Books by Shobhana L Chelliah
Three styles of personal names are attested for the Meithei (Tibeto-Burman, Manipur State in nort... more Three styles of personal names are attested for the Meithei (Tibeto-Burman, Manipur State in northeast India): a native-Meithei style, a Hindu style introduced with the eighteenth-century adoption of Hinduism by the Meithei, and a "resistance" style typified by previously unattested structures and clan names. This article shows that those who espouse a clean break with Indian political and religious hegemony use resistance-style names, whereas those who favor strengthened ties between Manipur and India, while still cherishing pre-Hindu identity, move fluidly between use of Hindu and resistance-style names.
The Oxford Handbook of Endangered Languages, 2018
The purpose of this chapter is set up a blueprint on how to design and carry out a language docum... more The purpose of this chapter is set up a blueprint on how to design and carry out a language documentation project for an endangered spoken language. In reality, no one blueprint will suffice since there are many documenter profiles and a variety conditions for language endangerment. For instance, the documenter may be a leading figure in a community’s culture and literature committee, a linguist hired by a community to initiate a documentation project, a linguist pursuing an academic goal such as completing a dissertation or gathering data to answer research questions, or an academic, most often a linguist or linguistic anthropologist, collaborating with the community to document its language. The language to be documented could score well on a vitality scale or be in danger of going silent in the immediate future.
In this chapter, I will assume that the documenters are community members and academic researchers working together with shared goals and methods and I will further assume that the language to be documented has average vitality by UNESCO standards. That is, a majority of the population speaks the language even though most children are multilingual and use the language in limited domains; there is a writing system but not much by way of written literature or grammatical description; and although government educational policies do not support maintenance of the language, the community is interested in creating documentation towards revitalization.1 With this scenario in mind, I review factors which can impact the planning and implementation of a language documentation project. These factors are: immediate and long-term goals; the composition and effective management of the team undertaking the documentation; funding to support the required activities; technological proficiency and linguistic expertise; preparation for onsite and offsite data collection; data management; personnel management; and results dissemination.
There are two exciting facets of language description: the fieldwork
experience, which is necessa... more There are two exciting facets of language description: the fieldwork
experience, which is necessary for data collection, and the process of discovery and analysis that leads to the description of the target language. In order for our record of language structures to be as accurate as possible, data collection is best conducted using rigorous methodology. The goal of language description is often not to capture just one speaker’s internal grammar but to represent prevalent patterns for a community of speakers. In that sense, grammatical description is “fake” in that no one speaker will instantiate all the structures described in the grammar; at the same time, however, the grammar is “real” because the facts described therein are accepted by most speakers as accurately representing their language. The main product of descriptive fieldwork, whether a grammar or a targeted description of particular parts of a grammar, must therefore include data from a variety of speakers, favoring the most frequent patterns and noting common variations based on social or contextual factors.
Handbook of Descriptive Linguistics Fieldwork
This handbook provides the most comprehensive reference on linguistic fieldwork on the market bri... more This handbook provides the most comprehensive reference on linguistic fieldwork on the market bringing together all the reader needs to carry out successful linguistic fieldwork. The book is based on the experiences of two veteran linguistic fieldworkers and advice from more than twenty active fieldwork researchers. They provide an encyclopedic review of current publications on linguistic fieldwork and offer a unique survey of past and present approaches and solutions to problems in the field. They also examine the historical, political, and social variables correlating with fieldwork in different areas of the world. The book includes information omitted in most other texts on the subject, such as the collection, representation, management, and methods of extracting grammatical information from discourse and conversational data. Extensive practical fieldwork tips are provided, as well as a handy sketch of major typological features for use in linguistic analysis.
Papers by Shobhana L Chelliah
Political pedagogies, 2023
use the term Burma throughout to refer to the country known globally as Burma/ Myanmar, because t... more use the term Burma throughout to refer to the country known globally as Burma/ Myanmar, because this is the name preferred by most of our Chin team members. 3 General information and examples of practical resources can be found at https://www. chinlanguages.org/ and student-authored working papers can be found at https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/iwpsalc.
