Description and Documentation of Lelepa, an Endangered Language of Central Vanuatu

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.

Lelepa is spoken by less than 400 people on the island of Lelepa, Vanuatu. It is surrounded by closely related and much larger languages. Both missionisation in the 1800s and recent, rapid urbanization and development have contributed to threatening the language as speakers are shifting to languages of wider communication such as Bislama (an English-lexifier pidgin and national language of Vanuatu) and not transmitting the language to younger generations. This project aims at building a corpus of annotated texts from audio and video recordings to be used as a foundation for a grammatical description and language resources for Lelepa speakers. Primary investigator: Sebastien Lacrampe

Project Details


Location: Vanuatu, Melanesia, Oceania Organiser(s): Endangered Languages Documentation Programme Project partner(s): Australian National University Funder(s): Arcadia Funding received: £18,613.00 Commencement Date: 01/2009
Project owner? Update this project



Related Projects

Arcadia Logo high res

Documenting the contemporary history of science in India

To collect, preserve and make available online endangered cultural artefacts related to the contemporary (~200 years) history of science in South Asia. It will also develop a …

Explore project
Arcadia Logo high res

Digital Preservation of Kerala Archives

To survey and digitize some of the most important collections of palm-leaf manuscripts in the Thrissur and Ernakulam districts, Kerala, India in both institutional and family …

Explore project
Arcadia Logo high res

Mapping Archaeological Pre-Columbian Heritage in South America

To produce an integrated public access database for the pre-Columbian archaeological heritage of South America, focussing on Brazil and Colombia.

Explore project