Documenting Yupna Diversity: Linguistic, Sociolinguistic & Sociocultural Perspectives on Variation in a Papuan Language Family

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).

This project documents the dialects and languages spoken in a portion of the Yupna region, an area of extreme linguistic diversity within one of the most linguistically diverse countries on earth, Papua New Guinea. Although multilingualism has been an everyday fact of life in these communities, state schooling is drastically reducing local linguistic diversity. Through linguistic elicitation, interviews, and recording of interactional events, the project captures a cross-section of the variation found in a set of neighboring villages where four related languages are spoken: Bonkiman (150 speakers), Yuwong (100 speakers), Domung (2,000 speakers), and Yopno (8,000 speakers). Primary investigator: James Slotta

Project Details


Location: Papua New Guinea, Melanesia, Oceania Organiser(s): Endangered Languages Documentation Programme Project partner(s): University of California, San Diego Funder(s): Arcadia Funding received: £83,166.00 Commencement Date: 01/2009 Project Status: Completed
Project owner? Update this project



Related Projects

ELDP

Documenting the endangered (Ho Nte) She: a special focus on tone and speech prosody

The Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) provides grants worldwide for the documentation of endangered languages and knowledge. Grantees create audiovisual colle…

Explore project
ELDP

Documentation of the language on disappearing in Western Yugur

The Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) provides grants worldwide for the documentation of endangered languages and knowledge. Grantees create audiovisual colle…

Explore project
ELDP

Documentation and description of Moré (Chapacuran): A highly endangered language of the Bolivian Amazon

The Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) provides grants worldwide for the documentation of endangered languages and knowledge. Grantees create audiovisual colle…

Explore project