Picture of Dusner Village Picture of Dusner Village Picture of Dusner Village Picture of Dusner Village Picture of Dusner Village

University of Oxford
Linguistics, Philology & Phonetics

Multimodal language documentation for Dusner, an endangered language of Papua

Oxford University logo Universitas Negeri Papua logo Universitas Cenderawasih logo
Leverhulme Trust Project F/10 192/A
Principal investigator: Mary Dalrymple
Co-investigator: Suriel Mofu
Photos of Dusner Village by Christian Imburi
With half of the world's 6000 languages expected to vanish within the next 50 years, preserving and documenting the languages of the world is critically important for linguists and speakers of endangered languages. Advances in technology have enabled new, more powerful language documentation methods which improve greatly on traditional paper-only methods. We have created an on-line database of video texts, their transcriptions, analyses, and translations, and a grammar sketch for Dusner, a highly endangered Austronesian language with 3 remaining fluent speakers.

Our project has produced: (1) digital video recordings of stories and conversations in Dusner; (2) transcriptions, with free English and Indonesian translations, aligned with the video files; (3) linguistically annotated texts in two forms: one human-readable and one in standard XML format, suitable for computer analysis; (4) a glossary of basic words and affixes, an important resource in lexicographic and historical linguistic work; and (5) a grammar sketch of the core structural properties of the language (Dusner, Suriel Mofu and Mary Dalrymple, Lincom, 2012). The on-line resources were created using Toolbox and Elan.

The project was a collaborative effort with UNIPA (State University of Papua) and UNCEN (Cenderawasih University, Papua), and ran from October 2010 to December 2011.

The Dusner data has also been archived at this site, by Oxford's Sustainable Digital Scholarship service.

