Overview of Procedures 52716 BantuOrthographyManual.

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Chapter 1: Overview of Procedures

The goal Develop an orthography for a Bantu language group, in partnership with speakers of that language laying a linguistic and educational foundation for the application of that orthog- raphy to reading and writing. Foundational Assumptions for Orthography Development • Community ownershipinvolvement in every stage of the orthography development process • The centrality of linguistic analysis to orthography development, inclusive of phonology, morphophonemics, grammar and discourse since these aspects of a spoken language overlap and inluence one another on the surface, they will seem to compete with one another for prominence in a writing system • Speakers’ perception should play a signiicant role in orthography decisions. That perception can be developed and enriched for those who take part in the orthography development process • Orthography-in-use as goal, and also as means for constant feedback and evaluation • Questions of readability and writeability will be considered throughout the development process • Revisions will be ongoing, and will necessarily relect the political, educational and social context of the writing system Goals The approach outlined below was developed by Constance Kutsch-Lojenga. Details and suggestions have been added by Leila Schroeder and Karen van Otterloo. The general goal of Kutsch-Lojenga’s approach is to allow participants to discover for themselves the pho- nemes of their language, by systematically sorting words according to the various sounds found in them. We have incorporated the goals of alphabet development and documenta- tion of linguistic discoveries into the process described below. Each topic is introduced generally, followed by detailed procedural instructions. Each linguistic feature studied is captioned, i.e., Vowels, Week 1. Below each linguistic feature caption are the instructions, including documentation of linguistic discoveries in Workbook Form, i.e., Fill in Table 2, the Vowel Combinations Chart Linguistic rationale Since there is a lot of variation between Bantu languages as to the rules which produce surface forms of morphemes, the participatory approach to orthography development will give signiicant attention to morphological and morphophonological issues before writing rules are determined. This procedure was originally developed in East Africa, in the Swahili-speaking area, and therefore the document contains many references to Swahili as the Language of Wider Communication. However, the procedure can be adapted to other parts of the Bantu- speaking world, where other languages function as the LWC. Overview The following section outlines a methodology for developing an orthography for a Bantu language. Whether the focus of study is one language or a cluster of languages, the approach will be the same. Initial Orthography Development: studying phonology and morphophonology Discovery of contrastive sounds vowels consonants tones Phonotactics: the combinations and combinatory restrictions of Consonants and Vowels, particularly in root-initial position. This study is needed 1. for the discovery of cases of complementary distribution: • in terms of CV-combinations • in terms of position of a C in the root structure 2. as necessary background material for the creation of exercises in primers Morphology and Morphophonology After establishing its phonemic inventory, the linguist wants to discover the lexical, or word-internal, morphophonology of a language. Two aspects of morphology require study: inlection and derivation. For Bantu languages, the study of morphophonology, both at morpheme boundaries within words and in clitic constructions, the main example of which is the associative construction, is also important. This information is needed so that sound changes in speech which are caused by phono- logical processes can be relected well in writing. Most of the results of these word-internal phonological and tonological processes will be written according to surface forms. The pho- nological changes which each aix produces andor undergoes needs to be written up in an orthography guide or “writers’ guide”. Once in a while, such phonological processes pro- duce surface sounds which are not found in the inventory of underlying contrastive sounds. These need very speciic consideration with respect to orthography. Sometimes – especially in the associative and other clitic constructions – questions on word boundaries need to be taken into consideration together with the morphophonological sound changes. Fortunately, Bantu languages are quite transparent in their morphological and mor- phophonological structure, though there is great variation in the ways they handle them. Approach: Participatory Research The people participating in this research should be made aware of every aspect of the indings immediately, as the process of research is going on. They should participate and give their opinions and insights, some of which will help the research move faster, and pro- mote learning for all. The approach relects a “learning by doing” philosophy. Linguistic analysis for this approach begins with word collection, using native intuition for initial spelling. This is followed by electronic data entry, and then moves to printing and sorting of word cards based upon phonotactics and target-language speaker perception. Alphabets are developed and modiied as necessary. Finally, participants discover their grammar together and, guided by Chapter 3 of Part 1 Bantu Orthography Manual, devise spelling rules which try to encompass their language’s morphology as well as its sound system. Caveat: Native speaker participation with intuitive writing as the basis for the original wordlist transcription does not imply that native speakers are asked to make suggestions as to how they want to write the more linguistically and pedagogically complex phenomena. The Manual provides a narrow list of grapheme and word break choices, and describes the issues for each. Participants should, after a good presentation and discussion of the issues involved, choose between the few options ofered them. Testing of readability as well as ac- ceptability will follow such decisions if questions remain. 76

Chapter 2: Data Collection