Project details:Individual Graduate Studentship. Duration: 2012-2014. £XX,XXX
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PROJECTS WE HAVE FUNDED
DOCUMENTATION OF BRAZILIAN TUYUKA
Tuyuka is an Eastern Tukano language spoken by approximately one thousand people distributed in some twenty communities in Brazilian and Colombian territories in northwestern Amazonia. The language as it is used in communities served by the Tuyuka indigenous school, and to aid the schools efforts toward language maintenance. The school serves five communities in Brazilian and Colombian territories: Sao Pedro, Cachoeira Comprida, Fronteira, Papunha and Bella Vista, and fieldwork will be conducted primarily in the first two, on the Brazilian side of the upper Tiqui river.
DOCUMENTATION OF CABIYARí
Cabiyarí is a severely endangered language spoken today by less than 20 speakers who live scattered along 6 different villages on the shores of the Cananarí and Apaporis Rivers in the Vaupés area of Northwest-Amazonia, in Eastern Colombia. The language has been classified as Northern-Maipuran branch of the Arawakan family. The remaining speakers of the language use Cabiyarí only in private, ritual or family contexts, while favoring the use of one (or all) of the 5 Eastern-Tukanoan languages also spoken in the villages where Cabiyarí speakers inhabit. This project aims to document the Cabiyarí language as well as a documentation of its speakers rapidly disappearing cultural practices and traditional knowledge. The outcomes of this project will be a transcribed, translated, and annotated audiovisual corpus of Cabiyarí, a documentation of cultural practices, and the training of community people in documentation processes, a lexicon and a sketch grammar. Likewise, this project will provide further data that can be used for the reconstruction of historical and cultural heritage of a severely endangered language and ethnic group.
DOCUMENTING ECUADORIAN SIONA LINGUISTIC VARIATION: THE COLLECTION AND ANOTATION OF A SOCIOLINGUISTICALLY AND CULTURALLY INFORMED VIDEO CORPUS.
Ecuadorian Siona is a severely endangered Western Tukanoan language spoken by less than 200 speakers in 6 villages on the Cuyabeno and Aguarico rivers in East Ecuador. This project aims to document rapidly disappearing cultural knowledge, such as the oral history, shamanistic practices, traditional ways of cooking and making artifacts. The outcomes of this project will be an transcribed, translated and annotated audio-visual corpus, community materials, the training of community documenters and linguistic resources, including a culturally informed lexicon and linguistic papers on the dialectal variation between the Aguarico and Cuyabeno communities and language contact phenomena.
URGENT VIDEO DOCUMENTATION OF ECUADORIAN HIGHLAND QUICHUA (A QUECHUAN LANGUAGE): FOCUS ON REGIONS OF IMMINENT LANGUAGE SHIFT
Ecuadorian highland Quichua is a distinct Quechuan language unique to the Ecuadorian Andes, unintelligible with any other language in the Quechuan family. It is currently undergoing rapid shift to Spanish. Starting with a recently-concluded one-year publicly funded project, a team of twelve native speakers began the first ever large-scale documentation project of this language. This project proposes building on this work by taking advantage of this highly experienced, skilled and productive team to continue documentation work for an additional two years, increasing the scope of the project to address the most urgent documentation needs of communities in the region.
CHA'PALAA DOCUMENTATION PROJECT
Chachi, an indigenous group living in northwestern Ecuador. Videos from a wide range of contexts and genres will be transcribed, translated, and analyzed in Toolbox and then combined with the media files in ELAN. During this process an electronic dictionary database will also be created. Much of the work will be carried out by trained Cha'palaa speakers. The material will be archived with the Chachi community, the Universidad de San Francisco and with ELDP and will be of interest not only to researchers but to the Chachi community itself.
KOFáN COLLABORATIVE PROJECT: COLLECTION OF AUDIO-VIDEO MATERIALS AND TEXTS
Cofán (con) is a linguistic isolate spoken by approximately 1,000 people in eastern Ecuador and Colombia in communities near the San Miguel and Aguarico rivers. This project focuses on the varieties spoken on the Aguarico river, by collecting, transcribing, and analyzing video and audio in a range of contexts and genres in collaboration with community members. The material will be archived with ELAR and also made available to community members in a flexible computer-based interface under development in tandem with the project.
DOCUMENTATION OF ECUADORIAN SECOYA
Secoya (sey) is a West Tucanoan language that is presently spoken by around 1,000 people divided by the Ecuadorian-Peruvian border. The participatory project focusses on the Ecuadorian variety with less than 500 speakers, producing annotated audio/video recordings on a wide range of cultural practices and genres, to be archived with ELAR and FLACSO. It will further provide a substantial electronic dictionary (Secoya-Spanish-English) with a print version and accompanying pedagogical material which will form the basis for the future elaboration of a much required practical grammar.
A PRELIMINARY DOCUMENTATION OF THE OKIEK LANGUAGE OF KENYA
This is a preliminary Okiek language documentation project. Okiek is one of the languages in the Kalenjin macrolanguage (Ethnologue). According to the Kenya Population Census of 2009, the Okiek number 76,000. They live scattered in Kuresoi, Narok South and in the region of Mt. Elgon and are also found in Tanzania. The Okiek generally, and especially those of Tinet (Kuresoi South where the documentation will take place), are eager to preserve their language and culture even though the existence of linguistic diversity around them and the socio-ecomomic changes in their way of life hinder this. Okiek is a highly endangered so far unwritten minority language. The project therefore documents not only the Okiek language and its structure but also its cultural, social and political dimensions (as recommended by Bowern (2011) for highly endangered languages) by audio and video recording conversations, songs, narratives, poems, proverbs and ceremonies associated with circumcision, bee keeping, etc. A good part of the audio / visual corpus obtained will be annotated and transcribed. It will be translated into English which is one of the official languages of Kenya.
COMPARATIVE DOCUMENTATION OF THE MYENE LANGUAGE CLUSTER
The comparative documentation of the Myene language cluster will result in a large and
diverse set of recorded and transcribed communicative events, a lexicological database and a dialectological database documenting the six language varieties of the Myene language (MYE), viz. Enenga, Adyumba, Mpongwe, Orungu, Galwa and Nkomi. Contrary to what is claimed in Ethnologue, the Enenga variety is probably dead, so that we will at most be able to work with rememberers. Adyumba, spoken in villages around Lake Ezingo near Lambaréné is moribund. It will be the focus of our documentation efforts.
THE DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF AMBEL, AN AUSTRONESIAN LANGUAGE OF EASTERN INDONESIA
Ambel is an undocumented Austronesian language spoken in the Raja Ampat archipelago in West Papua, Indonesia. There are an estimated 300 speakers. Younger generations are no longer learning the language, and Papuan Malay, the local lingua franca, is increasingly used as the language of everyday communication in traditionally Ambel-speaking villages. The aim of this project is to build an extensive audio-visual archive of Ambel, representative of a wide variety of genres. This corpus will form the basis of a grammatical description of Ambel for submission as a PhD dissertation, as well as a trilingual lexicon (Ambel-Indonesian-English).
ENDANGERED ORAL TRADITIONS IN THE ANDES AND THE AMAZON: COLLABORATIVE DOCUMENTATION OF TWO QUECHUAN LANGUAGES OF ECUADOR
This project is a collaborative documentation of two Quechuan languages of Ecuador: Upper Napo Kichwa and Tungurahua Kichwa. These endangered varieties are located in relative proximity, yet are spoken in different ecosystems: the Amazon and the Andes. The project focuses on documenting culture-particular genres of verbal art, particularly threatened by imminent language shift and loss. The project is a collaboration between the grantee and native speaker researchers. It emphasises capacity building among native speakers, including knowledge transfer from Upper Napo Kichwa speakers who have previously worked on documenting their language, to speakers of Tungurahua, whose language still has no documentation.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF UPPER NAPO KICHWA AND RESEARCH INTO THE USE OF EVIDENTIALS IN THE LANGUAGE.
Upper Napo Kichwa is an endangered Quechuan variety, used by several thousand speakers in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The linguistic and cultural practices of the Amazonian Kichwa differ significantly from those of the Andean Quechua communities, but remain undocumented. This project aims to create a documentation comprising at least 20h of audio and video recordings with associated annotations and metadata, representing the use of Upper Napo Kichwa in a variety of social and cultural contexts. Naturally occurring speech is prioritised in the corpus, as particular emphasis is placed on documenting the usage of evidentials in socially and culturally situated language exchange.
DOCUMENTATION AND SOCIOPHONETIC DESCRIPTION OF THE VARIETIES OF YUHUP SPOKEN IN COLOMBIA
A PRELIMINARY LINGUISTIC SURVEY OF YUCUNA, AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF COLOMBIA.
This project aims at documenting Yucuna (ISO 639-3: ycn), a definitely endangered North Amazonian Arawakan language spoken in Colombia by approximately 1.800 persons. A corpus of transcribed audio recordings will be produced with the help of community members living around the Miriti-Parana River. This study will constitute the basis for a more comprehensive project whose ultimate aim is to produce a grammatical description as well as a literacy handbook to be used in a community-owned education program.
DOCUMENTING MULTILINGUALISM IN INTERACTION: THE YUKUNA AND TANIMUKA OF THE MIRITI-PARANA (COLOMBIA)
This project focuses on Yukuna (Arawakan) and Tanimuka (Tukanoan), spoken by the Yukuna, Matapi, Tanimuka and Letuama groups in Colombian Amazonia. These groups are in long-term contact as they co-exist in highly multilingual communities along with members of other ethnic groups. This project aims at documenting the synchronic dynamics of multilingualism among Yukuna and Tanimuka speakers in two different sociolinguistic settings: within their traditional territory, characterized by egalitarian multilingualism, and in urban areas, where Spanish and Portuguese are the norm. Combining methods from corpus-driven linguistics and sociolinguistics, this project aims to shed light on present-day multilingualism in Amazonia.
DOCUMENTING KONDA AND KAIS: TWO ENDANGERED AND LESS-KNOWN TRANS-NEW GUINEA LANGUAGES OF SOUTH BIRD'S HEAD OF NEW GUINEA
Konda and Kais are Trans-New Guinea languages of South Bird's Head of New Guinea that have less than 1,000 speakers. These two languages are undescribed and are threatened and endangered as young speakers prefer to speak Papuan Malay and Bahasa Indonesia in daily basis rather than their native languages due to social, economic and political factors. In daily life, most speakers in villages are still depend their life on sago plants and many traditional stories relate to sago including their presence of their ancestors in the region. Thus, documenting stories around sago forest is essential.
MASSEP: A COLLABORATIVE DOCUMENTATION WITH A SPECIAL FOCUS ON LANGUAGE & MUSIC AND LANGUAGE & CHILDREN
Massep is a language spoken by 30-40 people in the Sarmi regency, Papua/Indonesia. The documentation of Massep will produce a collection of broad variety of culturally relevant speech practices in a collaborative documentation project. In addition to that, the project has two main foci: 1) language and music 2) language and children. These are highly susceptible to endangerment and the collected materials will offer the possibility for exciting interdisciplinary research projects of two under-researched areas.
THE DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF KURUDU, AN AUSTRONESIAN LANGUAGE OF EASTERN INDONESIA
Kurudu is an undescribed Austronesian language spoken on the island of Kurudu and in two villages on the mainland of Papua. The language is highly endangered, and the estimated number of speakers is 150 to 300. The collection is of high interest for understanding the historical relations between the (speakers of the) languages in the area, especially the Yapen languages and the other Cenderawasih Bay languages.
ENRICHING THE MEDIA CORPUS FOR WESTERN PANTAR (LAMMA), A PAPUAN OUTLIER LANGUAGE OF EASTERN INDONESIA
Western Pantar (Lamma) is a Papuan outlier language of Eastern Indonesia. The project builds upon initial fieldwork conducted by the applicant in 2004-2007. The project will undertake eight months of field work in order to: (1) to annotate existing recordings; (2) collect and annotate recordings documenting genre not well-covered in existing documentation (including conversation and ritual poetry); and (3) train local researchers in transcription techniques.
DOCUMENTING ÄIWOO
The project will expand on the limited documentation materials available for the Oceanic language Äiwoo by providing digital audio and video materials covering a wide range of contexts and genres, with a focus on materials which will simultaneously provide documentation of traditional knowledge such as place names and travel routes, subsistence activities and cultural practices. Moreover, the project will produce a dictionary based on both existing and newly recorded materials, an output which is given high priority by the language community. Together, these materials will form a lasting record and an invaluable support for continued use of the language.
DOCUMENTING NALöGO, AN OCEANIC LANGUAGE OF SANTA CRUZ ISLAND
Nalögo is an Oceanic language spoken on Santa Cruz Island in Temotu, the esternmost province of Solomon Islands. The last census in 2007 reports approximately 1620 speakers of Nalögo. A number of pressures, especially the great expansion of Solomon Pijin, are leading to rapid changes in patterns of language use and transmission. The project will expland on the limited documentation materials available for Nalögo. Digital audio and video materials covering different genres will be collected, transcribed and translated. In agreement with the speakers, a short collection of texts or a Nalögo-English wordlist will be produced.
DOCUMENTATION OF CHàCOBO, A LANGUAGE OF THE NORTHERN BOLIVIAN AMAZON.
Chacobo is a southern Panoan language, spoken in the northern Bolivian Amazon in the department of Beni. Estimates of the number of contemporary speakers vary between 800 and 1200. The vitality of the language is strong in remote areas, however, the interaction with surrounding regional economies has intensified resulting in a generation of children who are not learning the language in certain areas. Documentation of the language is thus urgent. The outcome of this project will be 50 hours of video and audio recordings, 10 hours of which will be transcribed and translated in ELAN, and annotated in FLEX. 3 field trips will be undertaken, totally 18 months in the field. The main output will be an extensive documentary corpus and a fairly comprehensive reference grammar of the Chacobo language.
DOCUMENTATION OF THE ORO WIN LANGUAGE
The Oro Win language is an underdescribed and severely endangered member of the Chapacuran family. It is spoken by six elders living along the headwaters of the Pacaás Novos River in the Brazilian state of Rondônia. This project will gather audio and video recordings of Oro Win speech from a variety of genres and will develop practical language materials with the community. The project will produce a corpus of annotated textual materials, grammar notes and a lexicon, along with a language learning pamphlet and documentary CDs and DVDs for use in the village schools.
MULTIDIALECTAL LEXICAL DOCUMENTATION OF YAMINAHUA, NAHUA, AND SHARANAHUA
This project documents dialectal variation in Yaminahua, Nahua, and Sharanahua, three Panoan languages that form part of a large dialect complex extending across western Brazil, eastern Peru, and northeastern Bolivia. This project documents the four primary varieties spoken in Peru: Yaminahua of the Sepahua river, Yaminahua of the Yurúa river, Nahua (Yora), and Sharanahua. The total speaker population for all varieties is under 1400, and the speaker communities are geographically dispersed and largely shifting to Spanish. This project focuses on the documentation of migration and contact histories and linguistic attitudes toward variation, particularly lexical and phonological variation.
DOCUMENTATION OF AMURDAK, AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE FROM NORTHERN ARNHEM LAND (AUSTRALIA)
Amurdak is an endangered language, traditionally spoken in Northern Arnhem Land, Northern Australia (ISO code amg). The current number of speakers is estimated between three and five, most of whom live in the community Minjilang on Croker Island. The project aims at documenting texts from as wide a range of genres as possible as part of a more comprehensive documentation project.
AN AUDIOVISUAL CORPUS OF CAQUINTE (ARAWAK)
Caquinte [ISO 639-3: cot] is a Kampan Arawak language spoken by 300-400 people in Peruvian Amazonia. It is rapidly losing ground to neighboring and related Asháninka and Matsigenka, with many residents of Caquinte communities speaking one of these latter two languages, or code-switching among them. This project responds to the urgent situation of Caquinte by documenting and describing the language via the expansion of an extant corpus, with a focus on the relation of textual material to regional flora, fauna, and topological features. Products will be a written and audiovisual corpus, draft dictionaries, a dialect survey, and a PhD dissertation.
DOCUMENTATION OF THE ESE EJJA LANGUAGE OF THE AMAZONIAN REGION OF BOLIVIA
About 1200 Ese Ejjas live in the Amazonian region of Bolivia and Peru. Though declining fast, language vitality is still high in Portachuelo, their Bolivian nucleus where the documentation will be initiated, with permissions and invitations. Exploratory trips have helped identify potential consultants there and the community has expressed special interest in valorizing their indigenous skills (like fishing, hunting and weaving). Data from this trip will be used to sketch out the first grammar of the language, anticipating a future cross border and multidisciplinary documentation project of the Ese Ejja language at a later date.
MAWNG DICTIONARY PROJECT
Mawng is spoken by approximately 750 people on Warruwi Goulburn Island and surrounding areas; Minjilang Croker Island, Gunbalanya (Oenpelli) Maningrida and homeland areas.
The aim of the field trip is to collect data that will extend the existing Mawng dictionary shoebox database. Some of the data collected will take the form of both texts recorded in order to collect data about obsolescing traditional practices. Other data will involve the identification of flora and fauna in consultation with a botanist and the recording of their Mawng names. Mawng speakers have indicated that the expansion of the existing Mawng dictionary database is the task of highest priority to the community in the area of language documentation.
THE ANALYSIS OF GOLPA STORIES
Golpa is a severely endangered Yol?u language spoken on Elcho Island, Northern Territory, Australia (for Galiwin'ku: longitude: 135°34'13.99"E, latitude: 12° 1'25.20"S). The stories were recorded back in the 1960s and have never been processed. There are only very few Golpa left who still speak and/or understand the language to a considerable extend. Processing these recordings will reveal and document linguistic and cultural knowledge about a dying Australian indigenous group and make it accessible to the community as well as to researchers.
THE PRODUCTION OF GOLPA LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION MATERIAL TO BE USED BY COMMUNITY MEMBERS: DICTIONARY, SKETCH GRAMMAR, AND MORE ANALYZED STORIES
The aim of the project is to produce Golpa language material that can be used by community members: a dictionary (mainly containing Golpa story book vocabulary (http://elar.soas.ac.uk/deposit/0139)), a sketch grammar that can be understood by the layperson, more processed stories about the Golpa, their land and culture and further grammatical and sociolinguistic data. Golpa is a severely endangered Yolngu language spoken on Elcho Island, Northern Territory, Australia. Only three of the very few Golpa still speak and/or understand the language to a considerable extent. The outcome of the project will be beneficial to the Golpa, neighbouring clans and to researchers.
VARIETIES OF KUN-BARLANG, A LANGUAGE ON THE EDGE: TOWARDS A COMPREHENSIVE DOCUMENTATION PROJECT
Kun-barlang is a highly endangered language traditionally spoken in northwestern Arnhem Land, Northern Australia. There are only around 60 remaining speakers. Almost all of the speakers are above the age of 40 and most are very elderly. Kun-barlang speakers now live in various multilingual Indigenous communities in northwestern Arnhem Land (Warruwi, Minjilang, Maningrida and Oenpelli) and in Darwin. The aim of this project is to create a community- and research-accessible corpus of Kun-barlang. Audiovisual recordings and documentation of new and existing Kun-barlang materials will be made in intergenerational teams with elderly speakers and younger Kun-barlang people.
EMPOWERING INDIGENOUS YOUTH TO CREATE A COMPREHENSIVE PAN-VARIETAL, ETHNOBIOLOGICAL, ANTHROPOLOGICAL RECORD OF KUN-BARLANG THROUGH TRAINING IN LOW-COST LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION TECHNOLOGY
This project will produce a comprehensive documentation of the remaining Kun-barlang varieties, a highly endangered language spoken in northwestern Arnhem Land, Northern Australia. Fewer than 60 speakers remain and most are elderly, so the need to annotate existing materials and create new recordings is urgent. Younger people will be trained and supported in the use of low-cost language documentation technology. Particular emphasis will be on documenting the full range of varieties and registers, including the undocumented 'widow's language,' and language in the domains of kinship, ethnobiology, music and public ceremony.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF THE DJEOROMITXí LANGUAGE FROM AMAZONIA, BRAZIL
This project will undertake the documentation of Djeoromitxí (Jaboti branch, Macro-Je grouping), a severely endangered language. The Djeoromitxí people live in the indigenous lands, T.I. Rio Guaporé and T.I. Rio Branco, in southern Rondonia, Amazonia, Brazil. The work will train the DjeoromitxÁ speakers in documentation to lay the groundwork to generate a documentary corpus in video, audio, texts, and linguistically annotated ELAN files, covering a wide range of discourse types and genres. Other goals are to elaborate a lexical database for a preliminary Portuguese-Djeoromitxí dictionary and to understand the aspects of grammar of the language for a preliminary grammar book. This documentation is quite urgent, once Djeoromitxí has become severely threatened (comprising only 23 fluent and 12 quasi-fluent speakers out of a population of 157)
SHOWING STORIES: ANCESTRAL NARRATIVES IN THE ARTISTIC PRACTICE OF NORTH-CENTRAL ARNHEM LAND
This project will document endangered practices relating to traditional and emerging artistic endeavours of the Maningrida region (Arnhem Land, Australia). Key genres of the project are: (i) narratives about ancestral beings, country, land management and clan, represented in bark painting, sculpture, weaving and fabric printing; (ii) procedural texts explaining methods/materials behind artistic production; and (iii) natural conversation. Recordings will centralise highly endangered languages of the region, specifically Ndjébbana, Gurr-goni, Na-kara and Rembarrnga. The project will prioritise community collaboration, capacity building, the creation of community language resources, and provide a significant and urgent record of important local artistic and language knowledge.
DOCUMENTATION OF YAN-NHANGU, AN UNDESCRIBED LANGUAGE OF NORTH-EASTERN ARNHEM LAND, NORTHERN AUSTRALIA
Yan-nhangu is spoken by members of a few families at Milingimbi Aboriginal Community in Eastern Arnhem Land, in Australia's Northern Territory. It is the least described language of the area, with very little previous work.
Claire Bowern spent 5 weeks at Milingimbi as a guest of Yan-nhangu speakers, carrying out documentation work and compiling materials for a learners’ guide. There was a great deal of enthusiasm for the project that translated into practical help at every point. Next year a second field trip to work further on the language will take place.
DOCUMENTING BURARRA DIALECTAL VARIATION WITHIN THE MULTILINGUAL ECOLOGY OF NORTH-CENTRAL ARNHEM LAND
Speakers of Burarra (north-central Arnhem Land) identity four dialects of their language, but much variation that distinguishes them survives predominantly in older speakers, outside of the urban centre, Maningrida. This project will produce a stratified corpus of naturalistic language use across a range of genres from speakers across the Burarra region, and will gather rich data about multilingual practices and language ideologies. As well as providing a significant record of cultural, mythological and local territorial knowledge, the project’s fundamental focus on dialectal and other variation will enhance our understandings of the linguistic construction of difference in a highly multilingual context.
LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION OF ENAWENE-NAWE (ARAWAK)
The goal of the project is to provide urgent documentation of the Enawene-Nawe language and culture by organizing an audio-visual archive with naturally occurring discourse. The Enawene-Nawe people, who number approximately 1000 people, live in the Halataikwa community, near the Iquê river (Juruena affluent) in the northwest of Mato Grosso, Brazil. The expected outcomes of the project are: a translated, transcribed and annotated corpus of the language, a sketch grammar, a lexicon, the training of community members in documentation, and the first draft of a pedagogical material
CLASSICAL SONG TRADITIONS OF CONTEMPORARY WESTERN ARNHEM LAND IN THEIR MULTILINGUAL CONTEXT
The classical song traditions of Western Arnhem Land are amongst the foremost examples of verbal art in the nine endangered languages of the region, but few people are now competent to perform or comment on them. Typically performed in multi-lingual social contexts, song texts demonstrate unusual linguistic features such as mixtures of languages and a high proportion of esoteric and intimate vocabulary. The project team will collect, transcribe, translate and analyse songs by contemporary performers, and where relevant repatriate and document archival recordings, making the research results available to communities via a network of local digital repositories.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF IñAPARI (INP) - AN ARAWAKAN LANGUAGE OF SOUTHERN PERU
The purpose of this project is to continue documentation and description of Iñapari (Purus, Arawak), a language spoken by four individuals in southern Peru. The speakers are siblings whose father was one of only two Iñapari speakers to escape a forced relocation to Bolivia. Little work has been done to describe the language beyond a phonemic inventory. The goal of this project is to document and describe the structure of the language as well as record oral histories. Specific outcomes include a detailed grammar, a lexical database, and an archived corpus of transcribed and analyzed audio and video recordings.
AN ETHNOGRAPHICALLY BASED LINGUISTIC DOCUMENTATION OF ARAONA: A TAKANAN LANGUAGE OF BOLIVIA
This project will produce a collection of transcribed, translated and analyzed narratives, conversations and other culturally relevant speech practices from the endangered Araona language of the Takanan family, spoken by approximately 120 to 150 people on the Manurimi and Manupari rivers in the department of la Paz, Bolivia. These materials will serve as the basis for a grammatical description of the language and a linguistically based ethnography of the Araona people. Such a project is urgent because there are currently few documentary materials (either linguistic or cultural) available on the Araona, while they face pressure to adapt to the outside because of rapid economic growth in the national economy.
DOCUMENTATION OF URGENTLY ENDANGERED TUPIAN LANGUAGES
This project aims at the study and documentation of five of the most urgently endangered native languages of Brazil, which have no other possibility for documentation. These languages are: Mondé, Puruborá, Mekens, Ayuru, and Xipaya. These five languages belong to the lesser-known branches of the Tupi family. Only two have received prior intensive research and none has adequate documentation available.
The general objectives are: to salvage the maximum information about the language and about the traditional culture expressed through the language; for the community and for science, making this information widely available while respecting the wishes and rights of the native communities. An ethnographic consultant is included to help collect cultural information. Academic results will include, where feasible, reference grammars, dictionaries, collections of texts, and extensive and varied recordings which will be digitalized and, to the extent which this is possible, annotated using techniques similar to those of the DOBES documentation project.
DESCRIPTION AND DOCUMENTATION OF ASHéNINKA PERENé (ARAWAK)
The objective of this doctoral dissertation project is to complement the results of initial description and documentation and carry out later stages of documentation as part of the long-term program of language documentation and preservation of Ashéninka Perené [prq]. Ashéninka Perené (Kampa, Arawak) is a significantly endangered, underdocumented language whose 5,500 speakers reside in the sixteen communities in the Perené valley, Junin province of Peru (latitude 10°56´S, longitude75°16´W). The specific outcomes include a detailed reference grammar, a lexical database, an archived corpus of transcribed and analyzed audio and video recordings, and training native speakers in language description and documentation.
LINGUISTIC AND ETHNOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTATION OF AKUNTSú
Akuntsú (a Tupían language) is spoken by only six people, all monolinguals, located near the Omerê River in Rondônia, Brazil (S.12.49’49.0’’ W.61.06’31.4’’). The six are the only survivors of genocide against this Indigenous group, isolated until recently. This project records and analyzes texts with detailed documentation of Akuntsú cultural traditions. It will contribute to a longer-range project to complete documentation of Akuntsú, with a reference grammar and dictionary at its core.
DOCUMENTING IRANXE-M?KY, AN ENDANGERED ISOLATE LANGUAGE OF BRAZILIAN AMAZONIA
M?ky is a severely endangered isolate language spoken by less than 100 people in Mato Grosso (Brazil) by two separate communities, Iranxe and M?ky. The Iranxe community would like to preserve their dialect, spoken by only a declining number of elder speakers, and the knowledge of these remaining native speakers. This project aims to document the Iranxe variety of M?ky and to enhance our understanding of this threatened isolate language, including its undescribed tonal system. The output will be recordings of narrative and conversational texts, transcriptions and annotations, and language materials for the community, and training of community documenters.
A DOCUMENTATION OF GUN-NARTPA TEXTS
Gun-nartpa, a Burarra dialect, is spoken in the Cadell river region of north-central Arnhem Land. There are approximately 300 speakers and the language is still learned as a first language by young children. This project will record speakers from a range of ages. The recordings will be segmented into prosodic units, and time-aligned annotations will represent interlinear and intonational information and translations. These annotations will enable further investigation of the interactions between verb serialisation, prosody and event structure, and will be added to an existing annotated corpus of narratives and other genres recorded by the researcher in 1993-94.
DALABON ORAL HISTORIES PROJECT
Dalabon is a severely endangered Australian Aboriginal language of a diaspora population which lives in southern and western Arnhem Land, Australia. As a result of the grantee's contact with this community as a field linguist at Diwurruwurru-Jaru Aboriginal Corporation (Katherine Regional Aboriginal Language Centre), younger Dalabon people have asked the grantee to train them in video-recording the oral histories of their elders in Dalabon. The grantee will conduct training, video-recording and transcribing sessions with Dalabon people, and use the data collected for PhD research into demonstratives, gesture and deixis in Dalbon. The grantee will also conduct speaker interviews and elicitation sessions on the research topic.
DOCUMENTATION OF MYTHOLOGY AND SHAMANIC SONGS OF THE NAHUA, PANOAN SPEAKING OF PERUVIAN AMAZON
Today the Nahua number less than 280 people, most of this material is spoken or sung only by the elder generation and due to recent rapid social and demographic changes and incipient language shift to Spanish could be extinct in less than two generations.
Together with a Nahua language assistants the aim is complete the transcription of over 130 hours of myths, shamanic healing songs, laments and love songs. The result will be the first ever substantial archive of Nahua material in text, sound and video format that is accessible to other researchers and most critically for the Nahua themselves.
A CULTURALLY INFORMED CORPUS OF DALABON: DESCRIPTIONS OF THE PERSON AS A BODY AND AS KIN
Dalabon is a severely endangered Australian language of southwestern Arnhem Land, numbering about five masterspeakers. As part of a team effort to document Dalabon (S. Cutfield, Prof. N. Evans), this project will enlarge the Dalabon corpus, focusing on two interconnected, linguistically and culturally significant domains, of which a semantic analysis will be articulated as a PhD thesis. The first domain is body descriptions (body-parts and - functions), and the metaphors using these elements to represent emotional and intellectual aspects of the person. The second domain is kinship, also a culturally central domain connected to the notion of self.
A PAN-DIALECTAL DOCUMENTATION OF WIK-NGATHARR, CAPE YORK PENINSULA
Wik-Ngatharr (also called Wik-Ngatharra, Wik-Alkanha or Wik-Elken) is an endangered Paman language variety spoken in Cape York Peninsula, Australia. Documentation of Wik-Ngatharr with the last generation of speakers will supplement ongoing research on the related language, Wik-Ngathan, by Professor Peter Sutton to develop further understanding of variation in the languages of the Wik region and their use. The applicant will work collaboratively with the Wik-Ngatharr community to create a representative corpus of transcribed, translated and annotated digital audio and video material, as a basis for further descriptive and community-orientated work.
A PAN-DIALECTAL DOCUMENTATION OF WIK-NGATHAN AND WIK-NGATHARR: CAPE YORK PENINSULA, AUSTRALIA
Wik-Ngatharr (also called Wik-Ngatharra, Wik-Alkanha or Wik-Elken) is an endangered Paman language variety spoken in Cape York Peninsula, Australia. Documentation of Wik-Ngatharr with the last generation of speakers will supplement ongoing research on the related language, Wik-Ngathan, by Professor Peter Sutton to develop further understanding of variation in the languages of the Wik region and their use. The applicant will work collaboratively with the Wik-Ngatharr community to create a representative corpus of transcribed, translated and annotated digital audio and video material, as a basis for further descriptive and community-orientated work.
DOCUMENTING THE NGAN'GI LANGUAGE
Ngan'gi is a severely endangered language spoken by less than 200 people in the Daly River region of Australia's Northern Territory. The exists some description of this language, but no real documentation. This project aims to thoroughly document Ngan'gi through the collection, transcription and archiving of a rich variety of linguistic and sociolinguistic practices, resulting in text, audio and video products that will be accessible to the community as well as safely archived for future uses.
DOCUMENTATION OF THE VURëS LANGUAGE, VANUA LAVA, VANUATU
This project will focus on the documentation of Vurës, an Austronesian language spoken by approximately 1,000 people on the island of Vanua Lava in northern Vanuatu.
Proposed outcomes are twofold: First, to write a comprehensive descriptive grammar of Vurës, which would include a detailed analysis of the phonology, morphology, syntax and discourse structure of the language, and the production of a trilingual dictionary, giving both English and Bislama translations, so that the dictionary will be of use both to the local community and to linguists. Second, to produce literacy materials that will give speakers the opportunity to learn literacy skills in their own language.
DOCUMENTING MALAKMALAK, AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF NORTHERN AUSTRALIA
MalakMalak is a northern Daly language spoken in the Daly River area in north-western Australia. Today it has an estimated eight remaining speakers. This project aims to complement existing sketch grammars with audio-visual recordings with a focus on documenting traditional stories and culturally significant processes such as hunting and gathering or tool-making and by compiling a 2,000-word dictionary. In addition to a Learners’ Grammar, aspects of MalakMalak slated for a more detailed discussion in future journal articles are its distinctive complex predicate structure, noun classification system, and spatial Frames of Reference, from both a typological and a comparative Australianist perspective.
