Matukar Panau corpus building for the study of language use in context

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.

Matukar Panau is a highly endangered Oceanic language spoken near Madang, Papua New Guinea. Although most children are no longer learning Matukar Panau, current speakers (apx. 300) form a vibrant community of multilinguals in dense social networks. As an Oceanic language on the PNG coast, Matukar Panau has many interesting Papuan features. No language of this area has a large corpus available. This project will produce 47 hours of audio-visual recordings and a 200,000+ word corpus. Recording will focus on conversations where participants are varied by age, gender, clan, social connections and differing language portfolios to document speaker interaction. Primary investigator: Danielle Barth

Project Details


Location: Papua New Guinea, Melanesia, Oceania Organiser(s): Endangered Languages Documentation Programme Project partner(s): Australian National University Funder(s): Arcadia Funding received: £29,486.00 Commencement Date: 01/2014 Project Status: Active
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