LD&C Special Publication No. 19: Documentation and Maintenance of Contact Languages from South Asia to East Asia
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ItemSP19 Whole Volume(University of Hawai'i Press, 2019-12-01)
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ItemSP19 Front Matter(University of Hawai'i Press, 2019-12-01)
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ItemSP19 Cover(University of Hawai'i Press, 2019-12-01)
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ItemDocumenting online writing practices: The case of nominal plural marking in Zamboanga Chabacano(University of Hawai'i Press, 2019-12-01)The emergence of computer-mediated communication has brought about new opportunities for both speakers and researchers of minority or under-described languages. This paper shows how the analysis of spontaneous contemporary language samples from online social networks can make a contribution to the documentation and description of languages like Chabacano, a Spanish-derived creole spoken in the Philippines. More specifically, we focus on nominal plural marking in the Zamboangueño variety, a still imperfectly understood feature, by examining a corpus composed of texts from online sources. The attested combination of innovative and vestigial features requires a close look at the high contact environment, different levels of metalinguistic awareness or even some language ideologies. The findings shed light on the wide variety of plural formation strategies which resulted from the contact of Spanish with Philippine languages. Possible triggers, such as animacy, definiteness or specificity, are also examined and some future research areas suggested.
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ItemPeranakans in Singapore: Responses to language endangerment and documentation(University of Hawai'i Press, 2019-12-01)Baba Malay is a critically endangered contact language that is home language to the Peranakans in Singapore and Malacca. This paper provides a diachronic perspective on the ways in which the Peranakan community in Singapore has responded to the issues of the issues of language endangerment and documentation. It reports qualitative observations of the community’s responses made by researchers of Baba Malay and community members in the 80s, when they first problematized the endangerment of Baba Malay. It also reports the qualitative and quantitative responses of community members towards language endangerment during and post- process of an ongoing language documentation project. Taken together, these observations show that Peranakans recognize how critically endangered Baba Malay is, and that the community is highly concerned about the potential loss of the language. The community’s general reactions towards language documentation, as well as bottom-up steps taken towards safeguarding the language, are discussed as well. These include the community-led initiatives such as the implementation of language classes, as well as individual-led initiatives, including the development of podcasts and a textbook for language learners.
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ItemKodrah Kristang: The Initiative to Revitalize the Kristang Language in Singapore(University of Hawai'i Press, 2019-12-01)Kristang is the critically endangered heritage language of the Portuguese-Eurasian community in Singapore and the wider Malayan region, and is spoken by an estimated less than 100 fluent speakers in Singapore. In Singapore, especially, up to 2015, there was almost no known documentation of Kristang, and a declining awareness of its existence, even among the Portuguese-Eurasian community. However, efforts to revitalize Kristang in Singapore under the auspices of the community-based non-profit, multiracial and intergenerational Kodrah Kristang (‘Awaken, Kristang’) initiative since March 2016 appear to have successfully reinvigorated community and public interest in the language; more than 400 individuals, including heritage speakers, children and many people outside the Portuguese-Eurasian community, have joined ongoing free Kodrah Kristang classes, while another 1,400 participated in the inaugural Kristang Language Festival in May 2017, including Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister and the Portuguese Ambassador to Singapore. Unique features of the initiative include the initiative and its associated Portuguese-Eurasian community being situated in the highly urbanized setting of Singapore, a relatively low reliance on financial support, visible, if cautious positive interest from the Singapore state, a multiracial orientation and set of aims that embrace and move beyond the language’s original community of mainly Portuguese-Eurasian speakers, and, by design, a multiracial youth-led core team.
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ItemDocumenting modern Sri Lanka Portuguese(University of Hawai'i Press, 2019-12-01)Sri Lanka Portuguese (SLP) is a Portuguese-lexified creole formed during Sri Lanka’s Portuguese colonial period, which lasted from the early 16th century to the mid-17th century. The language withstood several political changes and became an important medium of communication for a portion of the island’s population, but reached the late 20th century much reduced in its distribution and vitality, having essentially contracted to the Portuguese Burgher community of Eastern Sri Lanka. In the 1970s and 1980s, the language was the object of considerable research and documentation efforts, which were, however, curtailed by the Sri Lankan civil war. This chapter reports on the activities, challenges, and results of a recent documentation project developed in the post-war period and designed to create an appropriate and diverse record of modern SLP. The project is characterised by a highly multidisciplinary approach that combines linguistics and ethnomusicology, a strong focus on video recordings and open-access dissemination of materials through an online digital platform (Endangered Languages Archive), archival prospection to collect diachronic sources, a sociolinguistic component aimed at determining ethnolinguistic vitality with a view to delineating revitalisation strategies, and a strongly collaborative nature. This chapter describes the principal outputs of the documentation project, which, in addition to a digital corpus of transcribed and annotated materials representing modern manifestations of SLP and the oral/musical traditions of the Burghers, also include the findings of the sociolinguistic survey, an orthographic proposal for the language, as well as the copies and transcriptions of hard-to-obtain historical sources on SLP (grammars, dictionaries, biblical translations, liturgical texts, collections of songs).
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ItemForeword(University of Hawai'i Press, 2019-12-01)This foreword introduces the special volume "Documentation and maintenance of contact languages from South Asia to East Asia', presenting the nature and aim of the volume, as well as a summary of each of the research articles included, and highlighting its contribution to the field.