Jenneke van der Wal

𝔾𝕖𝕓𝕠𝕖𝕚𝕕 𝕕𝕠𝕠𝕣 𝕘𝕖𝕓𝕒𝕣𝕖𝕟

@onzetaal.bsky.social sprak met Gebarentaalonderzoeker Victoria Nyst @unileiden.bsky.social over haar onderzoek naar de oorsprong en verwantschap van gebarentalen, met een extra blik op Afrika & NL.

“Het dient meer dan een maatschappelijk belang”

✊ onzetaal.nl/tijdschrift/...

Have you heard of a ‘university of understanding’? The tour guide pointed it out yesterday, and this gem of a euphemism is used for prisons!

Niloticists on the Nile!

The source of the Nile!

#ELSEA on an expedition! Where do you think we’re going today?

One of the participants summarised at the end of the first week that ‘this is exponential learning!’ 😃
Thanks for the opportunity Una Europa! @unaeuropa.bsky.social
#elsea

And we ended the day by processing the data and discussing challenges that we encountered. How to type tone in a digital database? How to decide on morpheme boundaries?

A well-deserved lunch followed, of course including matooke. Have you ever had it? It steamed plantain mash, kept warm in banana leaves

Then the second data colelction session, where each team of 2 worked with their speaker of a Ugandan language. And it went so much better for everyone than the first session!

Day 5 of the #ELSEA field school!
With first attention for morphosyntactic data and where to find them - function to form or form to function? ↔️

Enorme goudschat blijft mysterie, ‘hoop dat ‘ie nooit gevonden wordt’ Het is eigenlijk jammer dat de goudwaarde van een mysterieuze schat zo centraal staat in de legende over Incakeizer Atahualpa. Een schat aan levenswijsheden...

𝐸𝓃𝑜𝓇𝓂𝑒 𝑔𝑜𝓊𝒹𝓈𝒸𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒷𝓁𝒾𝒿𝒻𝓉 𝓂𝓎𝓈𝓉𝑒𝓇𝒾𝑒, ‘𝒽𝑜𝑜𝓅 𝒹𝒶𝓉 ‘𝒾𝑒 𝓃𝑜𝑜𝒾𝓉 𝑔𝑒𝓋𝑜𝓃𝒹𝑒𝓃 𝓌𝑜𝓇𝒹𝓉’ 🔍

Martine Bruil @unileiden.bsky.social over de mysterieuze #Inca schat bij @bnr.nl “Ik hoop dat mensen zich op andere dingen gaan richten die de Inca's ons hebben nagelaten.”

@leidenhumanities.bsky.social @lucir.bsky.social

And let’s not forget to clap for the catering! 👏 #elsea

@unaeuropa.bsky.social @dclberlin.bsky.social #elsea

The rest of day 4 of the ELSEA field school was spent on phonetics! Bert and Federico gave us some tricky words to transcribe in the international phonetic alphabet, and then we practiced with Praat software

Forgot to tag @unaeuropa.bsky.social and #elsea

Today we enhanced linguistic scholarship in Eastern Africa by first learning how to store data in a digital database (Dative) - essential to be able to search effectively and find your data back!

Meet Jenneke van der Wal (@jennekevanderwal.bsky.social). By investigating how speakers of different African languages structure information in their grammar, she unravels fundamental principles about how people articulate their thoughts.

👉 shorturl.at/BwEEj

Ammodo Science Award Laureate 2025 🧪

And here is a little goat on Makerere campus. Has nothing to do with the field school, but showed us linguists a clear interdental bleat pronunciation 😛

The most interesting was the reflection session afterwards: What went well? What challenges did you find?
A common one: How can we steer a speaker back on topic? Apparently we have quite chatty speakers! 😄

First elicitation sessions this afternoon at the ELSEA field school! The participants met with speakers of Alur, Acholi, Ateso (Nilotic languages), Runyoro, Luganda, and Lugwere (Bantu languages). Lessons were put in practice, from consent to recording and more.
#elsea
@unaeuropa.bsky.social

Day 3 of the ELSEA field school starts with Federico Faletti explaining data management. How do we backup our data, which metadata are necessary to make the data FAIR?
#elsea
@unaeuropa.bsky.social

And we wrap up the second day by repleneshing the energy we spent on developing our fieldwork skills! #elsea

Allen warns you to pay attention! 😉

Translators were used to communicate with the experts, who were not familiar with the English language.

Why is it always "my collaborators don't speak English" and never "I don't speak isiZulu"?
(from Corrigan et al. 2011, "Ethnobotanical plant uses in the KwaNibela Peninsula, St Lucia, South Africa", South African Journal of Botany 77: 346-359)

ELSEA field school next session: which type of data are there? Which do we need for which research questions? Different degrees of spontaneity and interaction, written vs oral data, etc. A lot to learn!
@unaeuropa.bsky.social

Day two of the ELSEA field school started with Allen Asiimwe leading a session in which we shared experiences about connection and trust with the speakers we work with - how can the community leaders help? what cultural differences required an adaptation of your research plan?
@unaeuropa.bsky.social

Online linguistics course for early-career linguists in eastern Africa | Una Europa Eleven European research universities have come together to create a unique alliance – Una Europa. Our universities have been educating Europe for almost 1,000 years. Together, we teach more than 400,...

www.una-europa.eu/calendar/onl...

@unaeuropa.bsky.social

@unaeuropa.bsky.social

Second session at ELSEA field school: Bert explains what makes a good audio recording and everyone gets to try it out - first battery emergencies and microphone malfunctions are being overcome!
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