Projekt

The current linguistic situation on the island of Vanua Lava can be viewed as a microcosm of the linguistic situation in Vanuatu, and in Melanesia as a whole, an area that has always been abundant in linguistic diversity, but whose diversity is now threatened by a multitude of factors, which in the near future could see a great reduction in the number of languages spoken and an increasing shift towards uniformity of culture. The aim of this project is a thorough documentation, within the cultural context, of the two remaining languages Vera'a and Vurës. The documentation will focus primarily on Vera'a, which is the more endangered language of the two, with only 200-300 speakers, and which has not been documented at all While focussing on Vera'a, the project will take advantage of the opportunity to supplement existing Vurës data collected earlier by Catriona Malau, in particular with video recordings, which are lacking from the current documentation. Within the scope of a comprehensive language documentation, the anticipated outcomes of this project are primarily a substantial collection of annotated transcriptions of audio and video recordings for both languages. A lexicon database for the language will also be produced and archived.

• Prof. Dr. Ulrike Mosel

  Universität Kiel
  Philosophische Fakultät, ISFAS
  Insitut für Skandinavistik
  Kiel
  

• Dr. Sabine Claudia Hess

  Universität Heidelberg
  Fakultät für Verhaltens- und Empirische Kultur-
  wissenschaften
  Institut für Ethnologie
  Heidelberg
  

• Prof. Dr. Raymond Ammann

  Universität Basel
  Ethnologisches Seminar
  Basel
  Schweiz
  

• Katherine Holmes

  American Museum of Natural History
  Center for Biodiversity and Conservation
  New York
  USA
  

• Dr. Nicholas Thieberger

  University of Melbourne
  Faculty of Arts
  School of Languages and
  Linguistics
  Victoria
  Australien
  

• Chanel Sam

  Forest Conservation Unit
  Department of Forests
  Port Vila
  Vanuatu (Neue Hebriden)
  

• Dr. Catriona Malau

  University of the South Pacific
  School of Humanities
  Department of Literature and Language
  Pacific Languages Unit (PLU)
  Port Vila
  Vanuatu (Neue Hebriden)