Documentation and description of Ngarinyin, a language of the Kimberley region of Western Australia
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.
For centuries Ngarinyin has been the main language of the Northern central Kimberley Region of Western Australia, being spoken over an area of up to 45,000 km2. Nowadays, however, only about a dozen of elderly speakers use it as their preferred language and Ngarinyin is no longer passed on to children. This project aims to document elicited and un-elicited Ngarinyin speech and conversation and supplement existing mid-20th century sound recordings of Ngarinyin with sorely missed metadata. The project will also collect more data on an extensive, recently discovered avoidance register in the language.
Primary investigator: Stef Spronck
Project Details
Location: Australia, Australia and New Zealand, Oceania
Organiser(s):
Endangered Languages Documentation Programme
Project partner(s): Australian National University
Funder(s):
Arcadia
Funding received: £14,225.00
Commencement Date: 01/2007
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