Program: Tertulia Junior Faculty Colloquia
Title: Papua New Guinea: A proposal for collaboration
Slides: here.
Papua New Guinea is a linguistic paradise boasting at least 850 diverse languages in an area the size of California. Though field linguists, anthropologists, and biologists have flocked to PNG for decades to explore its beauty, the southern region of the country is still relatively undocumented. In this talk, I will illuminate some fascinating aspects of language and life in Southern New Guinea, focusing on the area where Ende is spoken, the language about which I wrote my dissertation. I will show some photos, maps, and videos and try to convince some of you to collaborate with me in this exciting field.

with Danielle Barth, Dineke Schokkin, James Stanford, and Catherine Travis
Google Group: here.
Workshop slides: here.

Variation off the beaten track: Expanding our understanding of social structures
In recent years, there has been an increased interest in the intersection of documentary linguistics and sociolinguistics. This means that more and more sociolinguistic work is being done with non-Western communities, and more documentary linguists are incorporating variation and sociolinguistic patterning into their grammar writing and documentation. In this workshop, we share our experiences of analyzing linguistic variation in under-documented languages, while trying to understand the effects of social structures both familiar and unfamiliar in Western communities as they play out in surprising ways. We present case studies from Papua New Guinea, China, and Vanuatu. How can we understand an under-studied social variable such as clan and how it interacts with community contact, alliances, social networks, and obligations? How might we reconceptualize age as a variable, which may have differing meaningful divisions from culture to culture, and may vary in the role it plays in innovation and diffusion? We discuss some specific problems we have faced, which are not necessarily exclusive to those working in “exotic” locations, such as: difficulties in interpreting variation due to lack of anthropological and ethnographic background, data sparsity, the transcription bottleneck, unbalanced sampling, and challenges in reconciling variation and abstraction in describing linguistic structures. This workshop is aimed at both documentary linguists who are interested in looking at sociolinguistic variation in the languages they are working with, and at sociolinguists who have encountered similar issues in their own research. We present some of our solutions and will have a portion of the workshop dedicated to discussion with workshop participants for sharing their ideas and experience.

Nick Evans, Dineke Schokkin, and I presented our work in reconstructing the phoneme inventory of proto-Pahoturi River. This presentation focused on the reconstruction of the liquids. Although there are at most three liquids in each PR language, there are five distinct correspondence sets across the family.
Slides

​Is Ende reduplication phonological copying or morphological doubling?
Ende infinitival verbs are an interesting puzzle for the Dual Theory of reduplication (Inkelas 2008), which distinguishes phonological and morphological doubling as formally and functionally distinct phenomena. In Ende, infinitival reduplication is sensitive to phonological structure (monosyllabic verb roots reduplicate, multisyllabic verb roots do not reduplicate) and to morphological structure (monomorphemic verb roots reduplicate, multimorphemic verb roots do not). The shape of the reduplicant may be phonologically-determined (CV template, TETU patterns) or morphologically-determined (total reduplication, no TETU patterns). In this talk, I will contrast the two potential analyses, showing that neither a strictly phonological nor a strictly morphological analysis can account for all the data, and suggest an alternative mixed approach.
 
Inkelas, S. (2008). The dual theory of reduplication. Linguistics, 46, 351–402.
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Thrilled to share the news that I just accepted a position in Boston University's Department of Linguistics for this Fallǃ I will be teaching phonology and fieldwork and continuing my research in southern Papua New Guinea, hopefully with some BU graduate students joining in on the fun. I'm so grateful for all the support from my friends and family this past year <3 ​

It was a fun experience to be interviewed for an in-flight magazine after reading so many of them over the years! This article came out in their January-February edition on all Air Niugini flights. 

Giving native speakers a voice improves linguistic data collection. In this talk, Kate Lindsey will detail the ways in which actively engaging native speakers in the linguistic exploration of the Ende language resulted in better research outcomes for her doctoral work on phonological variation in the Ende verb. This half-hour presentation will be followed by the screening of a short film, which is the culmination of collaboration between Ende community members, who directed and narrated the auto-documentary, and Lindsey, who provided technical training during an eight-week class.
 
The movie shows life as it was in southern Papua New Guinea before Christianity and how it all changed when two missionaries came from up river, and sent two Ende couples to bible school in the late 50s. They returned three years later as the first Ende pastors. The movie talks about the hardships they faced and how the arrival of Christianity came with the arrival of clothes, medicine, air strips, and schools. Ende Tän e Indrang is a unique ethnographic document as it details the cultural conversion of a little-known tribe from their own perspective. 

​Film: Ende Tän e Indrang ‘Light into Ende Tribe’. Papua New Guinea, 30 mins. In Ende language with English subtitles.

BY ALEX KEKAUOHA
Three years ago, linguistics PhD student Kate Lindsey was looking for new research projects when an advisor told her about a small tribe in Papua New Guinea that was seeking help preserving their language, called Ende. The tribe invited Lindsey to stay with them and create a dictionary and grammar, as well as translate various texts from English. Deciding that this field research could be developed for her dissertation, Lindsey set out a year ago for the tiny village, called Limol, 7,000 miles away.

Full Article here.

​An end. A beginning.


I’m settled in at Kwale and Aruwa’s house. Our second home in Upiara. The run up to this departure was so exaggeratingly slow, that I’m surprised at how fast the past two days have felt. 

