Documenting Kam: Natural interaction, multimodality, and community-driven ethnographic documentation
The Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) provides grants worldwide for the documentation of endangered languages and knowledge. Grantees create audiovisual collections with transcription and translations of endangered languages and practices. These collections are preserved and made freely available through the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR).
| Kam is a high-level Niger-Congo isolate, spoken by a small community of mountain dwelling farmer-fishermen in Central-Eastern Nigeria (ca. 5,000-15,000 speakers). This project has two aims. The first is to establish a corpus of language use in natural interaction, including multimodal communication, while exploring the role sand may play in speakers' gesture space. The second is to document ethnographically interesting texts and performances, focusing on traditional knowledge speakers wish to preserve. Throughout, but especially for the second aim of the project, it will rely on extensive collaboration with speakers from different generations, to strengthen the intergenerational transmission of such knowledge. |
Project Details
Location: Nigeria, Western Africa, Africa
Organiser(s):
Endangered Languages Documentation Programme
Project partner(s): Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
Funder(s):
Arcadia
Funding received: 161,066.00 GBP
Commencement Date: 03/2021
Project Status: Active
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