This week’s episode is with Lauren Gawne who does fieldwork in Nepal working with speakers of Yolmo and Syuba. Lauren has experience as both a successful grant applicant and as a grant committee assessor. In this episode, she shares her advice for navigating applying for funding in an overly-competitive and under-resourced environment. One of the essential points Lauren makes is that struggling to find funding doesn’t necessarily reflect on the quality of your work or your project, or your commitment to the community you’re working with. In this episode, Lauren shares how she has funded her work and her advice to researchers looking to apply for fieldwork funding. Also, read the instructions.
A popular expression in Nepal is a fatalistically resigned ke garne? ‘what to do?’ The government office is closed, ke garne? The bus is running late, ke garne? When people say this, they also bring their palms up and rotate them inwards, with their thumb and index finger extended and the other fingers bunched in.
This gesture doesn’t just occur with this phrase, it turns up in all kinds of question-asking contexts, across the wider region of India-Nepal-Pakistan and beyond. This has been noted anecdotally before, and in this new paper for the journal Gesture, I look at the gesture and its use in detail for the first time. I’m very excited about this publication because it’s my first publication on gesture in Syuba, and my first publication in Gesture (if the name alone doesn’t give it away, it’s the journal in this field!).
(GIF from SUY-141022-03, Sangbu Syuba gesturing while he says ‘what do we say?’)
The data are archived with Paradisec, and I made the clips specifically with the rotated palms tokens available through FigShare.
You can view the abstract on the journal website, and download the full text if you have institutional access. If you don’t, but you’d like to read the article, you can contact me for a pre-publication copy.
I’m also very excited that the paper has been included in a major review paper Kensy Cooperrider by Natasha Abner and Susan
Goldin-Meadow on ‘the palm up puzzle’.
Abstract
In this paper I examine the use of
the ‘rotated palms’ gesture family among speakers of Syuba (Tibeto-Burman, Nepal),
as recorded in a video corpus
documenting this language. In this family of gestures one or both forearms are rotated to a supine
(‘palm up’) position, each hand with thumb and forefinger extended and the
other fingers, in varying degrees, flexed toward the palm. When used
independently of speech this gesture tends to be performed in a relatively
consistent manner, and is recognised as an interrogative gesture throughout
India and Nepal. In this use it can be considered an emblem. When used with
speech it shows more variation, but can still be used to indicate the interrogative
nature of what is said, even when the speech may not indicate interrogativity
in its linguistic construction. I analyse the form and function of this
gesture in Syuba and argue that there are a number distinct functions relating
to interrogativity. This can therefore be considered as a family of gestures.
This research lays the groundwork for better understand of this common family
of gestures across the South Asian area, and beyond.
Reference
Gawne, Lauren. 2018. Contexts of use of a rotated palms gesture among Syuba (Kagate) speakers in Nepal. Gesture 17(1): 37–64. [Abstract]
Cooperrider, Kensy, Natasha Abner & Susan
Goldin-Meadow. 2018. The palm-up puzzle: Meanings and origins of a
widespread form in gesture and sign. Frontiers in Communication 3: 23.
doi: 10.3389/fcomm.
I was delighted to have the opportunity to share some of my favorite advice:
Fieldwork can be exhausting, trying to think of a hundred things while you navigate a culture, environment, and
cuisine that can be very different from what you’re used to. I always
make sure I have a support of comfort TV and silly novels. I don’t know anymore
how I did fieldwork before getting an e-book reader, it’s been more
than worth it’s (lack of) weight.
I take a bit of a prepare-for-anything
and expect-nothing approach to fieldwork – building up relationships
with people is really what you’re there for, and that’s so hard to
predict. Also, take three times more photographs than you think you’ll want. I always wish I had more photographs.
To read the advice from other fieldworkers, check out the ELAR blog. If you’ve done linguistic fieldwork, or some other kind of research fieldwork, feel free to share it as a reblog!
I’m back in the UK after a four month visit to Nepal. It was, on the whole, a productive four months, even with getting ill a record-breaking number of times in the first couple of months. Here are some of the highlights:
Getting to see everyone again, for the first time since the earthquakes in 2015. My last fieldtrip was scheduled for a week after the April 12th earthquake last year, and promptly cancelled, so it had been over a year since I’d seen people, and how they were going.
