Ep 25: Tibeto-Burman Field Linguistics with Shobhana Chelliah
Today's episode is with Shobhana Chelliah, a Distinguished Research Professor of Linguistics and Associate Dean at the University of North Texas (UNT). Shobhana is a documentary linguist interested in creating descriptions that expand typological discovery, primarily of the Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in Manipur state, India. Her publications include The Grammar of Meithei (Mouton 1997) and the Handbook of Descriptive Linguistic Fieldwork (co-authored with Willem de Reuse, Springer 2010) and the recently-published Springer Brief titled Why Language Documentation Matters. She is also the founding director of the Computational Resource of South Asian Languages Archive.
Things mentioned in this episode:
- Formalism
- Meitei (Manipuri) language
- Lamkang language
- Tibeto-Burman language family
- Boro–Garo languages
- Dimasa language
- Kokborok language
- Computational Resource for South Asian Languages (CoRSAL) Archive
- Hakha Chin language
- Shobhana's website
*Correction: The two Lamkang scholars who visited UNT were Daniel Tholung and Shekarnong Sankhil. This episode referenced Swamy Ksen, who is a Lamkang language expert Shobhana and her team works with in Manipur.