DOCUMENTATION OF THE SEVERELY ENDANGERED LANGUAGES MAKURAP AND WAYORO (BRAZIL): MATERIAL AND NON-MATERIAL TRADITIONAL CULTURE, AND ITS ASSOCIATED KNOWLEDGE
This project will provide documentation for Makurap and Wayoro, two severely endangered Tupian languages, spoken in the Brazilian state of Rondônia. The collection shall include 50 hours (about 30 hours for Makurap and 20 hours for Wayoro) of digital audio and video recordings of communicative events in naturally occurring discourse. Wayoro has only two fluent speakers and 11 passive speakers. Makurap has only 45 fluent speakers. The outcomes include documentation training for community members, an annotated corpus, a lexical database and a multimedia dictionary.
INVESTIGATION AND DOCUMENTATION OF THE MORPHO-SYNTAX OF ANINDILYAKWA
Anindilyakwa is spoken by about 1500 people living on Groote Eylandt, Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia. This project will create a basic learner’s grammar for future literacy programs. Anindilyakwa is a polysynthetic language, allowing a high degree of complexity in its word structure. It is endangered because of cultural breakdown, illiteracy, lack of teaching material and growing influence of English. This is manifested in the fact that the more complex forms are no longer being used by younger speakers today. This project focuses on the documentation of this morpho-syntactic complexity.
JAWOYN CULTURAL TEXTS, DICTIONARY AND GRAMMAR (SOUTHERN ARNHEM LAND)
Jawoyn is a language of southern Arnhem Land with only 3 speakers remaining in 2004. The project will make language materials available, and so will make another major Australianist corpus accessible to analysts, as well as to the community of people from which the information emanates. It will add to the corpus of materials available for typological and comparative work, and undoubtedly allow advances in plausible reconstruction among some of the evidently closely related Gunwingguan languages.
DOCUMENTATION OF REYESANO, AN ALMOST EXTINCT LANGUAGE OF BOLIVIA (SOUTH AMERICA)
The project was to undertake linguistic documentation of Reyesano, the most endangered and least known language of the Takana family from the Amazonian rainforests of northern Bolivia and eastern Peru. The project is probably the last chance for this language to be documented before it disappears completely.Reyesano was said to be probably extinct without any record (apart from a 150 word list). The project made it possible to find fluent speakers of this language, to collect a sizeable amount of material, and to produce annotations and analyses of these data in order to allow future users to make sense of it.
DOCUMENTATION OF THE PARESI-HALITI LANGUAGE
The project will document the Paresi-Haliti language (Arawak), variant of Formoso River, spoken in Southern Brazilian Amazonia. This language shows clear signs of endangerment, especially in the inter-generational transmission of key oral traditions; its documentation is already set up, as well as its phonological and morphological description. Adopting a participatory approach, the project will provide adequate training to enable the indigenous community to work autonomously in collection methods, archiving, documentation and analysis of linguistic data. Expected results include audio and video recordings of chanted mythical-historical narratives, with their annotation, the enrichment of the present data bases and the starting of a discussion on a practical orthography.
WARDAMAN DICTIONARY, NARRATIVE, SONG AND COUNTRY
Wardaman is a highly endangered language of the mid-Northern Territory of Australia: only two full speakers, both elderly. remain. This project aims, first, to extend an existing wordlist into full dictionary and second, to create a multi-level, interlinearized and glossed narrative collection. Biographical, mythological, historical narratives, and place-linked song will be recorded from the full speakers (brother and sister) in audio and video formats. Some documentation will take place at locations in Wardaman country (characterized by rich rock art and riverine environment ). This work is urgent. It will provide material useable by a community of Wardaman descendants.
SHANGAJI. A MAKA OR SWAHILI LANGUAGE OF MOZAMBIQUE. GRAMMAR, TEXTS AND WORDLIST
Shangaji is a Bantu language spoken in the Nampula province of Mozambique. Shangaji is an endangered language and hitherto undocumented. This project constitutes the final part of a larger documentation project involving the so-called Swahili languages of Mozambique. The existence of these languages related to both Swahili and languages of the interior proves that the early spread of Swahili reached far into Mozambique.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF SIRIONO, A HIGHLY ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF BOLIVIA
Siriono (Tupi-Guarani family) is an underdescribed and endangered language of lowlands Bolivia. In a small area lived nearly thousand Siriono with less a dozen fluent speakers of Siriono and around forty occasional speakers. The language is threatened by the use of the national language, Spanish, despite the fact Siriono is either an official language. The Siriono community express a need for linguistic and pedagogical material to help Siriono's transmission to the next generations. This study will contribute to our understanding of how language convergence manifests in areas of intense language-contact.
CHIMANE AREAL DOCUMENTATION, DESCRIPTION AND MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT
Chimane (or Tsimane') is spoken by 3000-5000 people in lowland Bolivia. The project aims to document and map speech practices across the Chimane speaking area, to produce a multimedia encyclopedia of cultural and linguistic information and community-led film, and to train interested community members in language documentation techniques and furnish them with equipment so they may continue the project after the end of the funding period. The applicant will also complete a doctoral thesis comprising a sketch grammar and a detailed study of valency changing operations in the language based on documentary materials arising from the project.
A PRELIMINARY DOCUMENTATION OF SILUYANA: COMPARING MBOWE AND MWENYI
Mbowe and Mwenyi are two of the Siluyana dialect cluster in the Western Province of Zambia. The main dialect Luyi is no longer spoken with only 3 rememberers remaining. Mbowe has 2,690 speakers and Mwenyi an estimated 6,000. Documentation will produce audio and video data of different speech genres and create archival data providing a database for future documentation of the cluster. Documenting these two languages will provide key evidence for understanding the dynamics of language and identity in the area in both its historical and structural dimensions.
STORIES FROM THE SALTWATER AS TOLD BY THE OLD MARRA LADIES
There are five elderly Marra speakers who are defying language shift in the Roper River region of Northern Australia, where all other Marra people now use Kriol, an English-based creole, as a lingua franca. This project will capture stories in Marra, translated into Kriol and English, about the lives of these last Marra speakers and their traditional knowledge. The project is truly collaborative and will create an ethnographically oriented canon of trilingual texts representing Marra people and traditional lifestyles. It will be of significant cultural and educational value to Marra people and inform important linguistic research.
DOCUMENTATION OF N'KEP (NORTH VANUATU): STRUCTURE AND VARIATION
N'kep is a variety of Sakao is spoken by c.800 people at Hog Harbour, Vanuatu. N'kep is typologically unusual and under increasing pressure from the national creole. The project includes a variationist sociolinguistics perspective, and explores the potential for these methods to complement endangered language documentation. A range of text types (from very rehearsed to very spontaneous), and samples from speakers of 3+ age groups will be recorded by the researcher and trained local language assistants.
GAJIRRABENG DIGITISATION, TRANSCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS
Gajirrabeng is a member of the Jarragan language family and has no living fluent speakers. There are a few elderly partial speakers plus the proposed project linguist Frances Kofod who still have sufficient knowledge of the language to provide a decent level of documentation. The first objective of this project is to secure previously recorded language data by digitising a large number of audio tapes made between 1986 and 1991 that are currently degrading, transcribe the recordings, and provide basic linguistic analysis. Another objective of this project is to transcribe and annotate a further 34 un-transcribed digital recordings made with Paddy Carlton and Mignonette Jamin during 2005-2007. Additionally, all existing Gajirrabeng transcriptions will be transferred to and annotated in the more recent language documentation software ELAN. All digital files with transcriptions, translations and annotations will be archived to standard with the community archive at the host organisation MDWg and with ELDP, following an open archive policy.
DESCRIPTION AND DOCUMENTATION OF LELEPA, AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF CENTRAL VANUATU
Lelepa is spoken by less than 400 people on the island of Lelepa, Vanuatu. It is surrounded by closely related and much larger languages. Both missionisation in the 1800s and recent, rapid urbanization and development have contributed to threatening the language as speakers are shifting to languages of wider communication such as Bislama (an English-lexifier pidgin and national language of Vanuatu) and not transmitting the language to younger generations. This project aims at building a corpus of annotated texts from audio and video recordings to be used as a foundation for a grammatical description and language resources for Lelepa speakers.
DISCOVERING MAFEA: TEXTS, GRAMMAR, AND LEXICON
Mafea is an Austronesian language spoken by about 200 people on Mafea island, northern Vanuatu. To date, the only publication about the language is a 300-word list collected by Jacques Guy and published in Tryon 1976.
Two objectives guide this research: (i) to produce linguistic documentation for the Mafea language, in the form of a descriptive grammar, a lexicon, and a collection of digitized (and subsequently glossed) texts; and (ii) to convert digital documentation into literacy material (such as story books), in order to assist Mafea-speaking children and adults in developing L1 literacy skills.
THE DOCUMENTATION OF GURINDJI KRIOL
Gurindji Kriol (GK) is an endangered mixed language (ML) spoken in Australia. It fuses Gurindji (Pama-Nyungan), with Kriol (English-lexifier) to create a unique system. GK is an important language to younger Gurindji people, entailing both modern and traditional Aboriginal ideologies. It is also significant linguistically, displaying a rarely observed mixed structure. GK provides a unique opportunity to document a ML. MLs often represent a prolonged stage of language change which precedes language shift. Thus the existence of MLs often goes by unobserved. In the case of GK, documentation is urgently required, with Kriol finding increasing currency with Gurindji teenagers.
DOCUMENTATION OF FIVE PAMAN LANGUAGES OF CAPE YORK PENINSULA, AUSTRALIA
The aim of the project is to document five highly endangered Paman languages of Cape York Peninsula (Australia): Kugu Muminh, Kuku Thaypan, Umbuygamu, Umpila and Wik Ngathan. The project is a team effort of five people with prior research experience on these languages, who want to pool knowledge and resources to document them as thoroughly as possible with the last generation of speakers. Our central goal is to produce an extensive representative corpus of texts, which will form a valuable resource for the communities involved, and will serve as the basis for further descriptive and community-oriented work.
GIZAC - GWARAYU AND THE INTERMEDIATE ZONE (AMAZONIA - CHACO, BOLIVIA) DOCUMENTATION PROJECT
GIZA is a language documentation project in Bolivia, working with endangered Gwarayu (gyr) and almost extinct Guarasuñe’e (psm), more widely known as Pauserna. Both languages belong to the Tupi-Guarani family. Gwarayu has approximately 5,000 speakers of varying competence, and of Guarasuñe’e there are only four speakers left. The two hitherto underinvestigated languages are found in a linguistic contact region and geographical intermediate zone between Bolivian Amazonia and Chaco. GIZA aims at compiling a large multi-purpose corpus that allows for scientific research on the two languages as well as for revitalisation activities.
DOCUMENTATION OF SEKE (SKE) - AN UNDESCRIBED AND ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF PENTECOST ISLAND, VANUATU
Seke is an undescribed, Austronesian language of Pentecost Island, Vanuatu. It is spoken by approximately 600 people in an area surrounded by speakers of the dominant local language. The project aims are to assemble a corpus of archivable, annotated, audio and video data of different genres: oral histories, ceremonial speech and conversation, to be made in collaboration with local fieldworkers. Research products will include a description of spatial/temporal expressions in Seke, a tri-lingual dictionary, documentation of ethno-botanical information, a sketch grammar and a socio-linguistic survey. Pedagogical materials for language maintenance projects will be produced in consultation with the community.
DOCUMENTATION OF SKE AND SOWA, NEAR-MORIBUND AND NEAR-FORGOTTEN LANGUAGE VARIETIES OF VANUATU
Ske and Sowa are closely-related languages of south-central Pentecost Island, Vanuatu. Sowa is extinct but partially remembered by children of the last native speakers. Ske has 300 speakers, is no longer much spoken by children, and many words and usages are remembered only by the elderly. The proposed project, locally based and led by a researcher of Sowa and Ske-speaking heritage, will preserve this rapidly-disappearing knowledge through outputs including archive recordings of Sowa and a dictionary of Ske language, completing and building upon an unfinished earlier ELDP-funded project.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF NGARINYIN, A LANGUAGE OF THE KIMBERLEY REGION OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA
Ngarinyin has been the main language of the Northern central Kimberley Region of Western Australia, being spoken over an area of up to 45,000 km2. Nowadays, however, only about a dozen of elderly speakers use it as their preferred language and Ngarinyin is no longer passed on to children.
This project aims to document elicited and un-elicited Ngarinyin speech and conversation and supplement existing mid-20th century sound recordings of Ngarinyin with sorely missed metadata. The project will also collect more data on an extensive, recently discovered avoidance register in the language.
A PRELIMINARY AUDIOVISUAL DOCUMENTATION OF HA, A LANGUAGE OF VANUATU
The Ha language is spoken in a single village of approximately 150 people on the southern tip of Pentecost Island in Vanuatu. It is the southernmost variety of the language known as Sa, but with significant lexical and some grammatical differences to other related varieties. Ha speakers say they have historical links to the people and language of North Ambrym immediately to the south. This preliminary documentation of Ha aims to investigate the distinctive grammatical, lexical and cultural features of Ha and its place in the Sa dialect continuum through the audiovisual documentation of conversation, narrative, ecological knowledge and verbal art.
ATCHIN DOCUMENTATION PROJECT
This project aims to document the language variety of Atchin Island, located off the northeastern coast of Malekula in Vanuatu. Through the creation of an extended corpus of audio-visual recordings, field observations and elicited lexicographic materials, the features of the language will be explored in as many contexts as possible. Alongside the technical analysis of Atchin for a linguistic audience, the corpus will provide input for a pedagogic grammar sketch, extended bilingual wordlists (Atchin-Bislama and Atchin-English), and literacy materials destined for kindergarten and Years 1 to 3 of the formal education system.
DOCUMENTATION OF MATANVAT (NESE): A HIGHLY ENDANGERED NORTHERN VANUATU LANGUAGE
The Matanvat (Nese) language (less than 20 speakers) is an under-documented Oceanic language spoken in the north eastern coast of Malakula in central Vanuatu. Pressure from Bislama along with other social factors are contributing to the language's rapid decline. The language, therefore, needs urgent documentation and this project is aimed at documenting and describing its grammar. This will involve recording, transcribing, translating and annotating audio and video materials which will be tailored to suit archiving purposes, to benefit the local community and to contribute to scientific research.
DOCUMENTING NORTHWEST MALEKULA: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF V’ëNEN TAUT, TAPE, AND TIRAX (MALEKULA, VANUATU).
V’ënen Taut, Tirax, and Tape, the three languages of the Northwest Malekula subgroup (Oceanic, Vanuatu), have been partially described but poorly documented. Focusing on field work, this project aims to create an audio-visual documentation corpus for each language. V’ënen Taut and Tirax both have small healthy populations, but in the case of Tape, only 4 native speakers remain and the need for documentation is urgent. All three language communities are engaged in literacy and/or revitalisation activities, and welcome this documentation project.
A DOCUMENTATION OF NORTH AMBRYM, A LANGUAGE OF VANUATU AND RESEARCH INTO ITS POSSESSIVE STRUCTURES
North Ambrym is an undocumented language spoken on Ambrym Island, Vanuatu. There are approximately 3000 speakers located along the coastal and inland areas of Northern Ambrym. The documentation aims to collect a range of text materials in audio and video format that will be given time-aligned transcriptions, translations and annotations. The project’s aim will be the completion of my PhD in Field Linguistics, which will include a sketch grammar and a detailed analysis of the structure and encoding of nominal possession in North Ambrym
DOCUMENTATION OF THE NEVERVER LANGUAGE, MALAKULA, VANUATU
The Neverver language of Malakula is spoken by fewer than 1000 people in two inland villages. The intention of this project is to provide a detailed grammatical description of this unknown language, including an analysis of its phonology, morphology and syntactic structure as well as presenting a selection of discourse features of oral texts.
Community-based research outputs will include a trilingual dictionary (Neverver-English-Bislama), a school word-list, text collections for children and adults and assistance with the publication of a hymn book written by a local chief and community elder. Beginner literacy materials for children will also be developed for use in kindergarten.
BANAM BAY LANGUAGE: DOCUMENTATION AND ENDANGERED LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE
Banam Bay is spoken in Southeast Malekula, Vanuatu by less than 900 speakers. Previously classified by Darrell Tryon (1976) as three different dialects, it has more recently been categorized as one, Banam Bay Area Language (Crowley 2000). Banam Bay has recorded wordlists, but is otherwise undocumented. This project involves working with community members in data collection, facilitating a basic orthography and creating resources for language management and vernacular literacy material creation. A basic grammar sketch and language description will satisfy my PhD dissertation, which will be archived alongside a repository of audio-recorded transcribed and translated narratives and updated trilingual wordlists.
NINDE DOCUMENTATION AND ORTHOGRAPHIC DESIGN PROJECT
This project is concerned with the documentation of Ninde, a threatened Central Malekula (Oceanic) language spoken in five villages in the South West Bay region of Malekula island of Vanuatu. Ninde is almost entirely undocumented; there is a sketch grammar based on data from one young speaker. The language is spoken by at most 1000 people, and in four of the five villages is not being transmitted to children. One of the immediate goals of this project is the community-led creation of an orthography and possibly even pedagogical materials in order to facilitate Ninde-language education and preserve traditional knowledge.
BLACK SAND STORIES: A POLYSEMIOTIC AND MULTIMODAL DOCUMENTATION OF PAAMESE SAND STORIES, A CRITICALLY ENDANGERED CULTURAL TRADITION OF VANUATU
This project will provide culturally enriched descriptions of the speech, gestures, and complex geometrical drawings of sand stories, a unique form of communication, practiced by only four elder storytellers on Paama, Vanuatu. These important mnemonic devices for local histories, indigenous cosmologies, kinship systems, and scientific knowledge have been listed as Intangible Heritage of Humanity by the UNESCO since 2008, but have never been documented in a systematic way. The project aims at preserving these invaluable vectors of indigenous language and culture, by employing innovative techniques and providing dynamic datasets that capture the inherent polysemiotic and multimodal nature of Paamese sand storytelling.
DOCUMENTING AXAMB, A SMALL ISLAND LANGUAGE OF VANUATU
This project aims to document and describe the Axamb language, a previously undocumented Oceanic language with some 700 speakers primarily on the low-lying Axamb Island off South Malekula, Vanuatu. The island of Axamb covers just one square kilometer and has suffered substantial erosion associated with climate change, resulting in islanders moving to other language areas on mainland Malekula and Port Vila. The project aims to create a transcribed, translated and annotated corpus of digital audio and video materials, a trilingual dictionary, a grammatical study, as well as draft literacy and language maintenance materials.
INITIAL DOCUMENTATION OF NA'AHAI, A LANGUAGE OF MALAKULA, VANUATU
Na’ahai is an undescribed language of the southwest coast of Malakula Island in Vanuatu, spoken by less than 1000 people. There are two central aims to this project. One is to undertake initial documentation of the language, in the form of a basic grammatical sketch as well as a transcribed and translated collection of audio and video recordings of stories, songs, and dialogues. The other goal is to train community members in their own ongoing documentation of the language, in particular in the compilation of a dictionary, for which there is considerable local interest.
A FIRST KAYARDILD AUDIOVISUAL TEXT CORPUS, WITH PROSODIC ANNOTATIONS
Kayardild has eight remaining fluent speakers, all elderly, on Mornington and Bentinck Islands, Australia. The language is described in a grammar, a dictionary, and an initial intonational phonology, but we still lack any annotated documentation beyond a handful of texts. This project will begin building an audiovisual corpus of Kayardild, as well as recovering metadata for older recordings, and sounding out directions for further documentation in the near future. It will produce audiovisual data with time-aligned interlinear, rhythmic and intonational annotations and translations. Prosodic transcription will be transparent for widespread use, but accompanied also by a more technical, ToBI-like key.
LINGUISTIC AND ETHNOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTATION OF KAYARDILD
The Kayardild language of the Queensland, Australia is the last of the Tangkic languages to be spoken. The four remaining,elderly speakers are also the last people well versed in many areas of traditional knowledge. This project seeks to enlarge the Kayardilid dictionary and audio-visual text corpus, but also to intensify investigation in three areas. The aims are (i) to increase the amount of ethnographic detail and cross-referencing incorporated into dictionary entries, (ii) to document traditional activities beyond those which are narrowly linguistic, and (iii) to begin documentataion of Kayardild song, as an element of the Kayardild way of conversing.
DOCUMENTATION OF BéSIRO, THE ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF THE CHIQUITANO PEOPLE OF LOWLAND BOLIVIA
Bésiro, an under-described language spoken by the Chiquitanos in the Bolivian low-lands. The collection recordings and their description will help classifying this language, which was said to be an isolate, but is now strongly suspected to be part of the Macro-Jê family. In collaboration with trained members of the community, this project will archive data on the language, produce a comprehensive grammar, pedagogical material and a Spanish-Bésiro dictionary. The task is urgent, since Bésiro, surrounded by Spanish, has become definitively endangered (5,000 speakers for 100,000 ethnic members).
DOCUMENTING THEORIES AND PRACTICES OF LANGUAGE SOCIALIZATION IN THE CONTEXT OF ENDANGERMENT: A PILOT STUDY ON YURAKARé
The Yurakaré language is severely endangered due to a break in intergenerational transmission. And yet, many children have at least some passive knowledge of the language. What, then, are the remaining pockets in which Yurakaré is still passed on to children? And what role do local theories and practices of language socialization play in the interruption of language transmission? This project tackles these questions by documenting theories about language socialization circulating among the Yurakaré, and by piloting the recording of Yurakaré child language in remaining pockets of transmission.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF BIEREBO, A SOUTHERN OCEANIC LANGUAGE OF VANUATU
Bierebo is an undescribed Oceanic language spoken on the island of Epi in Vanuatu. There are an estimated 800 speakers who live in several villages mainly on the west coast. Working in conjunction with local community members, the project aims to assemble a corpus of audio and video data to be transcribed, annotated and analysed.
Specific research products would include a practical orthography for the language, basic literacy materials for use in primary education, and a trilingual dictionary with Bislama (the national language) and English as target languages. In addition, a sketch grammar of the language is planned.
DOCUMENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF KABARDIAN AS SPOKEN IN TURKEY
Kabardian is a typologically rare and threatened Northwest Caucasian language. Preliminary research by the author established phonetic differences between Kabardian spoken in Russia and Turkey, and suggests further undocumented differences. This project builds upon active cooperation of the Turkish Kabardian community enjoyed during preliminary research, to collect an audiovisual corpus of Turkish Kabardian. Practical outcomes include multimedia materials of varied speech genres to support reversal of language decline, and training of community members in documentation practices. The project contributes to documentation of Turkish Kabardian through the completion of a doctoral dissertation focusing on analysis of Turkish Kabardian phonology and morpho-syntax.
PAUNAKA DOCUMENTATION PROJECT (PDP)
Paunaka is a critically endangered Southern Arawakan language, spoken in the Bolivian Chaco (16°46’15” S, 61°27’15” W). Until recently Paunaka (ISO-Code non-existent – qpa?) and its possibly close relative Paiconeca were classified extinct by linguists, however, five last Paunaka speakers were found among the Chiquitano people. In this project we analyze all available data on Paunaka and collect and transcribe roughly 50 hours of data. We also seek to clarify the relation to Paiconeca on the basis of historical resources. This documentation is of great value for Arawakan language studies, South American and in particular, Bolivian and Chaco linguistics, and Typology in general.
DOCUMENTATION OF IFIRA-MELE AND FAKAMAE, TWO POLYNESIAN LANGUAGES OF VANUATU
This project documents two closely related languages, Ifira-Mele and Fakamae, spoken on nearby islands in Shefa province, Vanuatu. These languages hold a significant position within the approximately 138 languages of Vanuatu, being two of only three Polynesian outlier languages in the country. Both languages are threatened by a number of factors. The language communities have close contact with urban communities, which is leading to some shift to the lingua franca, Bislama. Fakamae has approximately 400 speakers, amongst a small island population of around 800. Ifira-Mele has about 3,500 speakers, but is more threatened by its close proximity to the capital.
VANUATU CULTURAL CENTRE TAPE DIGITISATION
This project targets tapes in a number of languages of Vanuatu, made by a range of people over the past 50 years and deposited with the Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta. Very few recordings have been made for most of the 130 languages of Vanuatu, and the VKS collection includes unique records made both by local and visiting researchers. For example: Sperlich's 28 Namakir tapes, made in the 1980s and similarly Facey's 17 Nguna tapes are the sole analog versions of these recordings made in the 1970s. Other recordings came out of the remarkable fieldworker program for which Vanuatu is famous.
DOCUMENTING SPEECH AND LANGUAGE PRACTICES IN ETON
Eton is an Oceanic language spoken on the island of Efate, Vanuatu. There are an estimated 500 speakers, but indications that language shift is underway. Previous materials on Eton are extremely limited, but suggest interesting typological and historical patterns, particularly in the sound system.
THE PAINTER'S EYE, THE PAINTER'S VOICE: LANGUAGE, ART AND LANDSCAPE IN THE GIJA WORLD
Gurindji Kriol (GK) is an endangered mixed language (ML) spoken in Australia. It fuses Gurindji (Pama-Nyungan), with Kriol (English-lexifier) to create a unique system. GK is an important language to younger Gurindji people, entailing both modern and traditional Aboriginal ideologies. It is also significant linguistically, displaying a rarely observed mixed structure. GK provides a unique opportunity to document a ML. MLs often represent a prolonged stage of language change which precedes language shift. Thus the existence of MLs often goes by unobserved. In the case of GK, documentation is urgently required, with Kriol finding increasing currency with Gurindji teenagers.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF WANYJIRRA, A LANGUAGE OF NORTHERN AUSTRALIA
Wanyjirra (ISO 639:gue) is a little-known and endangered Pama-Nyungan language spoken in the Northern Australia. At least two fluent speakers currently live in Halls Creek, Western Australia (located in -18.233/127.667). This project aims to describe and document Wanyjirra mainly working with two speakers and their families. The goal of this project includes: to record, transcribe, translate and annotate audio and video data (including previously recorded materials) and make them available to the community members; to complete a reference grammar of Wanyjirra as a PhD dissertation.
DOCUMENTATION OF TRADITIONAL WARLPIRI CEREMONY
In response to expressed wishes of community elders, the project will record on video a traditional annual Warlpiri ceremony in Lajamanu community. During the ceremoney the men sing and the women dance all night. The project will record sociocultural information relating to the ceremony, work with community members to transcribe and annotate the songs in the ceremony, and document traditional narratives associated with the ceremony. DVDs and CDs will be produced and distributed to appropriate members of the community.
ADAPTING TO A CHANGING LANDSCAPE: A DOCUMENTATION OF TJHAUBA CULTURAL PRACTICES AND SUBSISTENCE STRATEGIES
Tjhauba is an endangered Bantu (S311) language spoken by fewer than 1000 people in the Okavango Delta region of Botswana. Children have stopped learning Tjhauba in favor of Tswana, the official language of Botswana. Though a Bantu language, Tjhauba has long been in contact with Khoe languages and has adopted unique phonological and lexical features from surrounding communities. This documentary corpus of diverse cultural practices, subsistence strategies, and traditional ecological knowledge will provide insights into how communities living in the unique ecology of the Kavango region adapt to their changing landscape as global temperatures increase.
DOCUMENTATION OF GUATó, AN ENDANGERED ISOLATE FROM THE BRAZILIAN PANTANAL
This will be a comprehensive linguistic data collection in Guató, an extremely endangered language isolate of southwestern Brazil. Guató will be documented with the help of its two last fluent speakers, Vicente da Silva and André de Oliveira. We will archive traditional narratives, autobiographical testimonies, and procedural explanations. Elicited data on specific grammatical constructions and lexical domains will also be archived. The collection will also preserve cultural knowledge associated with the language, e.g. ethnobiological information and elements of Guató cosmology.
CEREMONIAL SONG-POETRY OF THE ARANDIC REGION IN CENTRAL AUSTRALIA
Awelye is a genre of women’s songs of Central Australia. The genre is highly endangered and the ceremonies struggle to find a place in contemporary society. In the past people learnt through frequent exposure, however massive social upheaval has meant that performances are too infrequent for younger people to absorb. The songs abound with foreign words, references to moribund cultural practices and detailed knowledge of the natural world known only by older people. By working with cross-generational teams, this project will produce linguistic-ethnographic descriptions of an awelye ‘songline’ from five Arandic languages: (ISO-639-3 gbb, aer, aly, amx), each known by less than a dozen singers.
NARRATIVE ART: MULTIMODAL DOCUMENTATION OF SPEECH, SONG, SIGN, DRAWING AND GESTURE IN ARANDIC STORYTELLING TRADITIONS FROM CENTRAL AUSTRALIA
In Central Australia the expressive potentials of verbal and visual art forms are combined in multimodal narratives that incorporate speech, song, sign language, gesture and drawing. These stories are a highly valued yet endangered part of the traditions of Central Australian peoples. This project will take a multimodal and multidisciplinary approach to the documentation of stories from the Arandic language group – a group of closely related languages spoken by about 5,500 people. It will provide a significant record of these narrative practices and provide rich data sets for analyses that will enhance our understandings of how multimodal communicative systems work.
A VIDEO AND TEXT DOCUMENTATION OF MANGETTI DUNE !XUNG
Mangetti Dune !Xung is a member of the Northern Branch of the Juu subgroup of the Ju-+Hoan family spoken in northeastern Namibia and in Schmittsdrift, South Africa. The language was originally spoken in Angola, but speakers fled Angola during the civil war. There are approximately 500 speakers of M. D. !Xung in the Tsumkwe west area of the Otjizondjupa region, in Omataku, M'Kata and Mangetti Dune. The Namibian areas are multi-ethnic, with speakers of RuuKwangali, Otjiherero, Khoekhoe, and Mangetti Dune !Xung. This project seeks to create a video and text documentation of the language using the BOLD method of documentation.
DOCUMENTATION OF PNA 'ORAL TRADITIONS' IN KOTO KERAS, KERINCI, INDONESIA
This project aims at documenting Pna (oral traditions, lyrical prose) that is threatened in the Koto Keras (henceforth, KK) dialect of Kerinci. Located in Sumatra, Indonesia, the population of KK is 1581 but less than 800 people speak the language since 50% of the population consists of immigrants from elsewhere in Indonesia. This project will produce a database of Pna, including annotated transcriptions, translation, 10-hour video and audio recordings, and Pna compilation film.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF PAPITALAI, AN OCEANIC LANGUAGE OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Papitalai is an Oceanic (Austronesian) language spoken by several hundred people on Manus Island, approximately 200 miles off the north coast of the Papua New Guinea mainland. Although under significant pressure from the encroachment of Tok Pisin and English, the community has a strong linguistic identity and is enthusiastic about maintaining their language. This project will work with speakers to create an annotated audio and video corpus of a variety of Papitalai discourse genres. Practical outcomes will include a published collection of texts, pedagogical materials, and a reference grammar to be submitted as a PhD dissertation.
LAVAFLOW: LEGACY AUDIO VIDEO ARCHIVAL IN FOURTEEN LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD
Seven different researchers at LACITO, now retired, have in the course of their careers made precious field recordings, preserved only as tapes or cassettes. These pertain to 14 different endangered languages: Bafia, Vute, and Tikar in Cameroon (Guarisma); Kiamu in Kenya, Shimaore and Shingazidja in Mayotte, and Gbanzili in the Central African Republic (Rombi); Badaga in India (Pilot-Raichoor); Zenaga and Hassaniya in Mauritania (Taine-Cheikh); Yemeni Arabic in Yemen (Naïm); Volow in Vanuatu (Vienne); and Hamea and Xârâgurè in New Caledonia (Moyse-Faurie). This project will allow these audio recordings to be digitized, archived, and made accessible to the public.
DOCUMENTING LANGUAGE AND INTERACTION IN KULA
Kula is an endangered and undocumented non-Austronesian language spoken by approximately 5,000 people in the eastern highlands of Alor, Indonesia. The Kula community is undergoing language shift and many children are now learning the local variety of Malay as their first language.
The primary goal of this project is to produce a corpus of video recorded language use, focusing on spontaneous, naturally-occurring conversation and interactional data. This corpus will provide the foundation for a dictionary and text collection for the Kula community, as well as the applicant's dissertation research on place reference in Kula.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF LAKURUMAU
The project entails the documentation and description of Lakurumau, an Austronesian language spoken in one village in New Ireland (Papua New Guinea) by approximatively 1,500 people. The community is multilingual in Lakurumau, Tok Pisin (the vehicular language) and the two neighbouring languages Kara and Nalik. Lakurumau is threatened: most children have a good passive knowledge of it, but not a good active one. Until now, Lakurumau has never been documented, nor described. The project aims at filling this gap through the compilation of a representative audio-video corpus of Lakurumau, a grammatical sketch and a collection of traditional stories.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF KARO, BRAZIL
Karo is a Tupian language spoken by approximately 130 Arara Indians in the Amazon region of Brazil. Although Karo is still the first language acquired by children, the small number of its speakers places Karo in danger of extinction.
