Workshop: October 22-23, 2021
Linguistic Fieldwork and Documentation Training in Indonesia
Goal of Program
This website documents a training program in linguistic fieldwork and language documentation that was funded by a grant from the Documenting Endangered Languages Program of the National Science Foundation (DEL) to the University of Delaware (award BCS – 1747801, grant title “Collaborative Approach to the Documentation of Endangered Languages in Linguistically Diverse Locales”) and was conducted in collaboration with the Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia and the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA), an affiliate of the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS). The project was directed by Peter Cole and Gabriella Hermon, from the University of Delaware. It provided an opportunity for American graduate students in linguistics to gain training in linguistic fieldwork and documentary linguistics. Students from the U.S. traveled to East Indonesia (specifically to Nusa Tengarra Timur) for a six week training program that started out in Kupang on West Timor island. The American graduate students were paired with local Indonesian students (undergraduates and recent graduates) who were interested in documenting their own languages. After an intensive six day training program in Kupang, trainees spent three to four weeks in the field on one of the islands of East Nusa Tengarra, before returning to Kupang for a final training session.
In the summer of 2018, we initiated the program with, we believe, considerable success. Eight Indonesian participants and four U.S. graduate students formed teams that were trained to collaborate in documenting and describing a local language spoken in one of the communities found on West Timor and various surrounding islands. In the summer of 2019 four similarly formed American/Indonesian teams underwent training in Kupang, Indonesia, and then spent around four weeks documenting a second set of languages/dialects in East Indonesia. During both years, the teams returned to Kupang for a week of additional training and to help prepare the data they had gathered for archiving (submitted to Paradisec). During their field placements, students were supervised by local experts who specialize in fieldwork and language documentation: Dr. Jermy Balukh from the Institute of Foreign Languages Studies, Cakrawala Nusantara, Kupang, and Dr. Yanti from Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia, Jakarta (with the latter also acting as the general project coordinator in Indonesia).
The project was carried out with the assistance of the American Institute for Indonesian Studies (AIFIS). AIFIS’s main goals are to foster scholarly exchange between Indonesia and the United States, and to promote educational, artistic, and research collaborations between the countries. AIFIS offers a variety of fellowships to support Americans working in Indonesia, and Indonesians working in the United States.
Like many projects, this one was adversely affected by Covid. The capstone workshop, which was originally planned to be held in person in late 2019, was postponed until 2021 and was held by Zoom. The materials and videos of presentations from this workshop can be accessed from the Workshop page of this website.
