Documenting speech and language practices in Eton
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.
Eton is an Oceanic language spoken on the island of Efate, Vanuatu. There are an estimated 500 speakers, but indications that language shift is underway. Previous materials on Eton are extremely limited, but suggest interesting typological and historical patterns, particularly in the sound system. This documentation project will record and transcribe audio and video materials capturing natural speech produced in a range of contexts and genres, and speech produced in targeted discussions and tasks, in collaboration with community members. These will form the basis of structured corpora which will be drawn on for detailed linguistic analyses and community-oriented language resources.
Primary investigator: Rosey Billington
Project Details
Location: Vanuatu, Melanesia, Oceania
Organiser(s):
Endangered Languages Documentation Programme
Project partner(s): The University of Melbourne
Funder(s):
Arcadia
Funding received: £6,939.00
Commencement Date: 01/2015
Project Status: Active
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