Good things in the Language Archives Network News newsletter (No.8)

Check out the latest Language Archives Network News [sorry Dave!]newsletter here. It’s got helpful information on how the Max Planck Institute (Nijmegen) can help you set up a local archive, a system of cataloguing linguistics information (IMDI) about your recordings, and on getting permanent unique resource identifiers for stuff stored on the web. And it’s also got an article on recording information about plants and animals in the field that you might read in conjunction with Tom’s post on this topic.

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Government money and Indigenous languages in Australia

The present Australian government’s approach to coordinating and delivering (funding for) general services to Indigenous people has failed on its first trial. That’s the conclusion drawn in an article on a leaked report by Bill Gray (Chris Graham and Brian Johnstone in the National Indigenous Times). So, what happens about coordinating and delivering money for maintaining and documenting Indigenous languages in Australia? How much is spent? Does more go on documenting than on maintaining and supporting education? I got asked these questions the other day, and had to admit surprised ignorance. (Hey, I SHOULD know. I’m a tax-payer). Here’s a start on answering – based on web-trawling.. and maybe some readers can add to it – help, is there an econo-statistician handy?

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Papuanists’ Workshop Wrap-up

In spite of a few early setbacks – including the workshop venue being eaten by termites – the Pearl Beach Papuanists’ Workshop, or perhaps I should say the Itinerant Papuanists’ Workshop, was held last weekend.
Everyone had something interesting to say at the workshop. We heard from a range of people from SIL field linguists to PhD students to professors. The weekend was filled with intensive (and exhausting) discussion of many different aspects of Papuan languages and linguistics. Our exhaustion was kept at bay, however, by the New Guinea Fair Trade coffee that Tom so thoughtfully provided.

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Paper work in the Western Desert

The making of contemporary Aboriginal learning and literacy: Ngaanyatjarra engagement with changing western practices was a seminar given by Inge Kral today at the Centre for Aboriginal Policy Research. The seminar raised questions about reading and writing practices in Indigenous communities, and about the survival of small Indigenous communities faced with increasing demands from governments for paper work.

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Blog catcher: Africa, America, Australia, art, language, literacy, software, travel

Sociolingo’s Africa is a general blog which includes posts about languages (the writer’s based in Mali but draws together material from across Africa). There are some interesting posts on linguistics, literacy – including mother tongue language education. So much seems so familiar. Thanks to this blog I’ve learned about Litcam, Google, and UNESCO’s Institute for … Read more

HCSNet SummerFest06 registration closing

Registration for HCSNet’s SummerFest06 closes tomorrow (Friday 27th October). If you’re in Sydney in early december late November (27th and 28th to be exact… thanks Linda), there’ll be lots of interesting courses related to Human Communication Sciences, including: Introduction to Music Perception & Cognition, Introduction to Human Computer Interaction: Personalisation and User Control, Introduction to … Read more

Fifth East Nusantara Conference: CALL FOR PAPERS

from the website: In the past, four International Conferences for East Nusantara Linguistics have been held; three in Leiden (1998, 2001, 2005), and one at the ANU in Canberra (2000). With this fifth conference the location moves to Indonesia, and more specifically to the East Nusantara region. Also, the focus of the conference has been … Read more

Language of poetry and song: CALL FOR PAPERS

We don’t know very much about the language of songs and poetry in many of the small societies in our region, so it’s excellent that a group of researchers (Myf Turpin, Christina Eira, Tonya Stebbins and Stephen Morey) are putting on a workshop on the topic at the Australian Linguistics Society Conference 2007 in Adelaide, September 26-28. Here’s the information:

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