welcome to 083!
A new term, new writing class, new developments:
static web- I've been cleaning it out. It's a mess. Over 300 pages, old projects, old archives, etc., and all my responsibility though in its present condition I'm a little embarrassed. Look for: new and usable student page; better index; more pop art throughout; old penny postcards from
US GenWeb Archive; better
bibs for teachers; fewer dead links.
Topic weblogs that collect student writing by topic, so that, for example, you can scroll down a
food weblog and read about food. For all, visit
eap2.
Chat survey systematically asking people if they recognize & understand chat symbols (:-)), some of which have begun to appear in essays.
Other things I'd
like to have time for:
chat research- on the skills involved in chat;
research on machine translators and their effects on students' understanding;
sociology research on Cooley & the dead white men, continuation of
language inquiry in general;
tryout of text-to-speech software;
voice comments on blogs;
more pop art from the magic computer camera;
getting more linguistics from the archives out in the open air where all can read it;
rebuilding this blog so that, for example, you can click on topics;
gaelic language revivial;
going to cesl social events;
Labels: cesl, chat, internet, jpcl, personal, weblogs
linguistics at SIUC: retrospective
When I'm on break, as I am now, I sometimes go to an underground place that I know and love, but feel like very few others know about. It's the web archive records of the old Journal of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics - which, fortunately, saved, at least for the time being, a very interesting slice of the history of linguistics at SIUC.
The Journal, brought to SIUC by Dr. Glenn Gilbert, had at that time a webmaster, Caro Jacques I believe (though these pages list the author as Jeffery Parsell), who patiently put much of what it was doing on the web. Though one now has to know how to find it, as it is gone from all but the archives, short articles from old JPCL's can be found there; longer, more substantial ones also; longer pieces on Creole language in general; obituaries; a glossary of pidgin and creole terms; an index of old JPCL articles; in short, all kinds of stuff. I bring you a couple of examples, both called "Short Notes".
http://web.archive.org/web/20011202084455/www.siu.edu/cwis/departments/cola/ling/online/snotes/sn17.htmSanson Pirog, by Derek Bickerton and Marcel Rosalie (Issue 5.1, 1990)
a "Short Note" about fishing-boat songs in the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean.
and
http://web.archive.org/web/20011218045527/www.siu.edu/cwis/departments/cola/ling/online/snotes/sn54.htmON THE (SENSATIONAL) SURVIVAL OF KIKONGO
IN 20TH-CENTURY CUBA by Armin Schwegler
Issue 15.1, April 2000
There are many reasons to be interested in these documents, besides the fact that they are exactly the kinds of things I like to read. In the second article, there is clearly an academic argument about the survival of Kikongo, an African language, in Cuba and other places in the Americas, as opposed to a better-established theory that what survived was a combination of languages (it's clearly possible that both were right). Not that I know anything, really, about this particular dispute. It's more that I feel that putting it in public was itself an important act- on the cutting edge, one could say, of a general trend of making academic journals public, a trend that is continuing today and that in general is good, I feel, for such conversations. For one thing, people like me can participate, from home, late at night, whereas otherwise I might not have used my precious daytime working hours to go find the place in the library where I could have dug this up. Now if it were on a blog, I could also comment, if I wanted to, but that's another story.
My second point, and this really speaks to the first example, is that the web makes it far more likely that people, some people, any people, linguist people, will actually
find anything like this that is quite hard to find- this is what Google is good for. And I happen to know that such songs as these, and accounts such as Bickerton & Rosalie's, are quite valuable in their own way.
And this brings me to the rest of the story. The JPCL was moved to Ohio State soon after these were put on the web; SIUC inadvertantly deleted the file as "inactive" with our permission, as we believed that Ohio State now owned it, and would put it directly on their web (perhaps they did; I'm not sure, but it's not there now); the JPCL, meanwhile, has returned to being an offline, academic journal, available only in libraries and by subscription; but worse, linguistics at SIUC has suffered a decline, and who would even know - besides me, that is - that such cool stuff could be found so deep in the web- with SIUC's name still on it? That's why I'm on this earth, I guess. For that reason, and to ponder the following questions: could more of this be salvaged, and brought to the web where we all could read it? Will SIUC get back into the groove, and realize again what it means to have active, productive Linguistics publications? Will the field of linguistics come to enjoy the explosion of possibilities brought by the connection of world peoples through the new media?
I don't know the answers, sorry for teasing you. Enjoy these, such as they are; thanks again, Caro (or Jeff?), and thanks again to the
Web Archive for being there for us when we need it...
PS - though it has taken me a while to get the above links to work (let alone to
wrap, I have not made it easy for anyone else to actually do what I do, and go trolling through the caves of the archives. To do that, put the old JPCL address (www.siu.edu/departments/cola/ling) into the archive; December of 2001 works well; see what you can find!
Labels: endangered languages, internet, jpcl, linguistics, siuc
languages in the turquoise sea
My own memory is like my e-mail inbox: certain things, about three or four months old, risk falling off the edge of it, into the great abyss, to be forgotten until the great archivist calls me into question. Such it is with the
old jpcl files, which have been hiding away in the old
wayback archive. I'm very grateful to this archive, for we didn't think to save these files ourselves, and they have information about such languages as
St. Lucien Creole, and
Mauritian Creole. As you can see I'm not done saving the files, but I haven't given up. Break is almost here; it's 100 degrees in the shade, and I'm finding that old html code is about all I have the patience for.
