1,720,992 research outputs found
Linguistic diversity among the Datooga
No full text<p>This presentation provides a brief overview of literature and new research on language variation among Datooga-speaking communities, with a special focus on the Asimjeeg (Isimjega) variety.</p>Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Griscom, Richard. 2019. Linguistic diversity among the Datooga. Talk given at the Rift Valley Webinar Series. 01/05/2019
Bush2Town: community-based research with the Hadza and Ihanzu
No full textThis presentation reports on successes, surprises, and failures experienced during the first year of a community-based language documentation initiative including teams of local researchers from the Hadza and Ihanzu indigenous communities of northern Tanzania, as well as future directions for the initiative in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change.
Acknowledgement and citation: Griscom, Richard. 2020. Bush2Town: community-based research with the Hadza and Ihanzu. Talk given at the Rift Valley Network Webinar Series. 09/09/2020
Southern Nilotic Impersonal Constructions from a Typological Perspective
No full text<p>This presentation will explore a set of cognate constructions in the Southern Nilotic family that have variably been described as passive, impersonal, and third person plural subject constructions. Based on their formal and functional features, it will be argued that the term “impersonal” is the most appropriate label to describe these constructions, and it will be demonstrated how the constructions align and do not align with generalizations from the typological literature on impersonals.</p>Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Griscom, Richard. 2019. Southern Nilotic Impersonal Constructions from a Typological Perspective. Talk given at the Rift Valley Network Webinar Series. 04/09/201
Our tongues are rare: the mysterious Dorobo language known as Omaiyo
No full textThe term “Dorobo”, taken from the Maa word iltorobo (“those without cattle”), is used to describe unrelated small hunter-gatherer communities of East Africa, many of which have integrated with larger pastoralist communities such as the Maasai. This report will describe a visit to the last speakers of an unclassified Dorobo language, known by linguists as Omaiyo, which was conducted in northern Tanzania in the summer of 2018.Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change.
Acknowledgement and citation: Griscom, Richard. 2020. Our tongues are rare: the mysterious Dorobo language known as Omaiyo. Talk given at the Rift Valley Network Webinar Series. 20/05/2020
Rift Valley Bibliography: An introduction
No full text<p>The Rift Valley Bibliography is an open access digital bibliography of publications related to the languages of the Tanzanian Rift Valley Area (Kießling et al. 2008) and associated speech communities. Version 1.0 of the bibliography includes over 400 entries and is accompanied by a collection of PDF files that is available exclusively for members of the Rift Valley Network. During this introduction to the bibliography, we describe its contents and structure, suggest various ways that it can be used, and explain how members of the Rift Valley Network can contribute to future releases.</p>Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Griscom, Richard, Andrew Harvey, and Jeremy Coburn. 2019. Rift Valley Bibliography: An introduction. Talk given at the Rift Valley Network Webinar Series. 10/07/2019
The Tanzanian Rift Valley Area: A prolegomenon for research and a network
No full text<p>The Tanzanian Rift Valley is unique on the continent in that speakers of all major African language phyla have been in contact here for quite some time (c.f. Kießling, Mous, and Nurse 2008, hereafter referred to as KMN 2008). KMN 2008, a foundational work on the study of the Rift Valley as a linguistic area, delimit the Rift as the area in which the following languages are traditionally spoken: Iraqw, Gorwaa, Alagwa, Burunge, (South Cushitic); Nyaturu, Rangi, Mbugwe, Nyilamba, Ihanzu, Kimbu, (Bantu); Sandawe (Khoisan); Datooga (Southern Nilotic); and Hadza (isolate). Caveats in this list include the fact that Datooga is comprised of a group of distinct varieties, as well as that the smaller “Dorobo” languages (genetic affiliation unknown), as well as the likely-extinct languages Aasax and Kw’adza (both probably South-Cushitic) should also be included here. In this talk, we seek to: 1) contextualize the Area in terms of i) geography and environment, ii) its speaker communities, and iii) previous research conducted pertaining to their histories, cultures, and languages; as well as 2) articulate the need for a Rift Valley Network at the current time, as well as describe the current makeup of the Network and the work conducted by its members.</p>Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Griscom, Richard, and Andrew Harvey. 2019. The Tanzanian Rift Valley Area: A prolegomenon for research and a network. Talk given at the Rift Valley Network Webinar Series. 20/03/2019
Report of Language Endangerment Workshop: Babati - July 2018 / Ripoti ya Kongamano la Lugha: Babati - Julai 2018
No full textOn July 16th and 17th, 2018, representatives from four different central Tanzanian ethnic groups met in Babati to discuss the changes currently experienced by their communities and the effects on their languages and cultures, as well as potential ways to combat any negative changes. The groups represented were the Gorwaa, the Asimjeeg Datooga, the Hadzabe, and the Isanzu. The Gorwaa and Isanzu had been invited by Andrew Harvey, a researcher who had been previously working towards documenting these languages. The Asimjeeg Datooga and Hadzabe were invited by Richard Griscom, a linguist working in Northern Tanzania with these two groups, primarily spending time documenting Asimjeeg Datooga. Both the Gorwaa and Asimjeeg Datooga groups have experience conducting research themselves, and the Isanzu and Hadzabe are preparing for similar projects themselves whereby they will start to conduct research themselves. The primary aims of the conference were to share experiences of cultural change, to build a network between different communities engaging in linguistic research, to exchange knowledge and lessons from different projects, and to discuss different options for potential revitalization or preservation.Note: This report has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change.
Acknowledgement and citation: Griscom, Richard, Andrew Harvey, and R. Lindfield. 2018. Report of Language Endangerment Workshop: Babati - July 2018 / Ripoti ya Kongamano la Lugha: Babati - Julai 2018
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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