The production of Golpa language documentation material to be used by community members: dictionary, sketch grammar and more analyzed stories

Language	Golpa
Depositor	Juliane Kabisch-Lindenlaub
Affiliation	Leipzig University, Germany
Location	Australia
Collection ID	0425
Grant ID	SG0365
Funding Body	ELDP
Collection Status	Collection online
Landing Page Handle	http://hdl.handle.net/2196/3fba225b-9af4-4cdf-aa18-3552c0477dc2

 

Summary of the collection

The aim of the project was to produce Golpa language material that can be used by community members: a dictionary (mainly containing the vocabulary items used in the texts of the Golpa story book, a sketch grammar that can be understood by the layperson, more processed stories about the Golpa, their land and culture, and further grammatical and sociolinguistic data. The outcome of the project is beneficial to the Golpa, the neighbouring clans and to researchers.

 

Group represented

Golpa (Yolngu group)

 

Language information

Other linguists occasionally refer the language as Kuulppa, Korlpa, Gorlba, Gulba or Gurrlpa. Golpa has the closest relation to Yan-nhangu which is the only other Nhangu variety (of the Yolngu language bloc) that is is still spoken.

 

Special characteristics

Golpa is a severely endangered Yolngu language spoken on Elcho Island, Northern Territory, Australia. Only three of the very few remaining Golpa still speak and/or understand the language to a considerable extent. This project may have been the last opportunity to collect Golpa data.

(In the literature Golpa is only rarely mentioned: Few linguistic phenomena of the language are referred to by A. Capell (1945) and B. Schebeck (1976 and 2001). Except for around 200 Golpa entries in David Zorc’s (1986) Yolngu Matha Dictionary, there was no lexicon on the language.)

 

Collection contents

This collection contains two analyzed texts (that are part of Bernhard Schebeck’s huge audio collection which he made of the father of my consultants in the 1960s), a learner’s dictionary (with a Golpa-English part, an English-Golpa part and a Djambarrpuyngu-Golpa part), a learner’s grammar, a more comprehensive descriptive grammar, field notes, a number of yet unprocessed texts and lots of photos. This deposit supplements the outcome of the previous project.

 

Other information

The learner’s dictionary, the learner’s grammar and the scientific description of Golpa are also available at http://ausil.org/Dictionary/Golpa/lexicon/index.htm.

 

Acknowledgement and citation

To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:

Kabisch-Lindenlaub, Juliane. 2017. The production of Golpa language documentation material to be used by community members: dictionary, sketch grammar and more analyzed stories. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/00-0000-0000-000F-BF5E-2. Accessed on [insert date here].