October 2022 research dissemination by faculty members

October was a busy month for some of the Department’s faculty members who presented their studies at different conferences.

Asst. Prof. Elsie Marie Or presented a report that she co-authored with the Department’s resident archivist, Dustin Matthew Estrellado, at the 2022 Language Documentation and Archiving Conference, which was held at the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities from 03 to 07 October. Their paper titled “The State of Language Archiving in the Philippines: Lessons from the Ernesto Constantino Legacy Materials” introduced the contents and state of the Ernesto Constantino Collection, which include audio recordings and transcribed data collected from over a hundred Philippine languages between the 1960s and the early 1990s. They shared the challenges and issues involved in archiving the language legacy materials and the steps the Department can take to ensure the preservation of the materials so that they can still be accessed and used for future research and projects that could benefit more people.

Asst. Prof. Ria Rafael and instructors Noah Cruz and Vincent Christopher Santiago participated in the Pambansang Kongreso sa Nanganganib na Wika organized by the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino. This conference was held from 24 to 26 October at the National Museum in Manila.

Rafael and Cruz presented their paper titled “Tindig at Tunguhin ng Dayalektolohiya sa Pilipinas,” which is a historical survey of dialectological studies that have been done on different Philippine languages. They discussed the methods that have been used in conducting these studies and the types of outputs that these past studies have been produced. They also identified gaps that still exist in the field of Philippine dialectology and provided recommendations for future researchers.

Cruz also presented a paper titled “Ang mga Hamon sa Pagtatasa sa Sigla ng mga Wika sa Pilipinas” at the conference. In his talk, Cruz discussed the overall language situation in the Philippines and reviewed the appropriateness of widely-used language vitality scales and instruments in determining the vitality of languages in the country.

The paper that Santiago presented at the same conference is titled “Isang Radical Construction Grammar na Pagsusuri sa mga Piling Konstruksiyon sa Porohanon.” In this paper, he focused on presenting his analysis of three types of Porohonan constructions, namely, similative constructions, existential/locative/possessive constructions, and sentences with verb predicates.

Santiago also presented a paper at the 44th Annual Conference of the Ugnayang Pang-Aghamtao, Inc (UGAT), which was held on 26 to 28 October at Marinduque State College. His paper “Porohanon as an Island Language” presents some evidence showing how the insularity of their environment shaped the linguistic practices of Porohanon speakers. Both of the papers that Santiago presented draw from his thesis that he is currently working on together with his adviser, Dr. Aldrin Lee. Santiago received the E. Arsenio Manuel Best Student Paper Award for the paper that he presented at the UGAT conference.

Congratulations to all of our faculty members! We look forward to seeing their studies published in the near future!