CELD
Universitas Negeri Papua (UNIPA)
In 2009, Center for Endangered Languages Documentation (CELD) was established at Universitas Negeri Papua (UNIPA, State University of Papua) in order to facilitate state of the art ethnolinguistic research and local outreach for endangered language communities in the Indonesian Papua.
CELD is small, but is well equipped with latest documentation technology enabling it to carry out documentations about indigenous cultures and languages as well as to develop strategies and materials with the local speech communities for preserving their cultural knowledge and languages.
For logistic reasons, in its first project CELD focuses on the highly endangered languages of Yapen. Yapen is an island in the Cenderawasih Bay, north of the mainland, inhabited currently by a total population of 83.696 people. Over the next years, CELD will expand its project area successively – taking into account, on the one hand, the degree of endangerment of the approximately 250 languages spoken in the area. On the other hand, the capacities of the center and its young researchers. Recently, a documentation project on Iha, a non-Austronesian language, has started.
The current on-going project done in a corporation with a speech community is the documentation project of language and culture of Wooi in the Yapen Islands. The project is as an example of how CELD works. The starting point of this documentation is that some representatives of the Wooi community approached Dr. Alexander Loch, a German anthropologist, asking for a support to develop culture documentation. At the same time the director of CELD, Yusuf Sawaki, decided to work academically on the grammar of Wooi, from the Yapen language cluster. The same vision, between the speech community and CELD, has then developed respectively. One of world leading linguists of language documentation, Prof. Nikolaus Himmelmann, offered a support and German’s Volkswagen Foundation provides funding for the project. The data can be accessed in the DoBeS electronic archive.
Looking ahead, CELD determines to attract many Papuan linguists to carry out their own documentation projects and invites international scholars and community development experts to join the efforts, in order to make such work with indigenous communities and endangered languages sustainable.
Center for Endangered Languages Documentation (CELD)
Universitas Negeri Papua
PO Box 206
Manokwari 98314
www.celd-papua.org
