UTokyo Linguistics Colloquium (Dr. Sami Honkasalo)
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Naonori Nagaya
Feb 22, 2025, 12:19:40 AM2/22/25
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メーリングリストのみなさま、
東京大学の長屋尚典です。
シナ・チベット語族の研究者として著名な Sami Honkasalo さんをお迎えし、Grammar writing and cultural anchoring: Personal reflections on Sino-Tibetan fieldwork というタイトルでトークをしていただくことになりました。
日時: Monday, March 3, 2025 16:00-17:30 JST
講師: Dr. Sami Honkasalo (University of Helsinki)
場所: Zoom meeting room
登録: https://u-tokyo-ac-jp.zoom.us/meeting/register/bOY0GYb2QLmPXSzWj_qObQ
Sami さんは東京大学・言語学研究室の卒業生で、Geshiza 語の文法書で Association for Linguistic Typology から Pāṇini Award を昨年授与されました。
文法記述に興味のある方からそうではない方まで、ふるってご参加ください。
長屋尚典
-------
Grammar writing and cultural anchoring: Personal reflections on Sino-Tibetan fieldwork
Sami Honkasalo
University of Helsinki
Keywords: Geshiza, Horpa, Gyalrongic, Sino-Tibetan, grammar writing, fieldwork, cultural anchoring
This talk explores the birth process of my grammatical description of Geshiza, a Horpa language of the Sino-Tibetan/Trans-Himalayan language family. In this sense, it is an autoethnography and case study of grammar writing. By reflecting on my work against the constantly changing landscape of descriptive linguistics and the production of descriptive grammars, especially in the Sino-Tibetan research tradition, the talk aims to not only to identify some key issues, but also to provide a suggestion to the field with the proposed notion of ‘cultural anchoring’.
The talk focuses primarily on three aspects in the birth process of the grammar of Geshiza. First, it lays the foundations by covering the noteworthy characteristics of Geshiza as a language of the Sino-Tibetan family. Second, it highlights grammar writing as a metamorphosis where the final product emerges as a negotiation between ideals and practical constraints in a heuristic process. While the literature on linguistic fieldwork has expanded in recent years with several textbook-like monographs (see e.g., Bowern 2015 and Meakins et al. 2018 for two relatively recent publications), writing descriptive grammars and conducting fieldwork for this purpose are still frequently discussed in a teleological fashion with a retrospective viewpoint. While some change can be perceived, the talk argues that greater transparency regarding the heuristic birth process of descriptive grammars is needed. In short, reflecting on the subjective birth process does not diminish the scientific value of a grammar.
Finally, the talk introduces the concept of ‘cultural anchoring’ and discusses its broader relevance to grammar writing, offering some examples from my work on Geshiza. ‘Cultural anchoring’ (or the lack thereof) has been discussed in earlier literature. Most grammars, however, tend to provide only brief introductory remarks on the extra-linguistic contexts of their target languages. Inspired by Prins’s (2016) notion of ‘web of relations’, namely the network of connections a language holds with the non-linguistic realities such as culture, geography, and categorization of the world, the talk proposes that descriptive grammars should be anchored more deeply into such various extra-linguistic contexts, rather than treating language simply a system to be described in isolation. Not only is linguistic endangerment often tied to cultural endangerment, but we also cannot be fully certain how our grammatical descriptions will be used in the distant future, calling attention to the need for a broader approach to description. In conclusion, while descriptive grammars are a well-established genre, they are also flexible and evolving. Consequently, grammar writers must strive to ensure that their descriptions meet the needs of future users.
References
Bowern, Claire. 2015. Linguistic Fieldwork: A Practical Guide, second edition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Meakins, Felicity, Jennifer Green & Myfany Turpin. 2018. Understanding Linguistic Fieldwork. London: Routledge.