If any of the links work, have a look around. What you can't find on the surface, you'll find in the archive; and then, if I'm smart, and persistent, it will all come out of the archive, and back home. It'll take some coding, but it's one of my missions in life. These are, after all, endangered files.
Labels: endangered languages, jpcl, linguistics
notes from around and about
A
collection of my son's reviews, which make me proud. I can say that he started his journalistic career here at SIUC- as I guess I did also. I'm kind of a casual participator in the citizen's media, but he's bettered me, I think. I told him to get into the web-design part of it, and he would be employed for life. I'm not sure that's what he wants.
Working on patiently updating
CESL Today, cleaning up a disaster in the back library. I have heard that the restriction on all old logos, the more draconian of regulations for webmasters, may have been lifted. You may recall that I'm not so much against the high-noon-at-pulliam sidebar, though it is difficult to work around the same insidious red color day in and day out- but I am opposed to the deliberate forced defacement of old archived materials (ok, I admit, they weren't all that great to begin with)- the wreckage of which still upsets me- because of a "uniform look" rule. If that part of the webmasters' requirement is gone, I'm glad to know it. But I'll be happier still if some old logos can see the light of day again. The logos to me represent historical eras- and those who delete history are bound to go diving through server-logs and web archives trying, sometimes futilely, to recover it. I should also mention that an extreme time shortage has hurt this effort, as well as the St. Lucien project, the archiving of old faculty pictures and historical records, and numerous other projects, which mostly just take time, and a few moments by a computer.
Finally I invite one and all to
the Mix in Carterville to hear yours truly- Fri. evening, 7-9, be there or be square.
To those who missed it, abroad and wherever, a happy Fourth. It poured buckets here. We've moved from hot-tub to sauna now, though- it's likely to be prickly until October. Time to stop driving after 6:30 in the morning.
Labels: cesl, endangered languages, jpcl, personal, siuc
jpcl language files
I've
written before about, and I need to keep on top of my conscious perception- a certain problem, concerning work on small languages that is endangered. I'm not sure if the languages are endangered, but the work is endangered, since it is now available only on the
wayback web archive, which is an incredible and little known service. These files could at least be brought back to the SIUC Linguistics webpages, which I, by default really, am still in charge of, but it would be a time-consuming job. I started the first- a paper on
St. Lucien Creole, and realized that it alone, in order to be finished, would entail bringing half a dozen files back, planting them back on our website, and linking them internally together. I had almost forgotten this project- but mentioned one day to Dennis Oliver, who kindly put in a comment in favor of saving it. Thanks are in order here- as it makes a huge difference when one is not doing this kind of thing unnoticed.
But it also brings up a further question. Dr. Gilbert's classes, and Dr. Gilbert himself, did a huge amount of work on these languages. The small corner of it that was clipped of the web accidentally, a few years back, represents only a tiny percentage of the entire work, and material, that was actually done. What happened to it? Who will keep it in the general record of work done on languages? He is, in fact, here in Carbondale, as far as I know, and it's worth at least finding out. It would also be worth it to get it on the web, where it could do the rest of the world some good!
Labels: endangered languages, jpcl, languages, linguistics, siuc
teardrop in the turquoise sea
It turns out I'm at an interesting nexus point. I happened to be around SIUC a few years back when the
Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages was moved to Ohio State, and its files downloaded off the web and transferred, by disk I believe. A few years later SIUC wanted to delete the account as inactive and we let it- little did we know that those files did not reappear on any web and are probably collecting dust somewhere- Ohio State's link for them comes up empty. We're on a search for them, and they may turn up-
but-
In the meantime, I've gotten a request for an old file on St. Lucian French Creole (Ed Ford and Leonie St. Juste-Jean), and, since I happen to know about the wayback machine, was able to find at least an image of
the file. Turns out this link, the wayback's record of our old page, leads you to a subterranean archival record of all these files- obscure Caribbean pidgin language and other pidgin language reports, sometimes along with pictures and ethnography- projects of Linguistics students, mostly, saved by the wayback archive.
If those files never turn up (I am, as we speak, returning to many other responsibilities- as Ling-dep't webmaster, I'm really just a temp) - then this will be as close as we get. It's kind of a bureau dresser link into another world- but, I'd like to point out, the web is more and more important, not less & less. These small languages may have here their first recorded archiving- from the old times- a historical record that should not be forgotten, nor misplaced. I'm sorry to have ever been aware that they were to be erased- and to have done nothing about it at the time. Now I'm looking for someone to pick up the ball- collect them, brush the html dust off of them, put them someplace safe- in short, value them for the resource that they are. Takers?
Here's one on
Tok Pisin, "The National Language of Papua New Guinea" (E. Etepa).
And another one does
Mauritian Creole (B. Morrissey).
Finally,
Shelta-Gammon (H. Tondini).
Labels: endangered languages, jpcl, language, linguistics, siuc
