SIL linguists present papers at Caribbean linguistics conference

(August 2010) The Society for Caribbean Linguistics is holding its 18th Biennial Conference 9–13 August in Barbados, sponsored by The University of the West Indies. This year’s conference is dedicated to the memory of Professor Richard Allsopp, Caribbean linguist and lexicographer. In keeping with his contribution to language and culture, the theme of the Conference is "Caribbean Languages and Popular Culture."

Papers presented by SIL personnel

• Ken Decker: “Mapping the dispersion of English regional dialects in the Caribbean”
• Jo-Anne Ferreira: “Issues in the documentation and revitalization of an endangered heritage language: Using Trinidadian French Creole texts as a data source in language revitalization”
• David Frank: “Proposal for a Gullah dictionary”
• Elizabeth Parks, Jason Parks and Holly Williams: “Sign language use in the Dominican Republic and Jamaican deaf communities”

Language research and documentation are core contributions SIL makes to the world’s understanding of languages. Field linguists work in partnership with minority language speakers to collect and analyze language and culture data, producing linguistic descriptions: phonologies, grammars and dictionaries. SIL facilitates the publication of research in linguistics, anthropology, ethnomusicology and other fields. SIL has surveyed more than 2,500 languages, contributing unique and significant data to the Ethnologue, a reference volume cataloging the world’s known living languages.

Related links of interest

• Official conference website
• Creole languages in Ethnologue: Languages of the World
• Language and culture research, language assessment and sign languages in SIL
  
• "Papers at conference for Caribbean, Creole and Pidgin linguistics"
• "Kriol-English Dictionary celebrated in Belize" 
• "Symposium on endangered and creole languages"