Taking colleagues from NTU’s School of Art, Design & Media to the Syuba community to make art with the kids.
Returning copies of a book that one of my NTU students made about basket weaving in Lamjung.
Finally going to Ilam, the only major population of Yolmo speakers I hadn’t yet spent any time with.
Introducing speakers of Syuba, Lamjung Yolmo and Ilam Yolmo to each other - and watching as they discovered the similarities in their languages and histories.
Running a set of experiments, including a tone perception test (more info soon).
Starting to work with the Langtang language. I’m helping archive a language documentation project from Langtang (more info soon) and have become involved with the Langtang Memory Project. I didn’t make it to Langtang this time, but that’s why there’s always another fieldtrip planned, right?
Coming Up!
Now that I’m back from Nepal and, in the world of reliable internet and electricity, I’ll return to posting twice a week here.
Just because fieldwork is over doesn’t mean I’m keeping still for long - in a couple of weeks I’ll be in Alaska for CoLang, a two week summer school for Language Documentation and Revitalisation. I’ll be teaching a one week course on Wikipedia with Gretchen McCulloch and a one hour seminar on including children in language documentation and revitalisation with Barb Kelly.
In July I’ll be heading to the International Conference for Gesture Studies in Paris. The preliminary schedule looks great, and I’ll definitely be live tweeting.
For now though, I’m enjoying a bit of London summer, and quite a bit of bread and cheese.
I’m looking forward to seeing friends, may of whom are still homeless or living in damaged houses following the earthquakes of 2016, and the continued blockading of the southern roads to India where most of the country’s goods and petrol come through. This blockage, now over 3 months, is in reaction to the constitution that was promulgated after the earthquakes, which those in the India boarder region see as deeply biased against them. These factors are going to make it an interesting and challenging time, but I’m looking forward to seeing friends and continuing our work.
While I’m away I’m going to move from posting on Mondays + Thursdays (Aus time) to just promising that there will be new posts on Mondays. If I’m in Kathmandu and have time/internet access then there will be the occasional Thursday post too, but things may be a bit sleepier around here than usual for a few months.
To compensate there should be a sharp increase in the number of photos of baby goats, and my horrible fieldwork dress sense.
One of the first phrases I learnt in Nepali was के गार्ने ke garne, ‘what to do’? This question is rhetorical, usually rounding out a story of some hardship. The bus didn’t show up in the village for two days, ke garne? Your husband has spent most of your children’s lives working overseas to pay for their schooling, ke garne? You village house is small and has no power, ke garne?
Although the English translation gives a sense of futility in the face of adversity, it does not quite have this function. Instead, it is about resilience in the face of adversity - you still got to town, your husband is doing the right thing for the family, your house is all you have. There is nothing you can do to prevent these events, but that’s not reason to let them stop you.
This week the nation of Nepal faces adversity on a scale that is utterly incomprehensible. There is immediate suffering, and long term challenges. I’ve been in touch with Kagate and Yolmo speakers, and many have escaped with their lives, but not much else. Entire villages of houses are damaged, and the monsoon season is fast approaching. While they may not face the immediate food and sanitation crisis of Kathmandu, this will interrupt the pre-monsoon planting season.
Reports of such destruction are coming in from all across Nepal. Photos from Helambu - where the people I work with originally came from - show massive destruction as well. If you want to help in the short term, support a large NGO who have people on the ground, experience and supply chains for goods and services. Nepal will also need people’s help and concern in the long term as well. It’s never easy when the media attention fades and life goes on. I’ve created a Twitter list of voices in Nepal if you’re interested in what’s really going on.
The next few weeks will be very rough, and redevelopment will be measured in months and years, but Nepali people have the tenacity to pull through, after all, ke garne?
I’ll be in Nepal for the next 7 or so weeks, returning to Ramechhap to record more stories, and taking some more mobile phones to continue trialingAikuma. I’m really excited to be going back again so soon, and I’m looking forward to sharing some of my adventures, and hopefully some more songs, when I’m back.