Prins, Maria. 2016. A Grammar of rGyalrong, Jiăomùzú (kyom-kyo) Dialects: A Web of Relations. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
※ 本講演会は JSPS 科研費 JP24K00060 の助成を受けたものです。
シナ・チベット語族の研究者として著名な Sami Honkasalo さんをお迎えし、Grammar writing and cultural anchoring: Personal reflections on Sino-Tibetan fieldwork というタイトルでトークをしていただくことになりました。
日時: Monday, March 3, 2025 16:00-17:30 JST
講師: Dr. Sami Honkasalo (University of Helsinki)
場所: Zoom meeting room
登録: https://u-tokyo-ac-jp.zoom.us/meeting/register/bOY0GYb2QLmPXSzWj_qObQ
Sami さんは東京大学・言語学研究室の卒業生で、Geshiza 語の文法書で Association for Linguistic Typology から Pāṇini Award を昨年授与されました。
文法記述に興味のある方からそうではない方まで、ふるってご参加ください。
長屋尚典
-------
Grammar writing and cultural anchoring: Personal reflections on Sino-Tibetan fieldwork
Sami Honkasalo
University of Helsinki
Keywords: Geshiza, Horpa, Gyalrongic, Sino-Tibetan, grammar writing, fieldwork, cultural anchoring
This talk explores the birth process of my grammatical description of Geshiza, a Horpa language of the Sino-Tibetan/Trans-Himalayan language family. In this sense, it is an autoethnography and case study of grammar writing. By reflecting on my work against the constantly changing landscape of descriptive linguistics and the production of descriptive grammars, especially in the Sino-Tibetan research tradition, the talk aims to not only to identify some key issues, but also to provide a suggestion to the field with the proposed notion of ‘cultural anchoring’.
The talk focuses primarily on three aspects in the birth process of the grammar of Geshiza. First, it lays the foundations by covering the noteworthy characteristics of Geshiza as a language of the Sino-Tibetan family. Second, it highlights grammar writing as a metamorphosis where the final product emerges as a negotiation between ideals and practical constraints in a heuristic process. While the literature on linguistic fieldwork has expanded in recent years with several textbook-like monographs (see e.g., Bowern 2015 and Meakins et al. 2018 for two relatively recent publications), writing descriptive grammars and conducting fieldwork for this purpose are still frequently discussed in a teleological fashion with a retrospective viewpoint. While some change can be perceived, the talk argues that greater transparency regarding the heuristic birth process of descriptive grammars is needed. In short, reflecting on the subjective birth process does not diminish the scientific value of a grammar.
Finally, the talk introduces the concept of ‘cultural anchoring’ and discusses its broader relevance to grammar writing, offering some examples from my work on Geshiza. ‘Cultural anchoring’ (or the lack thereof) has been discussed in earlier literature. Most grammars, however, tend to provide only brief introductory remarks on the extra-linguistic contexts of their target languages. Inspired by Prins’s (2016) notion of ‘web of relations’, namely the network of connections a language holds with the non-linguistic realities such as culture, geography, and categorization of the world, the talk proposes that descriptive grammars should be anchored more deeply into such various extra-linguistic contexts, rather than treating language simply a system to be described in isolation. Not only is linguistic endangerment often tied to cultural endangerment, but we also cannot be fully certain how our grammatical descriptions will be used in the distant future, calling attention to the need for a broader approach to description. In conclusion, while descriptive grammars are a well-established genre, they are also flexible and evolving. Consequently, grammar writers must strive to ensure that their descriptions meet the needs of future users.
References
Bowern, Claire. 2015. Linguistic Fieldwork: A Practical Guide, second edition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Meakins, Felicity, Jennifer Green & Myfany Turpin. 2018. Understanding Linguistic Fieldwork. London: Routledge.
Prins, Maria. 2016. A Grammar of rGyalrong, Jiăomùzú (kyom-kyo) Dialects: A Web of Relations. Leiden and Boston: Brill.
※ 本講演会は JSPS 科研費 JP24K00060 の助成を受けたものです。
Naonori Nagaya, PhD.
Department of Linguistics
The University of Tokyo
https://sites.google.com/site/naonorinagaya/
Department of Linguistics
The University of Tokyo
https://sites.google.com/site/naonorinagaya/
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