Lida Cope East Carolina University Outline 1. Texas Czechs: The - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Lida Cope East Carolina University

Outline …

• 1. Texas Czechs:

The popula=on & language

• 2. Texas Czech Legacy Project:

Our purposes & audiences Audio Archive: source databases Building the archive & site tour

• 3. A searchable audio archive of Texas

Czech as a research tool

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• 1. Texas Czechs: Popula7on and Language

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Texas Czech Vernacular & its Speakers

• A blend of archaic Northeastern Moravian and

(to a lesser degree) North Eastern Bohemian dialects, and standard (‘school’) Czech, heavily influenced by over a century and a half of contact with English spoken in Texas.

• The 2010 Census: 8,748 Texans as Czech

speakers.

• An endangered immigrant language variety

fast approaching ex=nc=on

• The language will likely die in the next 10-15
• years. Its documenta=on is paramount.

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“I love Texas Polka and Czech music”

• n Facebook

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The Texas Czech Legacy Project at the University of Texas at Aus=n began in 2012; aims to make available speech and print data through its open-access digital archive of audio-recordings and historic documents gathered from ethnic Czech Moravians in Texas over a forty-year period.

Supported by:

• Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies since 2012
• Humani@es Texas 2013 and 2014
• Donated =me and exper=se: LAITS & TGDP

Cope, L., Hopkins, M., & Miller, R. (2012-2016). Texas Czech Legacy Project. hbp://laits.utexas.edu/txczechproject/home. Aus=n: University of Texas.

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Objec7ves and Audiences

Objec7ves

• Document and preserve:

unique language and heritage

• Aid: Texas Czech as a

resource in heritage language teaching

• Inspire: Collabora=ve

projects (ac=vists, educators, researchers) Audiences

• Community members
• Educators
• Students
• Researchers

– linguists, applied linguists, ethnographers, historians, folklorists, corpus linguists and dialectologists in the US, Czech Republic – Connected searchable corpora for Czech enclaves around the world!

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hbp://jsfiddle.net/bkxyjs8m/embedded/result/

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Designing an interac=ve map… Audio Archive Interviews Elicited Language (language tasks) Naturally produced speech Visual Archive Newspapers Photographs Lebers Biographies …

Audio Archive: Source Databases

• Svatava Pírková Jakobson’s (1908-2000) recordings from the

late 1960s-1980s (The Briscoe Center for the American History and Texas Czech Heritage & Culture Center, La Grange, Texas).

• Karel Kučera’s data from the late 1980s: 18 hours
• Lida Cope’s database: cc. 327 hours (1997 fieldwork); 90 full

interviews; group interviews and community events; includes language tasks and gramma=cal judgments

• John Tomecek’s database: oral histories (2007-2009): 15 hrs.
• Current recordings from 2012-2015

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Data Storage (DASe) then

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Transcrip7on & Transla7on with ELAN hbp://tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/elan/

(The Max Planck Ins=tute of Psycholinguis=cs)

• A copy of each master file split up into segments (1-5

minutes; longer with language tasks)

• Each segment transcribed (modified SC orthography):

accuracy accessibility authen7city

• Segments assigned file ID# to associate each segment

with a unique digital master file

• Transcrip=on:

– Texas Czech tokenized transcrip=on – English tokenized annota=on – English free transla=on

• Transcript displayed in Texas Czech, English, or both

Texas Czech and English

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Let’s take a tour …

Website design; dialect archive; search func=ons ... h[p://www.laits.utexas.edu/txczechproject/home

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• 3. A searchable audio archive of Texas

Czech as a research tool: but why?