Opening ceremony of the 4th International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation
Opening remarks for the 4th International Conference on Documentation and Conservation, held at t... more Opening remarks for the 4th International Conference on Documentation and Conservation, held at the Ala Moana Hotel, Honolulu, Hawai'i, February 26-March 1, 2015
Resilient relationships: Lessons from working collaboratively at a distance
This Talk Story facilitates conversations on the success and challenges of carrying out language ... more This Talk Story facilitates conversations on the success and challenges of carrying out language projects and maintaining relationships at a distance. Together we build a collaborative written record of lessons learned from the current pandemic, which can serve to guide future language documentation projects where distance is a factor
Preservation and revitalization of Indigenous and endangered languages supports a resilient futur... more Preservation and revitalization of Indigenous and endangered languages supports a resilient future. Funding agencies have extensively supported efforts aimed at preserving and providing online access to unique and valuable collections of language data. However, a gap exists between the way language data is organized and represented in digital archives (mostly by the LIS professionals) and understanding of that dataand how it should be organized and representedby language preservation and revitalization researchers, members of language communities. The specifics of information objects collected by language archives and information needs of these collections' end-users are not currently examined in the LIS education. This paper presents the work of the interdisciplinary team of educators, researchers, and practitioners to address this curricular gap, and discusses lessons learned and future directions.
Guest interview SOAS Introduction to Language Documentation and Description
Interview with guest Prof Shobana Chelliah of University of North Texas as part of the 2021 cours... more Interview with guest Prof Shobana Chelliah of University of North Texas as part of the 2021 course Introduction to Language Documentation and Description at SOAS. Interviewed by Joseph Lovestrand.
Organizing and Hosting Virtual PPTELL 2020 During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Educational Technology & Society, 2021
This paper aims at answering the "how" questions about organizing and hosting an online... more This paper aims at answering the "how" questions about organizing and hosting an online conference during the COVID-19 pandemic. The 3rd International Pan-Pacific Technology-Enhanced Language Learning (PPTELL) Conference and Critical Thinking Meeting (hereafter PPTELL 2020) hosted from June 29 to July 1, 2020, on Zoom is the example conference used in this paper to illustrate the challenges and approaches adopted before, during and after the conference. The mentioned conference was supposed to take place physically at the University of North Texas during the same period but was transformed into an online virtual conference due to the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020. It was an urgent decision, along with many unknown situations, such as the attendees' different time zones and "Zoombombing." A three-staged and target-action process guided the preparation and organization of the online conference, i.e., pre-, during, and post-conference. According to the live...
A bibliography of Meiteiron (Manipuri) linguistics
Linguistics of the TIbeto-Burman Area, 1990
... I wish to thank all the people in Manipur University who helped me in my attempt to collect m... more ... I wish to thank all the people in Manipur University who helped me in my attempt to collect materials on Meiteiron. especially Mr. Radhe Sham Singh, the Deputy Librarian of the Manipur University Library. Thanks also to Dr. MS Ningomba, Dr. Shree Krishan. Dr. CRS Sharma. ...
Linguistics of the TIbeto-Burman Area, 2011
Chelliah"s assistants Nick Lester and Moriah Sidebottom helped proof the articles and discussed t... more Chelliah"s assistants Nick Lester and Moriah Sidebottom helped proof the articles and discussed the ideas developed in this introduction. Thanks to Joseph Lehner, Gwen Hyslop"s brother, for his help with the language map. Finally, we thank Randy LaPolla and the LTBA editorial team for their patience and help with the production of this special issue of LTBA.
