Linguistlist.org

-------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF THE INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES OF THEAMERICAS Editor - Victor Golla (golla@ssila.org)Associate Editor - Scott DeLancey (delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu) -->> --Correspondence should be directed to the Editor-- <<-- __________________________________________________________________________Number 129: January 9, 2001__________________________________________________________________________129.0 SSILA BUSINESS* Results of the 2000 elections* Call for papers: 2001 Summer Meeting (UC Santa Barbara, July 6-7)129.1 CORRESPONDENCE--Re: teacher certification (M. Awakuni-Swetland)--Re: Melungeons (R. Troike)--Finding SIL publications (A. Bickford)--Mystery phrase (T. Donovan)129.2 WEBSITES OF INTEREST* BAE publications online* Updated list of publications by SIL-Mexico* The Open Language Archives Community129.3 SURVEY OF LANGUAGE AND CULTURE RETENTION ON THE NORTHWESTCOAST129.4 E-MAIL ADDRESS UPDATES --------------------------------------------------------------------------129.0 SSILA BUSINESS * Results of the 2000 elections^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^The Secretary-Treasurer received 169 ballots by the announced deadline(Dec. 31, 2000). Of these, 13 were cast electronically, the remainderby paper ballot. Elected were: VICE PRESIDENT (2001) & PRESIDENT-ELECT FOR 2002: Ken Hale MEMBER-AT-LARGE OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE (2001-03): Akira Yamamoto MEMBER OF THE NOMINATING COMMITTEE (2001-03): Karen Dakin * Call for papers: 2001 Summer Meeting (UC Santa Barbara, July 6-7)^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^The 2001 SSILA Summer Meeting will take place on the weekend ofJuly 6-7, on the University of California campus at Santa Barbara, inconjunction with the LSA Linguistic Institute. The meeting will beco-hosted by WAIL (the Santa Barbara Workshop on American IndigenousLanguages). Local organizers will be Marianne Mithun and Greg Brown.
The WAIL/SSILA meeting will be directly followed on Sunday July 8 bythe annual meeting of the Friends of Uto-Aztecan, to be held at theSanta Barbara Museum of Natural History.
Members of SSILA and others who would like to present a paper are askedto submit an abstract by *March 15*, preferably by e-mail to _both_ ofthe following addresses: Marianne Mithun <mithun@humanitas.ucsb.edu>Gregory L Brown <glb2@umail.ucsb.edu> If e-mail is not possible, then abstracts may be sent by snail-mail to: WAIL/SSILA ConferenceDepartment of LinguisticsUniversity of CaliforniaSanta Barbara, CA 93106 Abstracts may also be sent by fax to: 1-805-563-1948 The preliminary program will be announced around April 1. This earlydeadline has been set in order to allow participants to make travel andlodging plans in good time.
A small registration fee will be charged to cover the cost of the meetingspace, coffee, and a supper party on Saturday evening. Participants whoregister for the meeting before May 1 will be charged the "early bird"fee of $25; after May 1 (including at the time of the meeting) the feewill be $35. To register, please mail a check (payable to "WAIL"),together with the following information: NameAddressE-mail addressPaper title (if any)Lodging arrangements (if you have made them) Santa Barbara is a favorite destination for visitors during the summermonths and as a result, hotel rooms will be scarce and expensive. Withthe Linguistic Institute in town, there will be even greater pressureon the usual resources. WAIL/SSILA participants are encouraged to makelodging and travel plans as early as possible.
On-campus lodging in the San Rafael Guest House will be available toWAIL/SSILA participants during the conference. The dormitory roomsare part of suites containing a common living area and bathroom. Thereare two to four private bedrooms in each suite. The current rate foron-campus housing is $50 per night, with additional fees for parking.
