Linguistics News Item
The College of Information celebrates Dr. Alexis Palmer of the Linguistics department on her CAREER award. Palmer is one of three researchers from the University of North Texas, who were awarded more than $1.5 million total in grant money through the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER).
This January, Associate Dean of Research and Advancement and Linguistics Professor, Shobhana Chelliah received notice of her award for the University Distinguished Research Professor award. Chelliah’s research on language documentation and endangered South Asian Languages began years ago. It became her mission to support the international education of UNT students through interacting with speaker communities and institutions back in India and supporting language documentation there.
In collaboration with UNT POD, our COI faculty experts discuss their mission to document and preserve endangered and indigenous languages, including South Asian languages such as Lamkang, Mankiyali, Kashmiri and Burushaski. They also discuss events such as UNT’s Year of Indigenous Languages series and Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
During the past year, Lillian Randall transformed her life into a cycle of dedication to her sport Taekwondo. This type of dedication included driving across the state to her hometown of Midlothian, Texas, for Taekwondo practice, heading back to UNT in Denton for classes, a campus job, and maintaining a strict diet while on the road.
“Due to the time I dedicated to training and traveling, I missed most of the times my friends were hanging out and I saw my family even less,” says Randall.
Traveling to Kashmir with Dr. Munshi and my fellow students was both enlightening and immensely rewarding. We were fortunate enough to speak with all manner of people there, from those who enjoyed the benefits of the system to those who have struggled because of it. The connections that Prof. Munshi has forged and maintained in the country with various people enabled us to interact with teachers, students, journalists, mothers, priests and lawyers to name just a few.
Congratulations to Linguistics Department Chair, Dr. Sadaf Munshi on the release of her new book "Srinagar Burushaski: A Descriptive and Comparative Account with
Analyzed Texts"
Dr. Sadaf Munshi led a group of Students to Kashmir for the India Venture Fund Trip of 2018, with the goal of collecting data on manuscripts for preservation efforts. The team visited many manuscript collections, and visited local universities connect with local teams and establish the importance of different forms of linguistic preservation.
Several UNT faculty and students presented at the annual
DFW Metroplex Linguistics Conference
Held at Texas A&M Commerce November 9th, 2018.
UNT presentations at the DFW Metroplex Linguistics Conference:
The reconstruction of Proto-Segai-Modang (Kalimantan, Indonesia) - Alexander Smith
The Passive Side of Sexual Violence: A Linguistic Analysis of ICTY “Landmark Cases” - Kristyne Wahlert & Ashley Balcazar
Traditional Ecological Knowledge of Khurkhuls - Bebica Louriyam
University of North Texas October 4-6, 2018
The proposed project seeks to digitize and document a selection of highly endangered private collections of rare manuscripts from different parts of Kashmir (India). Often called the Sharada Peeth (‘seat of knowledge’) of the Indian subcontinent, Kashmir has served as an established center of learning from the Vedic times. Various internationally celebrated works dealing with religion, philosophy, history, language and literature were composed in the region.
