School of Languages and Linguistics - Theses

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End date: 2022 × Subject: applied linguistics × Subject: endangered languages × Subject: linguistics ×

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    Finding Hawu: landing pages, finding aids and the Alan T. Walker Collection
    Vaughan, Anthony Ronald ( 2016)
    Linguists working in language description have developed valuable grammars and dictionaries for many of the world’s small or endangered languages. However, without access to the primary data used to produce these tools, it can be difficult to scrutinise their accuracy. Language documentation aims to improve access to field data using online archives. Thus it shifts the focus from a grammar or dictionary to the data itself. Alan T. Walker collected an extensive written and audio record of Lii Hawu (the Hawu language), a small language spoken on the Sabu islands in eastern Indonesia, from May 1975 to January 1976. He subsequently published a description of the language titled A Grammar of Sawu (1982). Walker’s primary data (the Walker Collection) is now available digitally in the Pacific Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC). In this thesis, I consider the practical steps involved in creating a finding aid and inventory as a guide to the extensive Walker Collection. I also argue that landing pages and finding aids are essential elements of archival description. They are necessary to ensure digital language collections are accessible for both researchers and community members. I also discuss how primary data such as Walker’s can be used more widely, with the support of finding aids and inventories, to further document and revitalise small or endangered languages.