Category Archives: Fieldwork

Fieldwork Lab Meetings

Welcome back!

This semester, the Fieldwork Lab and the Ergativity Lab will be having joint weekly meetings on Mondays from 12-1pm in room 002. Information will also be posted here, as well as on McLing. All are welcome!

At this week’s meeting, Mikael Vinka will be presenting on Saami.

Abstract:

This presentation will bring up two themes. On the one hand, when working with an endangered indigenous language like South Saami, it is not uncommon to encounter disparities in grammaticality judgments among L1 speakers. At least some of these inconsistencies are probably best viewed as heritage speaker effects. I will illustrate the issue with data on VP anaphora in South Saami.

The second theme deals with training L1 speaking elders in language documentation. The elders have mastered transcription programs such as ELAN and PRAAT. 45 audio transcription of spoken South Saami are published at http://digitaltmuseum.no/search?page=2&type_filter=Audio&query=saemien%20sijte, as a result of efforts in the local community.

If you have any questions, or want to be added to the Fieldwork Lab email list, please contact me (Lydia) at lydia.felice@mail.mcgill.ca. I am the lab organizer this semester, and I would love to hear from you!

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Chuj Lab

This week Chuj lab says a fond farewell to RA and McGill Linguistics alum Lizzie Carolan, and to recent graduate Cora Lesure. But this year we welcome two new Chujistas: incoming PhD student Clint Parker, and Concordia BA student Justin Royer!

Chuj Lab: Clint, Lizzie, Cora, Magdalena, Jessica, Justin

Chuj Lab: Clint, Lizzie, Cora, Magdalena, Jessica, Justin

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Filed under Fieldwork, Student news

Gitksan fieldwork

Colin Brown is in Northern British Columbia from May 2nd until May 12th working with Gitksan speakers across five villages (photos below are of neighbouring Nisga’a territory).

IMG_4749 IMG_4788

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Filed under Fieldwork, Student news, Travel

Martha Schwarz to India

Congratulations to Martha Schwarz, who will be spending the summer doing fieldwork in India through a MITACS Globalink Research Award.  She will be staying in the Nepali-speaking Darjeeling region, collecting data on Nepali ergativity and Nepali laryngeal contrasts.  The ergativity project is co-supervised by Ayesha Kidwai (Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi). Martha recently present work on Nepali ergativity at the MOTH Syntax Workshop at University of Toronto Mississauga.

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Chuj project training underway

Collaborator Pedro Mateo Pedro has begun training Chuj speakers to record and transcribe Chuj narratives in Guatemala. This project is a joint project between McGill and Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, supported by a SSHRC Connection Grant.

Chuj project trainees recording a narrative

Chuj project trainees recording a narrative

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