Most of the first week of Workshop 1 is spent comparing the sounds of words on slips of paper or “cards”. Cards are the best tool for facilitating phonological analysis in an RGC workshop.* 

The Activity

The cards are first sorted by word category, syllable patterns (CVCC, CVC, etc.) and other features that potentially affect the environment of the sound in focus. 

Participants then read a group of words aloud and decide together whether or not the sound in focus is the same for all the words in the group. For example, there may be a pile of CVCV nouns, all initially written with the same vowel in both syllables. Participants decide if the vowels in every word truly sound the same or if any words should be placed in a separate pile to be written with a different vowel. 

Card-based activities begin with evaluating vowels, then hard-to-distinguish consonants and, lastly, tone. Nouns should be researched first, then verbs and, eventually, other parts of speech. It is helpful to compare large sets of words in the beginning of the activity (such as the largest group of nouns), before moving on to smaller groups of words. 

The Results

After re-sorting words several times, the number of piles for vowels and consonants that result will usually determine quite conclusively the number of symbols that should be written in the orthography. For tone, on the other hand, the resulting piles are merely a starting point. While the number of piles will represent the number of underlying tones (or tonal melodies), there are additional factors that will need to be considered (through other activities) before deciding what needs representation in the writing system.

Deciding Symbols

Often the group discovers that many of the symbols used in the tentative orthography are already adequate for representing the sounds that distinguish meaning. When there is a need for an additional symbol, the facilitator leads the group in a discussion on the advantages and drawbacks of various symbol options, usually those of related or neighboring languages.  

Preparation Required

The faclitator will need to write words on cards in advance of the workshop, using a wordlist provided by the community. The cards are then checked with particpants for accuracy during the first few days of the workshop. Before each new card-based session, the facilitator will need to make sure the cards are sorted appropriately, then write the sorted groups of words onto whiteboards. Having the words up on the a whiteboard where everyone can see them allows everyone to be engaged in the comparison process.** 

*This is done in much the same way as the Participatory Research in Linguistics (PRL) method developed by Kutsch Lojenga with 2 notable differences: 

1) The facilitator writes words on cards ahead of time from the prepared word lists. This saves time during the workshop, and enables participants to read the words more easily, since they are all written in the same carefully-written print. 

2) The words are re-sorted as needed before each new workshop session, again to save time. 

**This method does not usually work well with tone, since there may be many further changes after the initial sorting of cards. Working with the cards directly is often better, as rewriting words on the board to reflect the new groupings quickly becomes tedious. 

In the first workshop, prepared texts are used about once a day to discover the use of morphemes and constructions.

Revising the Texts 

Before the workshop, the community is asked to record, transcribe and gloss 8-10 narrative texts. The facilitator then types the texts into a word processor and makes any needed revisions to the punctuation and free translation. During the workshop, the texts are first reviewed with participants to check for naturalness, appropriate spellings (the group's best initial guess), and sociocultural context before being used to analyze morphemes and syntax. Each text is read through several times and corrected according to any changes that the participants suggest.  

The Activity

After a text has been revised, each word category, morpheme and construction that occurs in the text is marked with a unique color and shape (such as, underlines, circles, boxes, triangles, etc.).* Marking an element throughout a text in a uniform way (i.e. with the same color and shape around it), makes it much easier to find, read in context, and discuss what use it has in each occurrence. 

After a particular element of the grammar has been marked, the team discusses the use of that word category/morpheme/construction in the context of the story. Because the 8-10 interlinearized texts usually amount to a total of 40 or so pages, most morphemes and constructions in the language are well-represented. As the grammar is discussed, the facilitator make notes on the whiteboard, often using the participants' own wording to describe it. 

At the end of the session, the facilitator summarizes what was learned, along with an example sentence from the text. Participants are encouraged to write down these summaries and examples in their personal notebooks. 

Using the Texts for a Story Book 

In order to make the most of the texts used in the RGC workshop, they are afterwards made into a story book for readers of the language. To ensure that all the words in this book are correctly spelled, every word that occurs in the texts is written on a card and included in the card-sorting activities (see "Card-based Activities" above). 

*Even more extensive marking and analyzing of texts is done in Phase 2, when studying discourse analysis. 

An elicitation frame is a fixed sentence, clause or phrase where one word or morpheme is substituted for others of the same type. In RGC, the frames are taken from the prepared texts and used to elicit more data, which is then written on whiteboards. This activity is primarily used in the second week of the first workshop and in Phase 2. 

The Activity

Overall, frame-based activities are the ones used the most during RGC. It is also the activity that varies the most from one language to another. Below is a list of steps commonly used in eliciting a pronoun paradigm. Similar steps would be used for demonstratives, prepositions and other word categories that have small sets of words.

Pronoun Paradigm Example

• Choose a sentence from one of the texts and use it to create a pronoun paradigm. 

For most languages, it is recommended to begin by writing out all the pronouns of a particular grammatical case with the same verb. Using a sentence frame helps participants think of all the pronouns and verify how each is used. First choose a sentence (or clause) from one of the texts with a known pronoun and grammatical case, such as he ate. Then replace the pronoun (he) with pronouns for other persons/number in that case (for example, I ate, you ate, they ate, etc.). 

• Repeat the same process for pronouns in other grammatical cases.

Continue writing sentences together until you have a list of pronouns in every case for all persons, number and gender. 

• Decide spelling and word boundaries. 

Seeing all the pronouns on the board enables the participants to quickly identify the similarities and differences in pronominal forms. Often, this also helps them determine the best way to write them, for example, whether bound or free or with any other distinctions. If there is a disagreement on how to write the pronouns, discuss the benefits and drawbacks of each option. Consider what might be easiest for the language community to a) accept, b) read, c) write and d) use with technology, usually in that order of priority. 