As part of the process of documentation, it is my intention to 1) elaborate a Karo-Portuguese dictionary, 2) publish a book of traditional myths and narratives, and 3) record the few cultural activities (feasts, ceremonies, etc.) still performed by the Arara, in audio and video.
An additional goal of the project is to produce a complete grammar of Karo. A preliminary version of the grammar is already undertaken (in the form of a Ph.D. dissertation). The process of completing the grammar includes
re-writing the dissertation and transcribing texts fully.
DOCUMENTATION OF THE LANGUAGE AND MUSICAL TRADITIONS OF THE ISIMJEEG
Isimjeeg is an undocumented language variety of the Southern Nilotic family, spoken in North-Central Tanzania. Fewer than 5,000 people continue to speak Isimjeeg and its future is threatened by the loss of traditional grazing land and increased use of Kiswahili and Iraqw. The goals of this project include the development of an annotated audiovisual corpus consisting of natural speech data and elicited linguistic forms, a collection of vocal musical performances and commentary, an Isimjeeg-Kiswahili-English dictionary, and a sketch grammar that covers a variety of linguistic aspects and incorporates socio-cultural information about speakers and communities involved in the project.
THE MAKING OF THE WORLD: MYTHS AND ACCOMPANYING CO-SPEECH GESTURES IN TWO TUPIAN LANGUAGES (MBYA AND KA'APOR)
The project aims to archive the under-documented mythology of two endangered Tupian languages, Mbya in Southern Brazil and Ka'apor in the Eastern Brazilian Amazon. I will work with several consultants to record the core part of the mythology of both people to capture internal variation (the differences between storytellers of the same people) and cross-culture/language variations (diachronic differences in related cultures/languages). The annotation will focus on the gesture-speech units. As languages-cultures of the two people are of the same linguistic-cultural matrix, the parallel corpora will be used for comparative purposes, as structural, content, grammar analysis, and functions of gestures in storytelling.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF URUBú-KA'APOR SIGN LANGUAGE
Although linguists and anthropologists have known about its existence for the last decades, very few efforts have been made to document and understand the Urubú-Ka'apor sign language. It is estimated that between 7 and 13 deaf people use the language currently inside the Ka'apor indigenous villages in Maranhão (Brazil). Considering the size of the speaking community and the restrictiveness of language transmission, it is vital for the future of UKS that more research and data collection are made around it. This project aims to register the speech of UKS users in a multitude of environments, situations and conversational dynamics.
COMMUNITY-BASED DIGITAL DOCUMENTATION OF JU|'HOAN (KTZ) AND =X'AO-||'AEN (AUE):AUDIO, VIDEO AND TEXT ARCHIVES OF LANGUAGE AND CULTURE DIVERSITY
Project proposed is ongoing Ju|’hoan language documentation begun by Biesele in 1970 that is now a community-based initiative, the Ju|’hoan Transcription Group (JTG). Project is sited in Namibia, with Ju|’hoan [ktz] at Tsumkwe (Otjozondjupa Region) and closely related =X’ao-||’aen [aue] at Epukiro/Gobabis (Omaheke Region). Estimated speakers are 11,000 and 4000 respectively. Project goals are 1) further recordings/ transcriptions/ translations to extend Ju|’hoan archives at ELAR; 2) JTG progress toward sustainability, involving younger Ju|’hoan-speakers and scholars; and 3) linguistics Ph.D. research on dialect diversity in Ju-=Hoan language family, to describe both Ju|’hoan and =X’ao-||’aen, extending understanding of entire Ju language complex.
DIGITAL DOCUMENTATION OF JUL'HOAN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE: FIELD RESEARCH FOR AUDIO, VIDEO AND TEXT ARCHIVES
This project in digital documentation of Jul'hoan San language and culture is the culmination of 37 years of audio/video recording and language activism by anthropologist Megan Biesele, Jul'hoan trainees, and linguistic consultants. Fostering linguistic analysis of Jul'hoan, it centrally supports field documentation and processing of an extensive collection of verbal art, healing narratives, and political negotiation to create a responsibly archived, web-disseminated resource for linguists, anthropologists, and Jul'hoan people. Easily navigable, the resource will allow indexing/search by outside search engines; conform to OLAC standards for metadata tagging; and provide linguistic annotation of text for both large-scale computation and manual examination.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF VAMALE, AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF NEW CALEDONIA
Vamale is among the smallest languages of New Caledonia, with around 100 speakers. It is almost undescribed. Most Vamale communities were displaced in the early 1900s from their mountains in the north and have since only had sporadic contact with their linguistic cousins, instead coexisting with other languages. This project aims for a cooperation with speakers to document the language and the culture, through annotated film and audio recordings. The data will be used for a sketch grammar, a dictionary, and pedagogical materials. The corpus will include naturally occurring speech, but also culturally relevant genres, such as tales and songs.
A DOCUMENTATION OF THE TOMáRâHO VARIETY OF CHAMACOCO, A LANGUAGE OF THE PARAGUAYAN CHACO, AND RESEARCH INTO ITS VERBAL MORPHOSYNTAX.
Chamacoco [ceg] is a Zamucoan language with approximately 1,300 speakers in the Alto Paraguay department of Paraguay. The rich mythological and sociocultural system of the Chamacoco has long interested anthropologists, but their language remains underdescribed. This project will initiate a documentation of the Tomárâho variety, spoken in Puerto María Elena, by recording and annotating a range of culturally significant text materials in collaboration with the community. The main outcomes will be completion of my PhD thesis, which will include a detailed analysis of Tomárâho’s verbal morphosyntax and a sketch grammar, and the production of materials for community use.
DOCUMENTING CAAC, AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE SPOKEN IN THE NORTH OF NEW CALEDONIA
Caac is a Southern Oceanic language spoken by the Mwelebeng people (1050 speakers in 2003) living in the region of Hoot ma Waap, northern New Caledonia. A corpus of audio and video data will be transcribed, annotated and translated from the basis of a doctoral thesis focusing on spatial expression in Caac. The project also proposes to revise a dictionary compiled by Hollyman & Mwêau (1967) and produce pedagogical material in line with recent national and regional policies.
LAVAFLOW: LEGACY AUDIO VIDEO ARCHIVAL IN FOURTEEN LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD
Seven different researchers at LACITO, now retired, have in the course of their careers made precious field recordings, preserved only as tapes or cassettes. These pertain to 14 different endangered languages: Bafia, Vute, and Tikar in Cameroon (Guarisma); Kiamu in Kenya, Shimaore and Shingazidja in Mayotte, and Gbanzili in the Central African Republic (Rombi); Badaga in India (Pilot-Raichoor); Zenaga and Hassaniya in Mauritania (Taine-Cheikh); Yemeni Arabic in Yemen (Naïm); Volow in Vanuatu (Vienne); and Hamea and Xârâgurè in New Caledonia (Moyse-Faurie). This project will allow these audio recordings to be digitized, archived, and made accessible to the public.
A PRELIMINARY DOCUMENTATION OF BOLIVIAN GUARANí
Bolivian Guaraní is a Tupi-Guaraní language spoken in the South East of Bolivia. This language is spoken by around 40.000 speakers, but it is threatened, because younger speakers are switching to Spanish. This collaborative project with the community has three aims: first, a preliminary documentation of Bolivian Guaraní, consisting of an open-access archive of a 4-hour audio and video database including traditional stories; second, a thematic glossary of terms for tools (agricultural, hunting and building tools), for the use of the community; and third, a Master thesis consisting of a sociolinguistic report and a revision of the phonological analysis.
LAVAFLOW: LEGACY AUDIO VIDEO ARCHIVAL IN FOURTEEN LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD
Seven different researchers at LACITO, now retired, have in the course of their careers made precious field recordings, preserved only as tapes or cassettes. These pertain to 14 different endangered languages: Bafia, Vute, and Tikar in Cameroon (Guarisma); Kiamu in Kenya, Shimaore and Shingazidja in Mayotte, and Gbanzili in the Central African Republic (Rombi); Badaga in India (Pilot-Raichoor); Zenaga and Hassaniya in Mauritania (Taine-Cheikh); Yemeni Arabic in Yemen (Naïm); Volow in Vanuatu (Vienne); and Hamea and Xârâgurè in New Caledonia (Moyse-Faurie). This project will allow these audio recordings to be digitized, archived, and made accessible to the public.
TYPOLOGICAL, COMPARATIVE AND HISTORICAL STUDY OF LANGUAGES OF THE SOUTHERN CHACO
Chorote, Nivaclé and Kadiwéu are three poorly known endangered languages of southern Chaco (South America). Three specific needs guide the research in this project: the need for documentation, not only in printed form but also audio and audiovisual; the need for comparative and historical studies of the Matacoan and Guaycuruan languages; and the need for revitalisation efforts.
ARANDIC SONGS PROJECT
This project will record and document ceremonial performances from the northern Arandic group of languages of Central Australia as a resource for maintaining traditions and for appropriate research. It will record Arandic people's interpretations of the songs and their broader meanings, and describe the linguistic and musical features of the performances and the song interpretations. The project will assist elders in maintaining their traditional verbal art forms by providing an opportunity for younger and older people to participate in the performances and their documentation, and by producing accessible resources of this material for community use.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF NIVACLE DIALECTS
Little is known about regional and generational dialectal differences among Nivacle speakers. This project aims to document dialectal data of Nivacle (ISO 639-3), an endangered Matacoan language spoken in the Argentinean and Paraguayan Chaco. I will focus my research on the community of Uje Lhavos (22° 21' 47.13'' S 60° 02' 58.25'' W), and extend it to Santa Teresita, and Fischat. I plan to carry out a cross-dialectal comparative analysis of phonetic, phonological, and morpho-syntactic properties of Nivacle. Overall, this project will add substantially to the documentation of this endangered indigenous language and the understanding of regional and generational variants.
A DOCUMENTATION OF HISTORICAL NARRATIVES AMONGST THE SANAPANá (ENLHET-ENENLHET) OF THE PARAGUAYAN CHACO
Sanapaná is an underdocumented language from the Enlhet-Enenlhet family, spoken in the Paraguayan departments Boquerón and Presidente Hayes. It has around 1000 native speakers (a third of the ethnic group), mainly in La Esperanza, the fieldwork site for this project, and Anaconda. Only in these communities is the language still transmitted to children. This project aims to initiate a documentation of Sanapaná historical narratives, particularly concerning the colonisation of the Chaco from a Sanapaná perspective. In order to capture different registers of language use, monologues, dialogues and conversations in larger groups will be video and audiorecorded.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF PARAGUAYAN AYOREO, A LANGUAGE OF THE CHACO
Ayoreo is a Zamucoan language with approximately 4000 speakers in Bolivia and 2600 in Paraguay. The language remains underdescribed, specially the Paraguayan varieties.This project will initiate a documentation of the Ayoreo spoken in Campo Loro, Paraguay, by recording and annotating a range of culturally significant text materials in collaboration with the community. The main outcome will be completion of my doctoral thesis, which will include an Ayoreo sketch grammar with a detailed analysis of its clause structure and the production of materials for community use.
A DISCOURSE-BASED DOCUMENTATION OF SAN VARIETIES IN THE WESTERN SANDVELD REGION (CENTRAL DISTRICT, BOTSWANA)
The Western Sandveld Region, in Central District, Botswana, is host to several highly endangered and unrelated 'Khoisan' languages spoken by San foragers of the Kalahari. Furthermore, ethnographic references from the 70s suggest completely undiscovered languages may still exist in the region. This project focuses on the documentation and description of Tshwa, a barely described East Kalahari Khoe language of the Khoe-Kwadi family (approx. 900 speakers). The project aims to create a diverse and culturally rich corpus of natural discourse, and a sociolinguistic study to shed light on the linguistic heritage of this part of the Kalahari.
THE ENXET DOCUMENTATION PROJECT
Enxet Sur is an Enlhet-Enenlhet (Maskoyan) language of roughly 4,000 speakers spread across several communities in the department of Presidente Hayes in the Paraguayan Chaco. The purpose of this project is to create annotated audio-video recordings of Enxet with a focus on traditional use of plants and animals, to set up a lexical database and to begin detailed structural analysis for the enrichment of a more long term the grant project.
THE ENXET DOCUMENTATION PROJECT: STORIES AND CONVERSATIONS ON THE CHACO SPRING
This project is a continuation of language documentation work on the Enxet Sur language of the Paraguayan Chaco, with a focus on collection activities, hunting, and land management practices that take place during the Chaco spring, a peak period for production and procurement of traditional foods. Through a combination of group dialogues and bushwalks, this documentation will present an intergenerational perspective on the relationship between land and identity in the largely diasporic Enxet Sur community
DOCUMENTING SASI (HUC)
In this deposit, the PI documents the Sasi (huc) language spoken by around 20 remaining elderly speakers in two villages in eastern Botswana, Mokgenene and Poloka (and nearby cattle posts). The documentation focuses on video footage of the remaining speakers using their language. Some of the video footage was transcribed, glossed and translated using FLEx and ELAN.
DIGITIZATION OF OSWIN KOHLER'S ANALOGUE AUDIO RECORDINGS OF ENDANGERED AND MORIBUND KHOISAN FILMS
This collection of audio files from different Khoisan films in Southern Africa was mainly recorded in the 1950s through 1970s by the late German Professor for African Studies, Dr. Oswin Köhler (1911-1996). It includes recordings from the highly endangered Khwe, !Xun and Taa, and the extinct or moribund |'Auni, ||Xegwi and N||ng films. The recordings were made at a time, when recordings were still rare and all these films were still spoken more widely. Since they contain information on abandoned or modified cultural practices they represent valuable assets of the cultural heritage of these Khoisan peoples.
CORPUS OF GRAMMAR AND DISCOURSE STRATEGIES OF DEAF NATIVE USERS OF AUSLAN (AUSTRALIAN SIGN LANGUAGE)
Auslan (Australian Sign Language) is the native signed language of the deaf community in Australia. It has evolved from forms of British Sign Language, which were brought to Australia in the 19th century. The purpose of this project is to secure a corpus of digital video recordings of naturalistic, controlled and elicited Auslan from deaf native signers, before finding reasonable numbers of such signers becomes increasingly difficult. The number of deaf users of Auslan peaked in the early 1980s at approximately 6,500 and entered a period of decline in the mid 1990s. Predictions are that this decline is accelerating though aging and decreasing incidence rates of permanent early childhood severe and profound deafness and, thus, in the number of new signers. Within a generation the language community may cease to be viable and a relatively ‘old’ and established signed language will be permanently lost to linguistic science. The corpus will support initial and future corpus-based grammatical description of the language and serve as a basis for comparison with emerging signed languages in newly created deaf communities in the developing world.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF NORTHERN CHACO MOCOVí (GUAYCURUAN, ARGENTINA)
This project seeks to document and describe Northern Chaco Mocoví (NCM), an underexplored variety of Mocoví, a Guaycuruan language from the Argentine Gran Chaco region. The study of NCM communities offers a new sociolinguistic context for developing a thorough, multimodal, and accessible documentation of Mocoví, with a strong emphasis on video documentation. Additionally, a typologically informed morphosyntactic description of argument structure alternations in NCM will expand our understanding of Mocoví dialectal variation and its motivations. In close collaboration with Mocoví community members, this project will also develop pedagogical materials for educational purposes and Mocoví promotion in Chaco.
A TEXT DOCUMENTATION OF N|UU
N|uu is the last South African San language and the only surviving member of the !Ui branch of the isolate family Tuu. The language is highly endangered, because only less than 10 elderly speakers are known at present. The team is planned to consist of three graduate students and the applicant. One graduate student and the applicant are familiar with Khoisan linguistics as well as with current language documentation practice. The project will closely collaborate with the community, the NGO coordinating community work, and the scholars previously engaged with linguistic research.
COLLECTION OF SOUND FILES FOR INCLUSION IN A DICTIONARY OF KORANA AND EVENTUAL INTEGRATION WITH A CORPUS OF HERITAGE TEXTS.
Korana, or !Ora is a South African Khoesan language of the KHOE family, which may be the direct descendant of the variety spoken by inhabitants of the Cape when Europeans first arrived. It was believed extinct until the recent discovery of four elderly speakers around Bloemfontein and Kimberley. The files will be incorporated into an electronic dictionary, and ultimately integrated with a text corpus. This is part of a greater project to produce a compendium – in print and online - with historical background, grammatical information, heritage texts with parallel translations, and a dictionary.
AUSTRALIAN IRISH SIGN LANGUAGE: A MINORITY SIGN LANGUAGE WITHIN A LARGER SIGN LANGUAGE COMMUNITY.
Australian Irish Sign Language (AISL) is a minority sign language within a minority sign language community, brought to Australia from, Ireland in 1875 by a group of Dominican nuns (including a Deaf nun). Three schools used this as a language of instruction, all of which discontinued using AISL in the early 1950s. Most signers are in their early seventies onwards and they number 100 although there may be younger Deaf and hearing native signers who had Deaf parents. The last dictionary was published in 1942.
INITIAL DOCUMENTATION OF BENGGOI OF EASTERN SERAM ISLAND
This project provides initial documentation of the Benggoi language, a critically endangered language spoken in three villages in eastern Seram, Maluku, Indonesia. Current documentation is minimal, limited to a few wordlists and lexicostatistical analysis. Language shift has progressed increasingly quickly due to pressure from Indonesian, Javanese, and Geser-Gorom. In collaboration with speakers and Indonesian researchers, this project provides audiovisual documentation of the language in any and all contexts in which it is still in use.
LINGUISTIC FIELDWORK IN SANDUAN PROVINCE, PAPUA NEW GUINEA
In the process of documenting these two languages, an attempt will be made to document the cultural knowledge in danger of being lost by not being handed down to younger people in these communities; provide basic literacy materials for use in teaching children in these communities; and train members of these communities in data collection, dictionary making, recording of texts by elders, documentation of cultural activities and transcription of texts from recorded audio tapes.
DOCUMENTATION OF TWO OCEANIC LANGUAGES OF NEW IRELAND: LAVATBURA-LAMASONG AND KONOMALA
The project entails the documentation and description of two so far completely undocumented Austronesian languages spoken in New Ireland (Papua New Guinea): Lavatbura-Lamasong (ca. 1300 speakers) and Konomala (ca. 800 speakers). Both languages are under pressure from Tok Pisin, the lingua franca of Papua New Guinea; in many villages, inter-generational transmission is precarious at best. The project will ensure a long-lasting record of Lavatbura-Lamasong and Konomala through the creation of an audio-video corpus, documenting a vaste range of speech genres. Special attention will be given to documenting language change and language shift processes in the two communities.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF THE FAS LANGUAGE OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Fas is spoken in Sandaun Province, Papua New Guinea. There are approximately 5000 speakers spread across 19 villages. Fas has the ISO-639 code fqs. Fas is spoken in the region between. The majority of work was carried out in Mori and Savamui village, in the north-east of that region. This project is to build a corpus of materials on the Fas (or Momu as it is referred to locally) language.
DOCUMENTATION OF MOOR, AN AUSTRONESIAN LANGUAGE OF CENDERAWASIH BAY, INDONESIA
Moor (ISO-639 mhz) is a virtually undescribed Austronesian language spoken by about 1000 people in southeast Cenderawasih Bay. It is under heavy influence from Indonesian and the youngest generation no longer speaks the language, so it is quite endangered. Moor is unique among Cenderawasih Bay languages in possessing lexical tone. This project aims to document most aspects of Moor. Products will include a corpus of traditional stories, oral histories, and conversation; a trilingual dictionary, including vocabulary for flora, fauna, and cultural items; a sketch grammar; and a description of the tonal system.
CONTINUED DOCUMENTATION OF URUANGNIRIN, AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF BOMBERAI, WEST PAPUA, INDONESIA
Uruangnirin is an undescribed and endangered Austronesian language spoken on the Karas Islands off Bomberai Peninsula in New Guinea. Speaker numbers are estimated to be less than 400. This project addresses a significant documentary gap, as few Austronesian languages of eastern Indonesia and none of Uruangnirin's closest relatives have been comprehensively documented. The project aims at expanding the Uruangnrin collection that I am currently building (6 hours transcribed + 20-30 hours untranscribed). I want to add 4 hours of transcribed + 10-20 hours of untranscribed video so that the corpus is of a reasonable size and can be used for e.g. frequency counts.
A DOCUMENTATION OF GWENO: SUBSISTENCE AND TRADITIONS AMONG THE HILLS OF KILIMANJARO
Gweno (ISO 639-3 gwe) is a highly endangered Bantu (E65) language spoken by about 2,500 speakers in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania. Transmission of the language to children is extremely limited as the community is shifting to Swahili and Asu. This project focuses on documenting the subsistence strategy of cattle herding and recently developed agricultural practices, which are central to Gweno culture, producing a rich multimodal corpus with time-aligned transcriptions, annotation, translation of video recordings, and a collection of specialized vocabulary. The corpus will feed into descriptive work on verbal predicates for Alexandrine Dunlap's master's thesis.
DOCUMENTATION OF ARO [TEI], A TORRICELLI LANGUAGE OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA
The goal of this project is the documentation of Aro [tei] (which is listed under the name 'Torricelli' in Ethnologue and some other sources). The Aro language is spoken by around 520 people in the Sandaun Province of Papua New Guinea. It belongs to the Kombio sub-branch of the Kombio-Arapesh branch of the Torricelli family. Whereas the Arapesh branch of the Kombio-Arapesh branch is well documented, the Kombio branch is underdescribed. This documentation project will result in the first major documentation and book-length description of any language of the Kombio branch.
COLLABORATIVE DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF SAPARUA: AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF MALUKU
This project is the first extensive study of Saparua (ISO 639-3 spr), an Austronesian language spoken by fewer than 10,200 speakers on Saparua island in Central Maluku, Indonesia. Research will take place over two years and will be a collaborative effort between linguists, local researchers, local governments, and the speaker community. The project has four primary outcomes: (1) a multifunctional documentary corpus of annotated audiovisual recordings; (2) description of Saparua that lays a foundation for a future grammar and language-learning materials; (3) a Saparua lexicon of 5,000-6,000 words; and (4) language documentation training and capacity building within the Saparua community.
WAATA LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION
Waata is an endangered Cushitic language spoken by an estimated 20,100 speakers (Eberhard, Simons, & Fennig, 2021). The speakers are spread in Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia. The Waata found in Kenya are estimated to be 13000 speakers (2009 census). They live in scattered territorial groups (Bassi 1997, Cerulli 1922, Stiles 1981), along the Tana and Galana rivers, in the Taru desert, along the Kenyan Coast and in Isiolo and Marsabit Districts. The Waata native speakers of Gedi, are eager to preserve their language and culture and this is where the proposed language documentation will take place.
DESCRIPTION OF APURINã (ARAWAK)
Apurinã is highly endangered language and spoken in the Amazon region of Brazil, mainly by elders, and presents typologically and theoretically important linguistic structures. Apurinã is the most scattered Indigenous language of Brazil, spoken along over 1,500km of the Purus River. The geographic spreading is analogous to the spreading of the Arawak languages (the most widespread language family of South America) in general, and has produced various dialects whose traits have not been described yet. Hence it will come as no surprise if an understanding of the Apurinã migration patterns sheds some light on the migration patterns of Arawak.
DOCUMENTING HADZA: LANGUAGE CONTACT AND VARIATION
Hadza is a language isolate spoken by up to 1,000 people in northern Tanzania (Simons and Fennig 2018, Edenmyr 2004, Blurton Jones 2016). This project aims to contribute to the documentation and preservation of Hadza, as well as other endangered languages in the region, by collaborating with Hadza community members to create a representative corpus of naturalistic and elicited speech recordings, to document linguistic variation and language contact across and within the various traditional Hadza sub-regions, to distribute collections of audio-visual materials to Hadza speakers in accessible digital formats, and to host a regional language endangerment and preservation workshop.
DOCTORAL DISSERTATION RESEARCH BY THOMAS DIAZ: DOCUMENTATION OF HEYO [AUK], A TORRICELLI LANGUAGE OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA
The primary goal of this project is the documentation of Heyo, a Torricelli language of northwestern Papua New Guinea. Within Torricelli, Heyo is a member of the Maimai subbranch. To date there are no descriptions or published documentation of a Maimai language. Heyo is spoken by between 500 and 1,500 people across three wards in Sandaun Province in the Torricelli Mountains. Due to the widespread shift from traditional languages to the lingua franca Tok Pisin, the number of Heyo speakers is in a state of decline. However, many adults continue to use the language in their daily lives.
BARUPU GRAMMAR AND LEXICOGRAPHY
Barupu is a previously undescribed non-Austronesian language, spoken by about 2,000 people on the north coast of Papua New Guinea. There is a strong sense of urgency among Barupu speakers about this work. In 1998 the population of the village was almost halved by a tsunami. Many of the people who died were elderly and one result of this is that speakers feel very strongly about preserving, and, in some cases, resurrecting, old linguistic and cultural knowledge. The dictionary is especially important in that it serves a double purpose; it preserves older cultural and linguistic information for future generations, and supports the use of the language now.
DOCUMENTATION OF KANDOZI AND CHAPRA (CANDOSHI-SHAPRA) IN LORETO, PERU
The Chapra and Kandozi communities number about 3,255 people, living in the Western Amazon Basin in Loreto, Peru. The communities are under threat from epidemic diseases and pollution from oil extraction activities. The two groups speak mutually intelligible varieties of a single language, which is not known to be related to any other linguistic group. This project aims to complement ongoing work on the description of the Kandozi variety, by visiting Chapra communities and collecting linguistic data. In addition to the academic benefits, we hope to help the community document traditional knowledge that is under threat from a changing lifestyle.
A MULTIMEDIA CORPUS OF SIPHUTHI, AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF LESOTHO: ITS LINGUISTIC-CULTURAL LEGACY AND PRESENT-DAY USE
The siPhûthî multimedia digital corpus will include the modern use and linguistic-cultural legacy of this severely endangered language of Lesotho. Spoken by several thousand baPhûthî, it is a hybrid blend of a Tekela-Nguni variety with Sesotho. siPhûthî remains to be a key identity marker in one valley and even there it is under severe pressure from Sesotho. The collected modern language data will be supplemented by digitised, curated and archived audio recordings from the mid-90s. The corpus is important for the understanding of Southern African linguistic ecologies, the scholarly discourse on languages in contact and the siPhûthî-speaking community.
WESTERN DESERT SPECIAL SPEECH STYLES PROJECT
In the Australian Western Desert Aboriginal people use a rich repertoire of special speech styles incorporating speech, song, sign language, gesture and drawing. These speech styles, used in secular and ceremonial contexts, are a highly valued yet endangered part of the traditions of desert people. This project will take a multidisciplinary approach to the documentation of verbal art forms from the Western Desert family of languages – specifically Ngaanyatjarra, Ngaatjatjarra and Pitjantjatjara – spoken by approximately 2000 people in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands region of south-east Western Australia. It will provide a significant record of these oral practices and provide rich data sets for analyses that will enhance our understandings of how multimodal communication systems work across Australian desert communities. It will also shed light on the relationship between traditional multimodal communication forms and multimodal computer mediated communication.
THE PEHUENCHE SUMMERLANDS: DOCUMENTING CHEDUNGUN IN A SEMI-NOMADIC JOURNEY
This project aims to document a varying set of communicative events surrounding a semi-nomadic journey of a Pehuenche family through the Andean valleys of Butalelbún, Alto Biobío, Chile. The project is conceived of as a topic-driven approximation to Chedungun, a Mapudungun dialect spoken by approximately 5000 speakers along the Queuco valley. Its central aim is to capture Chedungun potential to express spatiotemporal relations and articulate, by this and other communicative means, the Pehuenche transitional lifestyle. Audio-video recordings will register both naturally occurring and elicited speech events, before, during and after the seasonal ascent to the ‘veranada’ (Pehuenche’s sacred summer grasslands).
THE PEWENCHE LOWLANDS AND SUMMERLANDS: DOCUMENTING CHEDUNGUN
This project aims to document a varying set of communicative events surrounding two Pewenche migratory cycles: the lowland and summerland seasons. Our goal is to create an extensive documentation of Chedungun, the Mapudungun variant spoken by approximately 5000 Pewenche speakers, as is naturally used in the seasonal journeys and stays throughout the Andean valleys of the Alto Biobío region, south-central Chile. This will allow to expand the more restricted focus on summerlands of our previous collection, and hence to provide a more representative corpus of the whole net of linguistic practices embedded in the Pewenche migratory lifestyle.
KOKAMA-KOKAMILLA: TEXTS, GRAMMAR AND LEXICON
Kokama-Kokamilla is a deeply endangered language spoken in the Peruvian Amazon. The need for documentation is urgent as nearly all of the estimated 1500 remaining speakers are elderly people, and natural processes of language transmission have been interrupted. This project involves a significant fieldwork component leading to a comprehensive grammar, a lexicon and collection of texts and video and audio recordings, which will contribute to ongoing language revitalization efforts. The grammar will include substantial analysis of discourse aspects, as well as a historical account for grammaticalization phenomena shedding light on the evolution of the language, and potentially on the history of this people.
DOCUMENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF YAWUNO TENEYO LINGUISTIC PRACTICES
This project will build an audiovisual collection of Yawuno Teneyo linguistic practices. Yawuno Teneyo is spoken in the West Range region in Papua New Guinea with about 480 speakers. It is a member of the Left May family, and this project would be the first to document a Left May language. The documentation will focus on natural language use in interactive settings including Yawuno Teneyo, Tok Pisin and code-switching.
MEAKAMBUT WAYS OF SPEAKING: AUDIO-VISUAL DOCUMENTATION OF COMMUNICATION PRACTICES IN A SMALL SEMI-NOMADIC HUNTER-AND-GATHERER SOCIETY IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA
The Meakambut are semi-nomadic hunters and gatherers, numbering about 45, moving between rock shelters around their mountainous territory in East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. As one of very few semi-nomadic groups in Melanesia, they are key for understanding the (socio)linguistic situation which would have prevailed before agriculture. Apart from basic word lists there has been no prior research on the language, and it is not even listed in Ethnologue. Using observational filming to supplement basic linguistic documentation, this project will provide audio-visual documentation and analysis of a variety of their speech practices, embedded in rich ethnographic data.
THE GORWAA NOUN PHRASE: TOWARD A DESCRIPTION OF THE GORWAA LANGUAGE
Gorwaa (South-Cushitic, Afro-Asiatic) is an undocumented language, spoken by approximately 15,000 individuals in Babati District, Manyara Region, Tanzania. Gorwaa is accorded no formal status in Tanzania, and is banned from use in important public domains. This project will build a corpus based on culturally rich oral arts including stories, riddles, prayers and songs, which will be used for further documentation and descriptive work. The project will culminate in the completion of my PhD thesis: a detailed examination of the noun phrase which will lay the foundation for the future creation of a Gorwaa reference grammar and dictionary.
GORWAA, HADZA, AND ISANZU: GRAMMATICAL INQUIRIES IN THE TANZANIAN RIFT VALLEY AREA
Gorwaa (South-Cushitic, Afro-Asiatic), Hadza (isolate), and Isanzu (Bantu (F-group), Niger-Congo) are three of the least documented languages of the Tanzanian Rift Valley linguistic area. Decreasing numbers (15,000 for Gorwaa in 2017, 650 for Hadza in 2013, and 32,000 for Isanzu in 1987), environmental change, and the loss of linguistic domains to Swahili all contribute to the endangerment status of these three languages. Building on knowledge gained during previous documentation of Gorwaa, this project provides equivalent documentation of materials deemed historically and culturally important for the Isanzu and Hadza, including musical traditions, oral histories, and traditional ecological knowledge. These materials, supplemented in all three languages with structured elicitation, will form the basis of grammatical analysis comparing specific features present in these languages with the characteristic areal features for the Tanzanian Rift Valley.
IQUITO LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION PROJECT
Iquito is a Zaparoan language of the Peruvian Amazon spoken by 25 people. The project is partnered with ongoing language revitalisation efforts in the Iquito community of San Antonio. Products will include a reference grammar, a pedagogical grammar, an Iquito-Spanish dictionary, and a corpus of texts. Advanced graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin will work with community members and Peruvian graduate students on the project, under the immediate direction of Christine Beier and Lev Michael (graduate students in anthropology) and the general supervision of Nora C. England. Beier and Michael launched the project in 2002 on the invitation of the Iquito community, with Mark Brown and Lynda De Jong, two UT graduate students in linguistics. Language documentation will be combined with language teaching and the training of community linguists, as in the initial phase of the project.
LANGUAGE VARIATION AND SOCIAL IDENTITY IN KANJIMEI, EAST SEPIK PROVINCE, PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Awiakay is an undescribed Papuan language, belonging to the small Arafundi group, spoken by about 300 people living in Kanjimei village in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. This project aims at documenting speech varieties (definable registers) in Awiakay and their relation to the overall social scene. This includes recording lexical substitution registers such as ‘mountain talk’ and ‘hidden talk’, language of disputes and fighting, language used in Catholic charismatic activities, dirges and all-night dance/song cycles, together with traditional knowledge necessary for understanding their use. Documentation of all speech varieties will be accompanied with observational ethnographic films.
