Banam Bay Language: documentation and endangered language maintenance
The Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) provides grants worldwide to for the linguistic documentation of endangered language and knowledge. Grantees create multimedia collection of endangered languages. These collections are preserved and made freely available through the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) housed at the library of SOAS University of London.
Banam Bay is spoken in Southeast Malekula, Vanuatu by less than 900 speakers. Previously classified by Darrell Tryon (1976) as three different dialects, it has more recently been categorized as one, Banam Bay Area Language (Crowley 2000). Banam Bay has recorded wordlists, but is otherwise undocumented. This project involves working with community members in data collection, facilitating a basic orthography and creating resources for language management and vernacular literacy material creation. A basic grammar sketch and language description will satisfy my PhD dissertation, which will be archived alongside a repository of audio-recorded transcribed and translated narratives and updated trilingual wordlists.
Primary investigator: Brittany Hoback
Project Details
Location: Vanuatu, Melanesia, Oceania
Organiser(s):
Endangered Languages Documentation Programme
Project partner(s): Victoria University of Wellington
Funder(s):
Arcadia
Funding received: £8,474.00
Commencement Date: 01/2014
Project Status: Active
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