MPI-PL Archive | The Language Archive

: conv_SO-ErA-VA-AA; Sammy recorded a conversation he had with his friend Eric, Eric's wife Vida and their little daughter Abitele. The daughter had asked her father for money to buy food and told him that she had not eaten yet, while her mother had already given her food. The four people talk about this. There was no outside observer present. The conversation has been transcribed and annotated in ELAN.

: ablabe_AD-YD; Previous to this recording, Sammy asked the people present whether they have any stories to tell. Then, Awua starts talking about how the puberty rites were performed in the past. When she finishes, Wisdom translates into English. After that, Yawa talks some more about the puberty rites. Wisdom translates again. The translations are only included on the audio recording.

: farming_SO; Sammy describes how they make farms in Vane, when they clear them and what they plant when.

: elic-dem-QUIS-top_100716_DQ

: scenery

: dog_PA; Peace tells a story that she has read somewhere. It is a story about a dog who is very greedy and steals meat. Then, when he crosses a river he sees himself in the water and thinks it is another dog with more meat in its mouth. He drops the meat to get the other dog's meat and then he has lost everything. Wisdom then translates the story into English. Then there is some talking between the people present and some proverbs and strange sentences are mentioned. This is also translated by Wisdom. Then there is some more conversation and some more proverbs are mentioned, again translated by Wisdom afterwards. There is one audio recording of this session, and two video recordings. The first video recording includes the story about the dog. The second video recording includes the first proverb telling. Translations are not included on the video recordings.

: sequencing_KO-PB_1; This task was designed by Rebecca during the field trip. One person (the director) watches a short video and the other person (the matcher) has a series of still pictures representing events that happen during the film (with descriptions written on them in Avatime). The two participants sit facing the same direction with a screen between them so neither can see what the other is doing but they can talk. The researcher makes sure that the matcher understands the pictures they have and their descriptions. Then instructs them that the matcher has this set of pictures which are things that happen in the film that the director saw but that they are in the wrong order. So the matcher must ask the director questions in order to determine the correct order of the pictures. Once the matcher has decided on an order, the screen is lifted and the director looks to see if the order is correct and they discuss where they might have gone wrong. In this case Prince watched the pear film and Kennedy arranged the pictures. He seemed to ask only if something had happened or not and then put it in the order that he asked rather than doing any rearranging based on the responses. At the end Rebecca sits with the two boys and talks about the order with them. The cards were labelled Onyime egu pearya ni oselome (the man picks pears from the tree) Onyime abamÉ si yÉ pearya bÉliÌ£la (the man sees that the pears a gone) Onyime enye pearya kpÉ kasÉyamÉ (the man pours pears into the basket) BanÉ tiaba bÉta pearya kpÉ kasÉyamÉ (two people put pears into the basket) Benyime tiata bÉza ni ÉkÉ aba (three boys pass in front of the man) ÉkÉ ani ÉgÉ bÉza kasÉyaba (a man and a goat pass in front of the basket) Onivue efeke pearya trÉ ni yÉ gasÉyaba (the boy picks up the pears and puts them on his bike) Benyime tiata bÉÅa pearya (three boys eat pears) Onivue awÉliÌ£ gasÉyaba (the boy falls from his bike) Onivue likutole liÌ£wÉliÌ£ (the boy's hat falls) Onivue amÉ likutole ni kÉsa (a boy sees the hat on the ground) Onivue akÉ likutole ki yÉnimiye (the boy takes the hat and gives it to his friend) Onivue akpÉ gasÉyÉ za ni yenenimidzÉ (the boy and his bike pass the girl) There is a transcription but it isn't typed up

: wordlist_100713_AB

: pear_110329_JYA-MM

: dictionary; A wordlist of 677 words in Avatime with glosses in English.

: elic-top_100727_AB

: famprob_110401_MeD-BeK

: S0811251; Fo Yao gives a description of the ECOM clips (Bohnemeyer & Caelen 1999). This is a set of video clips of moving geometrical shapes. They are meant to find out information about how motion events are encoded.

: elic-syntax_100617_MM

: R0811135; Rebecca asked Mathias to translate sentences from English into Avatime. The sentences came from the Bertinetto questionnaire, which is an extension for the Osten Dahl TMA questionnaire that can be found here http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/tools-at-lingboard/questionnaire/progressive-aspects_description.php.

: yam12-speech _NDC-person; The NDC candidate for the upcoming elections gives a speech at the yam festival in Amedzofe.

: elic-foc_100602_SO

: elic-contourtones-syntax_120924_AB

: time-in-space_KA_2; (Boroditsky, Lera, Alice Gaby & Stephen C. Levinson. 2008. Time in space. In Asifa Majid (ed.), Field Manual Volume 11, 52-76. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.) There are two non-linguistic tasks to assess the way people arrange time either as temporal progressions expressed in picture cards or done using small tokens or points in space to represent points in time. These non-linguistic tasks should be repeated with multiple participants as explained below. Responses are to be noted down on coding sheets and photographed and/or videotaped. For this experiment the researcher shows 4 cards to the participant which depict a temporal sequence (such as 4 stages of an apple being eaten) they are not given in the correct order. The participant's task is to arrange them in the correct order. The next set of tasks is a pointing task where the researcher points to a place directly in front of them both and says things like if this is today can you point to yesterday and tomorrow. The task is then repeated with different items at a different orientation. In this particular case: Kennedy and Rebecca were facing a little west of North (340degrees). I was on Kennedy's right and Prince was on his left. Kennedy arranged the pregnant woman, apple, duck and grandpa pictures L to R. We again had difficulty with the pointing task. He didn't understand the task. But the results are as follows: tuesday pointed up and right and behind him thursday pointed up and forward when he was a baby pointed forward and slightly right (there was a baby in front of us in this direction and I think he was pointing to it) when he would be old pointed forward and slightly right (there was an old man in this direction and I think he was pointing to him) last month pointed behind him next month pointed forward and to the right last year pointed back (I gestured first) next year pointed forward sunrise pointed right and up (I think towards where the sun actually rises) sunset pointed left and up (I think towards where the sun actually sets) Test points: pointed left and right no problem NSEW started out wrong so pointed right and slightly forward for north and left for south. Then when I asked about east he back tracked and pointed quite accurately to all 4. Forward back points accurate Also asked him to point to uptown and downtown (two direction terms that are often used in Avatime directions) and uptown was a forward and right point, downtouwn was to the ground (we were at the furthermost part of downtown and the uptown point was accurate)

: S0811262; Saskia mostly tries out Avatime sentences on Fo Yao to see if they are grammatical and if so what they mean. The goal is to find out the properties of motion serial verb constructions.