Meals are not provided with these accommodations, but will be availablein other campus residence halls. The person to contact for a reservationis Miki Swick, Manager of Campus Campus Conference Services, Housing &Residential Services. Her e-mail address is <mswick@housing.ucsb.edu>,her fax is 1-805-893-7287, and her mailing address is: Santa RosaAdministrative Center, UCSB, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA93106. Be sure to mention that you will be attending the SSILA/WAILconference.
A selective list of off-campus accommodations is available and will bedistributed with the January SSILA Newsletter. It will also be postedat the SSILA website, together with other meeting information.
Further questions should be addressed to the meeting organizers.
(The next regular meeting of SSILA will be held with the LSA in SanFrancisco in early January 2002. The call for papers for that meetingwill be sent out in April and abstracts will be due on September 1.) --------------------------------------------------------------------------129.1 CORRESPONDENCE Re: teacher certification^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^>From Mark Awakuni-Swetland (mawakuni-swetland2@unl.edu) 27 Dec 2000: With regard to Armelle Denis's inquiry (Bulletin #128.1) about specialprovisions for Indian language teachers: In 1999 the Nebraska legis-lature passed a bill that attempted to address the issue of certifyingNative language teachers by their respective tribal governments. Myunderstanding is that the Omaha Tribe, in Macy, has begun to implementthis provision, although I don't have the details of the test involved,or where the proposed teachers would be employed. The Omaha Tribe canbe reached at 402/837-5391. Below is the relevant section of the bill(LB 475).
--Mark Awakuni-SwetlandUniversity of Nebraska, Lincoln(mawakuni-swetland2@unl.edu) > Section 1.
>> (1) Teaching American Indian languages is essential to the proper> education of American Indian children. School districts and post-> secondary educational institutions may employ approved American Indian> language teachers to teach their native language. For purposes of> this section, approved American Indian language teacher means a> teacher who has passed the tribe's written and oral approval test.
>> (2) Approved American Indian language teachers that do not also> have a Nebraska teaching certificate shall not teach any subject> other than the American Indian language they are approved to teach> by the tribe.
>> (3) Each tribe shall develop both a written and an oral test that> must be successfully completed in order to determine that a teacher> is approved to teach the tribe's native language. When developing> such approval tests, the tribe shall include, but not be limited to,> which dialects will be used, whether it will standardize its writing> system, and how the teaching methods will be evaluated in the class-> room. The teacher approval tests shall be administered at a community> college or state college.
Re: Melungeons^^^^^^^^^^^^^^>From Rudolph C Troike (rtroike@U.Arizona.EDU) 1 Jan 2001: Re the inquiry about "Melungeons" in the Appalachians. I believe thisquestion was discussed fairly definitively in the ADS-L (American Dialect Society list) recently. The information should be available intheir archive, which is searchable on-line at: --Rudy TroikeTucson, Arizona(rtroike@U.Arizona.EDU) Finding SIL publications^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^>From Albert Bickford (linguistics_mexico@sil.org): Recently, SIL on the international level has changed its name from"Summer Institute of Linguistics" to "SIL International". SIL-Mexico,where I work, still uses the traditional name in its full form, plusthe Spanish "Instituto Linguistico de Verano", as well as theabbreviations SIL and ILV, but other SIL subdivisions in the Americasare doing different things.
The title "SIL Publications in Linguistics" now refers only to itemspublished in Dallas by SIL International. It does not include bookspublished by regional subdivisions such as SIL-Mexico or the SILbranches in Colombia, Brazil and Peru. Each of these groups has itsown substantial publication program. (SIL-Mexico, for instance, has aseries of over 40 bilingual dictionaries, five grammars, a series ofworkpapers, and other things of interest to SSILA members.) If youwere to write to the Dallas address and ask for a catalog of theirpublications, I think it would be unlikely that you would getinformation on these regional publishing operations. You wouldprobably get a list only of the things published in Dallas. (Thegeneral SSILA website -- www.sil.org -- has links to the websitesmaintained by the various branches, but without any indication thatspecialized publications can be ordered only at those sites.) I realize that, to the outside world, SIL often seems like a monolithicentity. In fact, the work in each country tends to function somewhatindependently of the rest of the organization, and this is especiallytrue in the Americas. This independence, I believe, helps SIL do abetter job in publication, since we can put out more things this waythan we would if we had a single centralized operation, and the editingand production can be done closer to where the authors are. However,it can make some publications harder to find.
