NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Gwich'in Settlement Area

Tags: social sciences, linguistics, language

Objective(s): To study how to talk about certainty, obligation and permission in Uummarmiutun.

Project Description: Different languages express things differently. Every language is a unique way of communicating thoughts and feelings and knowledge. The science of Linguistics is interested in finding out more about what human language is like, and therefore interested in many different languages. The principal investigator is interested in ‘modal words’ / ‘modal expressions’ in Uummarmiutun. With a modal word, we can express how certain we are of something, and we can use modal words to talk about permissions and obligations. ‘Could’, ‘must’ and ‘might’ are examples of modal words. Modal words in all languages have abstract meanings, and therefore they are very interesting and difficult to translate directly into another language. The principal investigator is interested in studying how these abstract things are said in Uummarmiutun. In other words, the researcher would like to study how to talk about certainty, obligations and permissions in Uummarmiutun. This study will be based on the knowledge of people who speak Uummarmiutun. The principal investigator will interview speakers of Uummarmiutun, to learn about the Uummarmiutun words that can be used to talk about obligations, permissions and certainty. The interest is in learning how one can use these words to say something to another person. The hope is that participants will share knowledge which they find important to the study. The principal investigator will also ask participants direct questions. For example, participants will be asked to explain the difference between two sentences. Or the principal investigator will describe a situation, and ask if one can say one of the sentences in that situation. Participants will also be asked in which situation one would say that sentence to someone. Each interview will last one hour (more or less), and participants will be asked for permission to record the interviews. In that way the researcher can hear them again after returning home. Participants will also be asked if talks or short stories in Uummarmiutun can be recorded. The participant could for instance give advice in Uummarmiutun or share knowledge about a topic he or she finds important. Later on, participants will be asked to sit down with the principal investigator and transcribe and translate some of the talks. The computer program Annotation Pro will be suggested when this is done. With Annotation Pro the translation and the Uummarmiutun text can be looked at on the screen at the same time, and the researcher can go back and listen to a sentence several times. Potential participants will be asked to read a consent form before interviews are done and let the principal investigator know if something in the consent for should be changed. The principal investigator wishes to make a popular scientific booklet with the research results. This book will be a description of how one talks about abstract things like obligations (‘he has to clean the house’), permissions (‘you may enter the house’) and certainty (‘he might be feeling sick’ or ‘he could be feeling sick’) in Uummarmiutun. The booklet will be especially for young people who are learning Uummarmiutun. The research results can also be used by teachers. The principal investigator would like to consult and cooperate with teachers in the process to make sure that the booklet will be useful for the community. If Inuvialuit elders, teachers or other citizens have requests or ideas for the book, the principal investigator would be very grateful to hear them. Copies of the popular scientific booklet and the academic thesis will be given to the Aurora Research Institute Library and to the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre. And copies of recordings where speakers share knowledge in Uummarmiutun will – if the individual participants agree – be given to the Inuvialuit Cultural Resource Centre, the Inuit Qaujisarvingat, and the Alaska Native Language Archive. In this way, others can hear how Uummarmiutun is spoken, and learn from what the participants tell. And in the future, the next generations can hear how Uummarmiutun is spoken today. If anyone has other suggestions for ways to make the research benefit the community, please let the principal investigator know. The book will be finalized after the research and analysis are made. If elders or Uummarmiutun teachers or other individuals have requests or ideas for the book, the principal investigator would be very grateful to hear them. COMMUNITY PRESENTATIONS The principal investigator has two fieldtrips planned; one in the fall 2014, and one in the fall 2015. In 2015, the plan is to give a talk where preliminary research results are presented to the community for feedback. The researcher would also like to present how research is done for this project and how data is collected. This is of course not a presentation of results. It is important to the researcher and the project to hear thoughts and comments from the community. Three ideas for community presentations: 1) The first kind is a presentation of what ‘Linguistics’ is, and/or how research is done for this project. 2) The other kind of presentation is a workshop for small groups of high school students. First the principal investigator will explain how research is done for this project on Uummarmiutun modals. Afterwards, students will be given small exercises, where they are the linguists who are doing research on Danish (PI’s native language). The researcher will be the participant, and the students will be the interviewer. In this way the students will see what linguistic fieldwork can be like. 3) Another idea for a workshop is a crash course in Swahili grammar. First the students get a brief introduction to Swahili grammar. Afterwards they do small exercises where they form sentences in Swahili themselves. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from September 3, 2014 to November 21, 2014.