Jost Gippert

Essentials of language documentation

Language documentation is a rapidly emerging new field in linguistics which is concerned with the methods, tools and theoretical underpinnings for compiling a representative and lasting multipurpose record of a natural language. This volume presents in-depth introductions to major aspects of language documentation, including overviews on fieldwork ethics and data processing, guidelines for the basic annotation of digitally-stored multimedia corpora and a discussion on how to build and maintain a language archive. It combines theoretical and practical considerations and makes specific suggestions for the most common problems encountered in language documentation. Key features textbook introduction to Language Documentation considers all common problems

Chapter 2 Ethics and practicalities of cooperative fieldwork and analysis

cooperative. In John Haviland and Jose Antonio Flores Farfan, eds. Bases de la documentación lingüística. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas, pp. 49–89. Spanish translation of Dwyer, Arienne M. 2006. Ethics and practicalities of cooperative fieldwork and analysis. In Gippert, Jost, Mosel, Ulrike and Nicolaus Himmelmann, eds. Fundamentals of Language Documentation: A Handbook. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 31-66. Preprint.

Chapter 1 Language documentation: What is it and what is it good for?

This chapter defines language documentation as a field of linguistic inquiry and practice in its own right which is primarily concerned with the compilation and preservation of linguistic primary data and interfaces between primary data and various types of analyses based on these data. Furthermore, it argues (in Section 2) that while language endangerment is a major reason for getting involved in language documentation, it is not the only one. Language documentations strengthen the empirical foundations of those branches of linguistics and related disciplines which heavily draw on data of little-known speech communities (e.g. linguistic typology, cognitive anthropology, etc.) in that they significantly improve accountability (verifiability) and economizing research resources. The primary data which constitute the core of a language documentation include audio or video recordings of a communicative event (a narrative, a conversation, etc.), but also the notes taken in an elicitation session, or a genealogy written down by a literate native speaker. These primary data are compiled in a structured corpus and have to be made accessible by various types of annotations and commentary, here summarily referred to as the “apparatus”. Sections 3 and 4 provide further discussion of the components and structure of language documentations. Section 5 concludes with a preview of the remaining chapters of this book.

The “Bun-Turks” in Ancient Georgia

The paper deals with the identification of the so-called “Bun-Turks” that are mentioned in several historical texts as a tribe which settled in Georgia in prehistoric times. On the basis of a thorough comparison of the relevant Georgian and other sources, the term is shown to have emerged from a corruption of the name of the Huns, which occurs in similar contexts, together with other designations of Turkic tribes. The available text materials further suggest that the historical basis for the mentioning of the “Bun-Turks” as settlers in Georgia was the Khazar attacks of the VIth-VIIth centuries, which were secondarily re-projected into prehistoric times.

Some Remarks on the Caucasian Albanian Palimpsests

The so-called Caucasian Albanian Palimpsest kept in St. Catherines Monastery on Mt. Sinai for the first time allows to draw a comprehensive picture of one of the languages (probably the state language) of the third medieval Christian kingdom in Transcaucasia, namely (Caucasian) Albania. The relevant parts of the two palimpsest manuscripts (Sin. N 13 and N 55) covering roughly 120 pages (that is two thirds of the two manuscripts) have been deciphered, interpreted, and translated in the course of an international project running since 2003. The Caucasian Albanian texts comprise a) fragments of a Lectionary, and b) parts of the Gospel of John, written by a different hand in a different style. A number of both text-internal and text-external arguments suggest that the original manuscripts were produced in the 7th century A.D. The analysis of the texts clearly argues in favour of the assumption that the translators relied upon corresponding Old Armenian sources. Nevertheless, it can be shown that the texts in parts deviate from those Old Armenian Bible texts that have survived to our days, so that Georgian, Greek, and Syriac sources must also be taken into account. The readable passages of the two texts furnish us with roughly 8,000 word tokens (some 1,000 lemmatised lexical entries). Hence, the Caucasian Albanian palimpsest gives a considerable insight into the lexicon, grammar, and phonology of its language, which can now safely be identified as an early variant of Udi (East Caucasian, Lezgian). Caucasian Albanian (or Old Udi) differs from present-day Udi in a number of features, including an additional set of palatalised consonants, a more conservative system of local case markers, gender distinction within the set of anaphoric pronouns, and a stronger tendency to construe larger clitic chains. The lexicon is marked for three aspects: a) the preservation of Lezgian terms lost in present-day Udi; b) a set of loans from Armenian and (less prominent) from Georgian; c) loan translations especially from Armenian. The syntax of the texts comes close to that of its sources; however, the texts also exhibit a number of syntactic features alien to both Armenian and Georgian. This suggests that the translators tried to find a balance between the preservation of the original wording of the sources and the necessity to meet the needs of the Caucasian Albanian speaking audience.

Chapter 14 Linguistic documentation and the encoding of textual materials

Dies ist eine Internet-Sonderausgabe des Aufsatzes „Linguistic documentation and the encoding of textual materials“ von Jost Gippert (2005). Sie sollte nicht zitiert werden. Zitate sind der Originalausgabe in Essentials of Language Documentation, edited by Jost Gippert, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann, Ulrike Mosel, Berlin / New York: de Gruyter 2006 (Trends in Linguistics, 178), 337-361 (chapter 14) zu entnehmen.

Zur Dativ-Apposition im Deutschen

0.1. Seit dem Anfang des letzten Jahrhunderts läßt sich im Deutschen die Erscheinung beobachten, daß eine Apposition im Dativ zu einem Bezugswort in einem anderen Kasus tritt. Dieser Konstruktion, im folgenden >Dativ-Apposition< genannt, ist die vorliegende Untersuchung gewidmet. Erste Hinweise auf die Dativ-Apposition finden sich in Grammatiken und Lehrbüchern des Deutschen bereits seit 1832 (Bauer, 8l); überall wird sie als >Inkongruenz< abgelehnt: sie ist »ungenau« für Blatz (1896; 1248), »tadelhaft« für Sanders (1897; 47), »inkorrekt« für Andresen (1892; 295); und noch heute gilt ihre Verwendung als »falschlich« wie für den Duden (1959; 480). In den Einzeluntersuchungen zur Apposition im Deutschen, die in jüngerer Zeit erschienen sind, spielt die Dativ-Apposition keine große Rolle; bei Kusmin (1960; 95), Faucher (1970; 92) und Molitor (1979; 30) wird sie am Rande erwähnt, andere Autoren notieren sie überhaupt nicht (Schwyzer, 1947; Seiler, 1960; Motsch, 1965; Hackel, 1970; Raabe, 1975/1979). Und nur wenige Schriften haben die Dativ-Apposition selbst zum Thema: so Schönmann (1959) und Förster (1972), die sie jedoch lediglich dokumentieren und im Sinne normativer Belehrung vor ihrem Gebrauch warnen; vor allem aber Leirbukt (1978), die erste Untersuchung mit eigentlich linguistischer Zielsetzung. Sie behandelt die Fälle nach akkusativischem Bezugs wort. Entscheidende Bedeutung kommt der Dativ-Apposition auch in der Argumentation von Winter (1967) zu; hier geht es um die Konstruktion mit genitivischem Bezugswort. Letztlich sind noch Twaddell (1970) undWaterman (1972) zu erwähnen: Beide untersuchen die inkongruente Verwendung des Dativs nach der Konjunktion als; laut Winter (1967; 25) steht jxüe Hinzufügung eines Nomens nach als der appositionellen Verbindung« immerhin »sehr nahe«, sie kann sogar als Abart der Appo-