It would be good if the "Regional Networks" section of the SSILANewsletter could help people zero in more directly on resources thatSIL has available for specific parts of the Americas. Could you perhapsinclude contact information for the different SIL branches, either byexpanding the existing general paragraph on SIL or by adding a separatenew paragraph for each branch? --Albert BickfordSIL-Mexico(albert_bickford@sil.org) [We will follow this advice, beginning in the January Newsletter. -VG] Mystery phrase^^^^^^^^^^^^^^>From Tony Donovan (donovan@post.com) 4 Jan 2001: I once heard a phrase which stuck in my mind. I know it's from anAmerican Indian language and I'm pretty sure it means 'goodbye'.
The phrase is .OSHONE NASHADE.
I've been told it's definitely not Lakota, Caddoan or Northern Siouan.
Would readers of the SSILA Bulletin have any idea what language thephrase is in, or could they suggest how I might find out? --------------------------------------------------------------------------129.2 WEBSITES OF INTEREST * BAE publications on-line^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^>From Maggie Dittemore (dittemorem@sil.si.edu) 27 Dec 2000: The Biblioteque nationale de France's "Gallica" has scanned and madeavailable online a large number of BAE Annual Reports and otherpublications (linguistics included). They are in a rather cumbersomePDF format, but they are there. The URL is: Click on Catalogues on the top bar. You can search in several differentways, but the way that seems to bring up the most (?) hits is to type"Bureau of American Ethnology" in the title word box or "mots du titre."You can also get a few other Smithsonian publications by typing in"Smithsonian." --Maggie DittmoreSmithsonian Institution Libraries(dittemorem@sil.si.edu) * Updated list of publications by SIL-Mexico^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^>From Albert Bickford (albert_bickford@sil.org) 2 Jan 2001: I have just posted updated pages about publications by SIL-Mexico and itsmembers. These consist of a bibliography of recent publications, recentconference presentations, a list of published dictionaries and grammarsby language family, and a price list with ordering information. Thesepages are all accessible from one central page: My thanks to all who have helped in compiling these pages! --Albert BickfordLinguistics Electronic Editor, SIL-Mexico(Albert_Bickford@sil.org) * The Open Language Archives Community^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^A worldwide group of archivists and information managers has recentlyorganized the "Open Archives Initiative" (OAI). This Initiative isconcerned with establishing general standards to facilitate theefficient on-line dissemination of content between archives and serviceproviders. The specifications of a proposed interoperability archi-tecture will be released to the wider public at a meeting in Washington,DC on January 23. Further information on the OAI is available at: The Open Language Archives Community (OLAC) is a network of languagearchives conforming with the Open Archives Initiative, founded at the Workshop on Web-Based Language Documentation and Description,Philadelphia, December 2000. The OLAC has a website under constructionat: Currently available at the site are five draft documents: 1. The Seven Pillars of Open Language Archiving: A Vision Statement 2. Requirements on the Infrastructure for Open Language Archiving 3. A Survey of the State of the Art in Digital Language Documentationand Description 4. White Paper on Establishing an Infrastructure for Open LanguageArchiving 5. Supporting Archive Communities in the Framework of the Open ArchivesInitiative At present, six organizations are working with the OLAC as PrototypeData Providers. Among the alpha testers who work with American Indianlanguage materials are Steven Bird (Linguistic Data Consortium, U ofPennsylvania), Gary Holton (Alaska Native Language Center), WallaceHooper (American Indian Studies Research Institute, Indiana U), andGary Simons (SIL International).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------129.3 SURVEY OF LANGUAGE AND CULTURE RETENTION ON THE NORTHWESTCOAST >From Guy Buchholtzer (guyb@paris.com) 5 Jan 2001: A survey of language and culture retention on the Northwest Coast isbeing organized by Guy Buchholtzer, an associate of CELIA (Centred'Etudes des Langues Indigenes de l'Amerique, Centre National de laRecherche Scientifique, Paris) in close collaboration with elders,members and organizations of the Kwak'wala speaking communities, theU'mista Cultural Society of Alert Bay, B.C., and the First NationsHouse of Learning at the University of British Columbia.