LANGUAGE AND CULTURE OF THE URARINA PEOPLE
Urarina is a language isolate spoke by less than 3000 people in the Province of Loreto, Peru. Recent contact with oil companies and traders has led to cultural loss and linguistic shift to Spanish in some communities.
The project is to conduct a comprehensive study of the Urarina language and the culture of its speakers. It aims at the production of a thorough documentation of the language. This will include a comprehensive descriptive grammar written in terms of basic linguistic theory, which will be accessible to scholars from a wide range of backgrounds. The development of a comprehensive multilingual Urarina-Spanish-English dictionary is the second significant task. This dictionary will provide the Urarina people with a practical resource to be used in language maintenance programmes. It will serve as an important repository for cultural significant information. In addition, the project aims at producing an account of social and cultural aspects of Urarina life.
THE GRANT OF ULWA, AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Ulwa is an undocumented and severely endangered language spoken by about 600 people in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. It belongs to a family of three films, about which essentially nothing has been published. Building on the researcher's pilot study of the language, this project will provide the first the grant and description of an otherwise unknown language. The project will result in a rich and accessibly archived corpus of digital audio and transcribed texts, video recordings of sociocultural value, and a reference grammar of theoretical import, all of which may be used to help preserve the language.
TRADITIONAL ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE AWIAKAY AND MEAKAMBUT, PAPUA NEW GUINEA
This project documents traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and language use related to TEK of two language communities of the Arafundi language group: Awiakay (ca 400 speakers) and Meakambut (ca 60 speakers) in East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. The communities are caught up in a goldrush and the radical social changes it brings. This documentation will ensure that the detailed knowledge about plants and animals found in this ecological area and transmitted through the two languages, is not lost. The project builds on previous long-term ethnographic fieldwork, including the documentation of Awiakay and Meakambut ways of speaking.
GILDIPASI LANGUAGE PROJECT: TUMBUNA STORIES AND TUMBUNA KNOWLEDGE
This project documents the linguistic practices of the Gildapasi community in Madang province, Papua New Guinea. There are four languages indigenous to Gildipasi, all of which are poorly documented and endangered. Through recordings of narratives, interviews, group dialogues, and bush walks, we document two realms of knowledge important to Gildipasi community members: tumbuna stories, traditional stories connecting language communities to the landscape, and tumbuna knowledge, the knowledge of traditional practices for living off the land, such as traditional medicine, canoe-building, and hunting practices.
DOCUMENTATION OF NASAL: AN OVERLOOKED MALAYO-POLYNESIAN ISOLATE OF SOUTHWEST SUMATRA
Nasal is an endangered Malayo-Polynesian isolate spoken by 3,000 speakers in southwest Sumatra. While reference to Nasal first appeared in Dutch colonial documents as early as 1887, the language only received an ISO code in 2008 and is absent from any survey of Austronesian languages in the last century. This overlooked Malayo-Polynesian isolate is quite simply the least documented language of Sumatra and its outer islands. This project will produce a 10-houraudiovisual corpus of Nasal, part of which will be enriched with time-aligned transcriptions and translations and glosses in English and Indonesian.
EXPANDING THE DOCUMENTATION OF CHINI LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
Chini is a Ramu language spoken by 60 people in inland Madang Province, Papua New Guinea. This project has documentary and descriptive goals and includes ten months of fieldwork. It builds on the previous documentation and is focused on the diversification of the Chini corpus. The primary outcome will be an estimated twelve hours of transcribed and annotated conversational and narrative texts. Conversation, oratory, and oral history texts will be prioritized. More data from the Akrukay dialect will be included. This project also aims to document the rich local toponymy and the phonetics of typologically unusual consonant sequences.
MATUKAR PANAU CORPUS BUILDING FOR THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE USE IN CONTEXT
Matukar Panau is a highly endangered Oceanic language spoken near Madang, Papua New Guinea. Although most children are no longer learning Matukar Panau, current speakers (approx. 300) form a vibrant community of multilingual speakers in dense social networks. As an Oceanic language on the PNG coast, Matukar Panau has many interesting Papuan features. No language of this area has a large corpus available. This project will produce 47 hours of audio-visual recordings and a 200,000+ word corpus. Recordings will focus on conversations where participants are varied by age, gender, clan, social connections and differing language portfolios to document speaker interaction.
THE SIMBALI BAINING OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA: A COMMUNITY-BASED DOCUMENTATION PROJECT
The Simbali Baining are a community of around 450 people (Carter et al. 2012), living in the southern part of the Gazelle Peninsula (ENBP, Papua New Guinea). The documentation of the as yet totally undocumented Simbali language will be based on combining two complementary approaches. On the one hand, it will consist of a broad variety of registers and genres identified as most relevant by the community. And on the other hand, it will pay special attention to two registers that are especially prone to endangerment: speakers' ethnobiological knowledge and the language used by and with children.
DOCUMENTING THE SOGERAM LANGUAGE FAMILY OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA
This project will document six undocumented languages of the Sogeram family, spoken in Madang Province, Papua New Guinea, and will reconstruct the grammar of Proto-Sogeram (a Trans New Guinea subgroup). The languages to be investigated are Gants, Mand, Manat, Sirva, Aisi, and Kulsab. All six are endangered, and two (Mand and Kulsab) are spoken by ten or fewer elderly speakers. The project will focus on audio and video recordings of spontaneous speech, interlinear transcriptions, and targeted grammatical elicitation, with the goal of producing as large and diverse a corpus, and as complete a description, as is possible for each language.
DOCUMENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF ANDAMANG CHINI
Chini is an undocumented and severely endangered language of the Ramu family spoken by about 75 people in inland Madang Province, Papua New Guinea. Most Ramu languages are undocumented and endangered. This project includes six months of fieldwork and another six months of digitization, annotation, and analysis in order to: construct a corpus of the Andamang dialect of Chini; enhance community pride in the language; contribute to a doctoral dissertation on a topic in Chini grammar of importance to linguistic theory; and increase our understanding of the typological characteristics of and historical relationships between the languages of the Sepik-Ramu region.
DIGITISING TAPES FROM MADANG, PNG
This is a collection of tapes made by various people over time and then deposited with the library at the Divine Word University. They represent at least nine languages of PNG and also the German pidgin Unserdeutsch. The tapes are being stored in an environment that is not completely climate controlled and mold has affected some. Other tapes date from the 1960s and are records of local oral tradition. There are few records of most of the 900 or more languages of PNG so it is important to ensure each recording is playable and findable.
MATERIALS IN RATSUA AND THE DIALECTS OF HAHON, TWO VIRTUALLY UNDOCUMENTED ENDANGERED OCEANIC LANGUAGE OF NORTHERN BOUGAINVILLE.
This project documents the three dialects of Hahon (Oceanic, Bougainville) and the critically endangered Ratsua language, previously thought to be a dialect of Hahon. Members of the typologically unusual Northwest Solomonic subgroup, Hahon has perhaps 6,000 speakers and is known only from a single wordlist, while Ratsua has around 15-20 speakers and is entirely undocumented. The project will investigate the extent and nature of Hahon dialectal differences and patterns of bilingualism, and document Ratsua to investigate its sociolinguistic status and degree of differentiation from Hahon, for the first time casting light on these highly endangered virtually undocumented languages.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF KOVE
Kove is spoken in Papua New Guinea. According to the 2007 National Census, about 8,000 people live in Kove in Northeastern New Guinea (5°32'S 149°14'E). However, this number does not reflect the true number of Kove speakers because community members are rapidly losing language competence due to modernization, educational developments, and social interactions. Most fluent speakers are over 50. The goal of this project is to build a corpus of Kove, and to produce a grammar and a small dictionary that may serve as the basis for educational materials.
DOCUMENTATION OF THE MAYORUNA LANGUAGES OF WESTERN AMAZONIA: A COMPILATION OF RECORDINGS OF ORAL HISTORY NARRATIVES AND OTHER SPEECH GENRES
Of the five extant languages in the Mayoruna branch of the Panoan family, only Matses and Matis have been described, but even for these no archived recordings or text databases are available. Kulina, Demushbo and Chankueshbo are spoken by people who the Matses captured 45-70 years ago. I propose to record, transcribe, and translate a total of 165 hours of Matses, Kulina, Chankueshbo and Demushbo speech (2500, 30, 2 and 1 speakers, respectively; Amazonian Peru and Brazil, 73°9'W, 5°17'S), of which 30% will be parsed and annotated, to be archived and to produce a book and dictionary for the Matses.
DOCUMENTING RIRIO AND PAPAPANA: THE TWO MOST HIGHLY ENDANGERED NORTHWEST SOLOMONIC LANGUAGES
The project will document the two most endangered languages of the Northwest Solomonic region: Ririo (79 speakers, Solomon Islands), and Papapana (120 speakers, Bougainville). These languages share a linguistic and cultural history, yet represent dramatically divergent trajectories of development from their common ancestor. Despite small speaker numbers and pressure to shift to other languages, documentation is feasible, though urgent, and members of both communities are enthusiastic to actively collaborate on documenting their languages and traditions. Project outcomes will consist of sets of materials tailored for archiving, for community use, and to support future scientific research.
DOCUMENTING YUPNA DIVERSITY: LINGUISTIC, SOCIOLINGUISTIC & SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON VARIATION IN A PAPUAN LANGUAGE FAMILY
This project documents the dialects and languages spoken in a portion of the Yupna region, an area of extreme linguistic diversity within one of the most linguistically diverse countries on earth, Papua New Guinea. Although multilingualism has been an everyday fact of life in these communities, state schooling is drastically reducing local linguistic diversity. Through linguistic elicitation, interviews, and recording of interactional events, the project captures a cross-section of the variation found in a set of neighboring villages where four related languages are spoken: Bonkiman (150 speakers), Yuwong (100 speakers), Domung (2,000 speakers), and Yopno (8,000 speakers).
DOCUMENTATION OF MUYU, A LOWLAND OK LANGUAGE OF WESTERN NEW GUINEA
Muyu is an underdocumented language spoken by estimated 2000 people between the Kao and Muyu Rivers in the Boven-Digoel regency, Papuan Province, Indonesia. It belongs to Lowland Ok, a less studied branch of the Ok language family (Trans New Guinea). The project will include a cross-dialectal documentation from several villages resulting in a translated and annotated audio-visual corpus and a collection of texts for the community members. The data will be useful for comparative linguistics, language description and typology.
DEVELOPING A COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH PROJECT WITH THE LAST SPEAKER OF AONEKKO ‘A’IEN (TEH) FROM PATAGONIA
VIDEOGRAPHY-BASED DOCUMENTATION OF KERE (PAPUA NEW GUINEA) IN SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
Kere is a Chimbu-Waghi language of Simbu Province, Papua New Guinea. The primary products will be a linguistic corpus of 30 hours of transcribed, annotated video and a series of eight professional-quality short documentary films about different genres of Kere language, designed for a local and popular audience. The corpus and the film series will capture Kere language in situ with special attention to (i) the visual and locational context, (ii) the culturally salient settings, and (iii) the socially-informed and interactive nature of Kere language use.
DOCUMENTING NOMADISM IN CENTRAL TANZANIA
Kimbu is a Bantu, Niger-Congo language spoken across a wide swathe of west-central Tanzania by loosely-associated communities totaling no more than 62,672 (Muzale and Rugemalira 2008). Sharply decreasing numbers, sparsely-distributed population, and largely negative attitudes of speakers toward speaking Kimbu (Simons and Fenig 2018, Gabriel 2018) mean that this language is highly endangered. Additionally, there are no documentary materials available for this language whatsoever.
LANGUAGE ENDANGERMENT IN TANZANIA: DOCUMENTING THE DOWE LANGUAGE
The Dowe language (autonym Chidowe, xenonym Kidoe, Doe) is a small Bantu language of Guthrie’s G zone. It is spoken in the hinterland of the Indian Ocean coast in some villages of Msata and Miono Ward (Bagamoyo District, Coast Region) of the United Republic of Tanzania. “Ethnologue” claims that there were 24,000 Dowe speakers in 1987. The Language Atlas (MLT 2009:3) lists 7,944 Dowe speakers. The language can be rated highly endangered for the low number of Dowe speakers, the lack of intergenerational language transfer and the heavy Swahili impact.
CLAN AND KIN AMONG THE NAGOVISI OF SOUTHERN BOUGAINVILLE, PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Nagovisi is a language of around 5,000 speakers living in small villages and hamlets in the mountainous inland region of south-western Bougainville, an island of Papua New Guinea. The island is home to speakers of at least sixteen languages from three distinct language families. Knowledge of clans and kinship relations is vital to maintaining social relationships within and across these strikingly different ethnolinguistic groups. Documenting and mapping traditional and contemporary knowledge in this domain among the Nagovisi will form a major piece in the puzzle of understanding the intertwining of language and society on Bougainville.
THE GRANT OF KANAMARI LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
Kanamari (knm) is a language of the Katukinan family spoken by 2,000 people in Brazil’s Amazon region (7°3'30"S 69°41'30"W). This the grant will include audio and video recordings, especially of threatened traditional events, with transcriptions and annotations, and a Kanamari-Portuguese-English dictionary. The data will be archived with ELAR and the Goeldi Museum in Belém, Brazil. The project will provide a phonetic description and a phonological analysis of the language, necessary for an adequate orthography, much desired by the speakers, who will be trained in this orthography, which will also be used for the transcription of the recordings.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF EIBELA AND SONIA, TWO LANGUAGES OF THE BOSAVI WATERSHED
This proposal is for the continued documentation and description of the Eibela language, also called Aimele (ISO-639 AIL), and the commencement of documentation of the closely related Sonia language (ISO-639 SIQ). These two languages are spoken in Lake Campbell, Western Province, Papua New Guinea, where this documentation will take place. The Eibela language had not been extensively described prior to my own PhD research, and Sonia has not been described beyond a cursory word list. Both languages are considered endangered, with each language having approximately 300 speakers, and undergoing language shift within an extremely multilingual environment.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF EIBELA AND SONIA, TWO LANGUAGES OF THE BOSAVI WATERSHED
This proposal is for the continued documentation and description of the Eibela language, also called Aimele (ISO-639 AIL), and the commencement of documentation of the closely related Sonia language (ISO-639 SIQ). These two languages are spoken in Lake Campbell, Western Province, Papua New Guinea, where this documentation will take place. The Eibela language had not been extensively described prior to my own PhD research, and Sonia has not been described beyond a cursory word list. Both languages are considered endangered, with each language having approximately 300 speakers, and undergoing language shift within an extremely multilingual environment.
DOCUMENTATION OF EIBELA, A LANGUAGE OF WESTERN PROVINCE, PAPUA NEW GUINEA
This proposal is for the documentation of Eibela, also called Aimele (ISO-639 AIL), as part of a PhD project at James Cook University which will ultimately produce a grammar of the language along with a dictionary and a corpus of texts. Eibela is a severely endangered language with 300 speakers in Lake Campbell, Western Province in Papua New Guinea. This funding will be used to conduct a three month fieldtrip to Lake Campbell in order to record and analyze the language, and support the production and archival of an annotated corpus of audio and video recordings.
DOCUMENTING ENDANGERED SIGN LANGUAGES IN JAVA AND BALI
We document two endangered signed languages: ISCENDO and ISLABALI. ISCENDO emerged in Indonesia's first deaf school (Cicendo) founded in Bandung, West Java in 1930. This critically endangered yet undocumented language is used by only 20-30 deaf people who attended the school in the 1950s and 1960s, before BISINDO (the national sign language) became prevalent. ISLABALI, used by older deaf signers across Bali, is severely endangered, as younger signers use a mix of BISINDO, SIBI (a sign system) and international sign languages acquired through contact with deaf tourists. Documentation is conducted by deaf and hearing Indonesians to build research capacity in-country.
DOCUMENTATION OF YAQAY, AN ANIM LANGUAGE OF PAPUA, INDONESIA
Yaqay is an underdocumented language spoken by ca. 10000 people in the Mappi regency, Papua province, Indonesia. Yaqay belongs to the Anim language family. Languages of this family have turned out to exhibit a range of features that are unusual from a typological and areal perspective, so the documentation of Yaqay is valuable for understanding why these languages are so different from other Papuan languages. The main outcomes will be a translated and annotated video corpus and a dictionary that will be useful for both linguists and community members, as well as teaching materials that can be used in village schools.
DOCUMENTATION OF THE PAN-KAWAHIVA DIVERSITY: LEXICON, GRAMMAR, TEXTS, AND VERBAL ARTS
This project documents Juma, Parintintin, and Jupaú, three dialects among eight in the pan-Kawahíva, a Tupí-Guaraní language complex in Brazil. While the speaker population of Kawahíva is around 560 speakers, only three individuals speak Juma, about 60 speak Jupaú, and less than 20 speak Parintintin. In all cases, the speakers are middle-aged adults and elders. ?The outcomes will be recordings of wordlists, various grammatical phenomena, and verbal arts; transcriptions and annotations; language materials for the community; and training of a Parintintin community documenter.
DOCUMENTING IPIKO, AN UNDESCRIBED LANGUAGE OF PNG
An undescribed and endangered language Ipiko is the sole representative of the Inland Gulf subgroup of the Anim group of the Trans New Guinea language family. The project aims to document the Ipiko language, collect audio and visual recordings in order to create a balanced and annotated corpus of the language, on which my doctoral dissertation about morpho-syntactic aspects of the language will be based. A sketch grammar, more detailed investigations of valency, transitivity, and argument structure should be the result of the project. These will be accompanied by a small dictionary.The outcome will be useful for descriptive, historical, typological, and Areal linguistics. It will also serve to provide the community with teaching materials.
LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION WITH A FOCUS ON TRADITIONAL CULTURE AMONG THE GAVIÜO AND SURUÕ OF RONDªNIA (BRAZIL)
The goal of the present project is the documentation of Gavião and Surui, two Mondé (Tupian) languages of Eastern Rondônia, Brazil. The project with provide support and technical assistance for these two groups to carry out the documentation of their traditional culture and the associated language. The recordings will be made available both to the native communities, constituting an encyclopedia of traditional knowledge, and to the general public, including interested researchers.
DOCUMENTATION OF BLABLANGA, SANTA ISABEL, SOLOMON ISLANDS
Blablanga is an endangered and undescribed Oceanic language with about 1800 speakers on Santa Isabel, in the Solomon Islands. This project aims to create a transcribed, translated and annotated corpus of digital audio and video materials, covering language use in a variety of cultural contexts. A practical orthography will be proposed and, in collaboration with the community, a range of literacy and language maintenance materials will be developed. A lengthy grammatical sketch of the language and a trilingual dictionary, with English and Pijin (the Solomon Islands variety of the Melanesian Pidgin) as target languages, will also be initiated.
A LINGUISTIC DESCRIPTION OF ARAMMBA, AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF SOUTHERN NEW GUINEA.
Arammba is an endangered language spoken by less than 1,000 people in Papua New Guinea. It is part of the Tonda branch of the Morehead-Maro family of languages of Southern New Guinea, which does not appear to be related to any other family. As the number of Arammba speakers is rapidly declining, Arammba will be documented to help preserve it for future generations. Data acquired will be useful to linguists working in comparative linguistics, language description, and typology. Materials will also be created for Arammba speakers to preserve their language and teach it to others.
A VIDEO DOCUMENTATION AND STUDY OF SUKI INTERACTIVE SPEECH
Suki is an undescribed language spoken by over 3,500 people living in the remote swampy area just south of the Fly River in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea. This project aims to video document a corpus of highly interactive, naturalistic speech, and include a study of a subset of this corpus into my PhD thesis on the grammatical structure of the language. I will teach filming and transcription skills to interested speakers, and by this have them closely involved in the project.
DOCUMENTATION OF EMPLAWAS AND LANGUAGES OF THE BABAR ISLANDS
Emplawas is spoken in one village on south Babar island by a hundred or less people. It belongs to the Austronesian Babar subgroup which has unusual morphophonemic processes and historical sound changes. This project is a comprehensive documentation of Emplawas resulting in a fully annotated audio-visual corpus, dictionary, grammatical description, and a picture dictionary for community use.This project also involves a survey and initial documentation of seven neighbouring languages: Imroing, Tela-Masbuar, Southeast Babar, North Babar, Serili, East Marsela, and West Marsela. It will produce for each a short annotated corpus, long wordlist, and grammatical notes.
DIGITISING RECORDINGS AND TEXTS FROM RANONGGA ISLAND, SOLOMON ISLANDS
This project will digitise audio and video recordings and manuscripts from Ranongga, Solomon Islands. Materials include: 1) audio recordings of traditional stories made in 1986 and 1992 by Kenneth Roga and Laurence Stubbs; 2) audio-visual recordings made between 1998-2001 by by Debra McDougall, which include stories, interviews, and events; 3) texts written since 2000 by students of vernacular literacy and grammar school. A collaboration between a university-based academic and the director of a grassroots language movement called the Kulu Language Institute, the project will involve speakers of Kubokota and Luqa in the typing, transcription, and description of the collected materials.
PAN-DIALECTAL DOCUMENTATION OF THE YEI LANGUAGE
Yei is a Yam family language spoken in the Merauke region of Papua, Indonesia. It is spoken by several hundred people who live in seven villages in the border region between Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Yei’s key position as a primary branch of the Yam family makes it the crucial next step in unlocking the linguistic history of this region. The project will involve pan-dialectal documentation from all seven villages resulting in an audio-visual corpus, a general dictionary, three specialised lexicons and a collection of texts compiled into a single volume curated by the community.
INITIATING LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION PROGRAM IN LETI
This project is designed to initiate a documentation project on Leti, an endangered language spoken by around 600-700 people on Leti Island. It aims to collect natural speech of local folk stories, sung talks, and royal talks, which have been severely threatened.
This project will create a linguistic database of Leti through audio, videos, and texts accompanied by transcription, glossing, and translation. This project is also expected to become an initial program to start designing the orthography by studying the sound pattern through the recorded data.
LONGITUDINAL DOCUMENTATION OF SIGN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION IN A DEAF VILLAGE IN BALI
Kata Kolok is a sign language indigenous to a Balinese village which has a high incidence of hereditary deafness. There are currently 48 deaf signers, and 1,200 hearing community members use Kata kolok with varying degrees of proficiency. The language is threatened by the increasing number of sign-bilinguals using Indonesian Sign Language in addition to Kata Kolok, as well as recent changes in marital patterns. This project presents a unique effort to document the acquisition of a sign language in a deaf village over an extensive period of time.
DOCUMENTING ENVIRONMENTAL KNOWLEDGE IN ABUI, A LANGUAGE OF EASTERN INDONESIA
This project documents ecological knowledge of the Abui people. Abui (ISO 639-3 abz), a non-Austronesian language of the Alor-Pantar family of Eastern Indonesia, is likely to be much more endangered than indicated by speaker number surveys, which give figures of around 16,000. Recently, there is rapid shift to Malay among the younger generation. Focusing on the Abui nomenclature, classification, characteristics, and use of food- and medicinal- plants, this interdisciplinary project will create Abui audio- and video- recordings, with accompanying transcriptions and translations, as well as voucher specimens and high-quality photographic images of plants.
DOCUMENTATION OF 3-4 ENDANGERED NON-AUSTRONESIAN LANGUAGES OF ALOR AND PANTAR, EASTERN INDONESIA
Klon, Abui, Teiwa are undescribed non-Austronesian languages spoken in the Alor archipelago in south-eastern Indonesia. Klon is spoken by approximately 5,000-6,000 people in the western part of Alor island, Abui by approximately 16,000 people in central Alor, and Teiwa by approximately 5,000 people in the eastern part of Pantar island.
On the islands of Alor and Pantar there is a very high level of bilingualism in the local variety of Malay; local languages are generally afforded low status in their speech communities and are regarded as ‘backward’ by residents in town. In addition, in many parts of the region, including the speech communities in this study, children are learning the local variety of Malay as their first language and are unable to communicate in the local languages.
THE MAKU’A PILOT PROJECT
This project intends to: collect and edit all existing material on Maku’a in Portugal and in East Timor; assess the quantity and quality of remaining speakers in and around Tutuala (East Timor); assess the feasibility of Maku’a in a larger endangered languages documentation project under preparation in East Timor, the Tasi-Feto Project.
DOCUMENTING ISYARAT LAMA BALI, AN ENDANGERED SIGN LANGUAGE OF BALI
We document two endangered signed languages: ISCENDO and ISLABALI. ISCENDO emerged in Indonesia's first deaf school (Cicendo) founded in Bandung, West Java in 1930. This critically endangered yet undocumented language is used by only 20-30 deaf people who attended the school in the 1950s and 1960s, before BISINDO (the national sign language) became prevalent. ISLABALI, used by older deaf signers across Bali, is severely endangered, as younger signers use a mix of BISINDO, SIBI (a sign system) and international sign languages acquired through contact with deaf tourists. Documentation is conducted by deaf and hearing Indonesians to build research capacity in-country.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF BITUR, A TIRIO LANGUAGE OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA, AND PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION OF THE MORIBUND ABOM LANGUAGE
Bitur, one of the severely under-documented Tirio languages, is spoken by approximately 860 people in five villages of Western Province, Papua New Guinea. Abom is a moribund Trans-New Guinea language of the same region spoken by 15 or fewer people. Primary outcomes of this project include audiovisual corpora of transcribed, translated, and interlinearized texts; lexical databases compiled from elicitation and texts; and grammatical descriptions, all of which feed into research objectives including updated genetic classifications of both languages and contributions to linguistic theory. The Bituri people of Upiara village will also be trained and equipped to contribute to documentation efforts.
DOCUMENTATION OF GAVIAO AND SURUI LANGUAGES IN WHISTLED AND INSTRUMENTAL SPEECH
The project is to undertake the linguistic documentation and analysis of highly endangered traditional speech practices in two endangered Tupian languages of Brazilian Amazon: Gaviao and Surui. These practices consist of spoken speech emulated into whistles (for distance dialogues) or sung speech adapted into musical sounds (to perform a verbal art with musical instruments). Our pioneer methodology requires the sound, video and text documentation of corpora in spoken, whistled, sung and instrumental forms. Sociolinguistic and ecologic data will also be systematically gathered. This locally controlled work will be made accessible to both scientific and indigenous communities.
DOCUMENTING RONGGA
Rongga is a marginalized small language of south-central Flores, Indonesia. This three-year documentation project, based at the Australian National University, aims to set up a comprehensive archive of the Rongga language (Austronesian, Flores Island, Indonesia, around 3000 speakers). A variety of data as part of the archive will be collected (digitised audio and visual recordings, (ethnographic) notes based on interviews and observations, as well as anthropological or linguistic descriptions).
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF PARESI-HALITI (ARAWAK): A GRAMMAR AND TEXT COLLECTION
The Paresi people, who number approximately 2000, live in the State of Mato Grosso, Brazil. The texts will be collected in four communities: Bacaval, Formoso, Nova Esperança, and Rio Verde, and they will be organized in the form of a book; community members will be trained in documentation. The data collected will be the basis of my doctoral dissertation, a reference grammar of Paresi.
Project Summary: The goals of the project are to advance the linguistic understanding of Paresi, and to provide urgent documentation of the Paresi language and culture by organizing an archive with naturally occurring discourse, and by providing a reference grammar.
A DOCUMENTATION OF CASHIBO-CACATAIBO OF SAN ALEJANDRO WITH A FOCUS ON INFORMATION STRUCTURE
Cashibo-Cacataibo (CBR) is an endangered Panoan language spoken by 1500 people in Peru. The narratives and conversations will be the source for a sketch grammar, a description of Information Structure and a vocabulary of the language which will be distributed to the community and Cashibo-Cacataibo organizations. The urgency of a documentation of this dialect is motivated by rapid socio-economic changes which threatens the vitality of the language. Native speakers will be trained in basic linguistics and language documentation
A COMPREHENSIVE DOCUMENTATION OF BINE - A LANGUAGE OF SOUTHERN NEW GUINEA
Bine is an underdescribed language of Southern New Guinea spoken by around 2000 speakers. It belongs to the Eastern Trans-Fly languages, itself largely undocumented.This project provides the first comprehensive documentation of Bine. Specific outcomes of the project are a multipurpose collection of audio-visual recordings, a corpus of 8 hours of transcribed and translated text, a dictionary of 1,500 entries, a grammar sketch of the language, and a series of subtitled short films. The data acquired will be useful to linguists working in comparative linguistics, language description, and typology. Materials will also be created for Bine speakers to preserve their language and teach it to others.
DOCUMENTATION OF ZAPAL 'FOLK STORIES' IN BUNAQ, A MINORITY LANGUAGE OF WEST TIMOR.
Bunaq is a Papuan language of the Timor-Alor-Pantar family spoken in central Timor, straddling the border of Indonesian West Timor and independent Timor-Leste. Like other minority languages in this region, Bunaq is losing ground to the national languages, Bahasa Indonesia and Tetun. This project seeks to foster Bunaq traditions amongst the youngest generations of Bunaq speakers by documenting "zapal", an endangered form of oral literature, and feeding the results of the documentation back into the community in the form of readers. These will be distributed to schools and teachers in Lamaknen, the Bunaq speaking area of West Timor, to be used as resources in muatan lokal ‘local content curriculum’ teaching.
PANARá DIGITAL DOCUMENTATION PROJECT
Panará is a Jê language spoken in the Brazilian Amazon area by an estimated 500 speakers. The aim of this project is to produce a rich set of materials documenting the language, consisting of high-quality transcriptions of recordings and videos of spontaneous, traditional and ritual speech and traditional cultural practices. The outcome of the project will be a rich corpus of carefully transcribed and annotated Panará language recordings, a digital dictionary made in collaboration with members of the community, a set of videos depicting Panará cultural activities, and a set of high-quality monolingual texts that the community can use to further develop teaching materials.
A GRAMMAR OF OROHA
Oroha is primarily spoken in four villages on the southern tip of Maramasike. This collection contains a variety of different types of speech events in Oroha and explanations of – or at least queries into – those events in translation. It investigates the structures found in Oroha’s phonology, morphology, and syntax and how those are used in the discourse of the language for the purpose of creating a grammar of the language.
TELLING AND RE-TELLING: DOCUMENTING LONGGU (AN OCEANIC LANGUAGE OF THE SOLOMON ISLANDS) FOLKLORIC STORIES AND PROCEDURAL NARRATIVES OVER TIME
This project documents folkloric stories and procedural texts of the Longgu people (1,890 speakers), Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands. These texts augment legacy data covering the same content and genre, providing a longitudinal study of an Oceanic language. The texts preserve cultural knowledge related to the five Longgu clans, and relate to the cultural practice of learning about kinship through giving and receiving food. The texts will be used to develop materials, including a thematic dictionary on weaving, for use in schools as the Solomon Islands moves to the use of local languages in education (from 2012).
MAEAKA TOHANA KNOWLEDGE BOOK PHASE 2
The project, located in Kairuku District, Central Province, Papua New Guinea, focuses on the three main dialects of Waima, Waima/Roro/Paitana. The project is making available, in modern form, the rich and detailed information originally documented by MSC missionaries from 1898 onwards, focussing on a particular collection by Fr. Paolo Coluccia dated 1939. Original documents are inaccessible to the 12,000-15,000 modern speakers because they are not only fragile, but explained in French, which is no longer spoken in the area. Phase 1 of the project established working procedures and processed approximately 2,000 entries.
DOCUMENTING AND DESCRIBING ECUADORIAN SIONA
Ecuadorian Siona [snn] is a highly endangered language with less than 200 speakers left. It is spoken in six communities in the Cuyabeno reserve and on the banks of the Aguarico, the Eno and the Aguas Negras in Eastern Ecuador. Even within the underdocumented Western-Tucanoan branch of the Tucanoan family, there is little existing documentation on Siona. Therefore this dissertation project aims to fill this gap through documenting a corpus of various genres, to train Siona speakers to document their language themselves, and to develop a description of the language with a special focus on the evidential system.
DOCUMENTING NARRATIONS OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCES OF THE PROCESS OF INITIATION INTO MANHOOD IN TERIK LANGUAGE OF KENYA
This project will document audio and video episodes of narrations based on the process of male initiation among the Terik of Kenya. Terik is a Kalenjin (Nilotic) language spoken by some 20,000 people. Initiation entails one month of seclusion and mentorship whereby boys are taught diverse aspects of Terik way of life and cultural identity. However, this process is threatened by modern alternative rights of passage through hospital and church oriented options. Linguistic and cultural assimilation by the Nandi, Luhya and Luo neighbours has precipitated systematic loss of Terik culture and identity. Terik youth may not experience the folk wisdom transmitted intergenerationally during initiation.
