Documentation and Description of Kove

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.

This project focuses on documenting Kove (IS0639-3:kvc), spoken in Papua New Guinea. According to the 2007 National Census, about 8,000 people live in Kove in Northeastern New Guinea (5°32'S 149°14'E). However, this number does not reflect the true number of Kove speakers because community members are rapidly losing language competence due to modernization, educational developments, and social interactions. Most fluent speakers are over 50. The goal of this project is to build a corpus of Kove, and to produce a grammar and a small dictionary that may serve as the basis for educational materials. Primary investigator: Hiroko Sato

Project Details


Location: Papua New Guinea, Melanesia, Oceania Organiser(s): Endangered Languages Documentation Programme Project partner(s): University of Hawai'i Funder(s): Arcadia Funding received: £9,999.00 Commencement Date: 01/2006
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