Medumba [BYV] Linguistic Fieldwork and Collaborative Language Development

本项目是对喀麦隆西部的一种东部班图语Medumba的声调进行研究。在1970年代，对梅敦巴语进行了一些描述和分析，很快就发现该语言的音调系统构成了重大挑战，并在重要方面与周边地区的班图语不同。这种语言及其近亲是“飘调”理论构建的基础，也是其在理解降音方面的关键作用。 对这一现象的推理与名词类系统的事实密切相关，名词类系统已被分段衰减，导致各种结构中非常复杂的语气实现模式。 本研究的目的是解决一个复杂的网络的问题，语气，名词类，并在很大程度上未描述的口头语气模式。这项研究包括四名研究生实地工作者在喀麦隆进行为期一个月的实地工作。它将提供一个更新的语言描述，沿着回答有关在各种情况下实现语气的具体问题。这些数据将被用于在音调系统的竞争账户之间做出决定。这个项目的意义在于几个方面。首先，它将大大增加语言科学对Medumba的了解，Medumba是一种语言，它体现了一种特别复杂且在理论上重要的音调系统。声调类型学的学术研究仍在发展中，本项目的成果将有助于这些努力。 其次，该项目将为四名研究生提供培训，他们都致力于成为理论上知情的语言实地考察专家。随着越来越多的语言灭绝，语言科学的压力越来越大，以充分了解其余语言的语法多样性范围。 随着该领域加紧努力描述和记录这些剩余的语言，培训年轻科学家使用最佳实践进行此类工作势在必行。学生们将在访问喀麦隆之前参加一个关于语言实地考察和非洲声调系统的国际暑期学校。最后，他们将开始与爱沙尼亚的一个应用语言学组织建立伙伴关系，这将有助于在殖民语言双语化继续侵蚀的情况下努力维持该语言。该伙伴关系的目的之一将是编制梅敦巴语书面材料，包括一本词典。该培训和经验由NSF国际科学与工程办公室的非洲，近东和南亚分部共同资助。再加上五位资深语言学家的进一步指导，它将帮助这些年轻的科学家为该领域最紧迫的领域之一的基础设施做出贡献：描述和记录未被描述的语言。

This project is a study of tone in Medumba, an Eastern Grassfields Bantu language spoken in Western Cameroon. Some description and analysis of Medumba was carried out in the 1970s, and it quickly became apparent that the tone system of the language poses significant challenges and differs in important ways from the Bantu languages found in surrounding areas. This language and its close relatives were the basis for the theoretical construct of "floating tone" and its critical role in understanding downstep. Reasoning about this phenomenon was closely linked to facts about the noun class system, which has become segmentally attenuated, resulting in very complex patterns of tone realization in a variety of constructions. This research aims to resolve a complex web of questions concerning tone, noun class, and largely undescribed verbal tone patterns. The research consists of one month of field work in Cameroon by four graduate student fieldworkers. It will provide an updated description of the language, along with answers to specific questions about the realization of tone in a variety of contexts. These data will then be used to decide between competing accounts of the tone system.The significance of this project lies in several areas. First, it will substantially increase what is known to the linguistic sciences about Medumba, a language that exemplifies one particularly complex and theoretically important type of tonal system. Scholarly work on the typology of tone is still developing and the results of this project will contribute to these efforts. Second, the project will provide training for four graduate students, all of whom are committed to becoming theoretically-informed linguistic fieldwork experts. As more languages become extinct, pressure grows on the linguistic sciences to fully understand the range of grammatical diversity in the remaining languages. As the field intensifies its efforts to describe and document these remaining languages, it is imperative to train younger scientists to conduct such work using best practices. The students will attend an international summer school on linguistic fieldwork and African tone systems prior to their visit to Cameroon. Finally, they will begin a partnership with a Cameroonian applied linguistic organization, which will contribute to efforts to sustain the language as bilingualism of colonial languages continues to encroach. One purpose of the partnership will be to develop written materials in Medumba, including a dictionary. This training and experience is co-funded by the Africa, Near East, and South Asia division in NSF's Office of International Science and Engineering. Combined with further mentoring by five senior linguists, it will prepare these young scientists to contribute to the infrastructure of the field in one of its most pressing domains: the description and documentation of under-described languages.