Documenting Ahamb, a Small Island 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.
This project aims to document and describe the Axamb language, a previously undocumented Oceanic language with some 700 speakers primarily on the low-lying Axamb Island off South Malekula, Vanuatu. The island of Axamb covers just one square kilometer and has suffered substantial erosion associated with climate change, resulting in islanders moving to other language areas on mainland Malekula and Port Vila. The project aims to create a transcribed, translated and annotated corpus of digital audio and video materials, a trilingual dictionary, a grammatical study, as well as draft literacy and language maintenance materials.
Primary investigator: Tihomir Rangelov
Project Details
Location: Vanuatu, Melanesia, Oceania
Organiser(s):
Endangered Languages Documentation Programme
Project partner(s): University of Waikato
Funder(s):
Arcadia
Funding received: £55,202.00
Commencement Date: 01/2013
Project Status: Active
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