Documentation and description of Ukaan, a language of Southern Nigeria

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.

The project aims to produce a collection of audio and video recordings of Ukaan, a Benue-Congo language spoken in Southern Nigeria, which is yet undocumented and only sparsely described. All recordings will be transcribed and translated, with at least 10% of the recordings annotated in detail. The text corpus will be supplemented by a sociolinguistic survey, a Ukaan-Yoruba-English dictionary of around 2-3000 words, a sketch grammar (including background information on language and speakers, interlinearised texts and a standard wordlist) and a description of the Ukaan tense, aspect and mood system. Finally, upon community request, an Ukaan story book will be published. Primary investigator: Sophie Salffner

Project Details


Location: Nigeria, Western Africa, Africa Organiser(s): Endangered Languages Documentation Programme Project partner(s): SOAS, University of London Funder(s): Arcadia Funding received: £7,945.00 Commencement Date: 01/2002
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