Documenting MalakMalak, an endangered languuage of Northern 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.
MalakMalak is a northern Daly language spoken in the Daly River area in north-western Australia. Today it has an estimated eight remaining speakers. This project aims to complement existing sketch grammars with audio-visual recordings with a focus on documenting traditional stories and culturally significant processes such as hunting and gathering or tool-making and by compiling a 2,000-word dictionary. In addition to a Learners' Grammar, aspects of MalakMalak slated for a more detailed discussion in future journal articles are its distinctive complex predicate structure, noun classification system, and spatial Frames of Reference, from both a typological and a comparative Australianist perspective.
Primary investigator: Dorothea Hoffmann
Project Details
Location: Australia, Australia and New Zealand, Oceania
Organiser(s):
Endangered Languages Documentation Programme
Project partner(s): University of Chicago
Funder(s):
Arcadia
Funding received: £86,880.00
Commencement Date: 01/2008
Project owner? Update this project
