Practica

Description: Through careful discussion and collaboration with speakers of the Akimel O'odham language, we will strive to document grammatical properties of the language of mutual interest, both to inform community language work and advance linguistic theory.

This practicum would be ideal for participants who would like to learn about collaborating with speakers to document and analyze grammatical features of mutual interest. 

CoLang workshop prerequisites and/or recommended experience: Some exposure to basic linguistic concepts such as 'subject', 'transitive', 'stress', 'agreement', 'transcription', etc would be helpful.

Non-CoLang prerequisites and/or recommended experience: Some experience with collaborative goal-setting would be hepful, valuing respectful interactions with expert elder speakers, openness to learning about cross-cultural differences, and a willingness to be patient and helpful to others as we all learn together. 

Required equipment and/or materials: You'll need paper and pencil, and access to a computer for typing up your daily notes and sharing them with the group. Audio recording equipment will be provided and daily audio files will be shared so you can cross-check them with your notes. 

Description: We will practice the documentation of conversations in Cook Islands Māori, and the process of turning these into a corpus. We will work with speakers of the language to transcribe conversational data. We will also do phonetic and syntactic analysis - supported by computer tools - to transform this data into a linguistically-annotated corpus.

This workshop is ideal for Linguistics students and community members who want to learn about tools to accelerate the analysis of the languages they are working with. This workshop is also useful for students and community members who want to practice techniques in linguistic documentation.or 

Objectives:

• Become familiar with natural language processing tools to accelerate the documentation of Indigenous languages. 

• Gain basic knowledge about the grammar of a Polynesian language and about common tools for linguistic analysis.

Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: We recommend that participants be comfortable learning new software and computer techniques.

Required equipment and/or materials: Participants will need a laptop computer to perform the work in the class.

Description: This practicum will focus on Group Mentor-Apprentice methodology. Participants will gain the skills necessary to run a GMA program in their own community and the ability to develop and assess GMA activities. Participants will develop these skills through live GMA sessions using the Piipaash language with Piipaash Elder Speakers. 

This practicum is ideal for language workers and linguists interested in a method that has successfully created speakers in indigenous communities. 

Objectives:

• Develop lesson plans for GMA immersion sessions. 

• Develop materials, routines and activities necessary for GMA to be effective

• Develop an awareness of the apprentice’s comprehension and language production ability

• Understand the concept of comprehensible input plus one in regards to GMA immersion set planning

• Be able to maintain an immersion setting with low affective filters 

CoLang Prerequisites and/or recommended experience: If you have never been involved with a language acquisition method that has created speakers in an indigenous community before, then it is highly recommended that you take the group mentor apprentice workshop in block D of week 2 to understand the theory behind the method. 

Non-CoLang prerequisites and/or recommended experience: Some experience with collaborative goal-setting would be helpful, valuing respectful interactions with expert elder speakers, openness to learning about cross-cultural differences, and a willingness to be patient and helpful to others as we all learn together. 

Required equipment and/or materials: You'll need paper and pencil, and access to a computer for typing up your daily notes and sharing them with the group. Audio recording equipment will be provided and daily audio files will be shared so you can cross-check them with your notes.