Sam Beer receives NSF/NEH funding to document endangered languages of northeastern Uganda
CU Linguistics 2017 PhD graduate Sam Beer, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Virginia,Ìýhas received a grant from theÌýDocumenting Endangered Languages (DEL) program,Ìýa partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) intended to develop and advance knowledge concerning endangered humanÌýlanguages. In his project, Dr. Beer willÌýdigitize, annotate, and analyze legacy recordingsÌýof two endangered Kuliak languages of northeasternÌýUganda, Nyang'i and Soo. HeÌýwill also conduct new fieldwork with current speakers.ÌýDr. Beer will digitize orÌýscan 25-30 hours of old audio recordings and 3,000-5,000 pages of old field notes onÌýSoo and Nyang'i. He will transcribe/translate/annotate a subset (with transcriptions/broad translation for everything, and annotation for a subset), in order to developÌýperspectives onÌýlanguage change, language death, the evolution of the field of linguistics, and how talk captured on the fly becomes linguistic data.