Network meeting in Tórshavn

The ScanDiaSyn network meeting in Tórshavn 17-19 October 2005

The following researchers from the ScanDiaSyn network travelled to the Faroes to meet with the linguists at Fróðskaparsetur Føroya:

Goughl? Photo: Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson

Caroline Heycock (Edinburgh)
Höskuldur Þráinsson (Iceland)
Þórhallur Eyþórsson (Iceland)
Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson (Iceland)
Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson (Oslo)
Øystein Alexander Vangsnes (Tromsø)

The goal of the meeting was to get an overview of available Faroese resources for the Scandinavian Dialect Syntax project and related projects, both in terms of existing material and of possible collaborators/assistants.

On Monday 17 a information meeting was held for an audience of local linguists. Øystein outlined the main goals and organizational structure of the Scandinavian Dialect Syntax project, and Gunnar Hrafn presented some of the plans and ongoing developments concerning the technical sides of the project, including the database and the ScanLex project. Höskuldur presented the Icelandic project on syntactic variation. Þórhallur gave an overview of which studies of syntactic variation in Icelandic and Faroese had been carried out in the past. Jóhannes presented his and Þórhallur’s comparative project on subject case marking in Icelandic and Faroese. Caroline outlined some results from a pilot study using magnitude estimation, and discussed the project that she has developed with Antonella Sorace (currently under review for funding) to investigate in detail the current status of some variable aspects of Faroese syntax, particularly verb movement, using magnitude estimation and other means of data gathering.

A foggy October day in Tórshavn. Photo: Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson

On Tuesday morning the 18th Heini Justinussen and Zakaris Hansen demonstrated a tagger for Faroese and a tagged corpus of Faroese written texts, and they outlined what computational resources are available and under development in the Faroes. Gunnar Hrafn undertook to set up an interface for the corpus, and a general discussion of how further material could be made available took place. Føroyamálsdeildin have considerable amounts of recordings of spoken Faroese, and some of it was transcribed with type writer in the seventies. Additionally Útvarp Føroya should have considerable amounts of recordings of spoken (and dialectal) Faroese which it might be worthwhile to seek access to. Øystein launched the idea that one should try to raise funding to have some of the existing material digitized and transcribed, for example through a joint ScanDiaSyn application to the Nordic Culture Fund.

It furthermore turned out that Jógvan í Lon Jacobsen has several hours of digital recordings of spoken Faroese made in connection with his loan word project. Much of the recordings is transcribed, and provided that approval is granted from the subjects, we can use some of this material to try to set up a sample corpus of spoken Faroese, with transcriptions and sound aligned in line with the general idea of the (future) ScanDiaSyn corpus.

Faroese VP fronting. Photo: Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson

In the afternoon the group met with two students, Victoria Absalonsen and Eyðfinn Fjallsbak, to hear if they would be willing to work as collaborators within ScanDiaSyn, in effect within the Faroese part of the Icelandic project funded by RANNÍS. It was agreed that in the first place the students would be engaged to add Faroese examples to the list of topics (the “Leikanger list”) once it was ready.

Later on the same day a brainstorming meeting concerning measure points in the Faroes was held. This followed up a discussion between Eyvind Weyhe and Höskuldur and Øystein from the day before. Eyvind, who didn't attend the brainstorming, independently proposed a list of measure points the next day after having given the matter some more thought. His list largely overlaps the list that emerged at the joint meeting, and thus we have the following list(s) of tentative measure points:

Suðuroy (3):
meeting: Sumba, Tvøroyri, Hvalba
Eivind: Sumba, Tvøroyri, Hvalba/Sandvík

Sandoy (2):
meeting: Húsavík, Sandur
Eivind: Skúvoy/Dalur, Skopun

Vágar (2):
meeting: Sandavágur, Sørvágur
Eivind: Sandavágur, Bøur/Gásadalur

Streymoy (6):
meeting: Tórshavn (2), Nólsoy, Tjørnuvík/Haldarsvík, Vestmanna, Sundalagið
Eivind: Nólsoy, Tjørnuvík, Vestmanna/Kvívík

Eysturoy (3):
meeting: Fuglafjørður, Eiði, Runavík
Eivind: Eiði/Funningur, Gøta/Strendur

Norðuroyggjar (4):
meeting: Klaksvík, Kalsoy, Svínoy, Viðoy
Eivind: Klaksvík, Kalsoy, Svínoy, Viðoy (Viðareiði)

This gives a set of 20 measure points at the most. If the Faroese investigation is carried out in parallel with the Icelandic investigation with 32 subjects distributed over 4 age groups for each measure point, then that will give a total of 640 Faroese subjects, or approximately 1,3% of the total number of Faroese speakers. This number is of course only tentative, but for the first written questionnaire (i.e. the pilot survey of phenomena) it seems viable to have 20 measure points. For that survey there will only be one or two speakers from each place.

The meeting(s) in the Faroes ended with some leisure for the visitors. After walking over the hill to Kirkjubøur, Johan Hendrik W. Poulsen showed the church and Roykstovan and lectured over issues related to Kirkjubøur and the Faroes more generally, before inviting the group over to his house.