Tuesday was my last work day in Limol, and consequently everyone who had ignored my requests for language help in the last two weeks came at the same time to help. I was able to get a few good recordings in and I also recorded some tutorials in Ende for how to use the camera and video cameras. Otherwise I spent the day organizing the corpus for leaving here and finishing some last minute transcriptions. 

I spent all day Wednesday packing, giving things away to friends, and organizing what I’m leaving for Catherine as clearly as possible. The men all went hunting and the women went for fish. I went with Wagiba our dog Maya for sago and got my 18th run in a row! Wagiba said some really nice things to me, like how nice my Ende has gotten and how I’m everyone’s daughter in the village. We had a really nice feast. Quite a few people gave thank you speeches which felt good. At least seven mothers brought me a plate of food! Though I had more work to do on the computer, I decided to have one last showing of the Ende movie and Moana for everyone. People really liked it. 

This morning was filled with last minute packing, pictures, and goodbyes. It was sadder than usual since I’m not sure when I’ll come back next. Everyone kept telling me all the old people will die while I’m gone, which, obviously, added to the sadness. But it actually felt quite rushed, I walked out of the village and it was hard to tell if my backpack was more full with my few possessions or leaves and flowers slipped in by my friends.

Now I’m in Upiara after an uneventful but very slow canoe ride in the hot sun. I sweated in two layers, a rain coat, and an umbrella but I think I avoided sunburn. I am looking forward to this trip to Daru, as I’m taking Wagiba with me on the plane and I know she will help me get what I need to get done done. Besides the usual shopping for Limol, my top priority is to get some recordings of an Agob speaker - Agob is the last language we need for a full survey of the Pahoturi River language family. I also hope to get a lot of transcribing done and to watch the World Cup final, but that depends on how many people come to visit and the TV channel selection at Tobest. Fingers crossed!

While this is an end to something big - my year here ‘down under’ - I also see it as the beginning of the last year of my PhD, which I am really, really excited to begin. This year will be all about writing, publishing, presenting, applying for jobs, and networking. I’ve got quite a few papers and talks lined up, and I’m excited just to do my best and talk about my work - which is something I still love! Many people experience getting burnt out from their dissertation, so perhaps I’m lucky that I had even more frustrating things to get burnt out on that my relationship with my thesis is still in tact :) hope it lasts through the year!

For now my mind is all on Australia. A few papers, presentations, meetings, and even a movie premiere are all scheduled for the next two weeks. I’m also starting my writing bootcamp, which is four hours of writing every morning, which I hope to keep up throughout the year! Penny is also taking me out for a birthday dinner (!) and Andrey has booked me a day at the spa (!) so I’m looking forward to getting nice and pampered too. 

Feeling good,
Kate

With the generous help from people who contributed to my Light for Limol campaign, the Ende Language Team was able to bring in 120 solar lanterns and 2 water rollers for Limol! We will be bringing more in on future trips, but for now enjoy this photo of all the mothers in Limol with their new solar lanterns. Feeling very grateful to be a part of something that means so much to the people of Limol.

Another enormously successful field trip to Limol in the books. I learned so much, not just about the language, but about what it means to be kind, generous, and selfless, Ende qualities that abound in KT village. This picture is of me and "the boys" who make this crazy dictionary/grammar/corpus thing happen! Jeff, Joshua, Warama, Tonny, and Jerry far right. Couldn't do what I do without their hard work and awesome attitudes!​

Today, I take off for beautiful Australia for a year of fieldwork and collaboration at the Australian National University! It was a tough decision to take a year "off" and leave home but I know that I need this year to understand the Ende language well enough to do it justice in my dissertation.

Spent the weekend down in Virginia getting my Wilderness First Aid certificate! I learned so much information and also how much I have still to learn but I feel more confident that I can help someone in an emergency. Will put this patch on my first aid kit for PNG ​

I am happy to announce that I will be moving to DC for the summer on an invited visiting scholarship at my alma mater, American University. I will be hosted by the Department of World Languages and Cultures. I'm so grateful to my undergraduate advisor Professor Naomi Baron for making this happen.
​While at AU, I will be preparing for this year's fieldtrip back to Limol and beginning to write my dissertation.

​I am very happy to report that I have been awarded support from the Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration and Field Research. They have accepted my proposal to collect and annotate the Ende spoken corpus and expand the Ende dictionary and grammar. Their support will go directly toward this important documentation task that has been requested directly by the Ende speaking community. I feel very honored to have their support and look forward to sharing this with Limol. 

​Today, I received the wonderful news that my proposal to continue research on the phonology and morphology of the Ende verb was accepted by the Stanford Vice Provost for Education Diversity Dissertaiton Research Opportunity fund. This grant will support travel and equipment fees related to my dissertation.

​I learned today that the Stanford Graduate Research Opportunity fund accepted my proposal to continue field research on the phonology and morphology of the Ende verb. Their generous support will support travel and equipment fees related to my dissertation.

​On May 6, I completed my first 100-mile bike ride - the Wine Country Century - to raise awareness for my Light for Limol campaign. During the month of April, I shared videos and stories about life in Limol, where solar powered lanterns and water rollers will make a big difference in the lives of Ende speakers. My goal was to raise $1000 to bring 2 water rollers and 40 solar lanterns - one lantern for every house in Limol. My friends and family went above and beyond to support me and as of May 6, we raised $2025 for Limol! This money will go to 4 water rollers and 80 solar lanterns, which will be shared between the villages of Limol and Malam.

Our second trip to Limol was an amazing success.

​Our research team included Grace Maher, Diana Johnson, Elizabeth Conlan, Catherine Scanlon, and Gwynn Lyons.