Project on diola language:
Description of gramatical aspects of diola
how
Programa Jovenes Cooperantes (Young Aid Workers program) is a program sponsored by regional spanish government Junta de Comunidades de Castilla la Mancha, whose main goal is to promote solidarity in its young citizens.
The program gave me the opportunity of interning three months in Senegal, learning and practicing aid development on the field, with the spanish NGO Asamblea de Cooperación por la Paz (Assembly of Cooperation for Peace). I will always be grateful to both institutions!!
By that time I had just finished the first course of the PhD program in General Linguistics at University of Barcelona and I was planning to carry out an investigation for my Master's Level Grade.
The program gave me the opportunity of interning three months in Senegal, learning and practicing aid development on the field, with the spanish NGO Asamblea de Cooperación por la Paz (Assembly of Cooperation for Peace). I will always be grateful to both institutions!!
By that time I had just finished the first course of the PhD program in General Linguistics at University of Barcelona and I was planning to carry out an investigation for my Master's Level Grade.
what, where, when
1. Three months field trip in the Diola village of Oussouye, in Casamance Province, a region in southern Senegal where more than a dozen of languages are spoken. I attempted to learn about Diola's world vision, practicing the language and gathering materials on some dialects. September-December 2008. These are the materials I collected:
2. Back home, morphosyntactic analysis of the 4 Diola Kassa folktales and application of the Grammaticalization framework methodology. Selection of 8 possibles "paths of grammaticalization" and suggestion of 2 hypothesis for synchronic paths of verbs Kalako and Kaban and their transformations in Diola Kassa. The dissertation attemps to tests these two hypothesis with statistical testing.
3. The dissertation was defended in September 2010 at Universitat de Barcelona.
- Diola Kassa: 4 folktales with translation into French by Berdnard Diatta, personal basic recordings of local speakers, audio recordings from local Radio Station Kabisseu Fm. Some of these materials can be found in the next sections.
- Diola Kwaatay: 2 dictionnaries, a compilation of folktales, literacy materials for Kwaatay dialect speakers provided by Sister Fina in Diembering village.
- Diola Fogny: a grammar by Linguist David Sapir (thank you Lucía for your help), a tape with recordings from Radio Sud FM provided by manager Mr Bodian, a tape with broadcasts in Fogny and twelve other local languages in Radio Ziguinchor Fm, furnished by manager Mr Moussa Joseph Faye
2. Back home, morphosyntactic analysis of the 4 Diola Kassa folktales and application of the Grammaticalization framework methodology. Selection of 8 possibles "paths of grammaticalization" and suggestion of 2 hypothesis for synchronic paths of verbs Kalako and Kaban and their transformations in Diola Kassa. The dissertation attemps to tests these two hypothesis with statistical testing.
3. The dissertation was defended in September 2010 at Universitat de Barcelona.
why
1. Academic challenges: to achieve the Master's degree in Linguistics, to learn about linguistic fieldwork, to study and try to speak a small language, to learn and put in practice a new Linguistics framework, to put in practice the scientific method,
2. Personal Challenges: to learn about Aid Development, to understand -at least a little bit- a different culture, to experience solidarity. To contribute to the preservation of linguistic and cultural heritage.
2. Personal Challenges: to learn about Aid Development, to understand -at least a little bit- a different culture, to experience solidarity. To contribute to the preservation of linguistic and cultural heritage.
