UHM Linguistics affiliates published together

Language Isolates, edited by Dr. Lyle Campbell, has been released in the Routledge Language Family series (2018). The work surveys the world’s language isolates, which form approximately one-third of the world’s “language families”. Contributions from people connected with University of Hawai’i linguistics (as current or former faculty and students) include a survey of the language isolates of Mesoamerica and Northern Mexico by Raina Heaton, a chapter on the endangerment of language isolates by Eve Okura Koller, a description of Burushaski by Alexander D. Smith, a sketch grammar of Ainu by Thomas Dougherty, and an introduction and a chapter on language isolates and their history by Lyle Campbell.

A.L. Blake awarded Luce Graduate Research Fellowship

A.L. Blake was awarded the Luce Graduate Research Fellowship for the project, “Documenting the botanical language of the Abui people of Alor Island, East Nusa Tenggara province, Indonesia.” Blake will be doing interdisciplinary research this summer in order to document ecological knowledge encoded in the Abui language. Emphasizing Abui nomenclature, classification, characteristics, and use of food- and medicinal- plants, the project generates Abui audio- and video- recordings, with accompanying transcriptions and translations, as well as high-quality photographic images of plants.

Ryan E. Henke presents at SSILA

PhD student Ryan E. Henke presented a paper, “The development of possession in the L1 acquisition of Northern East Cree”, at the 2018 Winter Meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA) in Salt Lake City, UT. In support of this presentation, Henke was awarded a travel grant from SSILA.

Ryan E. Henke receives GSO Award

Congratulations to PhD student Ryan E. Henke for receiving a Graduate Student Organization grant award. This grant supported his summer research project assisting with community efforts to document Nakota, a Siouan language spoken in Alberta, Canada.

UH linguists publish new book about department’s Catalogue of Endangered Languages project

Cataloguing the World’s Endangered Languages, just published, describes the creation and findings of the Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat, available at www.endangeredlanguages.com). The chapter authors and the editors are current or former linguists in the UHM Department of Linguistics, and members of the ELCat team. The book is edited by Lyle Campbell and Anna Belew, with chapters written by Russell Barlow, Anna Belew, Lyle Campbell, Yen-ling Chen, Bryn Hauk, Raina Heaton, Nala Lee, Sean Simpson, and John Van Way.

Cataloguing the World’s Endangered Languages outlines the research on which ELCat is based, discusses challenges and approaches to large-scale language cataloguing, presents new findings about the state of the world’s endangered languages, and outlines ELCat’s potential applications for students, funding bodies, researchers, and language communities.

The book is published by Routledge, and can be seen at: https://www.routledge.com/Cataloguing-the-Worlds-Endangered-Languages/Campbell-Belew/p/book/9781138922082