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Documentation and ethnolinguistic analysis of Modern South Arabian

Category
Completed Projects
Language documentation
Phonetics and Phonology
Research
Date

This community-based project is producing an audio-visual and written documentation of the endangered Modern South Arabian languages spoken in Oman and mainland Yemen. The Modern South Arabian languages (MSAL) are Semitic languages spoken by minority populations in southern and eastern Yemen, western Oman and the fringes of southern Saudi Arabia. You can go to the website here: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/info/125219/modern_south_arabian_languages/.

At this stage in the project, I am looking for one or two students to assist in inputting metadata relating to speakers, sound files and audio-visual files into CMDI: http://cmdi-maker.uni-koeln.de/. I am also looking for a student to assist in the analysis of instrumental and phonetic data collected from speakers of the languages. On 16th March 2016, we will be holding a workshop at the University of Leeds on endangered languages with Dr Mandana Seyfeddinipur from the Endangered Languages Documentation Project at SOAS, London, and you may be involved in helping organise the event.

If you join our team, you will learn about documenting endangered languages and the value of involving the local communities in documentation. You will meet language consultants from the communities when they come to Leeds, and you will learn about the languages we are documenting and encounter sounds which are rare in languages of the world. You may even become interested in learning one or more of the languages involved and conduct your own research on some of the many materials we have collected since the inception of the project.

Relevant fields of linguistics:

  • Corpus linguistics
  • Phonetics

Student profile:

  • Expertise required in PRAAT (http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/)
  • Expertise in EPG and Laryngograph is desirable, and otherwise a willingness to learn
  • Knowledge of Modern South Arabian is not required.

Activities to be undertaken by RES student:

  • Provide metadata in CMDI format for sound files, audio-visual files, speakers and still photographs
  • Assist in the collection of instrumental and acoustic data
  • Assist in the analysis of acoustic and instrumental phonetic data

Start date: Negotiable

End date: 8 weeks later

Hours per week: 3

Number of possible students: 3

Students who have questions about this project should contact Professor Janet Watson on [email protected]

If you would like to work on this project, please complete an RES application form. If your application is successful, the supervisor will be in touch in due course.