Her paper “At a Loss for Words” has been reprinted in Natural History’s Annual Editions: Anthropology 10/11.

You can read it here.

Marlyse Baptista and Eric Brown spent time this summer in Cape Verde recording Cape Verdean Creole speakers on the islands of Santiago and São Vicente.  This trip also launched a long term project to digitize and and post recordings of Cape Verdean Creole on the web.

Working with linguists Emanuel de Pina from the University of Cape Verde and Saidu Bangura from the University of Santiago, the Michigan linguists collected comparative morpho-syntactic data from informants all over the two islands.  Eric remained in Cape Verde for an additional 3 weeks conducting sociolinguistic interviews and collecting recorded word lists.  Both researchers are grateful to their collaborators and colleagues who made the long trip worthwhile and look forward to continued work in the area.  Keep an eye out for future presentations and publications!

Marlyse and Eric also want to acknowledge and express gratitude for the support of the Department of Linguistics, the African Studies Center and the International Institute.  Marlyse received an African Heritage Initiative Seed Grant from the African Studies Centerto help support this work

2. Sally gave one of the four plenary talks at ICML XII, the 12th International Conference on Minority Languages in Tartu, Estonia.

WHAT IS LOST WHEN A LANGUAGE IS STANDARDIZED?

Abstract:

Enlightened governments all over the world are granting language rights to minority groups, a tendency that is presumably welcomed by everyone attending this conference.  The specific rights vary from country to country, from making one or more minority languages official to establishing a right to native-language instruction in schools.  An issue that arises very frequently concerns standardization: which variety of a minority language should be selected or (if necessary) developed for official purposes, including use as a medium of instruction?  The advantages of selecting a single variety are obvious, especially the financial advantages.  The disadvantages are perhaps less obvious.  The focus of this presentation is on the disadvantages of standardization, in particular the concomitant loss of dialect diversity.  The most important disadvantages are arguably sociopolitical; but the scientific disadvantages, from a linguist’s viewpoint, are nontrivial.  Understanding of the processes and results of dialect divergence and convergence contributes signficantly to our knowledge of human language as a social and psychological phenomenon. Moreover, some nonstandard dialects have unusual, and unusually interesting, structural features that are not found in the associated standard dialect.  I will not argue that standardization should not occur, but rather that nonstandard dialects should be documented as fully as possible while documentation is still possible.  Examples will be drawn from several European languages and from a gravely endangered Native American language which is currently undergoing standardization.

3. Sally also gave  one of the keynote talks at ISB7, the 7th International Symposium on Bilingualism, in
Utrecht.

Children vs. Adults as Agents of Contact-induced Language Change

Abstract:
This paper explores the relationship between bilingualism and contact-induced language change, focusing on the question of which contributions might be expected from children and which from adults. The issue is reflected in debates among historical linguists as to whether internally-motivated language change is initiated by children during first-language acquisition or by adults — or by both. In language contact studies, it is possible to identify changes, usually temporary ones, that are initiated by children, and it is also possible to identify changes that are initiated by adults. The conclusion, therefore, is that both adults and children are responsible for contact-induced changes, although perhaps not for the same kinds of changes: shift-induced interference, which is due to imperfect learning of a target language by members of a speech community, is likely to be almost exclusively an adult phenomenon, or at least not primarily initiated by young children during first-language acquisition. I will not address in detail the question of the role of adults vs. the role of children in the initiation and spread of linguistic changes more generally, but some implications of the results from contact-induced change will be discussed in the concluding section.

The thesis combines linguistic and anthropological analysis with historical research in order to elucidate the background and structure of a traditional narrative set in the late 19th century and early 20th century on the Flathead Reservation of northwestern Montana.

Congratulations, Rosalie!

Congratulations, Eric!

Abstract

Montana Salish is an Interior Salishan language spoken on the Flathead Reservation in Northwest Montana by an estimated population of about 40 speakers. This paper describes the basic phonetic characteristics of the language based on data from five speakers. Montana Salish contains a number of typologically unusual consonant types. Including glottalized sonorants, pre-stopped laterals, and a series of pharyngeals distinguished by secondary articulations of glottalization and/or labialization. The language also allows long sequences of obstruent consonants. These and more familiar phonetic characteristics are described through analysis of acoustic, electroglottographic, and aerodynamic data, and compared with related characteristics in other languages of the world.

There is an interactive tool available separately from http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/research/tool.php