Tag Archives: featured

Announcements

University of Hawaii Linguistics Department ranked 10th Nationally according to the 2023 Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings

 

 

The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa has been internationally recognized as one of the world’s top universities across multiple subject areas, including linguistics, anthropology and geology, according to the 2023 Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings by Subject released on July 10.

UH Mānoa placed in the world’s top 100 and the country’s top 25 in five narrow subject areas:

  • Linguistics: No. 19 worldwide, No. 10 U.S.
  • Anthropology: No. 51–100 worldwide, No. 18 U.S.
  • Geophysics: No. 44 worldwide, No. 19 U.S.
  • Geology: No. 44 worldwide, No. 19 U.S.
  • Earth and marine sciences: No. 51–100 worldwide, No. 20 U.S.

Complete story can be found here.

Alumni News, Faculty News, Publications

Andrea Berez-Kroeker, Bradley McDonnell and Eve Koller published The Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management

MIT Press has just published The Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management, which was edited by Andrea Berez-Kroeker (Professor), Bradley McDonnell (Associate Professor), Eve Koller (PhD 2017) and Lauren B. Collister (U Pittsburgh). The Handbook, which is fully free and Open Access and can be found here, features 56 chapters including several from current and former UH faculty and alumni: Gary Holton, James Grama, Nala Lee, Matthew Lou-Magnusson, Luca Onnis, Bodo Winter, and Rory Turnbull. The volume offers a guide to linguistic data management, engaging with current trends toward the transformation of linguistics into a more data-driven and reproducible scientific endeavor. It offers both principles and methods, presenting the conceptual foundations of linguistic data management and a series of case studies, each of which demonstrates a concrete application of abstract principles in current practice. An online companion course can be found here.

Faculty News, Publications

Jejueo: The Language of Korea’s Jeju Island

The University of Hawaii Press has just published Jejueo: The Language of Korea’s Jeju Island, co-authored by Changyong Yang (adjunct professor), Sejung Yang (PhD graduate, 2018) and William O’Grady (professor of linguistics). This long-awaited book tells the story of a language that has gone unrecognized for too long and is now in grave peril. Once the island’s primary variety of speech, Jejueo currently has only a few thousand fluent speakers and has been classified by UNESCO as critically endangered.

The book, which is the first comprehensive treatment of Jejueo in English, offers both an introduction to the language and an in-depth survey of its grammar, supplemented with hundreds of examples. The authors present  a provocative new picture of linguistic diversity in East Asia, undermining the centuries-old belief that Korea is home to a single language and making the case for a new language policy in that nation.

Faculty News, Publications

Word Hunters: Field Linguists on Fieldwork Available Online

A new book entitled Word Hunters: Field Linguists on Fieldwork is now available for all valid UH affiliates (student, staff, and faculty). Our very own Dr. Robert Blust is featured in the book’s third chapter, titled “Historical linguistics in the raw.”

Thank you to Ph.D candidate Anna Belew for the notice! She had the following to say about the publication:

If you’re new to fieldwork and wondering what it’s really like, or if you love reading anecdotes from your fellow field linguists, good news! Hamilton just bought the ebook of a new volume called Word hunters: Field linguists on fieldwork. It’s got chapters from some of the biggest, baddest field linguists out there, including Bob. Check it out: 1) because it’s interesting, and 2) so that Hamilton will see that we actually use the books that we request they buy, and will keep buying the books we request!

(Photo courtesy of R. Blust & John Benjamins Publishing Company)

Conferences, Faculty News, General Interest

Dr. Gary Holton will be Keynote Speaker at LLL Conference

Our very own Dr. Gary Holton, who specializes in language documentation and conservation, will be the Keynote Speaker at this year’s LLL Conference “L4 : Languages, Linguistics & Literature for Life,” to be held on Saturday, April 7th. Dr. Holton’s talk is entitled, “Language Documentation: What Is It and What Is It Good for?”

Also, mahalo to Sydney Ludlow, our current MA student, who is serving as one of the Student Conference Chairs!

Registration is free and open to the public; be sure to sign up before April 2nd to guarantee a free lunch after listening to Dr. Holton’s talk!

Faculty News, Publications

101 Problems and solutions in historical linguistics: a workbook

This 512 page workbook in historical linguistics, authored by Dr. Robert Blust, will be published by Edinburgh University Press in February, 2018. It contains 101 problems and solutions covering 5 distinct problem areas (the establishment of genetic relationship among languages, sound change, phonological reconstruction, internal reconstruction, and subgrouping). Flyers are being mailed to Dr. Blust, and should arrive soon.

Alumni News, General Interest, Publications, Research Activities

Macanese Creole Patua is ‘Critically Endangered’

2014 PhD alumna Dr. Nala Huiying Lee has been featured in the Macau News for her study on Patua, a Portuguese-Asian Creole. The language has fewer than 50 speakers, making it “severely endangered” based on the absolute amount of speakers.

The study is also published in Language Documentation & Conservation Vol. 12 (2018), pp. 53-79.

To read the full original article on the Macau News website, please click here.

Faculty News, General Interest, Publications

Dr. Al Schütz’s 1977 Publication Republished in Fiji Times Feature Series

Beginning in late 2017, the Fiji Times (“The First Newspaper Published in the World Every Day”) has been reprinting chapters of Albert J. Schütz’s Diaries and Correspondence of David Cargill, 1832–1843 (Australian National University Press, 1977). This book covers three main themes:

  1. The first deals with the Wesleyan missionaries’ conversion of the Fijians to Christianity.
  2. The second concentrates on linguistic matters: Developing Fijian’s unusual but efficient alphabet; writing the first grammar and dictionary of a Fijian language; discovering extensive language/dialect variation; and eventually choosing a lingua franca.
  3. The third describes Cargill’s extreme reaction to unimaginable “field” conditions in Tonga and Fiji, which eventually affected his professional and personal life.

Schütz is grateful to the Fiji Times editorial staff for making this book available to local readers, thus giving them easy access to an important, but mostly unknown, part of Fijian history.

Read the 9-part series:

  1. Part 1 (published 29 Oct, 2017)
  2. Part 2 (published 14 Jan, 2018)
  3. Part 3 (published 12 Nov, 2017)
  4. Part 4 (published 19 Nov, 2017)
  5. Part 5 (published 26 Nov, 2017)
  6. Part 6 (published 03 Dec, 2017)
  7. Part 7 (published 10 Dec, 2017)
  8. Part 8 (published 24 Dec, 2017)
  9. Part 9 (published 07 Jan, 2018)
Faculty News, General Interest, Publications, Student News

Dr. William O’Grady and Ph.D candidate Sejung Yang help in publication of Jejueo language textbook

A sample page from the textbook. Courtesy of Sejung Yang.

Dr. William O’Grady and Ph.D candidate Sejung Yang, along with Dr. Changyong Yang from Jeju National University, have seen the first volume of their Jejueo textbook published on July 5, 2017. The textbook, written for Korean speakers, is the first of its kind for Jejueo, recognized by several international groups (including UNESCO, Endangered Language Group, and Ethnologue) as an independent language rather than a dialect of Korean.

The textbook is the first in a projected four-volume series. You can purchase the textbook from Kyobo (website in Korean).

For more information, including small previews of the book, please read the Center for Korean Studies article.