Linguapax
Help with documentation
I have a question for all of you. First, some background.
For the last two months I've been working documenting the Sgüüx̱s language, or South Tsimshian so that they can eventually teach it locally. By the end of April I will have worked through a Coast Tsimshian dictionary looking for cognates, and will have gone through the Dictionary Development Process template from SIL recording not just vocabulary, but everything that I can think of in terms of ways of expressing concepts without specific vocabulary, work-arounds for things that aren't common, different ways to use words, etc. As we work we're also getting an idea of groups of vocabulary, and common ways of saying things, and trying to expand on those.
That said, even though I suspect that by the end of the month we'll have as much of the vocabulary of the language, both roots and set phrases etc) as the elder will be able to give us with the methods we're using, I feel there's a gap in our documenting that we need to fill if at all possible.
While we've been able to get quite a few of what I call conversation scripts - the normal way to introduce yourself, the whole conversation, the way to give and accept gifts, a lot of set phrases for speeches, and things like that, I think that there are so many other conversations that we really have missed, and just from our conversations in English I get the impression that a lot of these common social encounters are handled quite differently by speakers of Tsimshian.
So - Is there something like a massive list of common types of social interactions, or a textbook I could find that would teach me how to recognize them in a language, and how to go about documenting them? Sort of like a list of semantic domains, but for conversations?
We only have one speaker left, and she is 97, so I really want to make the absolute best use of our time recording together.
Thank you all in advance for any advice you might have!
Dale McCreery
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