As part of the NSF-funded project “Endangered languages in contact in Istria and Kvarner, Croatia (ELIC)”, Dr. Keith Langston (PI) and Dr. Zvjezdana Vrzić (NYU, Co-PI) led two workshops in Croatia at the University of Rijeka and University of Pula in June, assisted by Dr. Silvana Vranić (University of Rijeka) and Dr. Ivana Lalli-Paćelat (University of Pula), who are also collaborating on this project. The goal of this research is to create an online spoken corpus of four endangered language varieties found in this region of Croatia: Čakavian (Slavic) and Istriot, Istro-Romanian, and Istro-Venetian (Romance). The corpus will be used to document these varieties, to analyze linguistic features of interest, and to study language contact phenomena. It will also be available to local community members, for use in language maintenance and revitalization projects or for other purposes. Other UGA researchers working on this grant are Co-PIs Dr. John Hale and Dr. Margaret Renwick.
During the workshops, research team members discussed and refined the system of transcription and annotation used in the project and consulted with one another about the individual transcriptions that they were currently working on. Researchers and assistants are currently focused on processing Čakavian and Istro-Venetian interviews that have been recently collected. The transcription of Istro-Venetian poses special problems because of language variation and the lack of any established orthographic norms. Since the corpus will include audio, researchers are developing a systematic orthographic transcription that is designed to be broadly acceptable to members of the local community, taking into account the variation in informal written usage.
Keith Langston 