This collection of twenty Mali texts was recorded in 2001 and 2002 and were transcribed and translated by Tonya Stebbins and Julius Tayul. The texts are a representative sample of the materials used as a corpus in the development of the Mali (Baining) Grammar (Stebbins forthcoming) and Mali (Baining) Dictionary (Stebbins forthcoming).

Mali is a member of the Baining language family, a non-Austronesian language family located in the southwest quadrant of the Gazelle Peninsula in East New Britain , Papua New Guinea . There are around 2,200 speakers of Mali living in eleven villages across Mali territory or in nearby villages and towns. There are two dialects of Mali : a coastal dialect whose speakers are called Abilta ‘those from the old village' and a mountain dialect whose speakers are called Arongda ‘those from a cold place'. Language shift to Tok Pisin is well established in the Mali community but children with two Mali parents still acquire Mali as their first language. Only the oldest generation of Mali speakers (50 or more years of age) is fully fluent in Mali ; able to use it in all domains without ad hoc borrowings from Tok Pisin.

Both dialects, both genders and speakers aged from 30 to 65 years of age are represented in this collection.