Stefan Schnell
***NOTE: I am not curating this site any longer. For my current research outputs and projects go to: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stefan_Schnell ***
I have been working on the documentation of the Oceanic language Vera'a, spoken in North Vanuatu. The current corpus of the Vera'a language can be found here: http://corpus1.mpi.nl/ds/imdi_browser/?openpath=MPI649372%23
Together with Geoff Haig I have developed a system of glossing conventions called GRAID (Grammatical Relations and Animacy in Discourse) which triggers the referential form, semantic/pragmatic features and syntactic function of referential expressions in discourse. For the glossing manual, see the papers section. GRAID-anotated texts from four languages and quantiative data can be found here: http://vc.uni-bamberg.de/moodle/course/view.php?id=9488
My current ARC-funded DECRA project investigates patterns of argument structure and referential choice in texts from diverse, hitherto understudied languages.
Supervisors: Ulrike Mosel and Geoffrey L. D. Haig
I have been working on the documentation of the Oceanic language Vera'a, spoken in North Vanuatu. The current corpus of the Vera'a language can be found here: http://corpus1.mpi.nl/ds/imdi_browser/?openpath=MPI649372%23
Together with Geoff Haig I have developed a system of glossing conventions called GRAID (Grammatical Relations and Animacy in Discourse) which triggers the referential form, semantic/pragmatic features and syntactic function of referential expressions in discourse. For the glossing manual, see the papers section. GRAID-anotated texts from four languages and quantiative data can be found here: http://vc.uni-bamberg.de/moodle/course/view.php?id=9488
My current ARC-funded DECRA project investigates patterns of argument structure and referential choice in texts from diverse, hitherto understudied languages.
Supervisors: Ulrike Mosel and Geoffrey L. D. Haig
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Papers by Stefan Schnell
This volume represents the first collective book dedicated solely to the languages of this archipelago, and to the various forms taken by their diversity. Its ten chapters cover a wide range of topics, including verbal aspect, valency, possessive structures, numerals, space systems, oral history and narratives. The languages of Vanuatu: Unity and Diversity provides new insights onto the many facets of Vanuatu’s rich linguistic landscape.
The originally spoken audio-recorded stories were edited by Makson Vorēs, then transferred into a digital format and translated into English by Stefan Schnell. Armstrong Malau provided the translations into Bislama, and Catriona Hyslop-Malau checked the English translation.
These edited stories constitute a subcorpus of written Vera'a that is part of the Vera'a ELAN corpus archived with The Language Archive, MPI Nijmegen.
This grammar is currently been further reworked and expanded for publication as a comprehensive grammar of the Vera'a language.
Specific types of texts / topics of documentation are: customary stories (about 80 stories, told by more than 30 different speakers of both sexes and different age groups), descriptions of plants and their usage in daily life, descriptions of fish, written description of birds; ceremonies (weddings, funerals, peace keeping, among others), house building, other social events like social mornings, the role of kava in traditional and modern society, and local history (WWII, landslide and resettlement of Vera'a speakers in 1945, Blackbirding, construction of an airstrip (recently)).
Other recordings feature traditional songs and dances, modern string band performances, performances of traditional water music.
Recorded texts have been transcribed in handwriting by a total of 6 different native speakers of the language, and these handwritten documents have been scanned and archived alongside the media and annotation files. Transcriptions have subsequently been entered (time-aligned) in ELAN, together with a free translation in English. A smaller part of the corpus is morphologically annotated. A number of texts (comprising close to 2000 clause units) have been annotated with GRAID.
A number of stories have been edited (handwritten) by one native speaker. These editions have been scanned and archived, and the edited texts have been entered into ELAN, alongside with a free translation into Bislama (the pidgin English of Vanuatu) and English. These stories were published as a trilingual book and disseminated in the community, and the library of the Cultural Centre of the National Cultural Council of Vanuatu.
Part I examines the theoretical conception of referential hierarchies in typological researchers and summarizes the cross-linguistically attested effects of referential hierarchies on particular morpho-syntactic constructions.
Part II constitutes the first descriptive account of the Vera'a language (Austronesian, Oceanic), which is spoken by approximately 400 people living on the west coast of Vanua Lava, the largest of the Banks Is. in North Vanuatu.
Part III examines the role of referential hierarchies in the morphosyntax of the language. Hierarchies of person, animacy, referentiality (accessibility, heaviness of referential expression, ...), focus are of particular relevance in the constituent order, prepositional flagging of non-core arguments, three-participant constructions, number marking, and different types of possessive constructions."
CONTENTS
1. Alexandre François, Michael Franjieh, Sébastien Lacrampe, Stefan Schnell — The exceptional linguistic density of Vanuatu
2. Elizabeth Pearce — Completing and terminating: On aspect marking in Unua
3. Peter Budd — Move the ka: Valency and Instrumental shift in Bierebo
4. Benjamin Touati — The initial vowel copy in the Sakao dialect of Wanohe (Espiritu Santo)
5. Michael Franjieh — The construct suffix in North Ambrym
6. Murray Garde — Numerals in Sa
7. Alexandre François — The ins and outs of up and down: Disentangling the nine geocentric space systems of Torres and Banks languages
8. Cynthia Schneider & Andrew Gray — Is it worth documenting "just a dialect"? Making the case for Suru Kavian (Pentecost Island)
9. Dorothy Jauncey — Not just stories: The rules and roles of oral narratives in Tamambo
10. Nick Thieberger — Walking to Erro: Stories of travel, origins, or affection