BF Journal: 10/22 - 10/29

Apparently I cannot figure out how to get Blogger to do IPAish stuff.  So it does the symbols just fine but changes colors in response? 

10/22 – 10/24

The first few days of officially working toward a goal with Jula and Vigue are over (I am eliciting words in both for now) and I have more questions than answers.  So many questions.  Perhaps more accurately: so many things that I do not know yet what to with them yet or how to begin investigating them.

I am not sure how long I will continue with Jula alongside of Vigue.  I do however, intend to fill in my created dictionary with both, before moving on to serious syntactic and morphological elicitation.  I may limit my Jula to just dictionary stuff for now.  That said, I do have future plans for Jula brewing.

I am settling into a routine with my consultant.  Mornings and sometimes early afternoon is for elicitation.  Right now it is just dictionary words, but that will change soon enough.  For the rest of the day, I sit there and feel like a moron.  I mean, I do analysis.  Yes, linguisty analysis.

By analysis, I mean I stare at Praat and listen to my recordings attempting to figure out if I have any idea what I am doing with the tones of both languages.  Jula is simple enough in principle: one high tone and one low tone, but there is more going on than simple lexical tone.  The tones definitely interact and change depending on position and/or morphology (word parts such as suffixes and roots).  I have no idea yet, without eliciting more than words and two/three word phrases.  But I may not do that with this language on this trip anyways.

Vigue is not so simple and I am very hesitant to talk about it right now since I know very little.  However, this is a blog where I promised to keep you all updated.  Take everything with a gigantic bag of salt.  Basically, I have no idea what I am looking at.

What I mean is: I expect three tones because other Gur languages have three tones.  I also think I am hearing three tones when transcribing.  I hear a rising tone (usually word initially, which I am unsure about).  I can hear a falling tone, especially after rising ones and near the end of words (which might not actually be a falling tone, but just normal declination or movement to the target level).  I hear a level or mid tone too.  Sometimes my transcriptions match very well with Praat (I know, I know, sorry linguists) and other times they are way off.  Like, I hear a low level tone for a falling high to mid tone or something.  And I am not actually sure if there are three lexical tone levels in this language or if the different tone levels are because of declination since most of my transcriptions and subsequent Praat viewing show one pattern.  A rising tone, then a falling tone, then level and/or more falling tones (regardless of category (noun, verb, or adjective)).  I think I may be up against some sort of elicitation pattern, but then I get wildly different ones, every so often.  So, long story short, I am still working on it.

10/25 – 10/29

Well, I am still unsure about tones, but I think I have a handle on the phonetic inventory (sounds that appear in the language) and some basic phoneme (sound units that distinguish meaning) ideas with the exception of nasals and glides (w and y).  Like other areal languages, Vigue has nasal vowels (ex: ɔŋ, eŋ), nasal consonants (ex: ŋ & n), and prenasalized stops (ex: mb, nd).  This makes segmentation difficult sometimes.  If there is a nasalized vowel before a stop consonant beginning another syllable the nasalization often assimilates the place of articulation of the following consonant.  This is isn’t terribly unsurprising but it can be tough to know if it is a prenasalized stop or a nasal vowel.  For example it took me a while to figure this one out because natural speech is not all that segmented.  Note: my tone analysis is still garbage, so some of these are wrong and I don’t even know it yet.

jíndí wèŋwèlɔ̀  ‘curious’

Nasals can also get interesting because they might affect each other similarly.  I thought this next example was a geminate palatal nasal for a while.

nwɛ́ŋɲò  ‘wave (v)’

Vigue also has labiovelar co-articulated consonants, such as:

k͡pɔ́ŋbɔ̀  ‘give birth’

Thus making segmentation of a nasalized vowel, a syllable final voiced velar (coda consonants are rare but previously attested), and a voiced bilabial consonant particularly fun.

nɛ́ŋgbɔ̄  ‘point (v)’

I didn’t know if it was:

nɛ́ŋ.g͡bɔ̄  -or-  nɛ́ŋg.bɔ̄  -or-  nɛ́.ŋg͡bɔ̄

It’s the middle one.

I am also unsure if I want to call [w] and [j] glides or vowels.  My consultant likes both at various times so I am having trouble locating a pattern, if there is one.  I am starting to think there isn’t one since there are other vowel clusters.

dóɔ̀rɔ̄  ‘plan (n)’

However, my brain WANTS to categorize them all the same way.  Because I MUST FIND ALL THE PATTERNS!!!!

As for my daily life, our routine got disrupted yesterday (10/28) because Bakari’s son is sick.  He had to leave but everything seems to be okay now.  I did not go to the village with him because I am little early in my elicitation to have much of an agenda in the village.  However, I would like to go again soon.  Especially after I have started eliciting simple grammar.  I would like to get texts to work with as early as possible.

I cannot recall if I mentioned this previously, but I am going to the gym with Zaki two or three times a week.  And getting huge.  By huge I mean I am trying to not get out of shape.

My social circle is growing a bit.  As this happens I have noticed something.  Everyone wants to set me up with someone.  EVERYONE.  Apparently this is rather normal here, but I am very not used to it.  I thought about just telling everyone that I have a girlfriend back home (not actually true), but the guys I live with know better.

In other news, I want to kill all the flies in the solar system.  I am going to look for another racket since nobody else is.  Or maybe I will find a sweeter gadget with which to wage war.