BF Journal: 10/15 - 10/21

10/15

Today was filled with fine tuning my first version of the dictionary that I will use.  I am excited and nervous for tomorrow.  I also sort of just want to get started, even I if I am not 100% perfectly prepared.

10/16

We went to Kanrankasso-Vigue today and met a potential consultant.  Jeff went off into the woods for a couple hours to do some plants with Minkailou and someone we met the first trip out there.  Bakari (our new friend), Zaki, and I went to the village market (which occurs every Thursday) and looked around.  Then we went to a sort of bar-ish place in the village and had a couple brews, ate some goat (NOT BABY GOAT), and waited for Jeff to return.

Bakari looks to be about 18 and has a pleasant disposition.  We made the arrangements to bring him back to Bobo for a few days to see how it goes.  After he got settled this afternoon I did a short session with him where I elicited a few words in Jula and in Vigue, to show him how it goes.  Jeff did a few animals and plants with him after.  Tomorrow will be my first chance to really see what he knows.  And to dust off my ears a bit.  I do plan to elicit Jula and Vigue (or perhaps another language eventually) at the same time for my dictionary.  The grammar that I eventually write will be Vigue, obviously.

He seemed to understand that the process will start slowly at first and he’s cool with it.  I will test his ability to read and write in French (which is kind of weird for me to do) before we make any decisions.  If all goes well, you keep hearing about my adventures with Bakari.

We plan to go out tonight with our new guy, but he’s a bit of a strict Muslim, so no alcohol for him.  I wonder how this will go…

10/17

Day one with Bakari went pretty well.  We did the planned four hour elicitation session in the morning.  I grabbed words in both Jula and Vigue.  Somewhere in the third hour I started to feel like I couldn’t hear tones anymore.  Since it is very early on in the process, I am probably not hearing them correctly yet anyways.

I recorded the session, but I need to boost the gain next time.  Or use an external mic.  I brought one and a backup.  In the afternoon I took a look at some words in Praat to see how well I did.  I can almost hear all of my linguist friends cringing right now.  I JUST DID IT AS A GUIDE, OKAY?!  Actually, it was pretty encouraging.  According to the varying levels in Praat, I am pretty decent at Jula tones.  Less so in Vigue, but that is a three tone system, not a two tone one (like Jula).  Well, I think so.  However, my ear appears to be well trained enough to hear tone changes, but with words that contain several syllables: I seem to have difficulty getting the high, mid, and low tones correct.  I presume this will get better with time.  After looking at Praat this afternoon, I am almost certain I cannot hear tones now. 

Linguists can skip the next paragraph:

For those who have no idea what I am talking about with tones and Praat, I will explain.  Praat is an acoustic analysis software (and it is free).  It allows people to extract reasonably accurate measurements of certain acoustic phenomena.  Speech scientists have discovered some of the acoustic (sound wave) phenomena that correspond to certain differences in people’s speech.  One of them is called “fundamental frequency” or “F0.”  This is calculated by measuring how well successive glottal pulses (vocal fold vibrations) correlate with each other.  These vibrations will create sounds waves that are collectable by instruments (obviously).  It turns out that this is the signal that our brains turn into pitch.  It gets slightly more complicated since we perceive this signal logarithmically, but you can see this signal going up and down (visually) with a program like Praat.  For examples: you can see this signal going up and down when singers do scales and you can see it rise at the end of questions (for English speakers).  So anyways, that is what I was looking at.

I resigned myself to reading and writing for the rest of the night.  And I spent an hour downloading a clip of John Stewart talking about white privilege with Bill O’Reily.  I watched Jurassic Park with everyone toward the end of the night.  It was… longer than I remember.

10/18 – 10/19

 Jeff and Minkailou went to Karankasso-Vigue on 10/18 after lunch.  I worked on my tone recognition with Praat.  Sue me.  And again on the 19^th.  My consultant is really good at helping me with my transcriptions already.  I taught him a few IPA symbols and he is able to assist with my transcriptions.  His lexical knowledge in Vigue is a bit lacking, but I am concerned with getting the systems right and he appears to have sound intuitions for phonetic stuff.  Noun lists and such can be checked with older people.  He understands the grammar and is good at figuring out what I am after even if my French is not perfect (which it totally is not).  I will offer him the fulltime several month consultant/informant job.  If all goes well, I will be a working on a Vigue grammar before long.

In other news, the fly racket is busted.  I swear it was Jeff, not me!  The flies seem to immediately know and are much bolder.  They are advancing and I am losing the war.  I fear my days are numbered.  Someone find a way to send me some bullfrogs.

10/20

Bakari accepted!  Looks like I will working on Vigue.  We are going to Karakasso to meet with Jeff and Minkailou tomorrow to make arrangements!  I will try to recall snapping some pictures when I get a minute.

It is kind of exciting for some other reasons too.  The first is that I simply cannot find anything written on Vigue.  I have lost my access to most academic journals since leaving Dartmouth, so it is possible that something is out there, especially since I only did a cursory look.  However, I easily found info on Turka and Dogosé.  I might be legitimately starting from scratch!  It is also exciting because I have noticed some interesting phonological interactions.  I don’t want to spill the beans yet in case I am totally wrong, but I am already enjoying the process of picking apart the phonology (well, what little I have done so far).

10/21

We went to Karaknasso to make arrangements for Bakari to work with me over the next several months.  Everything went smoothly and he is back at the house with me.  I also met the guy who helped arrange everything in the village for me.  He is was very congenial.  I forgot his name though, sorry.  Apparently Bakari has some family in Bobo too, so I presume I will meet them at some point.

My plan, for at least the next few sessions, is to do more of the same work.  That entails grabbing vocab words in isolation (with my sort-of dictionary).  After this I am hoping to start constructing very simple sentences to get some idea about tonal interactions and other phonological processes not occurring in isolated words.  If I find anything cool, I will let you all know.