• Diasporic dialects are worthy of study as contact varie=es &

relevant to contemporary examina=ons of their source languages

• The six-volume Czech Language Atlas (1992-2011)

incorporates research on Czech villages in Romania; a Romanian Banat corpus should soon become available through the Czech Na=onal Corpus…

• But there are quite a few other loca=ons: Ukraine, Austria

(Viennese Czech), Siberia, Bulgaria, Moldavia, Poland, Paraguay, United States …

• The existence of individual collec=ons = poten=al of having

available corpora for “contact Czechs” & learning from compara=ve analyses of diasporic dialects of Czech around the world

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When fully func7onal, the corpus should help answer …

(1) What level of accuracy does a comprehensive corpus analysis afford regarding the intersec=on

• f language-internal and cross-linguis=cally

effected change? (2) What insight does such analysis offer regarding the synchronic and diachronic change (i.e., the Labovian apparent :me = distribu=on of forms across age groups, and in real = at two or more discrete points in =me) in this diasporic dialect and compara=vely?

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Some broader ques7ons:

1) Which linguis=c features of Texas Czech have changed over the last forty years and why? Are these changes similar to those of other rapidly eroding dialects that are in contact with

• ther languages? [and comparing to other contact Czechs;

ICNC] 2) What types of Czech lexical and structural features have proven par7cularly resilient and why? 3) What specific insights into the lexical and gramma=cal characteris=cs of the Czech language can be gained by studying an isolated immigrant dialect like that of Texas Czechs? 4) What predic7ons regarding further dialectal leveling and change in European Czech can be made?

• What predic=ons can be made for the outcomes of

intensive contact between Czech and English in Europe?

• Exactly which features represent an accelerated change

progressing at a slower rate in European Spoken Czech and what predic=ons about the processes of change in ESC can be made as a result?

On the linguis7c features of Texas Czech …

Eckert, E. & Hannan K. (2009). Vernacular wri=ng and a sociolinguis=c change in the Texas Czech community. Journal of Slavic Linguis:cs, 17(1-2), 87-161. Eckert, E. (2007). Stones on the prairie: Accultura:on in America. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers. Cope, L. (2008). Wriben codeswitching and ethnolinguis=c iden==es of a Czech Texan. In C. Cravens, M. Fidler, & S. S. Kresin (Eds.), Between texts, languages, and cultures: a festschriG for Michael Henry Heim (pp. 1-14). Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers Dutkova-Cope, L. (2001). The Language of Czech Moravians in Texas: Do you know what ‘Párknu káru u hauza’ means?. Southwest Journal of Linguis:cs, 20(1), 51-84. Dutkova-Cope, L. (2001). Texas Czech: The Language of Texans who say they speak “A Different Type of Czech.” Southwest Journal of Linguis:cs, 20(1), 29-69.

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Applied linguis7cs for language documenta7on:

Cope, L. T. (2016). Texas Czech Legacy Project: Documen=ng the past and present for the future. Interna:onal Journal of the Sociology of Language 238, 105-125. Cope , L. (Ed.). (2012). Applied linguists needed: cross-disciplinary teamwork in endangered language contexts. Routlege/Taylor & Francis. Eckert, E., & Cope, L. (eds.) Mul=lingualism and minori=es in the Czech sociolinguis=c space. A special issue for the Interna:onal Journal of the Sociology of Language. Forthcoming Feb. 2016 Hinton, L. (2002). Commentary: Internal and external language advocacy. Journal of Linguis:c Anthropology, 12(2), 150-6. Krauss, M. (1992). The world’s languages in crisis. Language, 68(1), 4-13. Mihas, E., Perley, B., Rei-Doval, G., & Wheatley, K. (Eds.) (2013). Responses to language endangerment. In honor of Mickey Noonan. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Sallabank, J. (2013). AWtudes to endangered languages. Iden::es and policies. Cambridge University Press. Simons, G., & Lewis, M. P. (2013). The world’s languages in crisis: A 20-year update. In E. Mihas, B. Perley, G. Rei- Doval, K. Wheatley (Eds.), Responses to language endangerment. In honor of Mickey Noonan (pp. 3-19). John Benjamins Publishing Company.

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Thank You