Documentation and description of Bierebo, a Southern Oceanic language of 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.
Bierebo is an undescribed Oceanic language spoken on the island of Epi in Vanuatu. There are an estimated 800 speakers who live in several villages mainly on the west coast. Working in conjunction with local community members, the project aims to assemble a corpus of audio and video data to be transcribed, annotated and analysed. Specific research products would include a practical orthography for the language, basic literacy materials for use in primary education, and a trilingual dictionary with Bislama (the national language) and English as target languages. In addition, a sketch grammar of the language is planned.
Primary investigator: Peter Budd
Project Details
Location: Vanuatu, Melanesia, Oceania
Organiser(s):
Endangered Languages Documentation Programme
Project partner(s): SOAS, University of London
Funder(s):
Arcadia
Funding received: £27,629.00
Commencement Date: 01/2001
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