Across mountain and sea: Bringing language to linguists

• Main Authors: Déchaine, Rose-Marie, Crippen, James, Cooley, Bessie, Guntly, Erin, Hansson, Gunnar, Martin, Carolyn, Martin, John, Matthewson, Lisa, Moore, Patrick, Twitchell, Lance
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: Canada; Yukon; tlingit; Alaska
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10125/25281

We report on a project bringing Tlingit language speakers to the University of British Columbia (UBC) as resident consultants for one academic year. Spearheaded by community members, this project contributes to a model of “best practices” (Penfield et al. 2008) for community-based language research. Our goal was to establish a sustainable long-term collaboration by building community and scholarly capacity for language revitalization, research, and training. Our successful integration of theory, practice, and application included: (i) New relationships with fluent speakers from two Tlingit speech communities (Coastal and Inland). This is a breakthrough, as modern nation-state boundaries between Alaska (USA) and the Yukon Territory (Canada) have obscured traditional Coastal-Inland relations. To date, most linguistic research has focused on Coastal Tlingit, so having access to both varieties allows us to document previously un-described differences. (ii) Student training for future work on the language: a field methods course parallels the research project, allowing us to train several undergraduate and graduate students, a subset of which continue to work on the language. (iii) Collaboration between linguistic subfields: leveraging expertise in different subfields (phonology, syntax, semantics, linguistic ethnography, and language pedagogy) affords a breadth of scope that would otherwise be impossible. (iv) Inter-institutional and international collaboration: the project involves two research institutions (UBC and University of Alaska Southeast) in two different countries (Canada, USA). This is especially important in Canada, as no Canadian-based research is currently conducted on Inland Tlingit. (v) Outreach within the university community: the project features in the Language of the Year initiative undertaken by UBC Linguistics, which brings to the attention of the university community the contribution that field-based linguistic research makes to language stabilization and revitalization. Bringing speakers to ...