Talking Animals - Video Recordings
Animalitos hablando - Grabaciones de Video
Object Details
| Subject Language | Zapotec, Isthmus |
| Language PID(s) | ailla:119576 |
| Title [Indigenous] | |
| Language of Indigenous Title | |
| Title | Talking Animals - Video Recordings |
| Language Community | Isthmus Zapotec |
| Country(ies) | Mexico |
| Place Created | Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, Mexico |
| Date Created | 2012-04-01 |
| Description [Indigenous] | |
| Language of Indigenous Description | |
| Description | Adapted from Moore (2018:39ff) The Talking Animals referential communication task (Moore & Bohnemeyer 2012) elicits the use of spatial reference frames in discourse via descriptions of three-dimensional stimuli in table-top space. It requires participants to describe configurations of toy animals so that a fellow participant can arrange their own set of animals to match. A screen positioned between the two participants prevents visual attention-sharing and therefore forces the participants to use referentially maximally-explicit descriptions instead of relying on deixis and gesture to complete the task. Once the ‘matcher’ has finished, the ‘director’ checks their configuration and if necessary replaces the screen and provides additional instructions to the matcher until the director feels they have formed the matching configuration. Thus, the director produces propositions that orient the figures and locate them within the configuration. After each trial, the roles change such that the director becomes the matcher and vice versa. The task was run with up to 35 pairs of speakers per community (with some exclusions). Participants ages ranged from 15-69 (average 38) in La Ventosa, 17-61 (average 31) in Juchitán, and 17-85 (average 33) in Xadani. Recordings made in in La Ventosa contain "JCH1b", those made in Juchitán de Zaragoza contain "JCH", and those made in Santa María Xadani contain "XAD". Filenames also contain references to the numbers used to identify the speakers (typically two sequential numbers separated by a hyphen) and a date code in MMDDYYYY format. Recordings made in La Ventosa do not have date codes in their filenames, but dates are spoken at the beginning of each recording. |
| Genres | Elicitation Conversation |
| Source Note | |
| References | Moore, Randi. 2018. Spatial language and cognition in Isthmus Zapotec. Dissertation. University at Buffalo. http://hdl.handle.net/10477/78088 |
| Contributor(s) Individual / Role | Moore, Randi (Researcher, Analyst) |
| Contributor(s) Corporate / Role |
