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Phone donation to Vicky Herianto Homo (Merauke)

Vicky Herianto Homo (Year 8) from Merauke is the first school student who received the mobile phone (and a pair of shoes) as part of CIRHSS outreach activity “KEEP SCHOOL CHILDREN LEARNING THROUGH COVID-19” in collaboration with Yayasan Surya Widya Kerthi (17 September 2020).

Vicky’s profile

Vicky Harianto Homo is one of the native children from Merauke, Papua Province, Indonesia. He is originally from Marind, the largest tribe in South Papua. He comes from Tomerau Village, but he is now living in Merauke City for his education. His father has passed away, while his mother is still alive. She lives with Vicky’s nine other brothers and sisters at Tomerau Village. Tomerau is about 54,5 kilometers from Merauke city.

Vicky is the only child in his family who moves to Merauke City to continue his study. He is now living with his older nephew. Vicky is continuing his study at SMP Negeri Buti of Merauke (Buti Junior High School of Merauke). He is now sitting in grade eight. Based on the information from his class-teacher, Vicky is one of the diligent also smart students. He was included one of the top ten students in his class and he always attends his class on time, even though he must walk about half and one kilometer to school every day.

Vicky and his teacher

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, Vicky and his other classmates should study from home. Some of them who have mobile phones are sent the learning materials/assignments by the teachers to be studied, while some other students should go to school to receive learning materials and assignments from the teachers to be studied. Vicky belongs to the second group; he must walk to school and take his weekly learning materials/assignment provided by the teachers to be learned/done, just because he doesn’t have a mobile phone that might be used to support his long-distance learning. According to Vicky’s class-teacher, Vicky doesn’t even have shoes to wear to school. Far before the Covid-19 pandemic, Vicky always goes shoveling sands to earn money after school, said Vicky’s nephew.

Vicky’s nephew, Vicky, Vicky’s teacher

Below are some photos of the phone-donation delivery to Vicky.

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Coding untuk anak Sastra? Perlu banget!

CIRHSS Deputy Secretary, Gede Primahadi Wijaya Rajeg, Ph.D., gave a guess talk at BIT School about the benefits of coding/computing skill and data science in Language Sciences. Gede presented three simple cases to illustrate the interaction of computational and data science skills using R for investigating language and texts.

  1. Generating a frequency list of words from hundreds of text files, followed by
    1. Extracting full-reduplication words
    2. Performing summary statistics for the length of the letters in the reduplication
    3. Visualising the results
  2. Extracting prominent/key terms in a collection of novels to reveal what those novels are about.
  3. Comparing collocates of one word (i.e. menolak ‘to refuse’) in two different text corpora.

Below are the recordings of the talk (in Indonesian). The first part is the presentation, while the second part is the Q&A section.

Presentation
Q&A

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Dr I Made Netra won a research grant under the Research and Innovation Consortium for COVID 19 Program

CIRHSS Deputy Director, Dr. I Made Netra, is part of a team that won a research grant under the Research and Innovation Consortium for COVID 19 Program. The title of the research is New Normal and Protocol for Safe and Productive Society COVID 19: Socio-cultural study based on customary villages. Here is the summary of the project:

This research category is research of specific needs in the prevention and management of a COVID-19 pandemic with the aim of conducting analytical studies and developing a protocol model for productive and safe communities of COVID-19 in a new normal based on customary villages from a socio-cultural perspective. The model is expected to provide education to the community so that they are able to adapt in harmony with the new order of life that still upholds communal, religious, tolerant and productive values so as to create social harmony in diversity.

Congratulations, Dr. Netra!

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Udayana University, Indonesia established research collaboration with Leiden University, Netherlands!

Following up on the establishment of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on the Humanities and Social Sciences (CIRHSS) at Udayana University (6 September 2019), on February 13, 2020, Udayana University and Leiden University, Netherlands signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) (including Letter of Intent [LoI] between Leiden University Centre for Linguistics [LUCL] and the Research and Community Service Institute of Udayana [LPPM]), beginning with a collaborative research in the Humanities and Social Sciences (see also here for the news in Indonesian).

