(June 4) Recently a Language Documentation and Conservation (LDC) conference was held at the University of Hawaii from February 26 to March 3, 2015. Over 450 participants from around the world joined together to share new ideas and techniques, and also to make progress in challenging the communities that speak endangered languages to join the cause. Dr Jim Ellis of the Isles of the Sea project presented a top-down approach to writing grammars. Jim writes about this conference, “At the conference there were some 220 presentations given. Quite a few of these were about, or at least had something to do with, the role of pedagogical grammars in LDC. Apart from my own, there were no other presentations using a top-down approach to teach grammar.”
Dr. Stephen Levinsohn from England, who has spent many years teaching mother-tongue speakers around the world how to understand and make use of their own language, is guiding Jim through the building of a new kind of reference grammar for the Carolinian language group, one that begins with what the islanders are already familiar with—narratives and stories.
Jim writes, “That means the grammar begins with the big picture: understanding the linguistic features that make sentences sound right in the context of a whole story—the discourse level. Then, within the framework of discourse, the grammar moves on to show how sentences are built in Carolinian languages and how they differ from English constructions. And then, within that context, to explain how phrases are built in Carolinian languages. Then, within that broad context—and not until that context is built — help Carolinians understand the process through which they create words by building them from morphemes and phonemes. As mother-tongue translators increase their understanding of how their own language works, the result is a Bible translation that feels like their own language— and less like a national language like English. This allows them to read and hear the truths of God in a language that really speaks best to their hearts.
Jim Ellis explaining the top-down grammar at the conference in Hawaii
Dr. Stephen Levinsohn consulting on the Carolinian grammar project