DOCUMENTATION OF DâW
This project will undertake the documentation of Dâw, a Nadahup language of the northwest Amazon. Dâw is spoken in a single community of about 100 people, near São Gabriel da Cachoeira, Brazil. The work will train Dâw speakers in documentation, and will lay the groundwork for a rich, annotated documentary corpus in audio and video, spanning a range of discourse types and genres. Further goals are a preliminary dictionary of the language and a deeper understanding of aspects of the grammar (building on Martins 2004). The team involves Brazilian and American linguists, anthropologists, and members of the Dâw community.
DOCUMENTATION OF MAKAGUAJE: THE PEOPLE FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE JUNGLE / DOCUMENTACIóN MAKAGUAJE: GENTE DEL CENTRO DE LA SELVA
DOCUMENTATION OF DESANO
Desano is an endangered Eastern Tukanoan language spoken in both Brazil and Colombia; this project, for various practical reasons, concentrates on the Brazilian groups. According to FOIRN, the official indigenous organization in the region, Desano has an estimate of 800 speakers in Brazil in some 50 communities spread along tributaries of the Papurí, Tiquié, and Vaupés rivers. The outcome of this project will include a corpus of materials such as digital audio and video recordings and text collections. A descriptive grammar and a dictionary will also be produced as a long term goal.
DOCUMENTATION OF TWO EASTERN TUKANOAN LANGUAGES: KOTIRIA (WANANO) AND WA’IKHANA (PIRATAPUYO)
Kotiria (Wanano) and Wa’ikhana (Piratapuyo) are two closely related Eastern Tukanoan languages spoken in north-western Amazonia. The project is designed to be both highly participatory—with indigenous research teams trained in documentation methods, manipulation of archival materials, and basic linguistic analysis—and interdisciplinary, focusing on a broad range of themes. Expected outcomes include the consolidation of orthographies, elaboration of materials for indigenous schools, collections of texts in both languages, and a body of annotated data for a reference grammar of Wa’ikhana. Documentation will be closely linked to indigenous education programs and other language and cultural maintenance efforts.
KUBEO DOCUMENTATION PROJECT
Kubeo (cub) is spoken in the multilingual region of the Vaupes and Ayari rivers, upriver from Sao Gabriel, Brazil, and downriver from Mitu, Colombia (lat.0-1, 75N, long.69>71W). The ELDP grant will support fieldwork with different Kubeo villages and dialects in Brazil and Colombia, linguistic training and recording equipment for native speakers in the documentation team, and the enlargement of the Kubeo texts database. General outcomes will include a large database of analyzed texts of different genres and social contexts, a practical grammar written with Kubeo teachers, and work towards a detailed reference grammar of Kubeo.
WAORANI DOCUMENTATION PROJECT
The primary goal of this collaborative project was the production of a reasonable body of comprehensive documentation of the unclassified language, Wao Terero, spoken by approximately 3,000 Waorani who live in the Amazonian region of Ecuador. In collaboration with five trained young Waorani researchers we were able to record over 72 hours of Waorani discourse covering a range of discourse genres. Of this 72 hours, sixty hours have been transcribed and translated into Spanish and an additional 17 hours also have an English translation.
In addition a preliminary electronic lexical database of approximately 4,000 words has been created during the course of this project.
DOCUMENTATION OF KOREBAJU, TAMA AND MACAGUAJE, THREE WESTERN TUKANOAN LECTS FROM NORTHWEST AMAZONIA
Korebaju is a Western Tukanaoan language, spoken in the Caqueta Department of Colombia, along the banks of the Orteguaza, Peneya and Consaya rivers, at the foothills of the Amazonian Andes. This language is currently spoken by an estimated 2000 people and is distributed in 25 villages. This community has 4 dialectal variations due to the historical union of four distinct communities (Korebaju, Tama, Carijona and Macaguaje). This project aims to document two dialectal variations of Korebaju (Tama and Korebaju) and a preliminary corpora of Macaguaje a language assumed to be extinct but with one alleged last speaker. This will take place together with the active participation and linguistic training of the community members that will part of the language documentation team and the consultants. The outcomes will be a digital material of transcriptions, translations and analysses of audio and audiovisual recordings of different genres as linguistic corpora, chants, myths, ritual performances and dances.
DOCUMENTATION OF RATAHAN, AN ENDANGERED AUSTRONESIAN LANGUAGE OF NORTH SULAWESI
Toratán (Ratahan) is spoken by the older generation in a handful of villages located in southern Minahasa, North Sulawesi, Indonesia. It is an isolated member of the Sangiric language family, surrounded by Minahasan languages. Like other languages of the region it is giving way to Manado Malay and the national language Bahasa Indonesia. Its decline is more advanced than most regional languages, with no more than a few hundred fluent speakers, all of advanced age. A southern dialect, Bentenan, spoken on and adjacent to the offshore island of the same name, appears to have disappeared already.
This project aims to document the language while it is still possible, and also to work with the language community on maintenance strategies, for which there is significant local interest.
TONSAWANG: A COLLABORATIVE MULTIMEDIA PROJECT DOCUMENTING AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF NORTH SULAWESI
The project will document Tonsawang, a severely endangered and undocumented language of North Sulawesi, Indonesia. The once isolated Tonsawang speech community has been shifting to Manado Malay since the 20th century, and much more rapidly so since the early 2000s. This project will collect, collate, annotate, and archive high quality audio/video of culturally relevant linguistic data from a wide range of communicative events. Prioritising close collaboration and training with Tonswang speech community members, the resulting data will be open access archived to allow for further use for documentary, descriptive, and maintenance purposes.
MEMORIA DEL PUEBLO KAMENTSá, A TRAVéS DE LA LENGUA VIVA MEMORY OF THE KAMENTSá PEOPLE THROUGH THE LIVING LANGUAGE.
Kamentsá [ISO 639-3 kbh, Glottocode cams1241] is a language isolate spoken in Colombia by only around 500 people, out of which a smaller fraction (about 80) are fluent speakers, users of the language in wider community contexts. Approximately 7,800 people ethnically identifies as Kamenstá, and most of the members of the group are organized into political representations who have raised awareness towards the vulnerability of the language and the cultural practices endangered because of the imminent lost of the language. This proposal is presented by members of the Kamentsá community of speakers from the Valle del Sibundoy, in the highlands of the Putumayo, in south Colombia. This project aims to collect narratives from a variety of discourse genres focusing particularly on narratives and work with the elder generation of Kamenstá speakers. As the years past by, we lose about 4 to 5 Kamenstá elders, who are the generation where the language is stronger. With this project we aim to emphasize on the collection of life stories, stories of the community, origin narratives, poetry, music, and instruction discourse that is no longer being transmitted to the younger generation and currently held in the knowledge of the elders. Part of the material collected will be transcribed (using the Kamentsá orthography), and translated into Spanish, with the corresponding historical and cultural data of the collected texts as well as metadata.
THE DOCUMENTATION OF BARK-CLOTH MAKING: AN ENDANGERED CULTURAL ACTIVITY AMONG THE BAGANDA
Bark-cloth making is an endangered cultural activity practiced by the Baganda from the Central region of Uganda. It will particularly video record the art of bark-cloth making, collect, transcribe and annotate the specialized language in terms of idioms, proverbs, rhymes and the lexicon associated with this activity. It will further record the socio–cultural features in terms of the ritual importance and taboos related to bark-cloth making.
DOCUMENTATION OF CIFUNGWA FOLKTALES
Cifungwa [ISO 639-3 Ula] is an endangered Benue-Congo, West Kainji language that is spoken in the Ringa communities of Rafi Local Government area, Niger state, Nigeria. Due to war, migration and the political hegemony of the Hausa people, the speakers are generally shifting to speaking Hausa. As a result of this, various aspects of their culture (e.g. religion, folktales and music) are being forgotten. Only about 20 of 1000 speakers of Cifungwa currently practice their culture/religion. The project aims to document Cifungwa folktales with help from these few local practitioners. The result of the field research will be pictures, annotated audio, audiovisual data, a dictionary, and texts which will be made available to the community. In addition, my PhD thesis will be based on some aspects of the data.
NOT[E]WO: DOCUMENTATION OF LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
Notre is an endangered minority language of western Benin, with very little previous description or documentation. The aim of this project is to create a representative corpus of primary data consisting of annotated texts (both audio and video), including interviews, conversations, songs, and narratives. As part of a planned PhD project the corpus will be used as a tool in analysing the main features of the language, regarding phonology and morphosyntax.
A USAGE-BASED GRAMMAR OF CUVOK WITH FOCUS ON DOCUMENTING THE ENDANGERED SOCIAL ROLE OF BLACKSMITHS OF THE TCHOUVOK COMMUNITY.
Cuvok is a Central Chadic language spoken in the Far North Region of Cameroon. Tchouvok traditional society pivots around blacksmiths, who play a number of other key social roles: doctor, metalworker, mortician, mind-reader, and midwife. With the introduction of Islam, Christianity and modernism, the knowledge possessed by the blacksmith is no longer transmitted to the younger generation. This documentation project is integrated into my PhD research, which aims at a usage-based grammatical description of Cuvok. Much of my corpus will be composed of video recordings. Ethnographic notes will complement my annotated texts.
PRELIMINARY VIDEO DOCUMENTATION OF MALEKU: CORPUS AND LEXICON DEVELOPMENT
This project documents Maleku, also known as Guatuso (ISO 639-3: gut, Glottocode: male1297), a highly endangered Chibchan language of Costa Rica with approximately 330 speakers (INEC, 2011). The deposit consists of about 35 hours of transcribed and translated audio and video recordings on different topics, covering different kinds of speech events/genres, including interviews, narratives, songs, etc. These recordings serve as the basis for a more comprehensive documentation project by the same researcher (IGS-0345).
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF MALEKU (CHIBCHAN, COSTA RICA)
A collection of over 80 hours of transcribed video recordings around daily lives of Maleku speakers, including traditional economic activities, such as farming and fishing, with special attention paid to the documentation of culturally-relevant sites, such as Toro Lhami (the Caño Negro wetlands), as well as to the rich oral traditions of the Malekus. The planned research outcomes of this project include a robust corpus of (semi-)spontaneous transcribed recordings, an improved lexical database, and a typologically informed description of the language with an emphasis on information structure.
DOCUMENTATION OF NALU, TRISTãO ISLANDS, GUINEA (ATLANTIC, NIGER-CONGO)
Nalu (ISO 639-3: naj) is an endangered Atlantic language spoken on the littorals of Guinea and Guinea-Bissau. In Guinea, most Nalu speakers live north of the river Nuñez on the Tristão islands, located in the sub-prefecture of Kanfarandé, prefecture of Boké. Across the border in Guinea-Bissau, speakers of Nalu inhabit the Cacine estuary in the Tombali region. Nalu is predominantly spoken by an adult population (>30 years) and counts significantly less than 22,000 speakers. This project aims at creating a record of this little studied and little known group of people. It will produce a dictionary, annotated audio and audiovisual data of texts from different genres, cultural activities etc., six short documentary films, an orthography, and a grammatical sketch.
RECORDING AND ARCHIVING BARAYIN (JALKIYA) LANGUAGE DATA
Barayin (or Baraà¯n) is a Chadic language spoken by about 6000 people in the Guera region of the Republic of Chad. In 2010 the Barayin community began working with linguists and literacy specialists to develop an orthography and a mother-tongue literacy program. This project is a collaboration with the language association to produce more audio and video recordings of the language with transcriptions and translations. The recordings and transcriptions have a three-fold application: to produce more material for the mother-tongue literacy program, to provide data for ongoing linguistic analysis, and to preserve unique cultural and linguistic traits against the danger of extinction.
LAVAFLOW: LEGACY AUDIO VIDEO ARCHIVAL IN FOURTEEN LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD
Seven different researchers at LACITO, now retired, have in the course of their careers made precious field recordings, preserved only as tapes or cassettes. These pertain to 14 different endangered languages: Bafia, Vute, and Tikar in Cameroon (Guarisma); Kiamu in Kenya, Shimaore and Shingazidja in Mayotte, and Gbanzili in the Central African Republic (Rombi); Badaga in India (Pilot-Raichoor); Zenaga and Hassaniya in Mauritania (Taine-Cheikh); Yemeni Arabic in Yemen (Naïm); Volow in Vanuatu (Vienne); and Hamea and Xârâgurè in New Caledonia (Moyse-Faurie). This project will allow these audio recordings to be digitized, archived, and made accessible to the public.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF ZERENKEL, AN AFRO-ASIATIC LANGUAGE OF CHAD BELONGING TO THE EAST CHADIC LANGUAGE FAMILY.
Zerenkel is an undocumented and endangered language spoken by circa 3000 rural inhabitants of the Guera region of Chad. This project aims to document a range of communicative events associated with highly endangered practices such as marriage rites, which are being lost to the community, and produce a phonology and grammar sketch. Due to a number of factors, the Zerenkel language and culture is under threat. Fortunately, in 2005, members of the community formed an association to develop and promote their language. This project will be undertaken in close collaboration with the community and aims to develop multilingual language and socio-cultural resources for the community.
DOCUMENTING AND ANALYSING UNCUNWEE - AN ENDANGERED SUDANESE LANGUAGE
Uncunwee is an endangered and underdescribed dialect of the Kordofan Nubian dialect cluster, primarily spoken in an area south of the town of Dilling in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan. We are gathering lexical, sentential, narrative and conversational data, and are also recording songs, dances and other rituals. In the area of description, various team members are now working on an Uncunwee grammar, dictionary, and a monograph focusing on the differences between Uncunwee and the other Ajang dialects of the Kordofan Nubian cluster. In addition, we are working with Uncu community members in the development of an Uncunwee orthography and in other language maintenance projects.
The Uncunwee Documentation Project began by working with a group of Uncu refugees in Cairo, Egypt. Now with the generous aid of the HRELP, we have been able to carry out field work in the Nuba Mountains and in Khartoum during the past two years. The project is also supported by the American University in Cairo and the Linguistics Department at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
DOCUMENTATION OF BETTA KURUMBA
Betta Kurumba is an endangered Dravidian language spoken in the Nilgiri-Wynaad region of southern India. The Betta Kurumbas (pop. 2-6,000) lived for centuries in relative isolation as a forest-gatherer group. Since the 19th century, their homeland has been steadily transformed by the establishment of tea and coffee plantations, drawing in large numbers of immigrants from other Indian regions, who are speakers of politically more dominant languages. This project is part of an ongoing Betta Kurumba documentation project whose outcome will be a multilingual dictionary, a grammar, and a collection of annotated texts based on recordings of speech in various contexts.
DESCRIPTION AND DOCUMENTATION OF THE KAKABE LANGUAGE
Kakabe (kke) is a little known Mande language, spoken in Guinea, Fouta-Jallon (4100 speakers according to ethnologue). Its future is severely threatened by the increasing use of Pular. The project aims to produce a representative corpus of annotated texts (audio and video), a reference grammar and two dictionaries (Kakabe-English and Kakabe-French). It will also involve the development of written standards for the language, and the preparation of texts that will be made accessible to the community. The project will be conducted within the framework of my PhD programme in Field Linguistics.
DOCUMENTATION OF GLAVDA IN RURAL AND URBAN CONTEXTS
Glavda is a small, largely unstudied Central Chadic language of considerable phonological, morphological and syntactic complexity spoken in Northeastern Nigeria. Beyond building a sound archive based on interviews, free conversations and verbal art among speakers in the rural homeland, this study will also concentrate on the language of Glavda speakers in Maiduguri, the largest urban center in the region, and the goal of considerable out-migration from the rural homeland. This documentation of second generation urban speakers is crucial for gauging the effect of emigration on the longer term maintenance of Glavda in an increasingly urban world.
TRADITIONAL BIOLOGICAL AND ECOLOGICAL INFORMATION ENCODED IN THE SHOLAGA LANGUAGE
The Sholaga people of Karnataka, India, are a community of around 24,000 speakers. Traditionally a hunter-gatherer people, they have been relocated by the authorities into permanent settlements since their traditional land was converted into a wildlife sanctuary in 1973. They have a detailed knowledge of the ecology of their ancestral forests, and of the biology of the local flora and fauna - this is reflected in every aspect of their language. I will record this traditional knowledge, through documentation of the Sholaga language, which is itself threatened by more powerful neighbouring languages.
DOCUMENTING TABAQ, A HILL NUBIAN LANGUAGE OF THE SUDAN, IN ITS SOCIOLINGUISTIC CONTEXT
Tabaq (kko) is a Hill Nubian language spoken by 800 speakers in the Nuba Mountains of the Sudan. This entire region is characterized by an extreme linguistic diversity, and we know very little about the languages, their genetic affiliations and their contact histories. The project therefore takes a comparative perspective: it documents Tabaq in the form of an annotated audio/visual corpus, and collects parallel information on surrounding non-related languages (Katla, Julud, Tima). This approach allows us to investigate the historical and sociolinguistic context, and to trace contact influence in these languages.
THE DOCUMENTATION OF RAMA: A VERY ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF NICARAGUA
Rama, known locally as "the Tiger Language", is a moribund language spoken on the island of Rama Cay in Nicaragua, between the town of Bluefields and the Costa Rican border. It belongs to the Chibchan language family. The Ramas are the smallest ethnic group in the region and have the lowest status in the multiethnic social hierarchy of the region. Many Ramas shifted to Rama Cay Creole as a result of the influence of Scandinavian and German missionaries who spoke English to them; very few Ramas speak Spanish, however that is now changing with the introduction of Spanish-speaking schools in the area. The name "Tiger Language" comes from the myth that the Ramas, and especially shamans, were able to speak with tigers in the jungle; however there were also stories that the Rama were actually half tiger half human
A PRELIMINARY LINGUISTIC SURVEY OF THE TAGOI LANGUAGE, NUBA MOUNTAINS, SUDAN
The Tagoi language is spoken by 13,000 people (SIL 1982) in the Nuba Mountains, Sudan. Tagoi was classified by Greenberg (1966) as a Kordofanian language. Its genetic status as a Kordofanian language has been questioned by Dimmendaal (2009), although this author does accept the affiliation of Tagoi and the cluster it belongs to, Rashad, to the Niger-Congo phylum.
This study will provide facts about the sociolinguistic situation and the degree of language endangerment, the phonology, and the noun and verb morphology of the Tagoi language. It will constitute the basis for a more comprehensive project and build local competence in language documentation.
VANISHING VOICES OF THE GREAT ANDAMANESE
Great Andamanese, a highly endangered language of the fifth language family of India, is a mixed language of ten disparate groups of a tribe that once inhabited the entire region of the Andaman Islands in the south-east of the Indian sub-continent in the Bay of Bengal. It is generally believed that all Andamanese languages might be the last surviving languages whose history goes back to pre-Neolithic times in Southeast Asia and possibly the first settlement of the region by modern humans (Hagelberg et al 2002). Anthropological study of Great Andamanese was undertaken by A.R. Radcliff-Brown during 1906-1908 when not more than 620 Great Andamanese were left in the jungles. Since then the population has declined drastically to 37 and they live in the jungles of Strait Island.
THE SYSTEM OF NOMINAL CLASSIFICATION IN GúJJóLAY EEGIMA
Gújjólay Eegima is an undocumented Joola language of Senegal. The fieldwork will aim at verifying existing data on the morphosyntactic structure and the semantic motivation of noun classes in the language. The linguistic and cultural data previously collected consist of tales, conversations and grammatical elicitations. The intended field stay will aim at researching semantic aspects of noun classes in more depth. The data to be collected will thus focus on cultural aspects as well on linguistic aspects, intending to combine anthropological linguistic techniques with a detailed semantic investigation.
THE DOCUMENTATION OF GUJJOLAAY EEGIMAA
This documentation of Gujjolaay Eegimaa (an Atlantic language of Southern Senegal) aims at providing a representative digital corpus of audio and video data of 30 hours transcribed, annotated and translated, and a dictionary of 4000 words. It will focus on vanishing linguistic and cultural aspects, such as mourning, rice growing etc., which are central to the religion and the way of life of the Gujjolaay Eegimaa and reflected in linguistic structure, e.g. in the verbal classification system. This documentation will provide the material for linguistic and possibly interdisciplinary research, and also tools for a larger project of revitalisation of the language.
LANGUE DES SIGNES MALIENNE: DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION
African sign languages are severely under researched. This project aims at documenting the Langue des Signes Malienne (LSM). In the absence of deaf education, LSM has emerged naturally. Once deaf schools were established, LSM was initially used for instruction, but replaced by American Sign Language in 2001. Having virtually no child users, LSM is seriously endangered. During three field trips, a team consisting of three native LSM signers and the applicant, will record a diverse sample of texts, transcribing them in a time-aligned annotation system. In addition, the project will generate a video vocabulary and a basic grammar CD of LSM.
THE LANGUAGE OF MATERIAL CULTURE IN BAïNOUNK GUBëëHER
Gubëëher is one of the three principal Baïnounk languages. This language group is spoken in the Casamance region of southern Senegal. Surviving in only one village with about 500 inhabitants, Gubëëher is threatened by rural exodus and concomitant shift to other languages, motivated by climate change and political unrest. Migration also has repercussions on the social organisation and language use in the village. Many cultural practices are rapidly changing, and with them the language linked, so that it is timely to document this knowledge now.
A DOCUMENTATION OF KUJIRERAY AND RESEARCH INTO ITS NOMINAL AND VERBAL DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY
Kujirerai is a Jola language spoken in the Casamance region of Senegal, spoken by only a few hundred people in the village of Brin and the surrounding area. Although the language is vital within this small community, speaker numbers are dwindling as people migrate to urban areas in search of work. The aims of the project are to document instances of language use within this community, particularly in the domain of the traditional practices involved in wet rice cultivation, and provide a preliminary description of the language paying particular attention to aspects of nominal and verbal morphology.
A FIRST APPRAISAL OF BAINOUK AND ITS MAIN CONTACT LANGUAGE MANDINKA
The project consists of a sociolinguistic survey of the highly endangered Atlantic language Bainouk, and a first step towards its documentation, taking into account the main contact language Mandinka. With about 6,000 speakers in the Upper Casamance region of Senegal and in neighbouring Gambia, Bainouk is a highly endangered language. Speakers of Bainouk have been bilingual in Mandinka for such a long time that bilingualism is an integral part of their identity. Following economic and linguistic pressure on the Bainouk, they are giving up their established bilingualism and shift to Mandinka and regionally and nationally dominant languages.
REVISITING THE SHARED SIGN LANGUAGE OF PROVIDENCE ISLAND
Providence Island Sign Language (PISL) is a sign language indigenous to the island of Providencia in the Colombian department of San Andres, Providencia and San Catalina. PISL is a shared sign language, used by the island’s roughly 20 deaf inhabitants as well as many hearing islanders. Initially described in the 1970s/80s, some 100 years after its first emergence (Woodward, 1987), PISL has since received little follow up research. This project will create a dataset of the shared sign language used on the island which is presently critically endangered by rapidly shifting cultural, linguistic and economic pressures in the archipelago.
ZAGHAWA-WAGI: TOWARDS DOCUMENTING THE SUDANESE DIALECTAL VARIANT OF ZAGHAWA.
Zaghawa is said to be spoken by a total of 169.000 speakers in Sudan (North Darfur state) and Chad. This project focuses on the distinct Sudanese dialect Wagi. While this dialect is still spoken, it is rapidly giving way to Arabic due to a policy of Arabicization and large-scale displacements in the course of a civil war in Darfur. This pilot project explores the feasibility of a comprehensive documentation of Wagi: it aims to establish a field site and to collect preliminary sociolinguistic, lexical and natural data.
DOCUMENTATION OF BEDIK
The Bedik are an ethnic minority comprising about 3828 inhabitants living in villages on the mountains of eastern Senegal. Bedik is classified as a member of the Tenda group within the Niger-Congo language family. The main goal of the project is a documentation of Bedik, as the Bedik community would like to preserve and document their language and culture, by creating a collection of annotated texts based on recordings of speech in various genres and cultural contexts, and a first dictionary of around 3000 entries.
DOCUMENTATION OF URUANGNIRIN, AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF BOMBERAI, WEST PAPUA, INDONESIA
Uruangnirin is an undescribed and endangered Austronesian language spoken on the Karas Islands off Bomberai Peninsula in New Guinea. Speaker numbers are estimated to be less than 400. This project addresses a significant documentary gap, as few Austronesian languages of eastern Indonesia and none of Uruangnirin's closest relatives have received thorough description. The project aims at gathering a representative collection of naturalistic speech recordings from different contexts and genres, focusing on cultural linguistic practices related to work, traditional narrative and ceremonies. It will produce collections of recordings as well as a word list in (digital) formats that are accessible to the speakers. The materials will form the basis for a grammar sketch and a study into Uruangnirin clausal organisation.
DOCUMENTING THE BAYOT LANGUAGE (A WEST-AFRICAN LANGUAGE OF THE JOOLA GROUP)
Bayot is a Niger-Congo, West-Atlantic, Bak language of the Joola sub-group. This language is spoken in a Senegalese South-West zone that covers the prefecture of Nyassia, and mainly comprises three dialects: Ehin, Kugere, and Njambalaan. Nevertheless, according to my informants, speech differs from one village to another.
From the post colonial era until today, the Bayot people, a minority ethnic group, have been living under the threat of insecurity due to wars between kingdoms, slave trade, and, presently, the Casamance rebellion. This last calamity has caused disintegration of the Bayot villages (there are at least 15 villages), scattering the Bayot language speakers in foreign areas where they communicate using other languages. In fact, they see the use of other languages as a safety strategy.
DOCUMENTATION OF FORMAL AND CEREMONIAL DISCOURSES IN K’ICHEE’
This project will document formal and ceremonial discourses in natural contexts in three K’ichee’ (quc) communities: Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán, Nahualá, and Santa Lucía Utatlán, Sololá (14° 46´26´´ Latitude, 91° 11´15´´ Longitude), Guatemala. The texts will be recorded, transcribed and analyzed. A lexical database of 5,000 entries will be produced and two community members will be trained in documentation methods and grammatical analysis. A collection of texts in form of a book will be created. The corpus will be the basis of my doctoral dissertation on subordinate clauses in K’ichee’. Formal and ceremonial discourses are being lost rapidly in K’ichee’.
DOCUMENTING CULTURAL EVENTS IN CANGIN, A NOON LANGUAGE OF SENEGAL
Cangin is a dialect of Noon (ISO 639-3:snf), whose population is estimated at 9000. Noon is spoken in the Thiès area, a region in the west of Senegal. Their culture is very different from that of surrounding groups. This culture is being lost, and the project focuses on documenting ceremonial performances and cultural knowledge in order to preserve a record of a unique culture. The corpus will further contribute to the speech communities’ efforts to maintain and strengthen their language and culture.
DOCUMENTING CULTURAL EVENTS IN CANGIN, A NOON LANGUAGE OF SENEGAL
The Cangin language, a dialect of Noon, is spoken by approximately 9000 people. They live in Thies, a region in the west of Senegal. The project's aim is to document ceremonial performances and conversations about 'payaa' (divination) and 'mbilim' (songs and dance festival) of Cangin community. This corpus will provide audio and video recordings of cultural events as well as a window in to their history and language as the basis for the applicant's dissertation which is an anlysis of the grammatical construction of the language.
SURVEY, DESCRIPTION AND DOCUMENTATION OF TOL (JICAQUE) OF HONDURAS
The Tol language (Central Honduras) was estimated in 1990 to be the spoken by 250 people, and no information exists as to later developments, such as the influence of the dominant contact language Spanish. Secondly, the language will be described and classified, filling out existing gaps left by earlier work. Finally, the foundations will be laid for an audio-visual speech corpus, and an attempt will be made to have speakers produce recordings on their own.
THE ENDANGERED PAPUAN LANGUAGES OF MERAUKE-INDONESIA: ETHNOBIOLOGICAL AND LINGUISTIC DOCUMENTATION
The project will focus on ethnobiological documentation of two endangered Papuan languages of the Wasur National Park, Merauke-Indonesia: Marori and Smärky Kanum. The speakers of these languages are bi/multilingual; the Marori people have almost completely switched to the most dominant language, Indonesian. These people have traditionally maintained close spiritual-cultural links to their natural environments, which have undergone unprecedented changes in modern Indonesia, affecting their biodiversity, and the peoples' languages. Outcomes of the proposed project include lexical databases/dictionaries, corpora, an Ethnobiology Guidebook of the Wasur National Park, and academic papers on language documentation and language ecology from linguistic, biological and anthropological perspectives.
DOCUMENTATION OF TWO MAYAN LANGUAGES OF GUATEMALA: USPANTEKO, SAKAPULTEKO
Uspanteko and Sakapulteko are two of the most severely threatened Mayan languages for which inadequate documentation exists both of the K’ichee’ branch. A reference grammar, bilingual dictionary, and substantial text collection for each language will be produced. Audio recordings will be used to document natural speech. Spanish will be used as the explanatory language in the grammars, and as the translation language for dictionaries and texts. The project will be supervised by Nora C. England (University of Texas, Austin) and undertaken by Telma Can Pixabaj and Romelia Mó Isém, linguists at Oxlajuuj Keej Maya’ Ajtz’iib’ (OKMA), a Guatemalan Maya linguistic research institution. They will be assisted by two researchers from each language community, and will be further assisted by community consultants for text and specialized vocabulary collection. Community researchers will receive training in literacy, grammar, field collection methods and dictionary making procedures.
DOCUMENTATION OF MOCHO' (MAYAN): LANGUAGE PRESERVATION THROUGH COMMUNITY AWARENESS AND ENGAGEMENT
Mocho' is a Mayan language with two different dialects spoken in Chiapas, Mexico by around 50 speakers of whom fewer than half are fluent. It is therefore severely endangered and needs further documentation, especially of the Tuzantec dialect. Documenting Mocho' will be accomplished in cooperation with the community and will include descriptions of everyday life, as well as verbal art, cultural traditions, botanical knowledge and songs to the extent available. The results will be 75 hours of video and audio recordings. From this corpus, 15 hours will be transcribed and translated in ELAN and annotated in FLEX.
LAVAFLOW: LEGACY AUDIO VIDEO ARCHIVAL IN FOURTEEN LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD
Seven different researchers at LACITO, now retired, have in the course of their careers made precious field recordings, preserved only as tapes or cassettes. These pertain to 14 different endangered languages: Bafia, Vute, and Tikar in Cameroon (Guarisma); Kiamu in Kenya, Shimaore and Shingazidja in Mayotte, and Gbanzili in the Central African Republic (Rombi); Badaga in India (Pilot-Raichoor); Zenaga and Hassaniya in Mauritania (Taine-Cheikh); Yemeni Arabic in Yemen (Naïm); Volow in Vanuatu (Vienne); and Hamea and Xârâgurè in New Caledonia (Moyse-Faurie). This project will allow these audio recordings to be digitized, archived, and made accessible to the public.
MULTIMEDIA DOCUMENTATION OF IXIL MAYA RITUAL SPEECH
This project joins with community initiatives to document public performances of Ixil Maya traditional ritual discourse. These forms have been scarcely documented and include poetic forms, lexical items and grammatical structures not found in other types of Ixil speech. Practitioners of ritual dicourse currently use this highly conventionalized form in innovative ways to document recent Ixil history as part of a concerted effort to disseminate and preserve this information for their own community and for outsiders. Nonetheless, those trained in these highly specialized forms are very few and diminishing in number creating a sense of urgency among speakers for documentation of these discourse practices.
A CROSS-VARIETAL DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF PESH, A CHIBCHAN LANGUAGE OF HONDURAS
This project will document and describe three varieties of Pech, the most northern Chibchan language spoken in Honduras, with around 300 speakers. Pech is a highly endangered language, as young people do not speak it. The outcome will be a digital corpus of 30 hours of audio and video recordings, transcribed and translated into Spanish, of which 15 hours will be provided with an interlinear gloss. Various genres will be documented, in particular endangered speech practices including prayers and ceremonial speech, and narratives related to traditional cooking and medicine. Two volumes will be produced: a descriptive grammar and a collection of transcribed traditional texts accompanied by audio, video and photography.
DOCUMENTATION OF NORTHERN ALTA, A PHILIPPINE NEGRITO LANGUAGE
Northern Alta (aqn) is a highly endangered Negrito language of the Philippines. It is not generally transmitted to children and only a small amount of material has been collected. The aim of this project is to create a Language Documentation Corpus (LCD) for Northern Alta, comprising annotated high quality audio (.wav) and video recordings (.mp4), a sketch grammar, and a lexical database. The LCD will constitute the main resource for my PhD dissertation and focus on describing some grammatical features of the language. All of the outputs will be shared with the communities and will contribute to Negrito research.
NORTHERN ALTA: DOCUMENTATION OF ETHNOBOTANICAL KNOWLEDGE
Northern Alta (aqn) is an endangered Negrito language of the Philippines, currently being documented by ELDP grantee Alexandro Garcia (IGS0271). This application requests one additional year of funding for this documentation project.The purpose of the additional year is to expand the current collection with annotated texts and lexical data containing ethnobotanical knowledge, the importance of which, the applicant and the speech community only recently became aware of. Since the previous documentation work raised the interest of several young people in making recordings and transcriptions, the project will conduct a training during the Philippines school holidays during the spring of 2018.