Prof. Marian Klamer (left) of the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University, and Prof. Dr. dr. A.A. Raka Sudewi, Sp.S (K) (right), the Rector of Udayana University.
Prof. Marian Klamer (left, in red) and Prof. Dr. Ir. I Gede Rai Maya Temaja, MP (right, in black), the head of Research and Community Service Institute of Udayana after the signing of the LoI. At the back are Prof. Dr. dr. A.A. Raka Sudewi, Sp.S (K), the Rector of Udayana University (in Turquoise), and Prof. Dr. Ida Bagus Wyasa Putra, SH.,M.Hum, Vice Rector for the Cooperation and Information affairs (in white)

The impetus of this collaboration is the involvement of Udayana University, through CIRHSS and the Linguistics Graduate Program of Udayana, in the newly established consortium called OCSEAN (Oceanic and South East Asian Navigators). OCSEAN is an ambitious framework for large-scale interdisciplinary research, bringing together 26 institutions across the globe (including Udayana) and researchers from Data Science, Linguistics, Archeology, Anthropology, and Genetics. The consortium aims to re-evaluate our understanding of Austronesian expansion:

The research contextualizes the expansion of the Austronesian language family within the growing evidence for social and political complexity across Island Southeast Asia and coastal mainland regions prior to the arrival of rice and millet agriculture to Taiwan during the mid 5th millennium BP. It also takes into account the rich history of interaction since the spread of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of Austronesian outside of Taiwan. (http://www.wordsandbones.uni-tuebingen.de/?page_id=3311)

OCSEAN is a four-year project funded by the European Commission (H2020-MSCA-RISE-2019 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research and Innovation Staff Exchange, Project Number 873207). As part of this collaboration, six linguists from Udayana University are going to participate in (a fully funded) intensive, 3-month training on language documentation in Leiden University, starting from May until July 2020; they will be affiliated as research partners of the project. Udayana University itself contributes to the Linguistics work package of OCSEAN.

Complete attendants of the MoU and LoI signing. Not visible from previous photos are Dr. I Nyoman Aryawibawa (far left in yellow, the Secretary of CIRHSS and the Vice-Dean of Faculty of Arts), Dr. Made Sri Satyawati (in yellow next to Prof. Klamer, the Dean of Faculty of Arts), and Prof. I Wayan Arka (far right in black, the Director of CIRHSS).

In addition to acting as the Leiden University representative for the signing of MoU and LoI, Prof. Marian Klamer also delivered a guest lecture for CIRHSS and Linguistics Graduate Program at the Faculty of Arts (12 February 2020), followed by lunch with members of CIRHSS Executive, the Dean of Faculty of Arts, the Head of the Linguistics Doctoral Program, and Udayana representatives (see pictures below). Prof. Klamer presented her joint research on morphological simplification and language contact in language communities in Alor and Pantar, Eastern Indonesia.

Lunchtime after Prof. Marian Klamer’s guest lecture, with CIRHSS executive members, Dean of Faculty of Arts, Head of Linguistics Doctoral program, Vice-Rector for Cooperation and Information affairs, and the Head of Research and Community Service Institute.

Below are some other pictures from the MoU/LoI signing and lunch occasions.

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Simplification of morphology in Austronesian-Papuan contact — Guest lecture by Professor Marian Klamer

The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on the Humanities and Social Sciences (CIRHSS) and the Linguistics Graduate Program of Udayana University held a guest lecture delivered by Prof. Marian Klamer, from Leiden University (12 February 2020).

Prof. Klamer presented her recent collaborative research on how language contact leads to morphological simplification. The studies focus on Austronesian-Papuan contact, in particular, language communities on Alor and Pantar, two small islands in NTT, eastern Indonesian, where Austronesian languages are in contact with non-Austronesian (i.e. Papuan) languages.

Prof. Klamer discussed two case studies. The first one deals with morphological simplification in the verbal domain, especially the use of subject-agreement affixes on verbs in the first and second language speakers of Alorese (an Austronesian language). The second study examines morphological simplification in the nominal domain, especially in the use of possessive prefixes by bilingual speakers in Abui (a non-Austronesian language) and Alor Malay (an Austronesian language).

Two key references for the studies are pointed out during the talk:

Moro, F. R. (2019). Loss of Morphology in Alorese (Austronesian): Simplification in Adult Language Contact, Journal of Language Contact, 12(2), 378-403. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/19552629-01202005

Saad, G., Klamer, M., & Moro, F. (2019). Identifying agents of change: Simplification of possessive marking in Abui-Malay bilinguals. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics, 4(1), 57. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.846

Below are some pictures from the lecture.