Documentation & Application

CoLang 2022 practica offer participants an intensive experience working with speakers to document a language as well as to produce materials to contribute to the community's needs. Students must attend the first two weeks of workshops in order to participate in the practica. Practica at CoLang 2022 (June 27 - July 8) differs from a typical field methods course in being intensive, community-centered, and building from the skills acquired in the preceding workshops.  

Language Options

Participants who wish to register for a practicum will select one from the Northern Cheyenne or South Bolivian Quechua sections which are offered simultaneously. 

Prerequisites

Ideally, participants in practica should have completed, at a minimum, one university-level course in phonetics/phonology and one university-level course in morphology/syntax, or the equivalent. Participants without this background or who have no linguistics background are advised to register for Introduction to Linguistics 1, Introduction to Linguistics 2, and Writing What Is Recorded (Transcription) during the two-week workshop session.

South Bolivian Quechua Practicum

South Bolivian Quechua (quh) is a widely spoken variant of the language of the Inca empire which was further spread by Spanish invaders and closely related to the variety spoken in Cuzco, Peru. Even within Bolivia, the language has different varieties. This practicum provides an opportunity to deepen our understanding of South Bolivian Quechua through direct interaction with first language speakers from different parts of Bolivia. 

We will look together at various sources of information about the language in its local, regional and global contexts.  We will practice strategies for eliciting, transcribing, interpreting, analyzing, and organizing new linguistic data.  We will look at primary data collected and archived by the presenters. We will also revisit the curriculum materials proposed during the Pre-practicum workshop, deepening our understanding of how intellectual property and rights of access may be understood in communities of origin.

The overall goal of the practicum is to learn from the perspectives and experiences of first language speakers, develop our linguistic-analytic and field methods skills, exercise the capacity as an inclusive group to make informed inferences about South Bolivian Quechua and consider how to communicate our appreciation of the language to communities that speak it or want to reclaim it today.  

We will supply a syllabus and supplemental reading list for all participants.

The consultants speak Quechua, Spanish and English and participants will experiment with different languages of consultation.

Requirements for participants: 

• Please participate in the South Bolivian Quechua (SBQ) Pre-practicum in Week 2
• There are no prerequisites beyond those outlined for the practica (see above) and the SBQ pre-practicum workshop.
• SBQ-practicum schedule.

What to bring:

• Laptop, pen and paper
• Optional: audio/video recording devices, preferably with WAV and HD recording capacity (we’ll bring our own Zoom Q4Handy video recorder for in-class practice)

Suggested text: Bowern, C. 2008.  Linguistic Fieldwork: a Practical Guide. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

Recommendations of CoLang workshops:

• Documenting conversation (Week 1)
• Animating traditional stories as pedagogical tools for language reclamation (Week 1)

Facilitation Team:

• Susan Kalt, Carlos Flores Quispe & Gaby Vargas Melgarejo

Northern Cheyenne Practicum

Cheyenne (chy) is an Algonquian language spoken in both Montana (Northern Cheyenne) and in Oklahoma (Southern Cheyenne). This practicum involves working with members of the Northern Cheyenne community and allied linguists to collaborate on Indigenous language work. Practicum leaders Richard Littlebear and Burt Medicine Bull are first language speakers of Northern Cheyenne, language advocates, teachers, and Cheyenne language experts. Practicum leaders Wayne Leman and Sarah Murray are linguists who have worked with the Northern Cheyenne community and Chief Dull Knife College for many decades. Together, we will learn about Northern Cheyenne, prioritizing community perspectives, and integrate practice of documentation methodology. 

This practicum is open to all and is aimed at anyone who is interested in community-based Indigenous language work, both members of the Northern Cheyenne community as well as all other students. 

Schedule

Week 1
Block 1 9:00-10:30
Block 2 10:45-12:15
Block 3 1:30-3
Block 4 3:15-4:45 

Facilitation Team:

• Richard Littlebear, Burt Medicine Bull, Wayne Leman, & Sarah Murray

Cheyenne Texts project team at CDKC.Left to Right: Sarah Murray, Desta Sioux Calf, Wayne Leman, Chloe Ortega, Richard Littlebear, Jessie Angel-Brian, Haley Ash-Eide, Mina Seminole, Carol-Rose Little, Anthony Whitedirt