Cameroon

The team involved in this Pike Center small grant project tested a tool called A→Z+T that was being developed in Cameroon. The goal in this project was to run a trial of the tool with speakers of Bafanji [bfj], a Grassfields Bantu language of the Nun branch. The A→Z+T software tool was developed by Kent Rasmussen and modeled pen and paper participatory research methods. It used as its input a LIFT XML database exported from a FLEx dictionary. This tool allowed the researchers Cameron Hamm and Virginia Beavon-Ham to filter words by grammatical category and syllable profile in order to lead speakers through identifying categories of what they heard as same-sounding tone patterns among linguistically comparable words in tone frames. Based on their categorization, labels (later replaced by transcriptions) were assigned to those words deemed to be in the same category. For a preselected sample size at each level of categorization, .wav recordings were made directly in the A→Z+T tool. These were meaningfully named (with id, form, gloss, etc) and linked to the other non-audio information in the LIFT file. The LIFT file was then re-imported into FLEx for analysis and further work. Following initial analysis, further recordings were made directly in FLEx. This presentation represents a subset of the audio recordings exported in xhtml format and 7-zipped. Other audio recording subsets have been produced at the same time and labeled according to content. A guide to the Bafanji orthography used in tone context description is found at: https://www.webonary.work/bafanji/files/Bafanji-Orthography-Guide-rev.-2016.pdf.