Resources
Check out the resources created by our members:
- Glottal Sounds in nɬeʔkepmxcín (created by Noah Luntzlara)
- Reduplication and the Difference between Little and Plural (created by Noah Luntzlara)
Projects
Lab members are currently working on many separate and exciting projects in collaboration with community members, including language learning websites and apps, as well as investigations into many different linguistic areas.
Our lab also works closely with two other lab groups at UBC: Salish Working Group and Secwepemctsín Working Group.
A list of the ongoing projects and a short description:
| Ongoing Projects (Members) | Short Description |
|---|---|
| Conversations: (many members) | |
| Stories: (many members) | This project involves recording speakers telling stories (legends, personal memories, etc.) and then putting together a transcription, meaning breakdown, and translation. |
| Polar Questions: (Lisa Matthewson) | |
| Modals: | |
| Aspiration: (Danica Reid) | This project investigates how the stop consonants /p, t, k, q/ are pronounced when they are found in different parts of a word. |
| Vowel Variation: (Gazelle Khalaji Pirbaluti) | This project is about variation in pronunciation of vowel-consonant combinations. |
| Infinitives: (Brent Hall) | The purpose of this project is to investigate the syntactic distribution and behavior of infinitives. |
| Degree Adjectives: | |
| Building Verbs: (Sander Nederveen) | This project investigates how verbs extend over time influenced by the marking of the verb with -nwén̓-, -nwéłn̓, -n- or -t-, and -(ə)m. |
| Automatic Glossing: (Anna Stacey) | This project uses technology to try to automate the “glossing” (meaning breakdown) stage of the documentation process, to accelerate our output. |
| Diminutive Reduplication: (Noah Luntzlara) | This project is about the glottal sounds associated with diminutive reduplication, i.e., words for “little” things which involve internal copying |
| … |
Read more about our projects:
Many lab members have been working on recording natural conversations that take place between two or three speakers in nɬeʔkepmxcín. We first transcribe the audio in the orthography and try to provide translations and notes in collaboration with speakers. And we check our work with them throughout various stages.
This project has been supported by the ISI grant received from UBC.
For the outcome of this project, we hope to provide videos and audios with subtitles.
Many lab members have been working with speakers in the community to collect stories in nɬeʔkepmxcín. These stories can be personal, or originally written or told by the speakers, but they’re not only limited to that. Depending on the story, we first work on creating line-by-line glossing in the orthography and work with speakers to provide translations and audio format. The entire workflow is done in collaboration with speakers.
This project has been supported by the ISI grant received from UBC, the Jacobs grant, and SSHRC.
For the outcome of this project, so far we have published a few stories in the ICSNL conference and we hope to create more resources in various formats, such as e-books, or printed books in the future.
Many lab members are working on topics related to semantics which have been published in form of qualifying papers, or in other academic venues.
- Polar questions: How nɬeʔkepmxcín makes questions that can be answered with yes/no.
- Modals: How nɬeʔkepmxcín expresses meaning such as uncertainty, obligation (similar to could, should, would in English).
- Evidentials:
- Degree adjectives
- Building verbs:
Many lab members are working on topics related to syntax, (sentence structure and verb structure) that includes topics such as:
- Infinitives
- Lexical Suffixes
- Demonstratives
- Building verbs
- Subject Raising
Lab members are also interested in researching topics related to sounds in nɬeʔkepmxcín and have presented and published this work in academic venues and community meetings. The main topics worked on include:
- Aspiration in consonants: Investigating how the stop consonants /p, t, k, q/ are pronounced when they are found in different parts of a word.
- Vowel variation: Looking at the variation in pronunciation of vowel-consonant combinations, for example, when vowels are next to sounds such as q, x or k.
- Reduplication: Research on the glottal sounds associated with diminutive reduplication, i.e., words for “little” things which involve internal copying.
- Stress and Schwa: Research on how predictable stress is in pronunciation of words and what is the relationship of stress with the vowel schwa.
- Articulatory phonetics: How and where in the vocal tract sounds are articulated.
Language technology is also one of the areas our lab has been active in. One of our lab member has published a thesis on Automatic Glossing which is a tools that tries to automate the “glossing” (meaning breakdown) stage of the documentation process, to accelerate our output.
We hope to collaborate with other research groups and community to create more tools that is useful for them.