In addition to Chamorro, Dr. Chung has also studied other languages of the Pacific, including Indonesian, Maori, Samoan, and Tongan. Dr. Chung’s interest in Chamorro began in 1977 when she taught a field methods class at UC San Diego with the help of Francisco Tomokane. She has contributed numerous scholarly works on Chamorro throughout her career. In one of her books, The design of agreement: evidence from Chamorro (1998), a reviewer noted that her book, “the result of twenty years’ fieldwork on Chamorro, stakes a claim to be one of the classic works in American linguistics.”
He went on to state that the book is “both timely and timeless.”
Founded in 1924, the Linguistic Society of America is the major professional society in the United States dedicated to the scientific study of language. It also advocates for sound educational and political policies concerning language. This is the first time that the LSA has a scholar of the Chamorro language as its president. Dr. Chung’s term began on January 9, 2011, and lasts until January 8, 2012.
In 2008, Dr. Chung and this writer received funding from the National Science Foundation to lead a three-year collaborative project to revise the Chamorro-English Dictionary by Topping, Ogo, and Dungca (1975). This project is a collaboration between the University of California, Santa Cruz and the NMI Council for the Humanities. The key players in the revision are members of the Saipan, Tinian and Rota community who are actively involved in the revision process, in identifying new words not in the current dictionary, and in developing sentences illustrating each word in both Chamorro and English. Editing work, with the assistance of Ms. Tita A. Hocog of Rota and Mr. Manny F. Borja in Saipan, has commenced and will continue for the next two to three years. At present, there are over 9,000 entries with at least 3,000 more anticipated. Dr. Chung is also writing a new Chamorro reference grammar under the auspices of the project. This grammar, together with the revised dictionary, the new Chamorro orthography adopted by the CNMI Chamorro/Carolinian Language Policy Commission, and other resources in existence, will be valuable in sustaining and strengthening the Chamorro language in the community and teaching it in the schools.
The Chamorro-English Dictionary Revision Project members are grateful to have Dr. Chung in this project and are proud that she has been named the president of a prestigious society.
The writer is the co-principal investigator of the Chamorro-English Dictionary Revision Project.
