Medumba [BYV] Linguistic Fieldwork and Collaborative Language Development

这个项目是对喀麦隆西部所说的东部草原班图语Medumba语调的研究。20世纪70年代对梅登巴语进行了一些描述和分析，很快就发现，这种语言的声调系统构成了重大挑战，并在重要方面与周围地区的班图语有所不同。这种语言和它的近亲是“浮调”理论建构的基础，以及它在理解下台阶中的关键作用。对这一现象的推理与名词类系统的事实密切相关，名词类系统已经变得分段弱化，导致了各种结构中非常复杂的语气实现模式。这项研究旨在解决一个复杂的问题网络，涉及语调，名词类别，以及大部分未被描述的动词语调模式。这项研究由四名研究生田野工作者在喀麦隆进行了一个月的田野工作。它将提供对该语言的最新描述，以及对有关在各种上下文中实现声调的具体问题的回答。然后这些数据将被用来决定音调系统的相互竞争的描述。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梅登巴语的了解，梅登巴语是一种特别复杂且理论上重要的声调系统的例证。声调类型学方面的学术工作仍在进行中，该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，他们都致力于成为了解理论知识的语言田野调查专家。随着越来越多的语言灭绝，语言科学面临着越来越大的压力，要求他们充分了解剩余语言中语法多样性的范围。随着实地加紧努力描述和记录这些剩余的语言，必须培训年轻的科学家使用最佳做法开展这类工作。在访问喀麦隆之前，这些学生将参加一个关于语言田野调查和非洲语调系统的国际暑期班。最后，他们将开始与喀麦隆的一个应用语言组织建立伙伴关系，这将有助于在殖民语言的双语继续侵蚀的情况下努力维持这种语言。合作的目的之一将是开发梅登巴语的书面材料，包括一本词典。这次培训和经验是由美国国家科学基金会国际科学与工程办公室的非洲、近东和南亚分部共同资助的。再加上五位资深语言学家的进一步指导，它将使这些年轻的科学家做好准备，为该领域最紧迫的领域之一的基础设施作出贡献：对描述不足的语言进行描述和记录。

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.