Research

Dictionaries are repositories of lexical data. They preserve all kinds of linguistic and cultural information about a language. They can help minority people learn the national language and improve their skills in their own language. So far our work has resulted in a Zhuang dictionary and work on Yao and Bai dictionaries is in progress. In 2000 EAG ran a lexicography workshop in Nanning, and in 2001 another in Beijing.

Determining language boundaries and how many sub-dialects a language has requires travelling to many different villages, transcribing word lists and testing intelligibility. In 2000 and again in 2003 EAG offered practical workshops in sociolinguistic survey to Chinese researchers. Our members have collaborated with Chinese colleagues in doing field research and have published the following survey reports:

The languages of ethnic minorities are intimately bound up with their cultures, and so our members are also interested in studying the cultures of the groups where they live. This research includes investigations into the traditional customs of the people, collecting folk stories and proverbs, and writing ethnographic papers.

Examples of cultural research: