Blaine Billings
blaine.t.billings@gmail.com
PhD Candidate | Linguistics | University of Hawai'i at Mānoa

Ongoing Projects

Documentation of Nasal

This project is a collaborative effort between researchers at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, researchers at Universitas Katolik Indonesia Atma Jaya, and members of the Nasal community. The primary goal of the project is to produce extensive, long-lasting documentation output alongside Nasal-language materials to be used for local language maintenance efforts. My work on this project focuses on the documentation of the Nasal lexicon, development and maintenance of a lexical database, and production of associated dictionary outputs. Other ongoing tasks aim at producing children's books, compiling a reference grammar, and assessing the vitality of Nasal. This project is funded as a part of NSF Award #1911641.

From Nasal.

Sumatran Comparative Lexical Database

The Sumatran Comparative Lexical Database project is still in its infancy. A first step in a larger linguistic compilation of all things Sumatran, this project aims to be a thorough collection and analysis of cognate sets among all languages of the Sumatran subgroup of Austronesian drawn from all extant lexical sources. The database is heavily annotated and sticks strong to three principles: maximal refutability, maximal reusability, and minimal redundancy. As of the current state of the project, data from all 18 Sumatran languages is included, although thorough analysis has so far only been carried out for the Northern Batak languages. Currently, more than 60,000 entries drawn from data sources form the foundation for the more than 2,000 cognate sets (assigned to either inherited or loan vocabulary).

Old wordlist.

Rejang Materials Archiving

During his lifetime, Dr. Richard McGinn produced what remains both the broadest and most detailed documentation and description of the Rejang language and all its dialects. When he passed away in 2022, many of the materials he had produced still remained unpublished. The goal of this project is to collect, describe, and archive all of these materials so that they can be used in both future language maintenance and future language research projects.

Rejang wordlist scan.
Blaine Billings. Last updated: 21 November 2024.