Category: Papers

The phonology of Tajio Sija

Christina Truong with Derek Harman
Working paper based on original data. 2015.

This paper explores the phonology of the Sija variety of Tajio by comparing it with published research on other Tajio varieties, namely Kasimbar (Mayani 2013) and Sienjo (Himmelmann 2001). Sija is a village in West Sidoan, Parigi-Moutong, Central Sulawesi. Much of the data presented in this paper were collected and recorded in September 2015 in Palu, Central Sulawesi. Other supplementary data were collected by Derek Harman in Sija between 2007-2016 with a variety of speakers.

While Tajio Sija and the Central varieties from Kasimbar and Sienjo exhibit a rather low degree of lexical similarity for (what are considered) closely related varieties, our study shows that Tajio Sija is quite similar phonologically to the Central varieties. Additionally, our investigation of nasal obstruent sequences and reduplication in Tajio raises some questions. It is unclear what might motivate marked initial NCV patterns to emerge as an allowed or even preferred reduplicant shape. Tajio reduplication patterns may also shed light on the question of whether the reduplication base is best considered to be a phonological unit or a morphological unit.

Participatory methods for language documentation and conservation: Building community awareness and engagement

Christina L. Truong and Lilian Garcez
Article published in Language Documentation and Conservation, Feb 2012.

This paper describes three participatory methods to engage communities in research, planning, implementation, and evaluation of language programs for their own benefit. In the first activity, participants build a map of language variation, intelligibility, and language attitudes in their community. In the second activity, patterns of bilingualism among demographic subgroups are diagrammed and analyzed by the community. In the third activity, the community creates a diagram of their language use in various domains. Several pilot tests of the methods were conducted with minority language speakers in Malaysia and Indonesia. Using participatory methods creates an opportunity for the community to participate in, shape, and own collaborative initiatives for their language.
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