BF Journal: 11/15 - 11/22

11/15

Today’s work seemed to drag on a bit.  I can tell that I am growing weary of grabbing vocab and checking tones.  I will likely start grammar elicitation earlier than expected.  My plan will likely evolve to building vocab for checking noun and verb classes alongside very basic grammar.  I like shaking things up and not always following the plan. 

Don’t get me wrong, it is important to have a plan.  I like doing what Abbie Hantag suggested, going into each day with a question I want to try to answer.  That was some of the best advice I have gotten so far.  But being able to go with the flow is important too.  Especially when you don’t find what you think you will.  That is nearly guaranteed to happen.

Later, Oumar and I went to a Jazz concert at the French Institute.  I did not meet anyone because everyone was just seated watching the concert but it was a good concert.  I will likely go again sometime.  I am anxious to check out their library anyways.

11/16

Today’s work went half vocab and half beginning elicitation of pronouns (a start to grammar elicitation).  This was more challenging than I recall it ever being in any other language I have worked with.  It was challenging because my informant did not quite understand what I was after when I asked for some things.  However, it opened things up and I have tons of questions about pronouns. 

In the following examples you can see the paradigm I get with most verbs.  There are apparently multiple forms of the third person singular subject pronouns.  You can see the copula construction doesn’t have a verb ‘to be.’  However, I am much more interested in the unusual forms of the pronouns with ‘BE small.’  You can see this is not the case with all copula constructions too with the example ‘BE red.’  I have some ideas I will test when I do these again in a few days.

ɲūɔ̄ɲbɔ̠  ‘to eat’

1SGSubj     mīŋ ɲūɔ̄ɲ

2SGSubj     wāā ɲūɔ̄ɲ    

3SGSubj     a / (yā) yī ɲūɔ̄ɲ    

1PLSubj      sāvā sā ɲūɔ̄ɲ

2PLSubj      āŋvā āŋ ɲūɔ̄ɲ        

3PLSubj      sā tāŋ sā ɲūɔ̄ɲ       

ɲīsībɔ̠  ‘to go’

1SGSubj     mīŋ ɲise̠

2SGSubj     wāā ɲise̠

3SGSubj     a / (yā) yī ɲise̠

1PLSubj      sāvā sā ɲise̠ 

2PLSubj      āŋvā āŋ ɲisē̠

3PLSubj      sā tāŋ sā ɲise̠

BE red

1SGSubj     mīŋ saŋse̠

2SGSubj     wāā saŋse̠

3SGSubj     a / (yā) yī saŋse̠

1PLSubj      sāvā sā saŋse̠        

2PLSubj      āŋvā āŋ saŋse̠       

3PLSubj      sā tāŋ sā saŋse̠

BE small

1SGSubj     mūŋ bāŋrɔ̠̀ŋ

2SGSubj     wāɔ̄ bāŋrɔ̠̀ŋ

3SGSubj     a / (yā) yū bāŋrɔ̠̀ŋ

1PLSubj      sāvā sɔ̄ bāŋrɔ̠̀ŋ

2PLSubj      āŋvā ɔ̄ŋ bāŋrɔ̠̀ŋ

3PLSubj      sā tāŋ sɔ̄ bāŋrɔ̠̀ŋ

I also realized today that I might not be as good about taking my malaria prophylaxis as I would like.  Today was my 3 month anniversary here.  I have bottles of 90 pills which I supposedly take every day.  However, I had twelve left in the bottle…

11/17 – 11/18

More attempts a establishing precisely the pronoun system.  I can tell you at this point that I need more time.  I suspect part of my trouble is still that my consultant doesn’t always know what I want.  This is likely my fault for not explaining things clearly.  And he seems to attempt to put things into what I think is the past tense randomly.  I realize that this is not likely random and it is part of something subtle I have yet to pick up on.  But until then, it really messes with me and my pretty paradigms. 

11/19

Today was a little disheartening.  After spending a couple days on some pronouns and a few verb conjugations, I had decided that today (morning and afternoon) would for tone checking the previous days’ work with Bakary.  However, my recordings were useless.  There was a loud hum in all of them.  Never mind a decent F0 track, some parts were so bad that most formants (harmonic frequencies used to evaluate vowel qualities) were wiped out too.  After trying different settings on my recorder with my consultant for hours this morning, we narrowed down the problem.  It was naturally the one thing that I hoped it wasn’t.  My directional microphone no longer works with my recorder for some random reason.  Great.

This means I must settle again for using recording settings that pick up everything.  If you work in an open area because you must available to everyone when they need something (which is the case with me), then there is a lot of background noise.  The directional mic was amazing for removing most of this.  I might turn into some sort of sound police.

11/20

I had to work without the microphone today because I did not find a solution.  It wasn’t too terrible but we had to stop and pause a lot for other noises.  Such as: people talking in the same room as me (because I am required to work in the living room when Jeff is not here), doors opening and closing, telephones going off, etc.  The recorder I am using is very good.  Almost too good.  It wasn’t impossible to work, but this will get annoying fast.

In other news, broke my phone because I am graceful.  It fell out of my pocket into the smallest puddle in the world.  I guess it is time to waste more money on phones.  I didn’t do that enough back in the U.S. or anything.

Bakary and I did a long session today on verbs and I hope our recording took.  We agreed on almost all of the tones.  This could mean that we are getting better or we suck equally.  I’d really love to check.

11/21

Bad news on the recordings again.  I am getting pretty frustrated with all this.  After more experimentation it was determined to be that the mic gives the constant disruptive tone with my Zomm H4.  When I record with Praat it does not.  The Zoom is also giving a little bit of an issue with a constant band on energy without the mic.  However, I found a good setting for the Low Cut filter, which seemed to erase that.  To be clear, it wasn’t mind or nearby electronics making the sound, but that setting worked anyways.

I planned something more interesting tomorrow for Bakary and me because today was very trying on both our patience.  And it was disheartening that we lost the recording for yesterday’s session.  We were both feeling very good about it.

11/22

Learning greetings and such was fun today!  That and numbers.  There is nothing unusual about the numbers really.  It is a base-ten system.  The words for numbers combine in predictable ways. 

11 = 10 +1

538 = (5 +100), (3 +10), 8

Other than that, everything was pretty quiet and I plan on going to bed early.  On a Saturday.  In a foreign country.  I am so lame.