[Tlhingan-hol] How Many grammarians?

[David Holt]

In addition, when the qep'a' has held a "Grammarian's Round Table" all present former BGs have been invited.  Also, when the KLI has held contests which would be judged by Grammarians, some former BGs have been asked to help.  I think, though never formally stated anywhere, there are three paths to being called, "Grammarian".  1) Be one of the orignally designated KLI grammarians (no longer an active path).  2) Take the KLCP Level 4 (never yet requested).  3) Complete a term as BG (this is where the majority of our Grammarians come from).


Jeremy


________________________________
From: d'Armond Speers, Ph.D. <speersd at georgetown.edu>
Sent: Monday, November 9, 2015 2:15 PM
To: tlhingan-hol at kli.org
Subject: Re: [Tlhingan-hol] How Many grammarians?

I can shed some light on that.  The original idea with the "Level IV - Grammarian" level for KLCP was to address an early question (early-to-mid 1990s), how does one become a "grammarian"?  There were two list members who were recognized as grammarians (Seqram and Qanqor), and as the community grew questions arose about how to earn such a distinction.  The Level IV part of the exam was intended to address that question.  The challenge is, how do you write a written test that really demonstrates the level of fluency we were targeting?  In the KLCP documentation I described Level IV as a group interview, with topics and evaluation of the results to be solely at the discretion of the interviewers, who would themselves be grammarians.  To my knowledge, we have never actually followed this process for the Level IV KLCP.  While this was all developing, too, Lawrence had these beautiful pins made up for the first 3 levels of the test, and there's the significance of the number "3" to recognize, so in practice we've just stuck with the three levels.

This is all separate from KLBC.  The "beginner's grammarian" is specifically intended to be someone who is also still learning, but has reached a sufficient state of skill and interest to take the post.  Teaching is a great way to learn.  (This was never tied to KLCP, so there is no requirement to pass any level of KLCP to serve as BG.  But as a rough yardstick, I would think a successful BG would be at the Level I or II of KLCP.)  Once retired from the post, they become an {'utlh}, or respected, retired officer.  Over time this has generalized from "Former Beginner's Grammarian" to just "Grammarian", and thus serving a tour as BG has become a de facto secondary path to grammarian status.  Which seems appropriate to me, as the whole context for the original "grammarian" question was someone on the mailing list who is respected and experienced enough with the language to offer guidance and insight when questions arise, and KLBC seems just as valid as KLCP to attain that recognition (especially since we don't do KLCP Level IV).

-- Holtej 'utlh

On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 12:26 PM John R. Harness <cartweel at gmail.com<mailto:cartweel at gmail.com>> wrote:
For what it's worth, my understanding of the title "grammarian" has so far revolved around those who had completed all levels of the certification course. This might be a product of the Beginner's Grammarian position being defunct during my few years in the community. Then again the course guidelines do list a *grammarian*-level exam, level 4.
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