphosyntax, text.

This could be seen as a case of languageabandonment.

Like many field workers, I worked on a language (orgroup of languages) for a while, then moved on.What is needed is linguists that will stick with languagecommunities in the long term.In my defense, I’m eager to return to Tangkhulic.



LessonsLearned

Concluding Remarks

All that being said, I highly recommending workingwith endangered language communities.It provides an opportunity to work to preserve preciouscultural and linguistic resources.Working on the documentation, preservation, andrevitalization of endangered languages is doublyrewarding:

You get to satisfy an ethical imperative to help someof the most marginalized communities in the world.You get to seek out unique intellectual challengeswhen you develop documentation or technologies forendangered languages.



LessonsLearned

Further Questions?

Documents

The Tangkhulic Tongues - How I Started Working on Endangered Languagesref/public/MortensenTL.pdf · 2014-09-24 · Tangkhulic Tongues DavidR. Mortensen Introduction My Background