• Document the paradigms and the agreed-upon spellings. 

At the end of the session, all possible pronouns should be documented in tables with the agreed-upon spellings. These tables can be photgraphed, written in a notebook or typed into an electronic document. 

Frame activities are also very valuable in discovering the ways in which sounds change at morpheme boundaries. This common steps for researching morphophonology are listed below. 

Example Steps for Discovering Sound Changes at Morpheme Boundaries

• Choose a sentence from one of the texts that contains a particular word category or affix that the team would like to research further. 

• Substitute that word (or stem) with different lexemes of the same word category. 

Intentionally choose substitute words that represent all known language features that might cause the sound in focus to change. For example, when researching a consonant-initial suffix, test it with words that have different root-final consonants. When researching an affix with a tone change, test it with words that have different root tone melodies. 

• Document the changes that occur and decide how they should be spelled. 

Frame Exercises for Isolating Languages

In isolating languages, various functions (TAM distinctions, verb derivation, information flow, etc.) are indicated by word order changes or by particles that combine with different clauses or other particles. For these types of languages, a modified version of the standard frame activity is used to test various word orders and combinations. The common steps are listed below. 

Example Activity for an Isolating Language

• Choose a sentence from one of the texts and test it with various modifications. 

Try changing the word order of the sentence, substituting a different particle or otherwise changing the sentence until the team is satisfied that all relevant variations and combinations have been tested. Be sure to especially test all variations represented by other sentences in the texts. 

• Decide word boundaries and functions. 

For each possible variation, note the implications for word breaks. Also try to determine each construction’s function. This will be of help later when analyzing discourse for natural translation. 

• Document what was learned, along with examples. 

Frame activities offer the following advantages:

• They facilitate the collection of different word forms.

Generating a particular form of a noun or verb in isolation can be quite challenging. Starting with a sentence from a familiar narrative enables the team to collect many forms of a particlar word (lexeme) in that sentence, most importantly forms which may not have been discovered through other methods. 

• They facilitate the discovery of possible sound changes at morpheme boundaries:

Frame activities can be used to generate and confirm all possible sound changes at morpheme boundaries for both nouns and verbs. This is especially helpful for languages with extensive agglutinative or fusional morphology. If a language has a large number of assimilation processes, studying a morpheme in only the context of a wordlist or only the context of natural discourse will create problems for the analysis. Allomorphs within a text may vary so widely from one another (due to the number of assimilation processes) that they are unrecognizable to non-speakers as belonging to the same morpheme. A quite possible result is a near perfect analysis of morphophonology and a near perfect analysis of syntax, but no way to view the two working together in natural discourse. It would be like building a bridge from opposite sides of a river at the same time, and discovering later that because the measurements were incorrect, the sides can never be joined in the middle.  For this reason, it is imperative that the actual lexemes of texts - and not just lexemes from wordlist - be analyzed for morphophonology in addition to syntax and discourse. By using frames to identify all the possible sound changes at morpheme boundaries, the team can more effectively identify the surface forms of different morphemes in the texts and therefore how each might need to be written for fluent reading. 

Before a Session

The facilitator will need to carefully plan out the data to be used in each research session. This prepared data should be written up on 2 whiteboards before a session starts. For card-based activities, this involves listing words in groups, based on their syllable pattern and the vowel/consonant/tone sound in focus. For frame-based activities, this means writing up the frames that will be used during the session as well as lists of words to test in each frame. The facilitator will need to arrive early each day so that the whiteboards are filled with the relevant data before the first session begins. 

It is recommended to write small and quickly, but neatly. Especially for large paradigms, it is helpful to measure and plan each column so as to ensure enough space for a tidy and well-presented chart. Strategic use of colored markers makes charts and data easier to read. For example, language data could be written in black, glosses in blue, surface tone in green, and highlighted words (such as column headings) in red. 

During the Session

When testing words that take some thought, participants will sometimes change their minds about certain words. Rather than erasing incorrect words or putting a line through them (and then having to rewrite them), it is quickest to put a red dot next to incorrect words and a blue dot next to correct ones. 

At the End of the Session

After checking and discussing the data on one of the whiteboards, allow time for the participants to copy the corrected data in their notebooks. Then erase the board and fill it with more data, while participants copy data from the other whiteboard. 

Writing data on whiteboards before a session has the following significant advantages:

• It stimulates great interest and discussion, because some of the data will be incorrect and will need to be changed later. 

• It invariably encourages most participants to arrive early to begin copying down the data. While facilitators should always give adequate time for participants to copy the data after it has been corrected, participants often like to write the data down ahead of time, so that during the session, they only have to make corrections. 

• It models the value of diligence and good use of time, both of which are needed in order to investigate enough data in the course of two weeks.

• It gives participants an idea of how much work to expect in a particular workshop session. They will nearly always rise to the challenge! 

• It gives a clearer idea of the workshop activity the facilitator has in mind. It is much simpler to write up a verb paradigm and have the participants revise the forms (as needed) than to try to explain how to make a paradigm.

• It saves time during the workshop session itself, making the activity more enjoyable for the participants. Even if the facilitator knows a morpheme has irregular sound changes, s/he can still write the part of the word(s) that are predictable ahead of time. Then during the workshop session, the irregular changes can be quickly written in by either the facilitator or a participant. 

• It makes absolutely clear which data is under discussion during a particular session. This helps keep the participants more focused and engaged in the work and discussions on spelling.

Finally, a word of caution: Although effective use of time in writing data is important, facilitators must also be careful to spend enough time socializing with the participants during lunch and tea breaks so as to build a healthy rapport. Without a trusting relationship, the long days of hard work can more easily build tension that threatens the success of the workshop.