DOCUMENTATION OF THE SYNTAX AND SPECIALIZED USES OF Q'ANJOB'AL (MAYA)
Q'anjob'al is a Mayan language mainly spoken in Guatemala, with a number of speakers in Mexico and other parts of the world. Language revival efforts are under way to encourage the use of Q'anjob'al teaching and promotional materials.
This collection will have a focus on the syntax of complex predicates and endangered specialized uses of Q'anjob'al. The syntactic description focuses on complex predicates such as adverbial clauses, secondary predicates, auxiliary verbs, complement clauses, and directionals.
The texts collected will include topics such as ceremonial speech (i.e. corn planting, Mayan religion, house building, marriages, etc.) traditional medicine, customary laws, etc. and aspects of verbal art such as story telling, prayer, etc.
LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL DOCUMENTATION OF THE MIAHUATEC ZAPOTEC OF SAN BARTOLOME LOXICHA
This project will document the San Bartolomé Loxicha variety of Miahuatec Zapotec. Digital video recordings will be made with multiple speakers on a variety of subjects and in different contexts (at home, in the fields, the forest, etc.). The recordings will be transcribed, annotated and analyzed. Information gleaned from the transcriptions will be added to the grammar and dictionary. All materials for which consultants have given consent will be made available over a webpage created for the project and geared both towards the speech community and towards the public at large. Additionally materials will be archived with ELAR and AILLA.
A DOCUMENTATION OF ORKON/FANBAK, A LANGUAGE OF VANUATU
With around 30 active speakers of varying fluency, Orkon/Fanbak was originally spoken in the two villages of Orkon and Fanbak on the eastern coast of Ambrym and comprised of two dialects. These villages are no longer inhabited and the speech community is now highly fragmented and dispersed throughout the dominant North Ambrym language area. The documentation consists of a grammar sketch, a corpus of texts from different speech genres, and a detailed sociolinguistic study of social networks and language shift/loss, focussing on how competing background languages affect language use.
DOCUMENTATION OF ZACATEPEC CHATINO LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
Zacatepec Chatino is a moribund and highly conservative Chatino language desperately lacking description. It is only spoken in San Marcos Zacatepec, a community of about one thousand members, located in the Southern Sierra Madre of Oaxaca, Mexico. The corpus will document naturally occurring narrative, dialogue, ritual speech and cultural knowledge. The texts will be the basis of a descriptive grammar, a tri-lingual dictionary and will be shared with the community in printed booklets, CDs, and through archival means. Native speakers will be trained in language documentation methods.
DOCUMENTATION OF CHATINO, AN OTOMANGUEAN LANGUAGE GROUP OF OAXACA, MEXICO
Chatino is a group of closely related language varieties belonging to the Zapotecan branch of the Otomanguean language family. It is spoken by most of the 29,000 Chatinos of Oaxaca, Mexico’s, Sierra Madre: universally in some communities but only by elders in others. We will document the Chatino varieties of Quiahije, Yaitepec, Zacatepec, and one other locations in depth; and survey others. Our humanistic goal is to bring together indigenous graduate students, language interns, and other community members with non-indigenous linguists to share information and put basic documentation and analysis to use in literacy classes and other local preservation initiatives.
A DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTA LANGUAGE
This is a 12-month project, for the purpose of documenting Arta, an underdescribed language in the Philippines. Arta is a severely endangered Austronesian language, spoken by 11 Negrito people living in Nagtipinan, Quirino Province. This documentation project will create a digital corpus of audio and video recordings, transcribed and translated into Ilokano and English. This project will also include the grammatical description of the language, submitted as my Ph.D. dissertation, writing a paper on sociolinguistics of the language, and create a textbook for educational purposes.
LAS 'MAREñAS': A DOCUMENTATION OF HUAVE WOMEN'S LIVELIHOOD
Huave is an endangered isolate language spoken by an estimated 18,340 people in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca, Mexico. Transmission of the language in most of its speech communities is limited as they shift to Spanish. This project focuses on documenting the varied cultural activities (and the language used to describe them) that fall under female domains in four Huave communities: San Mateo del Mar, San Dionisio del Mar, San Francisco del Mar, and Santa María del Mar. The corpus will feed into descriptive work on subordination and clause-embedding verbs for Constanza Aceves Rodríguez's doctoral thesis.
DOCUMENTATION OF ZENZONTEPEC CHATINO LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
Zenzontepec Chatino (CZN) is the most divergent Chatino language (Otomanguean), spoken in the southern Sierra Madre of Oaxaca, Mexico (16°32"N, 97°30"W). There are about 8,000 speakers, but communities are shifting to Spanish. The corpus will document naturally occurring narrative, dialogue, ritual speech, traditional medicine, ethnobiological information, and geographic knowledge. The texts will be the basis of a descriptive grammar, augment a tri-lingual dictionary in progress, and be shared with the community in printed booklets, CDs, and through archival. Native speakers will be trained in documentation methods and transcription.
DOCUMENTING LANGUAGE ACROSS MODALITIES: VISUAL AND TACTILE SIGN LANGUAGE IN THE BAY ISLANDS
A previously undescribed indigenous sign language is used in the Bay Islands of Honduras. The language emerged in the village of French Harbour, Roatán, and has spread to the neighbouring island of Guanaja. As a result of a high incidence of Usher Syndrome, deafness is relatively common in French Harbour, and is associated with loss of vision later in life. The language is used by hearing, Deaf, and DeafBlind people in both visual-gestural and tactile-gestural modalities. This project provides an initial documentation of this language in both modalities.
AN INTEGRATED APPROACH TO TEOTEPEC CHATINO LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION THROUGH HISTORY AND CULTURE
Teotepec Chatino is a highly endangered Otomanguean language of Oaxaca, Mexico. This project will produce an integrated corpus of transcribed and analyzed texts. A strong emphasis on speaker training, and community participation at historical and cultural documentation, in the creation of written Chatino materials for speakers with varying levels of literacy will be integral to this work and lead to the composition of a uniquely community focused documentation that will reflect a rich but quickly disappearing body of narratives and procedural text. This
will augment my previous work on Teotepec Chatino and be of value to native speakers and scholars.
TEMPORAL REFERENCE IN LAKANDON MAYA
Lakandon Maya is an endangered and underdocumented language belonging to the Yukatekan branch of the Mayan language family. The Lakandones have been the subject of many publications devoted to their religious traditions and their forest dwelling way of life, but surprisingly little work has been done describing their language. The present investigation proposes an extensive documentation of the linguistic practices of Lakandon speakers with a focus on the use of deictic time words/expressions and their meanings. The results of the investigation will consist of a grammatical sketch, a dictionary of 3000+ entries, and a corpus of annotated texts.
COMMUNITY DOCUMENTATION OF BIOCULTURAL DIVERSITY IN THE EASTERN YEMENI PROVINCE OF AL-MAHRAH
Data principally from two main geographical groups of Mehri: Mahriyot, the Mehri spoken in far Eastern Yemen, and Mehreyyet, the Mehri dialects spoken by tribal groups within Dhofar, Oman, with some material from dialects spoken around al-Ghaydhah in Yemen. Mehri data from Dhofar is taken from a large number of geographical areas and tribal groups, including Hasik, on the eastern coast, Wadi Habrut, on the border with Yemen, the gravel desert villages of Rabkut and Dhahbun, settlements in the mountains which receive the monsoon rains, and from people who have moved to the main town of Dhofar, Salalah, from the mountains or desert regions. The language differences depend not only on the geographical location of speakers, but also on their tribal affiliation. Data has been collected from members of sub-tribes of Bayt Thuw’ar, Bayt Samodah, Bayt Kalshat, Bayt al-Afari, Bayt Za’banot, Bayt KamSayt and Bayt al-Qumairi.
DOCUMENTING INFORMATION STRUCTURE IN ISTHMUS ZAPOTEC
Isthmus Zapotec is a Zapotecan language spoken by approximately 80,000 people in southeastern Oaxaca, Mexico which is under threat given a rapid shift to Spanish. The main objective of the project is to, over the course of twelve months in Juchitán, document information structure in the language by recording, transcribing, annotating, and analyzing spoken texts from spontaneous life narratives as well as collect elicited native speaker judgments of constructed examples, something not represented currently in any archives of the language.
DOCUMENTING ENDANGERED TSELTAL CULTURAL ACTIVITIES: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC AND DISCURSIVE AUDIOVISUAL CORPUS
DOCUMENTATION OF CENTRAL TSELTAL: CREATION OF A BROAD CORPUS FOR MULTIPLE USES
Central Tseltal (a Mayan language spoken in Chiapas, Mexico) is a language that has been the focus of a previous linguitic research but without any available corpus. The intention is to gather a consistent corpus, sixty hours of audio and video recordings for multiple uses: a possible dictionary, the register of the dfferent genres of speech (narrations, casual and formal conversatons, ritual and religious speech and instruction speech, amnog others) , as well as grammatical and typological studies.
The corpus will be electronically archived and a selection of documents will be edited for a bilingual education project that Dr Polian has been collaborating with.
CORPUS AND LEXICON DEVELOPMENT: ENDANGERED GENRES OF DISCOURSE IN TU'UN ISAVI OF YOLOXOCHITL, GUERRERO
This project focuses on endangered discourse genres and threatened domains of cultural knowledge in Yoloxochitl Mixtec to create the first extensive, archival quality corpus of recorded and expertly transcribed time-coded Mixtec language material. A lexicon will be built minimally comprising all lemmas in the transcribed corpus. The results of this project will establish a foundation for future studies in Yoloxochitl Mixtec, particularly in phonetics and phonology and in syntax, two areas in which this language is of typolological interest. The corpus (recordings and transcriptions) and lexicon will be made available to scholars and speakers.
CORPUS AND LEXICON DEVELOPMENT:: ENDANGERED GENRES OF DISCOURSE AND DOMAINS OF CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE IN TU'UN ISAVI (MIXTEC) OF YOLOXCHITL, GUERRERO
This project focuses on endangered genres of discourse and threatened domains of cultural knowledge in Yoloxóchitl (16º 48' 58''N, 98º 41' 12''W) Mixtec (xty), spoken in four villages within a 12 km radius in
coastal Guerrero, Mexico. It will build upon a successful pilot initiative (100 recordings and time-coded
transcriptions totaling 38 hours; a 1,500-stem lexicon) to produce an additional 110 hours of ethnographically
rich recordings and parsed, glossed, and freely translated transcriptions. The lexicon will minimally comprise
all lemmas in the corpus. The results will create the first extensive, archival quality Mixtec corpus and
establish a foundation for future Mixtec studies, particularly in phonetics, phonology, and syntax, areas in
which Yoloxóchitl Mixtec (YM) is of typological interest.
LAVAFLOW: LEGACY AUDIO VIDEO ARCHIVAL IN FOURTEEN LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD
Seven different researchers at LACITO, now retired, have in the course of their careers made precious field recordings, preserved only as tapes or cassettes. These pertain to 14 different endangered languages: Bafia, Vute, and Tikar in Cameroon (Guarisma); Kiamu in Kenya, Shimaore and Shingazidja in Mayotte, and Gbanzili in the Central African Republic (Rombi); Badaga in India (Pilot-Raichoor); Zenaga and Hassaniya in Mauritania (Taine-Cheikh); Yemeni Arabic in Yemen (Naïm); Volow in Vanuatu (Vienne); and Hamea and Xârâgurè in New Caledonia (Moyse-Faurie). This project will allow these audio recordings to be digitized, archived, and made accessible to the public.
ARUMAHANI AND ABAIMAHANI: GARIFUNA TRADITIONAL SONG ACROSS TWO DIASPORAS
Garifuna, an Arawak language with a large French lexical component spoken by descendants of an African population, is the last indigenous language of the Caribbean islands to maintain a sizable population of first language speakers. We focus here on in-depth documentation of two of the most traditional genres of Garifuna a cappella song: Abaimahani, (a women's genre), and arumahani, (a critically endangered men's genre). We document these at two points representing two historical diasporas, Dangriga, Belize and New York City to explore resilience and adaptation of endangered languages in urban centers.
DIGITISATION OF NORTH MALAITA RECORDINGS
From 1971 to 1985, Ian Frazer conducted fieldwork in North Malaita, Solomon Islands, mainly To'abaita but with neighbouring groups as well (Lau, Baelelea, Pijin). During that time he built up a large collection of tapes, photos, field notes and other material. There are over 200 cassettes and over 40 reels of mixed content - music (traditional and contemporary), traditional stories, history, life histories, traditional and present day customs/culture, political history, labour history, and much else. None of the collection is digitised. This project will digitise this collection and make it available for current efforts to strengthen the ongoing use of local languages.
DOCUMENTATION OF CHUXNABAN MIXE
Chuxnaban Mixe, a previously undocumented Mixe language spoken by 900 people in one village in Oaxaca. Bilingualism with Spanish is on the rise, as education is only offered in Spanish. There are no literacy materials, nor has an official orthography been adopted. Research outcomes will include a transcribed audio collection of narratives and daily conversations, an electronic trilingual dictionary accompanied by sound recordings and images of culture-specific items, and a practical orthography. In addition, the linguistic documentation will result in a grammatical sketch.
CORPUS EXPANSION FOR MIAHUATEC ZAPOTEC OF SAN BARTOLOMé LOXICHA: CHILD LANGUAGE, SPONTANEOUS CONVERSATION, AND ETHNOBOTANY
This project will expand the existing corpus of Miahuatec Zapotec language documentation materials, focusing on currently unrepresented genres like child language acquisition and multi-participant spontaneous conversation, and boosting the documentation of under-represented lexical material, mainly through the collection of ethnobotanical samples with accompanying terminology and descriptions in Zapotec. This will be achieved through audio and video documentation, transcription and glossing, using computational tools including Toolbox.
INVESTIGATING AN UNDOCUMENTED SIGN LANGUAGE IN A CHATINO SPEECH/SIGN COMMUNITY
Chatino Sign is an undocumented emergent sign language located in the villages of San Juan Quiahije and Cieneguilla in the Southern Sierra Nevada mountains of Oaxaca. Chatino Sign is the language used by at least 5 deaf people and their families and friends. This pilot study aims to investigate the size, scope, and membership of the signing community and to collect videotaped naturally-occurring conversational and elicited texts of Chatino Sign.
DOCUMENTATION OF FIVE ZOQUEAN LANGUAGES SPOKEN IN MEXICO: CHIAPAS ZOQUE, JITOTOLTEC, SAN MIGUEL CHIMALAPA, SANTA MARIA CHIMALAPA, HIGHLAND POPOLUCA
This project will document five languages of the Zoquean branch, members of the Mixe-Zoquean language family. All the languages are spoken in the South of Mexico. Chiapas Zoque and Jitotoltec are spoken in Chiapas, Highland Popoluca in Veracruz, whereas San Miguel Chimalapa and Santa Maria Chimalapa are spoken in Oaxaca. All the five languages are endangered. The project will annotate high-quality videos regarding different communicative events selected by a team of linguists who are members of the speech communities. The material will be transcribed, translated, and analyzed in ELAN/FLEX. Most of the documentation and difussion of the results will be carried out by members of the different speech communities.
DOCUMENTING Tù'UN NA ÑUU SàVì (SAN MARTíN DURAZNOS MIXTEC)
This is a community-led research project that aims at creating a translated and annotated audio and video corpus of San Martín Duraznos Mixtec spoken in the community of origin in Oaxaca, Mexico. We will create educational materials with a focus on connecting the diaspora community in California with the community of origin through documentation of traditional stories and culinary and agricultural practices, which will contribute to the maintenance of the language. This variety of Mixtec is understudied and has approximately 300 speakers in the community of origin and 50 or more speakers in the diaspora community in Ventura County, California.
TEXTUAL AND LEXICAL DOCUMENTATION OF IXCATEC, A HIGHLY ENDANGERED OTOMANGUEAN LANGUAGE OF OAXACA, MEXICO
Ixcatec is a highly endangered language belonging to the Popolocan branch of the Otomanguean language family. There are 9 fluent speakers all of whom reside in Santa Maria Ixcatlan, Oaxaca, Mexico. This project will produce the only extensive, archival-quality corpus of recorded and transcribed time-coded Ixcatec texts. A lexicon will also be generated incorporating all lexical items in the transcribed corpus. The results of this project will establish the basis for future studies of this language and family and will be made available to the community, the interested public and scholars.
DOCUMENTATION OF THE MALIENG LANGUAGE, A VIETIC LANGUAGE SPOKEN IN THE QUANG BINH AND HA TINH PROVINCES OF VIETNAM
The Pakatan/Maleng/Bo language (henceforth Pakatan) has less than a thousand speakers. The variety spoken in the mountainous area of Hoanh Son, in the Vietnamese province of Quang Binh, is called Malieng is estimated to have around 200 speakers, who live in half a dozen villages around the area. Pakatan is spoken in both Vietnam, where receives the name Malieng, and Laos. This language must not be confused with Malieng, a Chut language variety. Pakatan is a Vietic language (Viet-Muong) with less than a thousand speakers. The community was originally formed by collectors and traders who have become emergent mountain agriculture sedentists.
DOCUMENTATION AND GRAMMAR OF GUTOB (MUNDA)
Gutob (ISO code gbj) is an endangered Munda language (Austro-Asiatic) spoken in Koraput district of Odisha, India and neighbouing districts in Andhra Pradesh. Estimates regarding the number of speakers vary between 15,000 and only 5,000. The community is rapidly shifting to Desia Oriya (ISO code dso), the local Indo-Aryan lingua franca. The main objective of the present project is the compilation of an annotated audio-video corpus. It will include speech acts from all domains in which Gutob is used. Additionally, the project will result in a grammar of Gutob which will be submitted as PhD thesis.
DOCUMENTING CHOYATá: THE MATLATZINCA VERBAL ART OF PERSUASION
This project aims to carry out an exhaustive documentation of "Choyatá"; the verbal art of the Matlatzinca people from San Francisco Oxtotilpan, who use it to persuade fellow members to seal social contracts in the community. Choyatá is the only such artistry that survives in Central Mexico in an Oto-Pamean community. The project will disseminate results by way of a book and will organize community workshops to generate awareness and promote its learning among younger Matlatzinca speakers through exchanges with the people who master it. In addition, we will produce didactical audiovisual materials to help preserve this cultural linguistic heritage.
DOCUMENTATION OF MATLATZINCA, AN OTO-MANGUEAN LANGUAGE OF MEXICO
This project will document Matlatzinca, an endangered Oto-Manguean language of Mexico, spoken in the village of San Francisco Oxtotilpan in the State of Mexico. High-quality videos about a range of different communicative events in the language will be transcribed, translated, and analyzed in ELAN/Toolbox. The project will also produce a book with texts on Matlatzinca folklore and history and a community dictionary on a digital platform with entries reflecting Matlatzinca material culture, toponymy and flora and fauna. Most of the documentation activities will be carried out by members of the community based in San Francisco Oxtotilpan.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF THE SOUTH EASTERN HUASTEC, A MAYAN LANGUAGE FROM VERACRUZ, MEXICO
DOCUMENTATION OF SAN JERóNIMO ACAZULCO OTOMI, OCOYOACAC, MEXICO
This project aims to document the Otomi linguistic variant spoken in San Jerónimo Acazulco, Ocoyoacac, Mexico, including tales, instructions, rituals, and routine descriptions. This Otomi language (Otopamean, Otomanguean) is spoken by about 350 people near Mexico City. A parallel goal is the development of pedagogical tools for reinforcing and teaching the language in the community. The documentation output will consist of transcribed and translated video recordings and a dictionary of the language. Archaisms found in the phonology and the tense/aspect/mood marking morphology make Acazulco Otomi valuable source for studies in language typology and Otopamean historical linguistics.
CONSEQUENCES OF CONTACT: DOCUMENTING IBATAN WITHIN THE MULTILINGUAL LANDSCAPE OF BABUYAN CLARO
Babuyan Claro, an island in the northern Philippines, is home to a dynamic multilingual community of people proficient in at least three languages - Ibatan, the local language, Ilokano, the regional lingua franca, and Filipino, the national language. This project documents Ibatan within this multilingual landscape, which continues to shape the language. Language choice and use for Ibatan's 2,500 first- and second-language speakers reflects participation in social networks that maintain connections across the island. A sociolinguistically-informed documentation that considers speakers' linguistic repertoires provides an understanding of the emergence, development and current use of Ibatan through processes of language continuity and change.
DOCUMENTATION OF HAWAII SIGN LANGUAGE: BUILDING THE FOUNDATION FOR DOCUMENTATION, CONSERVATION, AND REVITALIZATION OF ENDANGERED PACIFIC ISLAND SIGN LANGUAGES.
Hawaii Sign Language (HSL) developed indigenously in Hawaii. After the introduction of American Sign Language in 1941, HSL has become a critically endangered language in urgent need of documentation. Fewer than 40 users have been identified, all elderly, many above 80. In the documentation process, teaching materials with companion dictionaries will be developed and conversational histories about the lives of HSL users will be collected, annotated and archived. This is the first in-depth study of any indigenous Pacific sign language, providing an important foundation for future research on other undocumented indigenous sign languages in the Pacific.
DOCUMENTATION OF ARCHAIC AKHA, THE REGISTER OF THE SHAMAN, WITH A COMPARISON TO MODERN SPOKEN AKHA
Akha is a code that is not mutually intelligible with modern Akha (ISO 639-3: akh). There are about 500,000 speakers of Akha in Burma, China, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. However, according to community reports, the archaic code is spoken by perhaps only 100 elderly shaman.
Therefore, the goal of this project (based out of Chiang Rai, Thailand) is to create a corpus of archaic Akha that may be used by the community for educational materials, and also serve as the basis for a reference grammar of the language.
SONE-TU CHIN RITUAL LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION PROJECT
Ritual Sone-Tu is a ritual form of Sone-Tu, known only by three spirit mediums now in their 70s or 80s. Sone-Tu is a Southern Chin (Tibeto-Burman) language spoken by about 28,000 people in Rakhine (Arakan) State, Myanmar. During pre-colonial times, Ritual Sone-Tu was understood by the wider community and used in rituals and festivals. The arrival of Christian missionaries during colonial times caused widespread decline in ritual practices. The encroachment of the Rakhaing and Burmese languages on the Sone-Tu lexicon have meant that Ritual Sone-Tu is now completely untelligible to Sone-Tu speakers. Ritual Sone-Tu will disappear with the three surviving spirit mediums.
DOCUMENTATION OF SIHAN, AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF BORNEO
Sihan (Sian) is a severely endangered language spoken by a formerly nomadic community in one village along the Menamang river in Sarawak, Malaysia. The number of speakers of Sihan is less than 250. This project aims to document traditional narratives, healing songs, epic poems, hunting and foraging practices and a wide variety of naturally occurring speech. Community members will be trained in documentation and description techniques and a transcribed and translated audio-visual corpus will be produced. From this corpus a small Sihan-Malay-English thematic dictionary will be created for the purposes of language support.
LINGUISTIC DOCUMENTATION OF TINIGUA
Tinigua [ISO 639-3: tit] is the last surviving member of an independent South American Tiniguan family whose other (two?) members have disappeared without substantial documentation; with only one remaining speaker, it is now critically endangered. Additionally, the language is seriously underdocumented and underdescribed. This project aims to provide a linguistic documentation of Tinigua through work with Sixto Muñoz, its last remaining speaker.
The expected outcomes of this project are a transcribed, translated and annotated audio-visual corpus of the language, a grammatical description, and a lexicon. Additionally, I aim to gather further historical and cultural data on the Tiniguan culture.
DOCUMENTATION OF MALACCAN PORTUGUESE CREOLE
Malaccan Portuguese Creole is spoken by about 1000 people in the Portuguese Settlement in Melaka, Malaysia. The purpose of this project is to create a database of video and audio recordings comprising a variety of speaking contexts. The recordings will be paired with time-aligned orthographic transcriptions and annotations. The annotations will allow further linguistic analysis to be carried out while the corpus will serve as a digital resource for the community.
A DOCUMENTATION OF THE REMNANT BAKA-GUNDI LANGUAGE LIMASSA
This project aims at documenting Limassa, a language of the Baka-Gundi branch of the Mundu-Baka family (Ubangi), spoken in mainly Bomassa on the Sangha River in the north of the Republic of the Congo. In being the only securely known non-pygmy variety in the branch, Limassa may be the direct source of the Baka pygmy language complex. Limassa is undescribed; only three small vocabularies exist. It has always had few speakers. The central goal of this project is a thorough linguistic study aiming at an extensive and diverse data corpus.
A DOCUMENTATION OF THE REMNANT BAKA-GUNDI LANGUAGE LIMASSA
This project aims at documenting Limassa, a language of the Baka-Gundi branch of the Mundu-Baka family (Ubangi), spoken mainly in Bomassa on the Sangha River in the north of the Republic of the Congo. In being the only securely known non-pygmy variety in the branch, Limassa may be the direct source of the Baka pygmy language complex. Limassa is undescribed; only three small vocabularies exist. It has always had few speakers. The central goal of this project is a thorough linguistic study aiming at an extensive and diverse data corpus
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF NAM TRIK, AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF THE COLOMBIAN ANDES
Nam Trik (Barbacoan family) is a poorly described language of the Southwestern Colombian Andes spoken by about 8.000-9.000 people. The project will focus on two highly endangered dialects of Nam Trik, spoken in the communities of Totoró (76 speakers) and Ambaló (163 speakers). In collaboration with trained members of the community, a Nam Trik audio-video corpus will be collected. Part of this corpus will be used to produce a grammatical description and a bilingual multimedia dictionary. This study will also contribute to the typology of Barbacoan languages since Nam Trik does not have a grammar yet.
PRELIMINARY DOCUMENTATION OF LEUKON LANGUAGE
This project focuses on initial documentation of Leukon, an endangered language of Simeulue island, Aceh Province, Indonesia. Leukon is spoken in just two villages on Simeulue and is increasingly threatened due to rapid development and increased reliance on Indonesian and the local lingua franca, Jamee. There is almost no prior literature on Leukon, and very little on the neighboring (likely related) languages, Sigulai, Devayan, Haloban, and Nias.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF THE YANOMAMA OF PAPIU, AN ENDAGERED YANOMAMI LANGUAGE OF BRAZIL
Yanomama of Papiu is a highly endangered language spoken in Brazil. Yanomama is a Yanomami language of the Yanomam group and has around 1350 speakers 300 of which live in Papiu. The main goals of the project are: (1) to record, transcribe and translate 20 hours of audio and/or visual material of a variety of contexts of speech; 5 hours will be fully glossed (2) to create an online multimedia dictionary of the Yanomama (3) to publish textbooks of Yanomama folk literature and testimonial narratives; (4) to train local language consultants in documentation.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF NASA YUWE, THE VERNACULAR LANGUAGE OF THE NASA PEOPLE OF THE COLOMBIAN ANDES.
The Nasa Yuwe language (formerly Páez) is the vernacular language of the indigenous Nasa (aka Páez) people (ca. 150,000 ethnic members) in the Southwestern Andes of Colombia. Recent studies demonstrate the rapid decline of the intergenerational transmission and use of Nasa Yuwe in the youngest generations. The audio and video recordings to be collected in this project with the active participation of young community members will result in an important corpus of data susceptible to be used for the production of a description of the language and educational materials for the Nasa community.
TOTONAC ETHNOBOTANICAL KNOWLEDGE: DOCUMENTING TRADITIONAL ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE ACROSS COMMUNITIES
This project documents threatened traditional ecological knowledge in five Totonac communities in northern Puebla State, Mexico. The research teams are headed by two experienced linguistic fieldworkers with long-term commitments to the communities. They will build a database of plant nomenclature, classification and use, backed up by voucher specimens and digital photographs. A team of native experts will discuss each plant in digital recordings; all texts will be transcribed and translated. Results will be integrated with Amith's NSF/NEH and ELDP-supported work in five Nahuat communities. Collaboration with expert taxonomists ensures accurate identification to species of all documented plants.
DOCUMENTATION OF NAHUAT KNOWLEDGE OF NATURAL HISTORY, MATERIAL CULTURE, AND ECOLOGY IN THE MUNICIPALITY OF CUETZALAN, PUEBLA, MEXICO
This project focuses on three interrelated domains of endangered cultural knowledge and linguistic expression:
1) nomenclature, classification and use of plants in Nahuat communities in the municipality of Cuetzalan, Puebla, Mexico;
2) the creation of objects of daily use from regional flora;
3) traditional ecological knowledge.
It builds upon experiences and trust Amith has developed after three years of lexicographic work: two native speakers have advanced skills in digital recording, transcription, and ethnographic description; three partnering Indigenous collectives will facilitate work in scores of communities throughout the municipality and are building a cultural center to utilize project results in education and outreach.
DOCUMENTATION OF SANTA ANA HUEYTLALPAN OTOMI, TULANCINGO, MEXICO
This pilot project aims to document the Otomi language spoken in the community of Santa Ana Hueytlalpan, (Tulancingo, Hidalgo, Mexico). This is a language belonging to the Otomi linguistic family of languages (Otopamean branch of the Otomanguean macrophyllum). Santa Ana Hueytlalpan Otomi documentation is nearly nonexistent. The project will contribute to our knowledge and understanding of the language and its culture, producing texts with audio and video files and a visual bilingual dictionary intended to be used by the community (1,500 speakers approximately). The produced materials will constitute a database to continue with the documentation and description of this language.
DESCRIPTION AND DOCUMENTATION OF AYUTLA MIXE
Ayutla Mixe is spoken in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, and belongs to the Mixean branch of the Mixe-Zoque family. Ayutla Mixe has not been previously described nor documented. The main goals will be collection of texts, creation of a dictionary database, and elicitation for data towards a descriptive grammar. Community consultants will receive training in grammar, writing his language, and data collection methods.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF THE LAITU LANGUAGE WITH A FOCUS ON ENDANGERED CULTURAL PRACTICES
This project will document and describe Laitu, a Southern Chin language spoken by around 15000 people in Minbya, Mrauk-U and Myebon Townships of Myanmar. There has been a large impact of Buddhism and Christianity on the traditional social system of the Laitu Chin, resulting in abandonment of names, traditional clothing, rituals, and religion. On top of this, there is scant linguistic study and no publicly archived material on this language so far. The project focuses on audio and video recordings of narratives concerning nearly extinct religious rituals, the traditional ritual of facial tattooing, and other genres of texts with cultural significance.
VIDEOGRAPHY-BASED DOCUMENTATION OF THE LANGUAGE OF PARSIS IN GUJARAT AND MAHARASHTRA
Parsi Gujarati is a minor vernacular language of a Parsi (Indian Zoroastrian) ethnoreligious community in Gujarat and Maharashtra. It is primarily spoken by the elders and inextricably linked with the unique Parsi identity: its culture, religious ceremonies, arts, crafts, professions, oral expressions and folklore. The project aims at comprehensive videography-based documentation of PG through a text corpus with audio-visual recordings of naturally generated discourse occurring around extinguishing lifecycle rituals such as unique Parsi-Zoroastrian funerals exclusively performed by few hereditary corpse-bearers and context-dependent idioms, a PG distinguishing feature; and a dictionary with terms arising from rituals and traditional arts and crafts.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF NIHALI, A CRITICALLY ENDANGERED LANGUAGE ISOLATE OF INDIA
Nihali language ( ISO 639-3: nll) is a critically endangered language isolate, spoken in India. According to Ethnologue, about 2000 speakers live in Jalgaon-Jamod Tehsil, Buldana District of Maharashtra, India ( Latitude: 20.5402; longitude 76.0913). The project aims at a detailed descriptive grammar, a trilingual dictionary (Nihali- Hindi- English) and 20 hours of archival audio and video recordings of speech samples in different genres including: traditional stories, myths and legends, historical accounts, songs and poems, natural conversations that may serve as the basis for educational materials.
A PRELIMINARY DOCUMENTATION OF DANAU, AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF MYANMAR (BURMA)
The Danau language of the Shan State of Myanmar (Burma) was reported to be "dying" as long back as 1965. Anecdotal evidence from the field suggests that since the language has no official protection in the country, and is not formally taught, it is only spoken by a handful of scattered communities. Although around 10,000 people identify themselves as 'Danau', it has never been properly documented, and its future remains highly uncertain. I intend to carry out a first documentation of Danau, with an emphasis on recording the cultural and encyclopaedic knowledge encoded in the language.
DOCUMENTATION OF THE COSAO AND LABE LANGUAGES RELATED TO WILD MUSHROOMS WITH TRADITIONAL BIOLOGICAL AND ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE IN YUNNAN, CHINA
The Cosao, with a population of 149; the Labe, with 4,013 (2017), live in South and Centre Yunnan, China, approximately at longitude 101°34'E, latitude 21°37'N and longitude 101°54'E, latitude of 23°24'N. The Government lumped them into Hani and Bai respectively. However, their languages are not mutually intelligible and critically endangered. This project will focus on documenting the semantic domain of wild mushrooms, along with their traditional biological, ecological knowledge. Data will be collected by digital camera and recorder. Audio, visual materials will be transcribed, annotated, translated into Chinese and English, finally input ELAN, EDIUS or FLEx for archiving.
