Over the
past few days most of the kinks that inevitably came up while trying to get
everything squared away for my project. We did what we could to get everything
we needed to ensure that my operation here runs smoothly.
It is nice
to have Bakary around again. He is a character. Those who are reading this who
know him will be happy to know that he still gets higher and higher pitched the
more excited he gets. It being our first week back together I don’t have much
righteous indignation to report though. Il
faut regarder. Bakary and I made some plans for our workflow and when we
might go to KV. The initial idea is to go next week but the end of Ramadan poses
some complications. We are planning to go the following week.
Monday was
very productive. Bakary and I were excited to start again. I got a solid five
hours of elicitation. My head wanted to explode, but it was totally worth it. I
am here with the intention of making progress on the tone system (at least in
nouns) and getting a clearer picture of the noun classifiers and whether or not
they actually count as a noun class/gender system.
I have also
been introduced (over the phone) to a woman who will come assist with my other
goal of commencing very general sociolinguistic-y interviews. I will conduct
some in French and she will do some in Jula as my skills in Jula are less than
adequate.
I have also
discovered my new favorite Jula word in the process of hearing about the ethnic
tensions regarding the mayor in KV.
(1) mɔgɔ-kɛlɛn-fanga-tigi
person-one-power-owner
‘dictator’
The story according to Bakary is that the previous mayor (a
Mossi) did everything behind closed doors so it was never clear what he did
with the money he was charged with dispensing. I heard a different story from the
missionaries I met (I think I mentioned them in my last post) who are planning
to start working on Viemõ this winter. They have been doing some digging into
the past history of villages and working on mapping them all out. We met at a Lebanese
restaurant and had a pleasant conversation. They seem super interested in
collaboration but I had to be more hesitant. This isn’t just because I am an atheist
but I would not be allowed to share data without permission. I am also absolutely
ethically forbidden (on both a personal and institutional level) to influence religious
practices of any human subject (in this case: the Vigue).
My work
with Bakary was not quite as impressive the past couple days. Yesterday, my
door broke two hours into our session (during a pee break) and that required
immediate attention. We also had to deal with getting regular internet access. It
took quite a while and Zaky had to wait at Onatel
for like three hours this morning. I need to find a way to make it up to him. It
is very important for me to be able to get into sociopolitical arguments with
my friends on facebook every now and then (I am only sort of joking). The
change in temperature/climate caught up with me and caused me to get a cold
later that day.
Today was
less busy but also not quite as productive regarding elicitation. The cold hit me
hard and after about two and a half hours I could barely stay awake. I took the
longest nap in the universe and I do seem to feel better, but it is not over
yet. I hope it is by morning as I do feel bad about missing time during this
short 2 month trip. My desire to train my consultant to transcribe and translate
texts is going smoothly though. He needs to get used to the system I made up
for him, but he really seems to enjoy it. I hope he can manage to send me some
during this next year. It will also be good for him since I can pay him for
those texts out of research funding.
I am also
beginning to see that sorting out this noun suffix system might require more
than one consultant. I am getting very inconsistent results that are hard to
interpret and I wonder if group discussion (between Vigue) of lexical items with
modifiers might be more fruitful.
We went
through a bunch of stuff people left behind last year. I found a book I was
missing and some canned air! I also found a copy of a book about African
languages (the Heine and Nurse one) that I have been meaning to purchase. I am
not sure anyone should own this copy though because it smells like… old.
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