Mary R. Raymond

PhD Student

Mary’s linguistic studies began with a BA degree in Linguistics with Italian at the University of Reading. After graduation she spent a year in Papua New Guinea, assisting SIL translators with problems in the phonology and grammar of Arop-Lokep, an Austronesian language, and helping to develop a working orthography.

On her return to the UK she received AHRC funding to do the ELAP MA in Language Documentation and Description. She returned to Papua New Guinea for two months in the summer of 2005 to collect data on Karnai, a language closely related to Arop-Lokep, for her MA thesis (abstract).

While there she assisted the Karnai community in the production of an alphabet book, some literacy readers and two volumes of short stories written by Karnai high school students.

Mary’s PhD, also funded by the AHRC, will consist of a documentation and description of Kubokota, an Austronesian language of the Solomon Islands. She intends to develop various practical products for the use of the language community, including dictionaries, literacy materials and other literature. Her research interests include participant reference in discourse, spatial and temporal deixis, and the influence of geography and environment on language.

Mary is currently on Ranongga Island in the Solomon Islands, carrying out field research on the Kubokota language.

Publications:

2005b. (With Jeffrey D’Jernes) ‘Arop-Lokep Phonology Essentials.’ Data papers in Papua New Guinea languages 47:109-190.

2006. ‘Stress and syllabification in Arop-Lokep: an Optimality-Theoretic account.’ SOAS working papers in linguistics 14:109-129. http://www.soas.ac.uk/linguistics/research/workingpapers/volume-14/37820.pdf

2006. 'Literacy work in Papua New Guinea: the accidental and the planned' in Peter K. Austin (ed.) Language Documentation and Description, Vol 4. SOAS: Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project.