Linguapax
Grammaticographie des langues minoritaires: le cas de l'innu
Author: Anne-Marie Baraby
Dissertation Title: Grammaticographie des langues minoritaires: le cas de l'innu
Linguistic Field(s): Language Documentation
Subject Language(s): Montagnais (moe)
Language Family(ies): Algonquian
Dissertation Director(s):
Jean Dolbec
Dissertation Abstract:
This dissertation, a study of how reference grammars can be developed for speakers of minority languages, contributes to the newly emerging field of grammaticography, the science devoted to the grammatical description of languages, particularly those which are poorly documented and endangered. The present study addresses fundamental theoretical, methodological and practical concerns in grammaticography, taking as an example key issues arising in the development of a grammar for native speakers of Innu, an Amerindian language spoken in Quebec. Starting from an analysis of problems encountered in the course of documenting the grammar of Innu, this dissertation explores how grammaticography can best respond to the specific and very urgent needs of speakers of endangered and poorly documented languages.
The study opens with an analysis of the concept of reference grammar. It then considers how potential users of reference grammars can be identified in minority language contexts and how grammars can be structured in order to meet the needs of users who are native speakers of the language without being language specialists. The study next addresses the problem of content, considering both what to include and how to include it. In this section particular attention is paid to making metalinguistic and terminological choices, establishing grammatical norms and handling regional variations, deciding on the depth and breadth of grammatical description to include, selecting grammatical points to include, organizing the selected content optimally, choosing and integrating illustrative examples, and including key non-linguistic information. Next follows a discussion of the various solutions arrived at in the cause of writing a reference grammar for the Innu language. Among these figure the use of a multilevel approach designed to address the needs of a varied reading public, the selection of teachers as the target audience, the organization of content according to a hybrid structural-function approach, and the decision to write the grammar in a majority language. Although the challenges posed by the creation of minority language reference grammars vary substantially from one context to the next, it is hoped that many of the basic grammaticographic principles developed within the framework of this study will prove useful to others engaged in reference grammar writing in the case of endangered and poorly documented languages.