Orthography: Which Orthography Should I Use?
Keren Rice
Gwendolyn Hyslop
Course Information
In this three-day workshop we outline the complex process of designing an orthography. Unlike a phonological analysis which is usually straightforward and can be done in a short period of time, orthography development is a process, which involves much more than a phonological analysis. We walk students through some of the considerations one may have to take into account when designing an orthography, such as script, standardization, politics and religion. We provide ample opportunity to hands-on analysis and aim to exchange experiences, brainstorm, and expand resources together.
Course Documents
Required Readings
Cahill, Michael and Elke Karan. 2008. Factors in designing effective orthographies for unwritten languages. SIL Electronic Working Papers 2008-001: 16. http://www.sil.org/silewp/abstract.asp?ref=2008-001
Seifart, Frank. 2006. Orthography development. In (eds.) Gippert, J., Himmelmann, N. and Mosel, U. Essentials of Language Documentation, 275-300. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
*We will make a copy of this available.
Suggested Readings
Grenoble, Lenore and Lindsay Whaley. 2006. Orthography. Chapter 6 in Saving languages. An introduction to language revitalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 137-159.
Hinton, Leanne. 2001. New writing systems. In Leanne Hinton and Ken Hale (editors). The Green Book of language revitalization in practice. San Diego. Academic Press. 239-250.
Rogers, Henry. 2005. Writing Systems: A Linguistic Approach. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sebba, Mark. 2007. Spelling and society: The culture and politics of orthography around the world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Instructor(s) Bio
Keren Rice (University of Toronto; Organizing Committee and taught, InField 2008) has done extensive fieldwork in northern Canada and was awarded the first Bloomfield Book Award for her Grammar of Slave, published by Mouton de Gruyter. She has been involved in community-based fieldwork and teaching, designed a course on language revitalization, and oversaw the development of a website on fieldwork. She is editor of the International Journal of American Linguistics. She served a term on the governing board of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council in Canada as well as a term as president of the Canadian Linguistic Association, and she currently is co-chair of the Program Committee of the Linguistic Society of America. She has organized many international conferences. She was founding director of Aboriginal Studies at the University of Toronto, a post that she held for fifteen years.
Gwendolyn Hyslop (PhD candidate, University of Oregon) has been conducting fieldwork on Tibeto-Burman languages of Bhutan and northeast India since 2006. She is currently director of the Kurtöp Documentation Project, a collaborative team-based project devoted to the documentation, description, and preservation of Kurtöp, a Tibeto-Burman language of northeastern Bhutan. She has been working actively with the Bhutanese government to devise ’Ucen (Tibetan-like) orthographies for all of Bhutan’s minority and endangered languages. She has authored and co-authored several publications on aspects of Kurtöp phonology and grammar, as well as articles on the historical placement of Bhutan’s languages. Her dissertation, A grammar of Kurtöp, is expected this summer.