Agaw Family (Kemant, Khamtanga,

Qwarenya)
David Appleyard, SOAS
Project Summary:

Since visiting Ethiopia in 1973-74 for an extended period of research I have been engaged in
work on various of the Agaw family of languages, several of which are in an endangered
position, and in two instances severely so. The Agaw family (also called Central Cushitic)
comprises 4 branches each consisting of dialect clusters of varying complexity. Of these Bilin,
spoken in what is now Eritrea, and Awngi, spoken in the Gojjam region of Ethiopia, are
currently not in a threatened position and both are now being used as local languages of
literacy in their respective regions. The other Agaw languages are in a less happy condition.

During the initial field trip to Ethiopia in 1973-74 I spent a little over a month collecting data
on Kemant (or more properly Kemanteney), specifically on the dialect of Kerker, which more
recent surveys suggest is now extinct. Current estimates, based on the 1994 census, indicate
that only 1,625 of the 172,291 people who describe themselves as Kemant still speak
Kemanteney, and none of these.

A small sketch grammar (A Descriptive Outline of Kemant, BSOAS 38 (1975): 316-50) was
published describing the data collected in 1973-74.

On a subsequent visit to Ethiopia in 1983, I was able to collect material on another Agaw
language, called Khamtanga by the speakers I worked with and belonging to a different
branch of the Agaw family. Evidence suggests that this dialect cluster is more complex and a
variety of speech varieties, with names such as Khamta, Chamir, and Kaïliña, have been noted
by earlier researchers. Arising from this study, a sketch of Khamtanga appeared in two parts
(A Grammatical Sketch of Khamtanga I and II, BSOAS 50 (1985): 241-66, 470-507 resp.)

My third major stint of fieldwork on Agaw was devoted to what has been called Qwarenya,
the original language of the Falashas or Ethiopian Jews, and this variety I had the opportunity
to study in Israel amongst members of the community who migrated there from Ethiopia in
1991. Qwarenya is extremely endangered, if not actually extinct by now, as only 6 speakers
were identified in Israel, none of whom were under 70 years of age, and none of whom used
the language in their everyday conversation, but preferred to speak Amharic. Qwarenya is a
member of the same dialect cluster as Kemanteney, sharing about 75%-80% of the lexicon.

Ongoing project description:

Results of research on Qwarenya were published in 1998 (Language Death: the Case of
Qwarenya (Ethiopia), in Brenzinger, M. (ed.) Endangered Languages in Africa, 142-61. Köln:
Köppe Verlag.
Lexical data collected on these and other field-trips, including work on Awngi and Bilin, are
currently being used in a Comparative Dictionary of the Agaw languages, which I am at
present preparing. It is hoped that this book will be finished by the end of 2004.

Documentation of Ayere, an endangered

and undocumented minority language of
the Nigerian Middle Belt
Anja Moemeke-Choon, SOAS
Project Details:

Individual Graduate Studentship. Duration: 2007-2009. £29,659

Project Summary:

The purpose of this project is a documentation and description of Ayere, a minority language
in Nigeria, which is highly threatened by Yoruba and mainly undocumented and undescribed.
Work already existing on Ayere includes a word list and sketch vowel and consonant charts.
The outcomes will be a short sociolinguistic description of Ayere, a sketch grammar, a
trilingual dictionary Ayere-Yoruba-English of about 2,000 to 3,000 words and a collection of
written and spoken language materials. These will be archived with ELAR as well as a local
Nigerian archive. In the PhD thesis I will focus on the phonology of Ayere.

Stories from the Saltwater as told by the old

Marra ladies
Greg Dickson, Australian National University
Project Details:

Small Grant. Duration: 2010-2011. £8,500

Project Summary:

There are five elderly Marra (lSO:mec, location: -15/135.5) speakers who are defying
language shift in the Roper River region of Northern Australia, where all other Marra people
now use Kriol, an English-based creole, as a lingua franca. This project will capture stories in
Marra, translated into Kriol and English, about the lives of these last Marra speakers and their
traditional knowledge. The project is truly collaborative and will create an ethnographically
oriented canon of trilingual texts representing Marra people and traditional lifestyles. It will
be of significant cultural and educational value to Marra people and inform important
inguistic research.

Documentation of 3-4 Endangered Non-

Austronesian Languages of Alor and
Pantar, Eastern Indonesia
Louise Baird , Leiden University
Project Details:

Field Trip Grant. Duration: 2004-2004. £10,000

Project Summary:

All of the languages in this project are previously undescribed non-Austronesian languages
spoken in the Alor archipelago in south-eastern Indonesia. Klon is spoken by approximately
5,000-6,000 people in the western part of Alor island, Abui by approximately 16,000 people
in central Alor, and Teiwa by approximately 5,000 people in the eastern part of Pantar island.

On the islands of Alor and Pantar there is a very high level of bilingualism in the local variety
of Malay; local languages are generally afforded low status in their speech communities and
are regarded as ‘backward’ by residents in town. In addition, in many parts of the region,
including the speech communities in this study, children are learning the local variety of
Malay as their first language and are unable to communicate in the local languages.

The primary aim of the fieldwork is to collect more language data for Klon, Abui and Teiwa
to add to the body of data collected in 2003 by the three researchers in the Linguistic
Variation in Eastern Indonesia project. The main research aim of the project is to produce
short grammars of Klon and Teiwa and a full reference grammar of Abui. Either as a part of
the grammars or separately we will produce trilingual dictionaries (local language –
Indonesian – English), which will be useful for the local speech communities as well as the
worldwide linguistic community. We will also produce a collection of texts to be published
locally for each language using both the national Indonesian language and English.

Ongoing project description:

For more information please see http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/aapp