MPI EVA Department of Linguistics Jakarta Field Station Front page
(The Former) Jakarta Field Station
of the
Max Planck Institute
for Evolutionary Anthropology
Jakarta Field Station Front page
 
Data
Projects
  Language Acquisition
  Bilingual Language Acquisition
  Language Contact
  Language Description
  Language Experiments
  Javanese Dialectology
  Metaphor and Emotion
Collaborative Projects
  Documentation of Kenyah
  Figurative Language
  Language and Thought
  Phon. of Jakarta Indonesian
  Traditional Jambi Malay
  Moluccan [external link]
  Acquisition of Passive Voice
  Sociolinguistic Questionnaire
Former Collaborative Projects
  Acq. of Morpho-phonology
Publications & Conf. Papers
News
Regular Events
Events
The Jakarta Forum
Contact Us
People
Site Map
Links
Impressum
 Front page > Projects > Language Description

General Language Description

Many of Indonesia's 800 or so languages have not been properly described. For some, all we have are short word lists; for others, even that does not exist. Our General Language Description project selects languages and dialects which are of linguistic interest, but have not been properly described yet. Particular attention is given to nonstandard varieties, which have typically suffered from the worst neglect.

Project Goals:

  • Describe endangered languages and dialects (eg Sakai, Orang Asli, Orang Akit)
  • Describe non-endangered (but hitherto undescribed) languages and dialects (eg Riau Indonesian)
  • Describe other languages and dialects which are of particular linguistic interest (eg Pemalang Javanese)
  • Describe Jakarta Indonesian (as a reference point for the Acquisition of Jakarta Indonesian project)
  • Compile naturalistic text corpora for all the languages under investigation

Languages/dialects studied: (see map for approximate locations)

Last modified: 29 Mar 2007, London, UK
Location: language_description.php.html