DIGITAL ARCHIVING YAMI LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION
The Yami language, spoken on Orchid Island, belongs to the Ivatan or Bashiic language group. Yami is a Philippine Batanic language and forms part of the Austronesian family. The language is also referred to as ciriciring no Tao, or "human speech", by its speakers. Many Batanic myths and legends often mention the name “Yami” (dihami) (Yamada 1966), and refer to them as originating from the Batanic Island and migrating farthest to the north. So, the word Yami comes from the Batanic people. That is why the Japanese scholar Tori called the local people Yami (Benedek 1987:21) when he conducted linguistic research on the island. The local people call themselves "People on the island" (pongso no tao).
DOCUMENTATION OF CORA IN SAN JUAN CORAPAN
The primary product of this project will be an open access, digital corpus of 30 hours of video and audio of Cora language; including traditional genres of narrative, procedural discourse on topics of local plants and agricultural techniques, and natural conversation data.
PRELIMINARY DOCUMENTATION OF MACAU SIGN LANGUAGE
Macau is a small city at the Southern coast of China. Around 1200 Deaf/hard of hearing people live there, and over 200 are users of Macau Sign Language. However, due to the enforcement of inclusive education, Macau Sign Language has ceased to pass on to the deaf youngsters under the age of 20. The Deaf Community has a strong wish to document and conduct research on their sign language. This project aims at providing foundational documentation training to the Deaf Community and assisting them in the documentation groundwork, with a long term goal to preserve and promote the language.
DOCUMENTATION OF CRITICALLY ENDANGERED LAJI LANGUAGE IN SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT
Laji people, who call themselves li¹³pu³³ljo³³, is an ethnic group living in two nearby villages in Jinchang Town, Maguan County, Yunnan Province of China. The number of this group is only 415, but only 22 people are proficient in Laji language. Among them, 8 are more than 70 years old, 11 are between 60-69 ages, and 3 are in 53-60 age group. The two villages are surrounded by Miao and Zhuang people, Laji language has not been taught in the families, thus young Laji people cannot speak Laji language.
DOCUMENTATION OF WUCUN PINGHUA
This project will fund a native-speaker researcher to thoroughly document Wucun Pinghua, an endangered variety of Southern Pinghua spoken by approximately 6,000 villagers in five villages in Nanning, Guangxi, China. Currently, most fluent speakers of Wucun Pinghua are from the grandparent generation, and young villagers are not learning the language due to language shift to Mandarin. This project will result in fifteen hours of rich audio- and video- recordings with high-quality phonological transcriptions in IPA, morphological annotations, and English translations. The outcome of this project will contribute significantly to typological, historical, and areal linguistics of East and Southeast Asia.
A DOCUMENTATION OF SAAROA, A MORIBUND AUSTRONESIAN LANGUAGE OF TAIWAN
Saaroa language is a moribund Austronesian language of Taiwan. Spoken by approximately 10 people in Taoyuan District, Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, Saaroa, an underdescribed language, is not actively spoken in the community anymore and may be the next extinct Formosan language (the other two possible candidates are Thao and Kanakanavu). This project will pay attention to documentation of a variety of texts, including colloquial speech, traditional stories, ritual speech and practices.
LANGUAGE, ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIAL COGNITION IN SOUTHEASTERN YUNNAN: A HOLISTIC DOCUMENTATION OF MULTIMODAL COMMUNICATION AMONGST THE PHOLA
Phola is an endangered Tibeto-Burman language of China spoken by roughly 4000 people in small-scale farming-herding communities clustered in the mountain ranges of Yuanjiang County in southeastern Yunnan Province. This project's outcomes include firstly the compilation, annotation, interlinearisation, multilingual translation and archival of cross-sectional data on language use in various Phola villages. Secondly, the creation of two groundbreaking corpora designed to investigate and showcase documentary fieldwork methods and socio-ecological factors motivating language usage. Finally, the production of a multimodal grammar and lexicon of Phola, published as open access resources in an innovative digital format with embedded audio and video.
COMPREHENSIVE DOCUMENTATION OF TWO DIALECTS OF ENDANGERED SHE LANGUAGE IN CHINA, WITH TRADITIONAL ENVIRONMENT KNOWLEDGE (TEK) VOCABULARY AND DISCOURSE CENTRED
She language is a minority language, spoken in a few villages within Luofu Mountains and Lianhua Mountains in South China. It has about 1500 speakers(2010). Many teenagers switch to a Chinese dialect Hakka, with disfluent SHE, having forgotten most of the words and expressions of Traditional Environment Knowledge(TEK), which are now recalled only by some old men. The project makes a comprehensive documentation of SHE's two dialects, include phonological system, morpheme-syllables, a large set of words and expressions, syntactic sampling sentences, everyday sentences, and large varieties of discourses, especially focusing upon the vocabulary and discourse in the context of TEK. All the digital data can be applied to language teaching, linguistic research and other potential uses.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF MALTO
Malto is spoken around the Rajmahal hills in Eastern India. The low literacy rate and absence of written documents often confines the language as the language of home and there again it is considered a burden to be passed on to the children since its not going to be useful in life. Now may be the last instance to witness the language in its fullest possible use among the community, for the growing tendencies of language shift is slowly but gradually replacing Malto with Hindi and Bangla. Malto is a North Dravidian language coexisting with Hindi and Bangla of the Indo-Aryan language family and Santali of the Austro-Asiatic language family. Describing Malto would hence be a study in contact and convergence situation in the area too.
DOCUMENTATION OF UIPO
Uipo (exonym Khoibu) is an endangered underdocumented Tibeto-Burman language spoken by about 2000 people in Manipur, India. Until recently, it was officially marginalized as a “dialect” of another, not mutually intelligible language. Uipo experiences a threat from the majority language Meitei, especially following recent population shifts. The classification of Uipo remains unclear as it appears to exhibit features of different family branches. In collaboration with a community linguist and other community members, this project builds a corpus of conversation data and cultural practices.
A COMMUNITY-DRIVEN DOCUMENTATION OF NATURAL DISCOURSE IN ANAL, AN ENDANGERED TIBETO-BURMAN LANGUAGE OF MANIPUR, INDIA
Anal is an endangered Tibeto-Burman language (ca. 20,000 speakers) in Manipur, Northeast India. The available data presents a remarkable morphological complexity, typologically unusual properties and archaic features, valuable for historical analysis. Like many other endangered languages of this linguistically diverse, under-documented region, Anal experiences a great pressure from the official state language Manipuri.This project will build upon the recently initiated project of community-driven documentation of traditional oral literature. Relying on the work of community members, it will create an annotated multi-media corpus of everyday Anal conversation. It will additionally document grammatical data, which presents a number of typological peculiarities.
LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL DOCUMENTATION OF URGENTLY ENDANGERED SADU LANGUAGE IN YUXI CITY
Sadu group, with a population of 1,505 (2009), live in three villages of Yuxi Municipality,Yunnan Province, China. The Government lumped them into the Bai nationality in 1958. However, their language is not intelligible to Bai, nor to the neighbouring Yi nationality. The project will focus on documentation and salvage of this endangered language. It will target recording texts, legends, stories, folk songs, proverbs, marriage and funeral ceremonies comprehensively involved in their real life. Data will be collected by using audio recording combined with video footage. A sociolinguistic survey will also be carried out.
DOCUMENTATION OF PELA AND LANGUAGE CONTACT BETWEEN PELA AND ZAIWA IN LEXICAL AND SYNTACTIC BORROWINGS
This project works with local communities to document and describe the definitely endangered Pela language and its contact with Zaiwa. The researcher is a native speaker of these two Tibeto-Burman languages spoken by the Chinese state-designated Jingpo minority in Yunnan, south-west China. Audio, video and photographic records will pay special attention to endangered genres such as religious ritual and folk stories. This data will be used to describe the influence of Zaiwa on Pela lexicon and syntax. Research materials will be documented in a PhD thesis and shared with local communities and authorities in Chinese and English open-access publications.
THE DOCUMENTATION OF KOL NARRATIVES IN BANGLADESH
Kol is an endangered language of the Munda family in northwestern Bangladesh. The Kol people have their own linguistic and cultural identity in terms of stories, games, and rituals that are entirely unique from those of other sister language-speaking communities. Specifically, the games in the rainy season and the marriage rituals are uniquely diverse. However, now the Kol people are worried about losing their mother tongue and native traditions. This project aims to document the visual narratives of the Kol people to preserve and achieve their unique linguistic and cultural attributes.
DOCUMENTATION AND COMPARATIVE STUDY OF TWO ENDANGERED LANGUAGES IN TIBET: WUTUNHUA, DAOHUA
Daohua and Wutunhua are isolated linguistic islands within the vast Tibetan-speaking area. Daohua is spoken by approximately 2,600 people in eastern Tibet, and Wutunhua is spoken by about 2000 people in north-eastern Tibet.
A COLLABORATIVE DOCUMENTATION OF SAIHRIEM AND THIEK: TWO SOUTH-CENTRAL LANGUAGES OF THE CACHAR CLUSTER
This project aims at a comprehensive documentation of Saihriem (600-700 speakers) and Thiek (3125 speakers) — two South-Central languages of Cachar plains and hills. The 3-year research project will be a collaborative effort between linguists, academic institutions, and the speaker communities. The three-fold outcomes of the project are:
1. A multifunctional documentary corpus of annotated audio-visual recordings.
2. Community dictionaries for both the Saihriem and Thiek communities (as desired by the community).
3. Capacity building for community members and the students of Assam University.
AMAILON: THE RITUAL LANGUAGE OF THE NUPA MAIBI
This project involves documentation of an endangered variety of Meithei, a Tibeto-Burman language of North East India. The language is a liturgical speech variety used by the Meibi (a religious title), who represent a minority among the Nupi Manbi (indigenous transgender) community in Manipur state, North East India. The Meibi are part of a specific offshoot of an ancient Manipuri religious tradition called Samahadi, which predates the colonial era. The language of the Meibi is unintelligible to the speaker of standard Meithei.
DOCUMENTATION OF THE SOUTHERN TUJIA LANGUAGE OF CHINA
This project will investigate and document one of the endangered languages of China: Southern Tujia. This language is spoken in the mountainous area of central south China, and has no literate traditions or adequate documentation. It currently is in the final phase of an apparently inexorable decline: the number of native speakers is less than 1000, and almost every remaining speaker is bilingual in Tujia and Chinese.
DOCUMENTATION OF OINAM, A DIALECT OF POUMAI NAGA
Oinam is an endangered language spoken in Oinam Hill village (one of the Poumai Naga villages), senapati district of Manipur, northeast India. Due to migration of the natives to nearby villages and towns, there are only few monolingual speakers in the village. There are hardly any written materials available in this language. The project aims to create a documentation comprising at least 50 hours of audio-video recordings in genre of key cultural importance.
DOCUMENTING TRADITIONAL AGRICULTURAL SONGS AND STORIES OF THE SUMI NAGAS
Sumi (ISO: nsm) is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Nagaland, Northeast India by an estimated 100,000 speakers. Its use is in a state of decline as a result of competing national and dominant languages.
This project aims to assist the Sumi Cultural Association in documenting traditional Sumi songs (lejole) associated with the different stages of the agricultural cycle. Most of these stories have not been transmitted to speakers under the age of 70, particularly with the advent of Christianity and rapid modernisation.
The main outcome of the project will be a collection of high quality annotated audio and video recordings of these songs, along with an explanation of the signficance of each song by the various performers.
INVESTIGATION OF AN ENDANGERED VILLAGE SIGN LANGUAGE IN INDIA
This endangered village sign language is spoken in a southern Indian village in Karnataka. 250 people in the village are deaf out of a population of 14,000. The sign language used in the village is different from the Indian Sign Language (ISL) used in urban areas. The project will produce a corpus of digital video with time-aligned transcriptions and translations, a documentation of the sociolinguistic setting, and pedagogical materials. The project also investigates approaches to the complex research ethics of documenting this particular situation, including ways of supporting the sign language users inside and outside the village community.
DOCUMENTATION OF ZAUZOU, AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE IN CHINA
The major goal of this project is to document the language of Zauzou — a Lolo-Burmese language spoken in Southwestern China. Zauzou is an endangered language (Bradley, 2007) spoken by approximately 2100 members of the Nu nationality. Among those speakers, 1800 live on the banks of Lancang River, Lanping Country,Yunnan province in mainland of China. Most Zauzou speakers are older bilingual adults who also speak Mandarin, Bai, Lisu, etc. There are two major dialects — Guoli and Jiangmo Dialect. About 70 percent of Zauzou speakers speak the second dialect. This project documents a variety of recordings, including conversations, narratives and expository texts.
DOCUMENTATION OF TWO GELAO VARIETIES: ZOU LEI AND A HOU, SOUTH WEST CHINA
A COMPREHENSIVE COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR OF THE TURUNG AND SINGPHO LANGUAGES OF ASSAM
Turung, with perhaps 1000 speakers and Singpho, with perhaps 2500 speakers. Both languages are under threat from increasing use of Assamese. Particular emphasis will be given to recording the most endangered genres: traditional songs, and traditional religious rituals and prayers.
This project will lead to a thorough grammatical description of Singpho and Turung, carefully comparing the two languages and detailing the influences on them from languages with which they are in contact, particularly Tai and Assamese. This linguistic description will be presented with a CD containing links to sound files and transcriptions of the texts underlying that description.
The project also involves the development of written standards for the languages, and the preparation of Turung and Singpho texts that will be accessible by the community.
Readers wishing to consult and search Stephen Morey's Turung text transcriptions on the web, should go to http://crcl.th.net/assam/
DOCUMENTATION OF THE ORAL LITERATURE OF THE TAI KHAMYANG COMMUNITY IN UPPER ASSAM, INDIA
Tai-Khamyang is a highly endangered language of the Tai-kadai family spoken in the Upper Assam area of Northeast India. With only 25-20 fluent native speakers, this language is facing extinction as young generation shift to Assamese the state language and English. This project aims at audio and video documentation of the oral literature (history, traditional stories, songs etc) still narrated and sung by some of the older members of the community which will be used to produce textbooks and other language learning materials for revitalizing the use this language by its young native speakers.
CHOGUITA RARAMURI (TARAHUMARA) DOCUMENATION AND DESCRIPTION
Choguita Raramuri (Tarahumara) is an underdescribed,endangered Uto-Aztecan language spoken in Northern Mexico. In cooperation with community members, this project will produce documentation in the form of a corpus of transcribed, annotated and analyzed texts, audio and video. Practical outcomes will be multimedia materials of a wide range of speech genres to assist in the reversal of language decline of younger speakers, and training provided to community members in documentation practices. Description and linguistic analysis will contribute to a comprehensive grammatical description of Choguita Raramuri, through the completion of a doctoral dissertation focusing on the analysis of the language's morphology and phonology.
A REFERENCE GRAMMAR OF CHOGUITA RARAMURI (TARAHUMARA)
Choguita Raramuri (Tarahumara) is an endangered, underdescribed Uto-Aztecan language of the Taracahitan branch spoken in the northwest of Mexico. The specific goal of this project is twofold: to complement the results of initial description and documentation and carry out later stages of documentation to produce a reference grammar of the language; and to train Raramuri colleagues in the community of Choguita in audio and video documentation, mobilisation of documentation products for immediate use in the community and training of younger speakers in documentation practices.
A CORPUS-BASED REFERENCE ACCOUNT OF THE MORPHOLOGY OF PUMA
Puma (ISO 639-3 code:pum) is a seriously endangered southern Kiranti language spoken mainly in Khotang district of eastern Nepal for its preservation. It is estimated that there are about 4000 Puma native speakers. Materials on the language have just been collected by the Chintang and Puma Documentation Project (CPDP) funded by the Volkswagen DoBeS project.
This research is aimed not only to describe Puma, but also help in the development of a school grammar and preparation of pedagogic and teaching materials for mother tongue education.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF TIDIKELT-TUAT TAMAZIGHT, AN ENDANGERED BERBER LANGUAGE
The project will create a body of primary data of 50 hours of naturalistic data and 31 hours of elicitation, useful for the community and for berberologists working on the comparison of Berber varieties. It will be documenting the main characteristics of this language
THE PROPOSED PROJECT AIMS TO CONTINUE DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF CHAMPANG, ALSO KNOWN AS ‘THAMPHANG’, A HIGHLY ENDANGERED TANGSA NAGA LANGUAGE SPOKEN BY NOT MORE THAN 200 PEOPLE IN THE HIGH PATKAI MOUNTAIN RANGES RUNNING ALONG THE ASSAM-ARUNACHAL PRADESH BORDER REGIONS IN NORTHEAST INDIA (27°16’25” NORTH AND 95°45’41” EAST). THE GOAL OF THIS PROJECT IS TO DOCUMENT AND DESCRIBE THE STRUCTURE OF THE LANGUAGE AS WELL AS RECORD ORAL HISTORIES. SPECIFIC OUTCOMES INCLUDE A DETAILED GRAMMAR, A LEXICAL DATABASE, AND AN ARCHIVED CORPUS OF TRANSCRIBED AND ANALYZED AUDIO AND VIDEO RECORDINGS.
The proposed project aims to continue documentation and description of Champang, also known as ‘Thamphang’, a highly endangered Tangsa Naga language spoken by not more than 200 people in the high Patkai mountain ranges running along the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border regions in Northeast India (27°16’25” North and 95°45’41” East). The goal of this project is to document and describe the structure of the language as well as record oral histories. Specific outcomes include a detailed grammar, a lexical database, and an archived corpus of transcribed and analyzed audio and video recordings.
CROSS-DIALECTAL DOCUMENTATION OF A HIGHLY ENDANGERED LANGUAGE IN GUIZHOU PROVINCE OF CHINA
Caijia is an extremely endangered language spoken by less than 1,000 Cai people (Bureau of Ethnic Identification in Bijie 1982), a group with a very small population scattered in northwestern Guizhou Province of China. It is the language used inside the family-based communities of Cai. The genetic affiliation of Caijia remains unclear. This project aims to document several dialects of Caijia spoken in Weining, Hezhang and Liupanshui counties of Guizhou and yields corpora of audio, video, and text data, a sketch grammar, a collection of stories as well as a comprehensive dictionary with English and Mandarin translations.
DOCUMENTATION AND GRAMMATICAL DESCRIPTION OF YAKKHA, NEPAL
Yakkha belongs to the Kiranti family (Tibeto-Burman) and is spoken in the Sankhuwasawa District in Nepal. Though officially 14,000 people still speak it, the language is prone to Nepali influence, and scarcely used by the younger generation nowadays. Yakkha was virtually undocumented until the applicant began working on it in 2008. The main aim of the project is to greatly expand the text corpus and grammatical analysis the applicant has compiled to date. This will serve as a basis for writing a grammar of Yakkha, focusing on grammatical relations and clause linkage, to be submitted as a PhD thesis.
A GRAMMATICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE KOHI RAI LANGUAGE OF EASTERN NEPAL
Koyi Rai is a Tibeto-Burman language of the Kiranti group spoken by about 2000 people in Eastern Nepal. Due to contact with the national language Nepali (an Indo-Aryan language), Koyi is becoming seriously endangered, with no remaining monolingual speakers. The goals of the project are to produce materials for as complete a documentation as possible: this includes a trilingual dictionary, a grammatical description, and a collection of annotated texts based on recordings of traditional stories and other oral materials. The project is carried out in affiliation with LACITO-CNRS, where an online archiving project for endangered oral languages, synchronizing text and sound, is underway.
DOCUMENTING KURTOEP IN A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: A GRAMMAR, DICTIONARY AND TEXTS
Kurtöp is an endangered language of Lhüntse, Bhutan. It includes audio and video files of the language as spoken by its speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences between November 2005 to January 2009. The audio and video files comprise of conversations, interviews, narratives, storytelling, singing and elicitation, including files used for acoustic study. The various foci of the recordings include historical information, religion, storytelling, agriculture, local culture, ceremony and flaura and fauna. In addition, over one thousand photographs accompany the recordings.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF HRUSSO AKA LANGUAGE OF ARUNACHAL PRADESH
This project aims to document and describe Hrusso Aka, a language spoken by about 3000 speakers in the West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh, India. It is an interesting language because of its dissimilarities with other languages in the region. It is highly endangered due to a rapid language shift to Hindi. The project will involve collection, annotation and archiving of video, audio and text samples of Hrusso Aka, and production of a written grammar, primers, a dictionary and digital media outputs. The project also aims to train local language consultants in orthography, literature development and language support.
SUREL AND SUNWAR NARRATIVES
Surel and Sunwar are closely related, threatened Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in different regions of Eastern Nepal. This project will produce books and audio-CDs with Surel and Sunwar texts with introductions, glosses and translations into English and Nepali. The project will provide both language communities with locally easily accessible material to study the languages. A comparative study of these languages, that historically were in close contact, will further our knowledge of the local linguistic and general history.
DOCUMENTATION OF THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF GONGDUK
This project will produce the first documentation of the Gongduk language, an endangered language spoken by up to 2,000 people in a remote region of Eastern Bhutan. The precise classification remains unknown, though it is tentatively considered a Tibeto-Burman isolate. In addition to documenting the language in a variety of contexts and producing a phonological analysis and grammatical sketch, the core of this project will be to produce a full ethnobotanical analysis of Gongduk flora and fauna.
DOCUMENTING LHOKPU AND BLACK MOUNTAIN MöNPA LANGUAGES IN BHUTAN AND THEIR ENDANGERED YARN PRODUCTION PRACTICES
This innovative project aims to document the highly endangered North-Eastern Black Mountain Mönpa (approx. 275 speakers) and Lhokpu (approx. 800 speakers) languages of Bhutan, coupling the linguistic documentation with that of the equally endangered practices of natural fibre yarn production. We will document the process of making yarn from locally grown cotton and nettle fibres - from managing the plants to production of the final product. All the language associated with these processes will be collected along the way, together with language in other contexts (e.g. conversation, narrations, procedural texts, elicitation, but not only as these pertain to the yarn production).
DOCUMENTING AND DESCRIBING KAGATE, AN ENDANGERED TIBETO-BURMAN LANGUAGE OF NEPAL
Kagate is an endangered member of the Central Bodic branch of the Tibeto-Burman family, spoken by around 1500 people in Ramechhap (Eastern Nepal). Younger community members now prefer Nepali and English for education and economic opportunity. There are very few written materials in Kagate, and no recordings of traditional songs, stories and cultural practices. Speakers of Kagate would like to document these genres before they are lost, and to create resources to help promote use of Kagate at all ages.
DOCUMENTATION OF 'OLEKHA, WITH A FOCUS ON TRADITIONAL ETHNOBOTANICAL KNOWLEDGE
The Olekha language has five remaining speakers living in the remote Rukha village of south central Bhutan. Most of the community today speaks Dzongkha, the national language.Phobjip is spoken just north of the area. The community has shifted to an agricultural lifestyle from a former hunter gatherer lifestyle within the past 50 years, retaining aspects of the former culture. Among these is a rich reliance on local plant life. This project, working in collaboration with the Dzongkha Development Commission and the Bhutan Oral Literature and Language Documentation Projects, proposes to document the Olekha langugae, focusing on the ethnobotanical knowledge.
LINGUISTIC AND ETHNOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTATION OF WESTERN DIALECTS OF NYENKHA SPOKEN IN THE PHOBJIKHA VALLEY IN WANGDUEPHODRANG, BHUTAN
Nyenkha is a nearly extinct East Bodish dialect spoken at Phobjikha (<300 people) and Wangduephodrang (<3000), Western Bhutan by an illiterate minority without national participation. Elderly people speak and understand well; middle-aged have limited competence, children neither speak nor understand Nyenkha due to its lack of value in marketplace and official settings. Documentation includes linguistic and ethno-cultural database, audio/video/photographic records of conversation, interviews, oral literature/folk genres, leading to grammatical sketches and an initial dictionary fragment. Generated archival data will facilitate future maintenance and revitalization efforts, and provide evidence for understanding local language and identity in both historical and structural dimensions.
DOCUMENTATION OF NORTHERN PRINMI ORAL ART, WITH A SPECIAL FOCUS ON RITUAL SPEECH
Northern Prinmi (ISO 639: pmi, +27° 55'45", +101° 16'49"), a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in China by several thousand ethnically Pumi in northern Yunnan Province and an estimated 40,000 ethnically Tibetan in southern Sichuan Province, is increasingly endangered due to the development of large-scale infrastructure in the region, urbanisation, and the influence of Southwestern Mandarin Chinese. This project will document Northern Prinmi oral art, with a special focus on ritual speech, one of the domains of the language that is more severely threatened by disappearance. The project will result in a collection of annotated video and audio texts and rituals.
LINGUISTIC DESCRIPTION AND COMPREHENSIVE DOCUMENTATION OF MEWAHANG, AN UNDESCRIBED TIBETO-BURMAN LANGUAGE OF NEPAL
Mewahang, an oral Tibeto-Burman language, has approximately 900 remaining speakers living in the remote and isolated villages of the Sankhuwasabha district of eastern Nepal. This project aims to describe morphosyntax of the langauge and document rapidly disappearing cultural knowledge, unique oral tradition, recipes and shamanistic practices, which otherwise would be lost.The outcomes of this project will be a monograph, peer-reviewed linguistic papers on morphosyntactic investigations, and rich transcribed, translated and annotated audio-video corpus. The research crucially will shed light on Tibeto-Burman linguistics and typological studies of languages, which promises to be a contribution to Tibeto-Burman and theoretical linguistics.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF DULONG
Dulong is a Tibeto-Burman language variety spoken in Gongshan Nu and Dulong Autonomous County, Yunnan Province, China, in villages alongside the Nu and Dulong rivers. With under 10,000 speakers, the language is vulnerable to the encroachment of Lisu and Southwest Mandarin Chinese. While the language is still in full use by the community, this project aims to make a comprehensive multimedia documentation that serve as a basis for language maintenance efforts and provide data previously unavailable to scholars and others interested in the language.
CROSS-VARIETAL DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTIVE STUDY OF TAMANG
Tamang (ISO-639: taj) is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken over a large but sparsely populated area in Central and Eastern Nepal (27°5’N, 85-86°E), and exhibiting considerable geographical variation which is still poorly understood. All varieties of the language are now threatened by Nepali.
This project will produce a wide-ranging documentation of Tamang with a focus on the most endangered varieties, including a corpus of audio, video and texts, a descriptive study of features shared and diverging between varieties, and a polylectal trilingual dictionary in Tamang, Nepali and English.
These will contribute to efforts to maintain Tamang as a viable contemporary language.
BRAHUI LANGUAGE OF RUDBAR-JONUB, ASIA, IRAN
The Brahui Language of Rudbar-Jonub is the prevalent language in Tom-Meyri village, located in the southern part of Rudbar town in Kerman Province, Iran. Brahui of Rudbar-Jonub is one of the non-Iranian languages spoken in Iran. The majority of speakers live in the Sistan and Baluchistan regions, but a group with a population of about 750 people inhabit the southern part of Rudbar town. A small number of Brahui people living in Sistan in Iran believe that they are originally from the Mamasani tribe who fled to Pakistan and then returned to Iran. This collection aims to provide a comprehensive videography-based documentation through a text corpus with audio-visual recordings of naturally generated discourse occurring around endangered lifecycle rituals and special cultural and linguistic features, as well as a dictionary of terms around traditional arts and crafts.
LINGUISTIC AND ETHNOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTATION OF THE BARAM LANGUAGE
Baram is a seriously endangered language of Nepal, for its preservation and promotion. For this purpose, we will develop a corpus of the various texts of the Baram language and thereby prepare resources such as its sketch grammar, lexicon and ethnographic profile. To revitalize the language, we will develop Bara?m orthography and prepare a Baram primer to facilitate its use in basic education and literacy programmes. The audio-video recordings of the Baram database will be archived with its annotation in a website for its accessibility to linguists, ethnographers and the Baram speech community.
DOCUMENTATION OF THE NAMUYI LANGUAGE
Namuyi is an endangered Qiangic language of the Tibeto-Burman family spoken along the lower reaches of the Yalong River in south-western Sichuan Province, China. The documentation will include a 5,000 entry trilingual (Chinese-English-Namuyi) lexicon, a volume of annotated texts, and a bilingual (Chinese & English) web site. All of the data will be digitised, and will include digital audio and video documentation. The data will be deposited in ELAR and at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, CASS. After the end of ELDP project, I also will write a reference grammar of Namuyi.
ERSU AND XUMI: COMPARATIVE AND CROSS-VARIETAL DOCUMENTATION OF HIGHLY ENDANGERED LANGUAGES OF
SOUTH-WEST CHINA
The project studies two language clusters of multi-ethnic and multi-lingual western Sichuan (China): (1)
Ersu, comprising the mutually unintelligible Ersu, Tosu, and Lizu languages; (2) Xumi, comprising two diverse varieties with
restricted mutual intelligibility. All four languages are endangered. The project yields corpora of audio, video, and text data,
primarily of the moribund Tosu (4 speakers) and the severely endangered Xumi (circa 1,000 proficient speakers), and (1)
sketch grammars of Tosu, Xumi, Lizu; (2) a collection of Ersu stories; (3) two comparative dictionaries (Ersu-Lizu-Tosu;
Xumi), with Mandarin and English translations; and (4) pedagogical materials for Tosu.
DOCUMENTATION AND ESTABLISHMENT OF A LOCAL ARCHIVE FOR MILANG, AN ENDANGERED TIBETO-BURMAN LANGUAGE OF NORTH EAST INDIA
Milang is a highly endangered and virtually unknown Tibeto-Burman language of North East India. Spoken by around 2,000 people in the far north-east of Arunachal Pradesh State at around +28 degrees 25'53" latitude and +95 degrees 2'30" longitude, Milang currently lacks an ISO 639 code due to the almost complete absence of existing documentation and description of this language. The proposal will fund a six-month fieldtrip to Arunachal Pradesh, where a rich videoand audio-based corpus of texts will be collected, and a local language archive will be established for the benefit of Milang people.
A DOCUMENTATION OF THE UPPER BELT VARIETY OF MINYONG (ADI), ARUNACHAL PRADESH, NORTH EAST INDIA
Minyong is a language of the Adi cluster of Eastern Tani languages (ISO-639 adi). Spoken by approximately 20,000 traditionally animist hill tribespeople in eastern central Arunachal Pradesh state, North- East India Upper Belt Minyong is currently almost completely undocumented and in an increasingly endangered state due primarily to the meteoric rise of Hindi in the region. Special attention will be given to documentation of animist Minyong ritual speech and practices, which are acutely threatened by disappearance within the present age.
PRELIMINARY DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF GYALSUMDO
This project aims to document and describe the Gyalsumdo language, an endangered, undocumented Tibetan language spoken in Manang district, Nepal, spoken by approximately 200 people. The project will involve the production of a corpus of audio and video recordings of a wide range of genres and registers, a sketch grammar, a trilingual glossary, and a detailed study of the language's tonal behaviour and its interaction with syntax.
NAR-PHU (TIBETO-BURMAN, NEPAL): FIELD RESEARCH FOR AN AUDIO-VISUAL ARCHIVE OF COMPARATIVE LEXICAL AND DISCOURSE MATERIAL
Nar-Phu is a Sino-Tibetan language of Nepal which has shown a sharp decline in speakers due to emigration and the influence of national and other regional languages. This project will provide documentation and archival quality data on Nar-Phu towards a comparative lexical database with Nepali and Nyeshangte. This project will also provide a transcribed, annotated corpus to facilitate analyses of the discourse function of morphosyntactic structures. Additionally, this project will provide for the community a Nar-Phu/Nepali word-book aimed at primary school use, and copies of recordings for community archival and reference.
AN AUDIO-VISUAL ARCHIVE OF DZARDZONGKE (SOUTH MUSTANG TIBETAN)
South Mustang Tibetan (SMT) or 'Baragaunle' (28° 53' 37.3848'' N 83° 48' 38.106'' E, ca. 1800 speakers) is a severely endangered language spoken in a number of villages in Mustang, Nepal. It is related to Loke/Lowa, another language of the Bodish branch of the Sino-Tibetan language, which is also an endangered language spoken in Upper Mustang. Most speakers of SMT are fluent in Nepali and Seke as well and SMT is not used in writing or education, putting it in a very precarious situation. Due to economic difficulties in the aftermath of the 2015 earthquake and the current pandemic, speakers are rapidly leaving the villages to find employment in Kathmandu and abroad. This is having a disastrous effect on the local language and cultural traditions, which is why this project aims to acquire audio-visual materials that will help preserve the local language and unique pre-Buddhist Bon cultural tradition.