Dusner speakers
Picture of Emma Somesa Picture of Enos Yoweni Picture of Anna Imburi
Name: Emma Somesa
Age: 85
Current address: Dusner Village
Emma is the oldest speaker of Dusner. She speaks Dusner and Wandamen fluently, and also speaks Indonesian. We communicate with her through interpreters who speak Indonesian and Wandamen.
Name: Enos Yoweni
Age: 60
Current address: Sowiar Village, Simei
Enos comes from Dusner and speaks 4 languages fluently: Kuri, Dusner, Wandamen and Indonesian. He is the head of Sowiar Village (a 3 hour walk from Dusner Village). There is no land transportation to his village.
Name: Anna Imburi
Age: 60
Current address: Yogyakarta, Central Java
Anna comes from Dusner Village and speaks 3 languages fluently: Dusner, Wandamen and Indonesian. She is Emma Somesa's niece.
Interpreter
Picture of Soleman Nelwan
Name: Soleman Nelwan
Age: 65
Current address: Dusner Village
Soleman is a Dusner man and a Vicar in the village. He speaks Indonesian and Wandamen fluently but speaks and understands very little Dusner. He assists Dr. Mofu as a translator, using Indonesian and Wandamen.
Toolbox resources
Toolbox dictionary database
Autobiographical story 1
Narrator: Anna Imburi
Date of recording: 11 February 2011
Location: Yogyakarta, Central Java
Transcription and translation: Suriel Mofu and Mary Dalrymple
Downloadable resources:
  Video file: (MPG [52MB]) video/compare.mpg
  Audio file: (WAV [57MB]) audio/compare.wav
  Toolbox files: transcription, translation into English and Indonesian, linguistic analysis (toolbox/compare.txt, xml/compare.xml)
Autobiographical story 2
Narrator: Anna Imburi
Date of recording: 12 April 2011
Location: Yogyakarta, Central Java
Transcription and translation: Suriel Mofu and Mary Dalrymple
Downloadable resources:
  Video file: (MPG [44MB]) video/cc.mpg
  Audio file: (WAV [49MB]) audio/cc.wav
  Toolbox files: transcription, translation into English and Indonesian, linguistic analysis (toolbox/cc.txt, xml/cc.xml)
Autobiographical story 3
Narrator: Anna Imburi
Date of recording: 3 November 2010
Location: Yogyakarta, Central Java
Transcription and translation: Suriel Mofu and Mary Dalrymple
Downloadable resources:
  Video file: (MOD [176MB]) video/bb.mod; (MPG [24MB]) video/bb.mpg
  Audio file: (WAV [57MB]) audio/bb.wav
  Toolbox files: transcription, translation into English and Indonesian, linguistic analysis (toolbox/bb.txt, xml/bb.xml)
Autobiographical story 4
Narrator: Anna Imburi
Date of recording: 3 November 2010
Location: Yogyakarta, Central Java
Transcription and translation: Suriel Mofu and Mary Dalrymple
Downloadable resources:
  Video file: (MOD [145MB]) video/ee.mod; (MPG [20MB]) video/ee.mpg
  Audio file: (WAV [46MB]) audio/ee.wav
  Toolbox files: transcription, translation into English and Indonesian, linguistic analysis (toolbox/ee.txt, xml/ee.xml)
Autobiographical story 1
Narrator: Enos Yoweni
Date of recording: 14 August 2011
Location: Wasior, West Papua
Transcription and translation: Suriel Mofu and Mary Dalrymple
Downloadable resources:
  Video file: (WMV [487MB]) video/enos1.wmv; (MPG [53MB]) video/enos1.mpg
  Audio file: (WAV [61MB]: audio/enos1.wav
  Toolbox files: transcription, translation into English and Indonesian, linguistic analysis (toolbox/enos1.txt, xml/enos1.xml)
Autobiographical story 2
Narrator: Enos Yoweni
Date of recording: 16 August 2011
Location: Wasior, West Papua
Transcription and translation: Suriel Mofu and Mary Dalrymple
Downloadable resources:
  Video file: (WMV [439MB]) video/enos2.wmv; (MPG [70MB]) video/enos2.mpg
  Audio file: (WAV [110MB]) audio/enos2.wav
  Toolbox files: transcription, translation into English and Indonesian, linguistic analysis (toolbox/enos2.txt, xml/enos2.xml)
Autobiographical story 3
Narrator: Enos Yoweni
Date of recording: 15 August 2011
Location: Wasior, West Papua
Transcription and translation: Suriel Mofu and Mary Dalrymple
Downloadable resources:
  Video file: (WMV [569MB]) video/enos3.wmv; (MPG [63MB]) video/enos3.mpg
  Audio file: (WAV [124MB]) audio/enos3.wav
  Toolbox files: transcription, translation into English and Indonesian, linguistic analysis (toolbox/enos3.txt, xml/enos3.xml)
Conversation between Enos Yoweni and Emma Somisa
Participants: Emma Somisa and Enos Yoweni
Date of recording: 19 August 2011
Location: Dusner, West Papua
Transcription and translation: Suriel Mofu
Downloadable resources:
  Video file: (WMV [31MB]) video/conversation2.wmv; (MPG [5MB]) video/conversation2.mpg
  Audio file: (WAV [65MB]) audio/conversation2.wav
  Toolbox files: transcription, translation into English and Indonesian, linguistic analysis (toolbox/conversation2.txt, xml/conversation2.xml)
Untranscribed videos:

Counting
Narrator: Anna Imburi
Date of recording: 13 April 2011
Location: Yogyakarta, Central Java

Counting from 1 to 20: (MOV [17MB]) video/counting1-20.mov; (MPG [2MB]) video/counting1-20.mpg
Counting from 20 to 30: (MOV [12MB]) video/counting20-30.mov; (MPG [1.5MB]) video/counting20-30.mpg

Conversation 1
Participants: Emma Somisa and Enos Yoweni
Date of recording: 19 August 2011
Location: Dusner, West Papua
Downloadable resources:
  Video file: (WMV [328MB]) video/conversation1.wmv; (MPG [63MB]) video/conversation1.mpg
  Audio file: (WAV [65MB]) audio/conversation1.wav

Sermon and religious teachings
Year of recording: 1954
Location: Dusner, West Papua
Information about the date of recording provided by Solemon Nelwan. Recording available by permission of the Global Recordings Network.
Downloadable resources:
  Audio file: (WAV [87MB]) audio/old.wav