OLAC Record oai:scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu:10125/24772

Metadata
Title:		Documenting a language with phonemic and phonetic variation: the case of Enets
Bibliographic Citation:		Khanina, Olesya; 2018-12; Kaipuleohone University of Hawai'i Digital Language Archive;http://hdl.handle.net/10125/24772.
Creator:		Khanina, Olesya
Date (W3CDTF):		2018-12
Description:		This paper describes phonemic and phonetic variation attested in Enets, a highly endangered Uralic language of Northern Siberia. This variation is worth describing for three reasons. First of all, it is a part of documenting phonology of this disappearing language. Second, it is extremely frequent and widespread, including most words of the lexicon, but at the same time it does not visibly correlate with any social parameters, so this is one more case study in the vein of the sociolinguistic agenda set by Dorian (2001; 2010). Third, the Enets variation presents a challenge for consistent transcription, let alone an orthography design. These three reasons structure the paper: after an introductory section on the Enets community, languages used in the community in past and present, methodology of this study, and phonological profile of Enets, I proceed to a phonological description of the variation (section 2), to sociolinguistic details of this variation (section 3), and finally to issues of representation of the Enets data in a vain search for a perfect orthography for the language (section 4). Crucially, the last reason was the driving force for this research in the first place, as “[c]reating a phonemic orthography implies at least a basic phonological analysis preceding its design” (Jany 2010:234) and “faulty phonological analyses give rise to faulty orthographies” (Rehg 2004:506). Being neither a phonetician, nor a phonologist, I had initially aimed only for a basic description of sound patterns for the sake of an orthography; however, it quickly became evident that the puzzle of variation in Enets was not to be taken lightly, and more specific research was conducted. However, despite all the work done, I still see the results rather as a grounding for a consistent transcription/orthography than as a full phonological description. For the latter, Enets is still awaiting a talented phonologist, while our documentation project aimed hard to preserve exemplars of Enets sounds for this purpose (see Khanina 2017 for details).
		National Foreign Language Resource Center
Format:		31 pages
Identifier:		Khanina, Olesya. 2018. Documenting a language with phonemic and phonetic variation: the case of Enets. Language Documentation & Conservation 12. 430-460.
		1934-5275
Identifier (URI):		http://hdl.handle.net/10125/24772
Publisher:		University of Hawaii Press
Rights:		Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
		Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States
		http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/
Subject:		Enets
		Northern Siberia
		Uralic
		language documentation
		Phonetics
Table Of Contents:		khanina.pdf
		Archive.zip
		khanina_noaudio.pdf
Type:		Article
Type (DCMI):		Text
OLAC Info
Archive:		Language Documentation and Conservation
Description:		http://www.language-archives.org/archive/ldc.scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu
GetRecord:		OAI-PMH request for OLAC format
GetRecord:		Pre-generated XML file
OAI Info
OaiIdentifier:		oai:scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu:10125/24772
DateStamp:		2019-04-23
GetRecord:		OAI-PMH request for simple DC format
Search Info
Citation:		Khanina, Olesya. 2018. University of Hawaii Press.
Terms:		dcmi_Text