While I’m away I’ve lined up a bunch of weekly posts about the language fun-times I’ve been having here in Singapore, and Georgia will around when her day job permits. If that’s not enough reading for you, remember there’s always our archive, the list of blogs we recommend on our home page side bar, and the #tumblinguistics hashtag with enough reading to delight and entertain for hours!
I had a great time at the Australex conference last year, and it’s exciting that proceedings are now available as open access download from the conference website (via link above).
There are lots of great papers here, and the nice thing about lexicography is that the ideas and stories behind peoples’ work are often quite accessible even if you don’t work in this area (which is probably why I enjoyed the conference so much).
Particularly interesting is the work by Rob Amery & Mary-Anne Gale tracing the work of the missionary linguists who came over from Germany over 175 years ago and provided documentation of the Indigenous languages of the South Australia area. I also partcularly like David Nash’s paper, which suggests that the modern scientific naming conventions are a great way to incorporate endangered words into a new domain of knowledge.
As a dictionary dabbler, I feel very lucky to have a paper in this collection as well. In it I discuss the workflow and social experience of the lexicography work I’ve done with the Yolmo and Kagate communities to date. It is rather chatty as far as my academic writing is concerned, so if you’re at all interested in the type of work a field linguist occasionally finds herself doing you can read all about it.
Thanks to Jasmin Morley. Julia Miller and Ghil‘ad Zuckermann for their work on the volume, and the conference, and thanks to the University of Adelaide for hosting the proceedings online and making them open and easily accessible!
A couple of years ago I published a small dictionary of Lamjung Yolmo based on the lexical database I built as part of my PhD work. I used the Print on Demand (POD) publisher started at The University of Melbourne (a joint venture between the University Library and Bookshop) because it was an affordable and scalable option; I only wanted about 50 copies to take back to Nepal with me, and it allowed other people to purchase copies should they wish.
While POD is a perfect solution for a publication like this, and allows linguists and communities to access well-made books at a more affordable price, it’s still a developing industry. When the University Bookshop was sold to a private company, the custom book publishing office packed up and disappeared without even giving authors the chance to print more copies of existing titles.
On the advice of Nick Thieberger on the Paradisec blog, I decided to migrate the dictionary over to CreateSpace, an Amazon company. The scale of their service means that it’s hopefully more stable. I think the dictionary also looks even better. Best still, the scale of their industry means that you can now buy a copy for only $6USD (and it costs me even less to buy them to take to Nepal).
CreateSpace also gives the opportunity to link the publication into a Kindle e-Book option. This involves a bit more tinkering around, and unfortunately I couldn’t get the Nepali Devanagari working in the Kindle ebook format. You can still download a PDF version from the World Oral Literature Project site.
Overall, I’m really happy that the dictionary is back in print. You can buy copies from the CreateSpace website and Amazon.
I spent a really great week up in the hills of the Ramechhap district. Although it may look at though I spend most of my time taking photos of cute things and mountains, the trip was to make a collection of recordings of traditional songs and stories with the Kagate speakers who live there.
I spent a lot of time talking to people about what they wanted to record, and about their language and lives. This meant also consuming a lot of potatos and buffalo milk. I’ll hopefully have some recordings to share with you soon!
Later this week I’ll be at the 19th Himalayan Languages Symposium at ANU in Canberra. I always enjoy going to conferences full of people who work with languages that are closely related to those I am familiar with, as we often face similar issues and complexities. I’ll be sharing some of my PhD work, and I’m looking forward to meeting many people and putting faces to names!
I thought I’d use it as an opportunity for some gratuitous fieldwork photographs! From top: Prayer flags at Boudhanath, Everest from a plane window, children rowing to school on Phewa lake in Pokhara, baby goats and looking towards Manage from Lamjung.
I often tell people that I accidentally started working on Lamjung Yolmo for my PhD. I had initially intended to work on Kagate (and eventually have started a project with its speakers), and in initial conversations was told by the people I work with that was the name of their language. I’ll save the story of language-name complexity for another day, but the upshot was that I ended up focusing on a variety of Yolmo spoken in Lamjung that had never been discussed in the literature before.
It’s been really interesting to discover how different it is to the previously documented varieties, and also to see people who know Nepal’s language landscape be surprised when you tell them there are half a dozen villages of Yolmo speakers 200km from where anyone expected them to be.
