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Chamorro language presentation today
The Northern Marianas Humanities Council will be hosting a Chamorro language presentation today at the American Memorial Park Visitors Center Theatre in Garapan.
Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve members pose with Gov. Eloy S. Inos for Tuesday morning’s declaration of Sep 15-19, 2014, as ESGR week. (Dennis B. Chan)
The council said there will be two visiting linguists: Dr. Sandy Chung and Dr. Matt Wagers, along with Manny F. Borja. They will do a special presentation on the Chamorro language and it is free to the public.
“They will be exploring how the Chamorro language differs across islands and across generations. Everyone knows there are differences in the Chamorro words people know and how they pronounce them, but what about the grammar,” the council said.
The three presenters will be talking about their psycholinguistic experiments on Saipan, Tinian, and Rota. The experiments investigate how people understand relative clauses.
“Unlike English, which only has one word for relative clauses, Chamorro has three. This makes Chamorro a good language for investigating how speakers comprehend complex sentences,” the council said.
Study results have revealed some interesting linguistic differences across three islands, but they also show the speaker’s ability to understand relative clauses is fully maintained across the generations.
“The community is asked to help identify other differences in Chamorro grammar that could be investigated,” the council said.
The presentation is sponsored by the NMI Humanities Council and funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities.
For more information contact the council at 235-4785.