Motion verbs and directional prefixes are used in Lamkang to encode space. The Lamkang language, ... more Motion verbs and directional prefixes are used in Lamkang to encode space. The Lamkang language, spoken by the Lamkang Naga, is part of the Kuki-Chin subgroup and is spoken in the Chandel district of Manipur state, India. Lamkang evokes absolute frames of reference, specifically the uphill and downhill axis, to describe movement. Lamkang combines this absolute framing with the culturally determined prestige of one location over another. Directional prefixes, derived from motion verbs, are also employed to express movement through space and metaphorically through time and social or psychological space. The directional prefixes exhibit verb-stem variation just like main verbs. Lamkang employs these prefixes to express boundary crossings, but for fictive or virtual motion main-verb semantics is employed. Finally, Lamkang spatial encoding employs a venitive which acts as a narrative device to locate the center of action. KEYWORDS Lamkang, absolute reference, aristomorphic reference, fic...
Chapter 7 Affixal morphology
A Grammar of Meithei
Appendix IV Texts
A Grammar of Meithei
Preparing Linguists’ Field Recordings and Datasets for Ingest into a Digital Library System: Lessons from Creating the Lamkang Language Resource at the UNT-DL
Closing ceremony of the 4th International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation
Closing remarks for the 4th International Conference on Documentation and Conservation, held at t... more Closing remarks for the 4th International Conference on Documentation and Conservation, held at the Ala Moana Hotel, Honolulu, Hawai'i, February 26-March 1, 2015.
Linguistic Fieldwork Contributing to Documentation
Why Language Documentation Matters, 2021
This chapter provides an overview of primary motivations for linguistic fieldwork, language descr... more This chapter provides an overview of primary motivations for linguistic fieldwork, language description, and language documentation. The work of Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, Mary Haas, John Peabody Harrington, Dell Hymes, and Joel Sherzer continue to influence methods of data collection and the types of data language documenters collect. We discuss three broad motivations for language documentation: documenting language use/language and culture, understanding human cognition, and describing language structure. We discuss three methodologies related to these motivations: ethnography of communication, experimental methods, and eliciting targeted constructions. The discussion also contrasts four nonacademic motivations for language documentation: Christian proselytizing, community language revitalization efforts, personal reward and fulfillment, and humanitarian service.
The last twenty years have seen efforts to support the study of minority and lesser-studied langu... more The last twenty years have seen efforts to support the study of minority and lesser-studied languages of India from varied stakeholders: these include the Indian government, international and Indian nonprofit organizations, indigenous and state-level cultural and language committees and institutes, and individuals with a passion to preserve and document their cultures and languages. Their efforts have led to mixed success due to conflicting ideologies, history, and resource availability (Annamalai 2003). Basing my observations on my research, personal experience and engagement with language documentation activities in the country, I provide an overview of the current state of language study and my hopes and efforts for future of language documentation and description in India.
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Books by Shobhana L Chelliah
In this chapter, I will assume that the documenters are community members and academic researchers working together with shared goals and methods and I will further assume that the language to be documented has average vitality by UNESCO standards. That is, a majority of the population speaks the language even though most children are multilingual and use the language in limited domains; there is a writing system but not much by way of written literature or grammatical description; and although government educational policies do not support maintenance of the language, the community is interested in creating documentation towards revitalization.1 With this scenario in mind, I review factors which can impact the planning and implementation of a language documentation project. These factors are: immediate and long-term goals; the composition and effective management of the team undertaking the documentation; funding to support the required activities; technological proficiency and linguistic expertise; preparation for onsite and offsite data collection; data management; personnel management; and results dissemination.
experience, which is necessary for data collection, and the process of discovery and analysis that leads to the description of the target language. In order for our record of language structures to be as accurate as possible, data collection is best conducted using rigorous methodology. The goal of language description is often not to capture just one speaker’s internal grammar but to represent prevalent patterns for a community of speakers. In that sense, grammatical description is “fake” in that no one speaker will instantiate all the structures described in the grammar; at the same time, however, the grammar is “real” because the facts described therein are accepted by most speakers as accurately representing their language. The main product of descriptive fieldwork, whether a grammar or a targeted description of particular parts of a grammar, must therefore include data from a variety of speakers, favoring the most frequent patterns and noting common variations based on social or contextual factors.
Papers by Shobhana L Chelliah