The purpose of the project is to describe and to evaluate certainaspects of the multidisciplinary and multicultural nature of presentlanguage teaching and retention strategies in First Nation communities.
The inquiry focuses primarily on the cultural aspects of this process, both at (a) the research and teaching levels (university, community);and at (b) the interactive and interpersonal/cross-generational levelbetween potential keyholders of language and culture survival, namelythe elders and the (mostly) younger learners. A third aspect of theproject will consist of collecting, organizing and centralizing allpertinent and available cultural and linguistic information pertainingto Kwakwaka'wakw communities for local educational, cultural andhistorical studies. Buchholtzer has made a proposal to the U'mistaCultural Society to set up within its walls a Centre for Kwakwaka'wakwLanguages and Dialects; the proposal has been accepted, has the supportof the Society, and work has begun.
A first step for Buchholtzer will be to complete the bibliographicalproject which has been under way for several years (1,200 entries todate) in order to get a broad overview of the materials publishedabout Kwakwaka'wakw language and culture in general. Researchers andteachers are invited to sent their list of publications at the addressgiven at the end of this report. Their contribution will be mostappreciated.
To address phase (a) of the project, it is crucial that First Nationsresearchers and educators have the opportunity to review existingresearch and teaching of Amerindian disciplines done outside theircommunities and in other countries. To this end, Buchholtzer arrangedfor the director of the First Nations House of Learning at UBC, DrJo-Ann Archibald, to visit Paris in October 2000, where Amerindianlanguages and cultures have been regularly taught since the 1970s.
He arranged a meeting with researchers in Amerindian languages (CELIA,CNRS) and with anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss at the Laboratoired'Anthropologie Sociale, College de France. Linguists Michel Launeyand Duna Troiani (CELIA) and anthropologist Emmanuel Desviaux (Collegede France) were on hand in Paris. The visit coincided with aninternational symposium in Amerindian ethnolinguistics held at CELIA.
This exchange of scholars and Dr Archibald visit to France was madepossible thanks to the generous assistance of the French GeneralConsulate in Vancouver and M. Emmanuel de Calan, Conseiller Culturelof the French Embassy in Ottawa.
For further information, please contact Guy Buchholtzer 306-2621Quebec Street, Vancouver, B.C. V5T 3A6 Canada; or by e-mail toguybuch@vcn.bc.vca.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------129.4 E-MAIL ADDRESS UPDATES Bender, Margaret .benderm@wfu.eduCroese, Robert A. .rcroese@charter.netde Gerdes, Marta Lucia.Klaus_Gerdes@t-online.deMcKiver, Beverley .bmckiver@aol.comRankin, Robert L. .rankin@ku.eduVellard, Dominique .dominique.vellard@irin.univ-nantes.frvon Wichert, Paul.umvonwi0@cc.umanitoba.ca **************************************************************************THE SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF THE INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES OF THEAMERICAS------------------------------------------------------------------------Victor Golla, Secretary-Treasurer & Editor P. O. Box 555Arcata, California 95518-0555 USA------------------------------------------------------------------------tel: 707/826-4324 - fax: 707/677-1676 - e-mail: golla@ssila.org Website: **************************************************************************

Source: http://linguistlist.org/ssila/Bulletins/Archive/bull129.pdf