In 2013 there has been a revision of Ethnologue - the most comprehensive listing of all known languages - and Lamjung Yolmo has been added in the list of known Yolmo dialects. This is a nice step towards better recognition of the Yolmo people of Lamjung and their language. It was also nice that it happened just before my completion talk, so I could tell everyone who was there!
The Lamjung Yolmo Dictionary has not yet been reviewed by any of my academic colleagues, but it’s now been in the hands of some very interested reviewers for a couple of months now. In many ways these reviewers are more important than the academic ones, because they’re the speakers of of the language.
Most of the feedback from speakers fell into two categories. The first type of reaction was one of general interest and gratitude. Although some people will never do more than flick through the dictionary, admire the pictures and leave it to be forgotten on a shelf, that’s enough for them and they’re happy with that.
The second type of reaction was to take to the dictionary with a critical eye and start pointing out all of the errors. Some people would just pick it up and read out things that they had a problem with, while others (like in the image below) would take to it with a sharp eye and a sharp pencil.
This process was less distressing than you would imagine. Sure, it’s not the greatest feeling to have every page of something you’ve written pulled to pieces - but there’s a lot more to it than that. First, you have to separate out genuine errors from differences of opinion. It’s a bit like giving a British English manuscript to a US English speaker. We have differences of opinion about spelling conventions, and all the more so in Yolmo since this is the first time anyone’s seriously tried to write the language down.
The other reason I’m actually ok with this process is that this has provided a wealth of new information. Until the dictionary was in such a pretty format no one cared enough to read it. I’d tried leaving copies with people before and never got such a reaction. Although it’s unlikely that I’ll have the opportunity in the near future to remake the dictionary there is still a lot of use for this feedback. I could have been the kind of lexicographer who waits 20 years to publish and tries to make a perfect product, but the vagaries of funding mean I can’t guarantee Yolmo speakers that I’ll be around after completing my PhD.
Most interestingly, the two types of feedback weren’t necessarily from exclusive groups. Even though someone was happy to ‘correct’ every entry in the dictionary they were still excited to have it. On the whole it was quite the success!
The recent visit to the villages where Lamjung Yolmo is spoken was a great success. I spent a day learning how to make baskets, discovered than an empty corn cob is called a pìŋgu and got to see some great sunsets. There are a few more things I got up to that I’ll share over the next few weeks.
There are basically two aims to fieldwork. The first is to try and figure out exactly what the hell is going on, linguistically speaking, when people use the language they use. The second, which is inextricably linked to the first, is to furnish yourself with examples of the phenomena you’ve observed.
A written grammar is really just someone making assertions about a language and backing them up with examples. For example , if I were writing a grammar of English, I may make some observation like ‘plurals normally end in -s’ and then give example sentences that I’d collected from an English speaker - 'the three dogs’, she ate four cakes’. I’d also have examples of irregular forms 'the six sheep,’ 'the two children.’
Things are changing slowly as people include more recordings with their work as well as written examples, but examples are still important - but when you’re reading a grammar you take them for granted because they’re just there, in print, looking very legitimate and impressive. Some of them are quite famous. Any Tibeto-Burmanist would instantly recognise “He said that he went there” as being from Hale’s seminal work on the conjunct/disjunct system (the rest of you don’t need to worry about it at all).
Anyway, it’s easy to forget that these examples come from somewhere. Hale actually sat down at some point and asked a Kathmandu Newari speaker to say “He said that he went there”. When you start thinking about it, a lot of example sentences are quite strange and you wonder where they come from. Were they prepared by the researcher? Recorded on the fly during a session? Part of a narrative? How do you get such wonderful sentences as “(It is said that) I used to love my little dog a lot” (taken from Aksu-Koç & Slobin 1986)?
I’m building up a fair corpus of wacky sentences. I wonder at this early point what will take my fancy later as being clear and pertinent examples of what is important in Yolmo. I hope it’s not some of the sentences from recent sessions such as:
'why do you beat the dog?’ 'the earth is round’ 'you never spoke English while living in Australia’ 'before eating I wash my hands’ 'he was cured because of good medicines’
[Lauren is currently in off in the hills of Nepal for field work. This post originally appeared on Lozguistics]
