Language socialisation and the transmission of Qaqet Baining (Papua New Guinea): Towards a documentation project

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.

Qaqet is spoken by 6000 speakers in Papua New Guinea in highly multilingual settings. These settings have consequences for the transmission - and hence the long-term survival - of the language: children in coastal villages no longer grow up with Qaqet as their dominant language, while children in interior villages speak Qaqet dominantly only until school age. This pilot project will aim to collect a preliminary corpus of sociolinguistic information, child-directed speech and children's narratives. This corpus will form the basis for a future comprehensive documentation of language socialisation and transmission practices, which will enable us to better understand how languages can become endangered. Primary investigator: Birgit Hellwig

Project Details


Location: Papua New Guinea, Melanesia, Oceania Organiser(s): Endangered Languages Documentation Programme Project partner(s): La Trobe University Funder(s): Arcadia Funding received: £8,406.00 Commencement Date: 01/2008
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