AN AUDIO-VISUAL ARCHIVE AND SEARCHABLE CORPUS OF KAIKE, AN ENDANGERED TIBETO-BURMAN LANGUAGE OF DOLPA, NEPAL
Kaike (ISO 639-3 kzq, 82E; 28N, ca. 800-1000 speakers) is an endangered Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Dolpa, Nepal. All speakers of Kaike are fluent in Nepali and Poinke Tibetan as well and Kaike is not used in writing, religious contexts, songs or education. This project will provide high-quality audio-visual materials to preserve the language for the local and linguistic community. These materials will furthermore be transcribed and translated and donated to the local community as a collection of traditional stories and practices they could use as teaching material. Finally, the texts will be morpho-syntactically annotated to provide a searchable corpus for anyone interested in the rich typology of the languages of the Himalaya or Kaike's interesting linguistic features.
MULTIDIALECTAL DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF SEKE (NEPAL)
Building on initial fieldwork and community collaboration, this project aims for a comprehensive, multidialectal documentation and description of Seke, a highly endangered, little-documented Tibeto-Burman (Tamangic) language originally from five villages in Upper Mustang, Nepal. Of the estimated ~700 community members, only a few hundred elders scattered between the villages, Jomsom, Pokhara, Kathmandu, and New York are actively using the language. The project will result in a richly annotated audio-video corpus including stories, oral histories, and a range of other narratives reflecting the practices, experience, and knowledge of Seke speakers, as well as scholarly and community publications.
DOCUMENTING SEKE STORIES
Seke, a little-documented Tibeto-Burman language of the Tamangic branch, has at most 700 speakers from five villages of the Mustang District in northern Nepal. Today the language is highly endangered, with few speakers under 40 years old, massive outmigration of all but the elderly, and even older speakers shifting overwhelmingly to Nepali. Building on an ongoing Columbia University Field Methods class, ”Documenting Seke Stories" aims to create an annotated corpus of video and audio recordings including folktales, oral histories, and a wide range of other narratives reflecting the lives and stories of Seke speakers.
A COMPREHENSIVE ILLUSTRATED DICTIONARY OF ERSU WITH AUDIO FILES
The project builds on the results from the prior ELDP project (MDP0257) to arrive at a first-ever, comprehensive illustrated dictionary of the Ersu language, accompanied by audio files. Ersu is a little-studied, endangered Tibeto-Burman (Qiangic) language, spoken by approximately 8,000 people from an overall ethnic population of ca. 16,800 people in rural areas of Southwest China. The project will yield (1) a dictionary of 5,000 entries compiled in accordance with best lexicographic practices, and (2) a corpus of audio and video data documenting endangered meanings, that is, words related to such domains as traditional material culture, aphorisms, epigrams, and proverbs.
A DOCUMENTATION OF THE VDAB-PA TIBETAN
The vDab-pa, as a branch of Tibetan, spoken by approximately 8,000 population
in Daocheng (South west Sichuan, China), is a relatively isolated language that
can rarely communicate with the languages of periphery areas of the vDab-pa
area. Furthermore, the vDab-pa Tibetan is undescribed so far, but has been
undergoing rapid evolution because of the dominance by official Mandarin and
the lack of native language education to the young generation. This project will
focus on the documentary corpus of daily dialogue, ceremonial speech, and
legendary story of the vDab-pa.
LINGUISTIC DOCUMENTATION OF THE VARIETY OF BERBER SPOKEN IN THE SIWA OASIS (EGYPT)
Siwi language (Berber language family, Afroasiatic phylum) is a variety of Berber spoken in the Siwa oasis (Egypt) considered “definitely endangered” by the Atlas of UNESCO. Thanks to linguistic fieldwork, I’ll create a corpus of primary data useful for the community and for berberologists who work on the comparison of Berber varieties, I will document the main features of the language, especially as regards morphosyntax and discourse. I will give special attention to data elicited from women, which remain unknown because the conservatism of the society prohibited male researchers to undertake this work.
DOCUMENTING AND SURVEYING EASTERN MINYAG VARIETIES
Eastern Minyag is a virtually unstudied Tibeto-Burman language spoken by perhaps no more than 2,000 people in sparsely populated, mountainous villages of western Shimian County and eastern Jiulong County, western Sichuan, China. This project's primary outcomes will be a cross-sectional audiovisual corpus representative of extant Eastern Minyag varieties, all but one of which are undocumented. This corpus will contribute to a Ph.D. project (a descriptive grammar of Eastern Minyag) and be made available to speakers through a community archive. Project files deposited with ELAR will include IPA transcriptions, interlinear glossing, and written translations in Simplified Mandarin and English.
DOCUMENTATION OF ORAL TEXTS (LIFE HISTORIES, FOLK TALES, LOCAL HISTORICAL LORE), POEMS, IDIOMS AND RIDDLES OF TORWALI
The aim of this project is to collect and document oral texts, such as life histories, folktales, local historical lore, poems, idioms and riddles of Torwali (ISO-639-3 Code trw), an endangered language of the northern Pakistan. The documented material will be made available for the speech community in the form of booklets and in digitized form for the academic community. It will supplement the Torwali-English-Urdu dictionary project funded by National Geographic, with the addition of related lexical items. The project is community-based since the principal applicant and all other people involved in the project are native speakers.
GRAMMAR OF MINYAG, A MINORITY LANGUAGE OF WESTERN SICHUAN
Minyag is an under-documented Tibeto-Burman language spoken by roughly 10,000 people in villages clustered around Gangkar Mountain (CH: Gongga Shan) in Kangding County, western Sichuan, China. This project’s primary outcomes are the creation of cross-sectional audio and audio-visual corpora documenting a variety of language uses; the publication and promotion a locally authored Minyag-Chinese-Tibetan-English Dictionary; and an M.A. thesis on the grammar of Minyag useful for future studies on the language’s typological classification. This project includes rich annotation and translations in Simplified Mandarin, English, and Standard Tibetan orthographies to make data accessible to the Minyag language community and local scholars.
DOCUMENTING RAMARI HATOHOBEI (LITERALLY THE LANGUAGE OF TOBI ISLAND), A SEVERELY ENDANGERED MICRONESIAN LANGUAGE
Tobian (Ramari Hatohobei) is the language of Tobi, one of the Southwest Islands of the Republic of Palau, a Micronesian nation in the western Pacific. Severely endangered, Tobian is currently spoken by approximately 150 people. Tobian and the dialects of Sonsorol, Merir, and Pulo Anna, the other three Southwest Islands, are closely related to the languages spoken in the outer islands of Yap and Chuuk. Intensive work will be done with elderly Tobian speakers to document their language through collection of vocabulary, stories, poems, and songs in their relevant socio-cultural context before it is lost.
DOCUMENTATION OF FOUR MORIBUND MOLUCCAN LANGUAGES
This project will provide rich descriptions of four languages from the eastern Indonesian province of Central Maluku — a region with both high linguistic diversity and the highest level of language endangerment in Indonesia, yet which remains one of the most undescribed regions linguistically. A history of long-standing contact with non-indigenous peoples, colonisation, intensive trade, and conversion to non-indigenous religions have all played a role in language endangerment. The research team will document Soahuku/Amahei (Seram Island), Haruku (Haruku Island), and Allang and Tulehu (both of Ambon Island) in both the homeland and with remaining speakers in the Indonesian diaspora in the Netherlands. This project also incorporates the training of Community Language Workers in language documentation techniques in order to support language maintenance initiatives in both settings. Partner institutions include Pattimura University (Ambon), the MPI Field Station and Atma Jaya University (Jakarta), the Moluks Historisch Museum (Utrecht), and the KITLV (Leiden and Jakarta).
KNOWLEDGE OF ENDANGERED LANGUAGES IN THE SUDANESE COMMUNITY, MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA
DOCUMENTATION OF THE PALIKUR (ARAWAK) LANGUAGE
The Palikur is a group of about 2300 people. Around 1400 living in Brazil, at the Indigenous Land of Uaca¡, Oiapoque, Amapa, in 12 villages: Kuahi, Ywawka, Flecha, Mangue 1, Mangue 2, Tawari, Amomni, Kwikwit, Pwaytyeket, Kamuywa, Urubu and Kumene. About 900 living in Guyane. In Brazil 80% of natives speak Palikur and Portuguese. In Guyane the French is the mother tongue of youngsters. This project goal is to document in audio and video different genres of spoken Palikur in Brazil, ritualistic speak, narratives, chants, and that are not transmitted to new generations anymore.
DISCOURSE-BASED LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION OF THE BAJA CALIFORNIA YUMAN LANGUAGES KUMEYAAY AND KO'ALH THROUGH TRANSCRIPTION OF NARRATIVES
Ko’alh and Baja California varieties of Kumeyaay. Both are spoken in Baja California Norte, Mexico, both belong to the Delta-California branch of the Yuman family, and both are highly endangered; fewer than sixty people still speak Baja varieties of Kumeyaay, and exactly four people speak Ko’alh. This project places emphasis on discourse. We will will work with native speakers to transcribe, translate, and analyze as many as possible of the 42 texts we have already collected and use the results to expand our Ko'alh-Kumeyaay comparative dictionary database and write a grammatical sketch of Ko'alh.
DOCUMENTATION OF QUEYU (CHOYO) AND ITS CULTURAL TRADITIONS
Queyu is an understudied and underdocumented Tibeto-Burman (TB) language spoken in Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China. Though speakers are classified as Tibetans (Lu 1985: 67, Wang 1991: 46), Queyu belongs to the Qiangic branch instead of Tibetic, with approximately 6,000~7,000 speaker population. The goals of this project are: (1) the creation of a collection of Queyu texts, audio and video recordings that cover linguistic and sociocultural perspectives of the Queyu community (2) an annotated corpus of texts, video and audio recordings of natural and elicited Queyu data, (3) a Queyu-Mandarin-English dictionary, and (4) a sketch grammar of Queyu.
HIGH-QUALITY SEARCHABLE CORPUS OF THE CHEYI LANGUAGE
This project aims to investigate the Cheyi language spoken in four villages namely Yazhong, Jiade, Pugu, and Rizi, located in Pubarong Township, Yajiang County. The name "Pubarong" is a transliteration of the Tibetan words {spo.bo.rong} or {spobs.pa.rong}. According to my population statistics collected in 2022, Pubarong is divided into four villages, each consisting of three smaller groups, totaling 12 groups. Yazhong Village has a population of 778, Jiade Village has 302, Pugu Village has 464, and Rizi Village has 474. The villages have a total of 542 households and a population of 2018. Based on my preliminary research, these native speakers are distributed along the Yalong River Valley and can be categorized into upstream Cheyi people and downstream Cheyi people. There are notable differences in the Cheyi dialect spoken by residents in the upstream and downstream areas. The Cheyi people from Yazhong Village refer to those living upstream as "l? nd?? pi," while the residents of Jiade Village, Pugu Village, and Rizi Village refer to those living downstream as "m? t?o? pi."
Determining the dialectal divisions within Cheyi is a significant research endeavor, but no studies have been conducted on this topic thus far. Hence, this project aims to address this gap by selecting appropriate native speakers from these four villages and collecting 10 hours of natural language data from each village, amounting to a total of 40 hours.
DOCUMENTATION OF SMAR-SKAD SPOKEN IN DPAL-RI, BRAG-GYAB: LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
Smar-skad is an understudied and underdocumented Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Chamdo, Tibet Autonomous Region, China. While native speakers are of Tibetan ethnicity, Smar-skad is seemingly a "non-Tibetan" language with close relationship with Rgyalrongic languages. Smar-skad has 3 mutually unintelligible dialects with estimated population of 8,000 ~ 9,000. The goals of this project are: (1) an annotated data set in multiple types of media (audio, video, texts, etc.) that covers linguistic and cultural perspectives of the language community; (2) archived data to be deposited with ELAR and Pangloss; (3) typological and historical studies of Smar-skad to be presented in my PhD thesis; and (4) a Smar-Tibetan-Chinese-English dictionary.
LANGUAGE PRACTICES OF THE COUSHATTA TRIBE OF LOUISIANA: A DOCUMENTATION OF KOASATI
Koasati (IS0 639-3:cku) is the language of the Coushatta Tribe of Lousiana, still spoken fluently by approximately 200 people, the majority of whom live on or near the Coushatta Reservation outside Elton, Louisiana (30.5N, 92.7W). This project is a collaborative effort between the Coushatta Heritage Department and linguists from The College of William and Mary. Its goals are to transcribe, annotate, and archive historical Koasati materials in a way that is accessible to the Coushatta community, as well as create audio and video documentation of informal language practices that will assist learners with contemporary, context-dependent Koasati language use.
DOCUMENTATION OF NYAGRONG MINYAG, AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF WESTERN CHINA
Nyagrong Minyag is spoken by less than 1,000 ethnically Tibetan people in Sichuan Province, China. This language is endangered not only by the encroachment of Kham Tibetan and Southwest Mandarin, but also by forced relocation due to a dam project on the Yalong River. Therefore, documentation of this language in its geographical/cultural setting is urgent. This project will focus on collection and annotation of audio and video texts, creation of a multi-lingual dictionary, and documenting native geographical knowledge. Alongside the primary documentation, the researcher will produce linguistic analyses as part of his dissertation and train native speakers in language documentation.
DOCUMENTARY CORPUS OF CHHITKUL-RAKCHHAM, AN ENDANGERED TIBETO-BURMAN LANGUAGE OF NORTHERN INDIA
This project will produce a documentary corpus on Chhitkul-Rakchham, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken across two villages in Himachal Pradesh, India. This will be the first ever corpus of Chhitkul-Rakchham. Unwritten and exclusively spoken at home, Chhitkul-Rakchham is endangered and threatened by the spread of Hindi. This project will collect a corpus of audio-video recordings of speech samples in different genres, primarily everyday conversations, but also narratives, traditional genres, and some elicited materials. The corpus will serve as a foundation for the development of further linguistic fieldwork and aid in the investigation of grammatical features and language support initiatives.
DOCUMENTATION OF YONGHE QIANG LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
This project will produce transcribed and annotated texts in Yonghe Qiang: an endangered Northeastern Tibet-Burman language spoken in Southeastern Mao County, Rngaba prefecture, Sichuan, China. There are about 2,000 speakers, but communities are shifting to Chinese. The culturally rich body of texts, which will include life-history interviews and naturally-occurring conversations by speakers of different ages and genders, will serve as the empirical materials for a grammatical description of the language. The materials collected will be shared with the community through both printed booklets and digital means. Native speakers will be involved as collaborators at all levels of the project.
DOCUMENTING A RELIGIOUS MINORITY: THE DARI DIALECT OF KERMAN
Dari (also known as Behdini, Gavri or Gavruni) belongs to the Central group of Western Iranian films. It is spoken by the religious minority of the Zoroastrians in the cities of Yazd and the surrounding areas, Kerman and Tehran. While the situation of the Zoroastrian-Yazdi dialect is comparatively better, the situation of the Kermani dialect, the focus of this project, is especially grave. The exact number of Behdinan speakers is not clear. For the Kermani dialect, we can estimate only thirty-five speakers, based on a list of the names, of whom twenty-seven are living in Tehran and six living in Kerman.
DOCUMENTING THE MANDAEAN'S RITUALS
To record transcribe and translate speech and rituals of the Mandaeans with the aim of preserving these for future generations and to enable young members of the Mandaean community to learn the language. After 2000 years of continued and flourishing existence in both Iraq and Iran, this community is threatened with annihilation in that region, especially in Iraq, because of religious radicalism which is sweeping the country at this time. The community has dispersed to Australia, the US, Canada and many European countries and almost no one of the youngest generation speaks the language. It will be dead within a decade or two.
PRESERVATION OF THE SPOKEN LANGUAGE OF IRAQI JEWS
After 2,500 years of continued existence in Mesopotamia (Iraq), no Jewish human or culture trace is left there. The community has been dispersed to Israel and the West and none under 45 years old, speaks the language. This pilot project aims to preserve the endangered language by building a foundation for a future major documentation. Consultants will be recorded in Israel and London and the data collected will be transcribed and stored using open standard formats and archived at ELAR.
PRESERVATION OF THE SPOKEN JEWISH IRAQI – PHASE 2
The project adds to my previous work on Jewish Iraqi by actively involving the speaker community in the preservation of the language. A second generation Jewish Iraqi will be trained in Israel in field recordings and transcription methods in order to participate in future language documentation. Interlinear transcriptions of a wide range of audio recordings, together with a new bilingual audio dictionary will be produced.
EXPANDING THE DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF CAHUILLA
Cahuilla is a Uto-Aztecan language spoken in the mountains and deserts near the Salton Sea in Southern California. It is severely endangered, with only 5 elderly speakers remaining. Documentation in the early twentieth century focused largely on elicited speech, resulting in a lack of quality data representative of conversational discourse and other genres of naturalistic, culturally relevant speech. Expanding the language documentation with high-quality audio and video will result in a robust language corpus that can be utilized for linguistic analysis and development of language learning materials. Project outcomes will contribute to language revitalization efforts and scholarly linguistic research.
A MULTI-MODAL DOCUMENTATION OF JEJUAN CONVERSATIONS
Jejuan is spoken on several islands of Jeju Province of South Korea, with a number of diaspora speakers in Osaka, Japan. Traditionally treated as a variety of Korean that is unintelligible with other varieties, it was recognised as a critically endangered language by UNESCO in 2010. There are approximately 5,000 to 10,000 speakers, with fluent speakers all above the age of 70. This project aims at building an annotated audio-video corpus of spoken Jejuan with a focus on conversational genres, supplementing existing documentation of narratives and songs.
DOCUMENTATION OF JOWSHAQANI, A CENTRAL IRANIAN LANGUAGE
The project will document Jowshaqani, a Central Iranian language spoken in Jowshaqan township in northern Isfahan province in Iran. With 3500 inhabitants, Jowshaqan township is situated some 120 km north of the city of Isfahan at the border of an area where Central Iranian dialects are spoken. Jowshaqani is increasingly giving way to Persian and there are fewer than 600 fluent speakers of this language. This documentation will include audio and video recordings with transcriptions, translations and annotations of the recorded data. The project will also provide a Jowshaqani/English/Persian dictionary.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION BEIRUT DOMARI, AN ENDANGERED VARIETY OF DOMARI.
Domari is one of the very few diasporic Indic languages. It is spoken by the Middle Eastern Dom, commonly known as the Gypsies of the Middle East. There are no reliable figures about the number of speakers of Domari. The goal is to produce at least 20 hours of annotated audio and video recordings documenting a wide variety of textual genres, as well as to create material that will address the desire of the community to formally teach the language to various internal audiences. Specific outcomes will be the production of a grammatical sketch, a lexicon, a multimedia dictionary and a collection of narrative and procedural texts.
DEHI OF ARAN AND BIDGOL: A CENTRAL IRANIAN LANGUAGE
Dehi, which is also known as "Di" or "Zebu Mahalli" (local Language) among people, belongs to the central group of Western Iranian Languages and is spoken in some quarters of Aran and Bidgol in the north of Kashan in Isfahan province in Iran. Dehi is a severely endangered language from which the two dialects of Arani and Bidgoli are recognized both of which are almost identical.The number of speakers of the Dehi is not exactly clear, since its speakers only reside in three quarters, so the number of speakers is computed less than 1000 in the Bidgol and that's nearly 2000 people in the Aran.
WESTERN ZEI: IRANIAN SIGN LANGUAGE IN KERMANSHAH
Zaban Eshareh Irani (ZEI) which is also referred to as Persian Sign Language (Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2017) or Iranian Sign Language (Behmanesh, 2006) is a sign language used by the Deaf community in Iran. Although Deaf communities use this language to communicate to peers, it does not have any institutional support and the government does not recognize it as an official language. It has not been investigated whether there are variants of ZEI or not, but it seems likely that different variants of sign language exist in different parts of Iran.
DOCUMENTATION OF THE KUNDAL SHAHI LANGUAGE
The Kundal Shahi language [shd] is spoken in the village of Kundal Shahi, in the Neelam Valley of Pakistan-administered Kashmir. It belongs to the North Western zone of the Indo-Aryan language family. The total number of active speakers is less than 700 individuals. The language is severely endangered as it is increasingly being replaced by Hindko. The language is under-documented. The documentation project aims to collect a range of text materials in audio and video format that will be translated with annotations.
DOCUMENTATION OF A DIALECT OF MONGGHUL AND A DIALECTOLOGICAL SURVEY OF MONGGHUL
Mongghul is an endangered Mongolic language spoken in the Qinghai and Gansu provinces in China. The goal of this project is to produce a sketch grammar of one variety of Mongghul, including a description of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and a wordlist. Information on language contact and history will also be included. In addition, the project head will conduct a small dialectical survey of the documented and non-documented varieites of Mongghul. Mongghul is an endangered Mongolic language spoken in the Qinghai and Gansu provinces in China.
DOCUMENTING HENAN OIRAT
Henan Oirat (Henan Mongol) is the ethnic language of the Henan Oirats, a group of c. 30,000 individuals who inhabit Henan Mongol Autonomous County (Henan Mengguzu Zizhi Xian) of Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (Huangnan Zangzu Zizhi Zhou), Qinghai Province, China. This project aims at documenting the current state and last traces of the Mongolic language of the Henan Oirats. Formerly the number of speakers was estimated 50, but on the basis of our recent fieldwork (Ma'tya's Balogh, July 2012) there are appr. 300-600 speakers left (100 real fluent ones). Henan Oirat is a highly aberrant form of Oirat with considerable influence of Tibetan. There is no doubt that it will become extinct within 50 years or even sooner.
DOCUMENTING KANGJIA: A CRITICALLY ENDANGERED MONGOLIC LANGUAGE
Kangjia is a critically endangered Mongolic language spoken in Kangyang Town, Jainca County, Qinghai Province of China. This project endeavors to document its phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and cultural relevance by collaborating with its few speakers and members of the language community. Through audio-video recordings, photos, and digital archiving, we aim to preserve this language and its culture, facilitate future research, and thus contribute to the linguistic diversity of the area.
Domaaki ([?oma:ki], aka Dumaki, Domaki; ISO 639-3: dmk; Glottolog: doma1260) is a severely endangered language spoken in two villages by dozen of fluent speakers in northern Pakistan. It belongs to the central zone of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Iranian group, which is part of the Indo-European language family. The language is called Domaaki or Dumaki by outsiders, but the community itself prefers the term Dawoodi. The project will: (a) create a corpus of 40 hours audio and video recordings of different genres, (b) annotate a corpus of texts of 10 hours in ELAN/Flex, video and audio recordings of natural and elicited Domaaki data, c); train Domaaki language speakers in language documentation; and (d) capture still photographs of cultural artifacts and different activities. Native speakers will be involved as collaborators at all levels of the project. The data acquired will be useful for linguists working in language description and comparative linguistics.
TACHENWIT
Tachenwit is a Zenati Berber language spoken in the two large regions of Dahra and Chenoua (Algeria). This documentation project will spicificly follow the community of the region of Tipaza (Algeria). It will collecte a corpus of approximately 30 hours of audiovisual recordings of natural conversations, interviews, songs, tales, proverbs, rituals, recipes of traditional dishes and riddles, including 5 hours of transcribed and translated data to English and French (including silences). Additionaly, outcomes will include a PhD thesis, a dictionnary as well as research papers and presentations.
DOCUMENTING NEW YEAR CEREMONIES OF TATS OF UPPER TAROMI IN HAZARRUD
This project documents traditional New Year ceremonies in Hazarrud village in Tarom district of Zanjin province in Iran, as recounted by the remaining Tati speakers of the village. The estimated number of Tats with an active command of this variety is less than 10, all more than 70 years old. The traditional New Years celebrations are no longer actually performed in the village, where the language of wider communication is now a variety of Azeri Turkic, or increasingly, standard Persian. The Tati dialect of Hazarrud has remained highly conservative when compared with other Tati dialects, and along with the cultural content, the project will contribute to our understanding of the dynamics of language shift and change in the highly diverse, and rapidly declining, Tatic group of languages.
DOCUMENTATION OF THE LANGUAGE AND LIFESTYLE OF THE GALESH, PROVINCE OF GOLESTAN, IRAN
The Galesh are herdsmen in the Alborz mountains. Their total number is unknown, but diminishing rapidly due to the modernisation of the Iranian society. This project attempts to find out if the language of the Eastern Galesh in Golestan is similar to any of the languages of the settled population in the area or if it should be regarded as a language of its own. In Galeshi there are many terms for husbandry and dairy production, which are not found among the agriculturalists. Since the lifestyle of the Galesh is severely threatened this project will document important aspects of it before it is too late.
DOCUMENTING THE LANGUAGE OF THE MODERN ASSYRIAN MOUNTAINEERS OF NALA: AN ANCIENT LANGUAGE ENDANGERED THOUGH MIGRATION AND OBLIVION.
Modern Assyrian Language (Sorith) in Nala, a language of speakers among villagers of 7 pure Christian countries, These villages belong to Amadiya District / Duhok Governorate in Kurdistan / Iraq. The indigenous people, speaker of this language are about (1000) living in these villages. Their isolated and remote villages helped speakers keep their authentic language and vocabularies inherited thousands of years. In fact, the situation now is different and their language is endangered and vulnerable to die also due to the increase migrating to other places especially after ISIS appearance and also being obliged to go outside their area to work, a case that threatens the entity of their own and Assyrians in all in Iraq.
DOCUMENTATION OF THE BETH QUSTAN DIALECT OF THE CENTRAL NEO-ARAMAIC LANGUAGE, TUROYO
The Beth Qustan dialect of the Central Neo-Aramaic, Turoyo, which is the language of Tur 'Abdin, South Eastern Turkey, with an estimated 20 families remaining in the village.This project will document socio-cultural practices of the Turoyo speaking community in Tur 'Abdin, focusing on vernacular tales, particularly those that demonstrate cultural interaction between Muslims and Christians, including Muslim visitations to the shrines of Christian saints, and consultation of soothsayers by Christians.
A DOCUMENTATION OF THE NORTH-EASTERN NEO-ARAMAIC DIALECT CLUSTER OF GARGARNAYE
The highly endangered dialectal cluster of Neo-Aramaic called Gargarnaye is spoken originally in several villages in south-eastern Turkey by Assyrian Christians and encompassing at present around 30 families. The focus of the documentation will be on linguistic variation within the cluster on the one hand, and on the characteristic features of the dialect among the Christian Neo-Aramaic varieties on the other. The resulting collection of media will include also the extra-linguistic aspects of the community life so that in addition to preservation of the dialect also the speakers' enthusiasm for their own language will be enhanced.
TALYSHI DOCUMENTATION PROJECT (COMPLETION)
Talyshi is a North-western Iranian language spoken on the Caspian coastline between Iran and Azerbaijan. The language is divided into three highly divergent dialectal clusters. The central and southern dialects are still poorly described and scarcely known outside Iran, where wordlists and Persian translations are available.
All recordings will be transcribed and translated, with at least 10% of the recordings annotated in detail. These texts will be supplemented by an electronic lexicon of approximately 2500 words, a skecth grammar and an analysis of argument marking patterns.
DOCUMENTATION OF THE LANGUAGE ON DISAPPEARING – WESTERN YUGUR
This project documents the Western Yugur language by video and audio recordings and linguistic annotations, which are mainly naturalistic material. The Yugur people speak two ethnic languages, Eastern Yugur and Western Yugur. Eastern Yugur is a Mongolic language, while Western Yugur is a severely endangered Turkic language spoken solely in Northwest China. The 2020 Chinese census recorded 14,706 Yugurs and there are around 2,000 active Western Yugur speakers according to UNESCO (Moseley, 2010).
DOCUMENTING COMMUNICATIVE PRACTICES OF CUSTOMARY COURT PROCEEDINGS: THE CASE OF TUNEN NATIVE-SPEAKERS OF THE NDIKBIAKAT CANTON
The aim of this project is to document the traditional communicative practices specific to customary court proceedings within the Banen community. Their language,Tunen, is a Narrow Bantu (A.44) spoken by close to 40,000 people in the Centre and Littoral Regions of Cameroon. Focus is put on customary court debates, deliberations, and judgement. Legal terms and customary law speech acts are highly endangered in this community due the lack of intergenerational transmission. Consequently, this documentation work is of utmost importance to safeguard, thanks to sound archiving, the ancestral practices peculiar to traditional courts in the Banen community.
A DICTIONARY OF EASTERN PENAN
Eastern Penan is a Western Austronesian language, exclusive to Sarawak in east Malaysia and neighbouring Brunei, in northeast Borneo. It is an endangered language with considerably less than 10,000 native speakers. There is increasing evidence of attrition of Eastern Penan and language shift among Penans in coastal areas of Sarawak.
The main initial purpose of the project will be the production of a dictionary resource of around 5000 separate lexical items for Penans in their mother tongue, with equivalents in Malay and English, which are the two media of formal education in Sarawak (and throughout Malaysia).
There will be considerable potential value for Eastern Penans resulting from this project, amongst which will be the chance to gain text literacy skills in their own language at an early age through the availability of this resource, and subsequently enhance literacy acquisition in Malay and English in the school context
A PILOT STUDY ON THE DOCUMENTATION OF THE LOKOYA LANGUAGE
The Lokoya language is spoken by around 12,000 people in South Sudan and is considered threatened due to language shift and population displacement. Very little documentation has been carried out on this language. This project will undertake initial documentation work with speakers living in Melbourne and in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya and will record a range of conversations, traditional stories and songs. It will investigate the current status of the language and examine the feasibility of carrying out a major documentation project for the language.
COLLABORATIVE CORPUS BUILDING AND THEMATIC DICTIONARIES OF RAMARI DONGOSARO (SONSOROLESE)
Ramari Dongosaro (Sonsorolese) (ISO 639-3: sov) is the language of Sonsorol a Southwest Island of the Republic of Palau, a Micronesian nation in the western Pacific. According to Eberhard et al. (2021), endangered Sonsorolese is currently spoken by less than 400 speakers. A team composed by a linguist and the Sonsorol State Youth Organisation Young Historians aim at testing thematic dictionaries (Mosel 2011), structured using ESL lesson planning methodologies, for the documentation of this lesser-documented language. Active elicitation and discussion groups, along with audio and video recordings of those sessions and of cultural practices in their social context, aim to shed light on meaning meta-discourse and create a corpus for Sonsorolese.
LAVAFLOW: LEGACY AUDIO VIDEO ARCHIVAL IN FOURTEEN LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD
Seven different researchers at LACITO, now retired, have in the course of their careers made precious field recordings, preserved only as tapes or cassettes. These pertain to 14 different endangered languages: Bafia, Vute, and Tikar in Cameroon (Guarisma); Kiamu in Kenya, Shimaore and Shingazidja in Mayotte, and Gbanzili in the Central African Republic (Rombi); Badaga in India (Pilot-Raichoor); Zenaga and Hassaniya in Mauritania (Taine-Cheikh); Yemeni Arabic in Yemen (Naïm); Volow in Vanuatu (Vienne); and Hamea and Xârâgurè in New Caledonia (Moyse-Faurie). This project will allow these audio recordings to be digitized, archived, and made accessible to the public.
LAVAFLOW: LEGACY AUDIO VIDEO ARCHIVAL IN FOURTEEN LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD
Seven different researchers at LACITO, now retired, have in the course of their careers made precious field recordings, preserved only as tapes or cassettes. These pertain to 14 different endangered languages: Bafia, Vute, and Tikar in Cameroon (Guarisma); Kiamu in Kenya, Shimaore and Shingazidja in Mayotte, and Gbanzili in the Central African Republic (Rombi); Badaga in India (Pilot-Raichoor); Zenaga and Hassaniya in Mauritania (Taine-Cheikh); Yemeni Arabic in Yemen (Naïm); Volow in Vanuatu (Vienne); and Hamea and Xârâgurè in New Caledonia (Moyse-Faurie). This project will allow these audio recordings to be digitized, archived, and made accessible to the public.
A DOCUMENTATION OF BELAIT, AN AUSTRONESIAN LANGUAGE OF BRUNEI
Belait is an undocumented Western Austronesian language from the Berawan-Lower Baram group, spoken in Brunei, Borneo. There were reported to be approximately 700 speakers in 1995, scattered across several villages in the Tutong and Belait districts. This documentation aims to collect a range of audio and video text materials accompanied by time-aligned transcriptions, glossing and translations into English and Malay. All material will be archived with ELAR.
DOCUMENTING DRUMS AND DRUM LANGUAGE IN IBIBIO TRADITIONAL CEREMONIES
The use of drums and drum language is a phenomenon found in most African, Asian and other continents of the world. it is a valuable means of communication for man right from the traditional era into the contemporary times. Among the Ibibios of the south-south Nigeria, the use of drum and its language though essential in most traditional ceremonies is greatly endangered. This documentation will make use of the following research methods: Participant observation structured and unstructured interviews, focus group among others. This research is significant because it will revitalize and document essential elements in the culture of the people.
DOCUMENTING ENDANGERED LANGUAGES OF THE BAZOU SUBDIVISION IN CAMEROON
This project will document endangered languages of the Bazou subdivision of Cameroon: Kwa' Nsiteu, and the Goze-Goshimdjang-Lek dialect complex. None of these languages has previously been the focus of documentary work, and all are endangered. Kwa' and Nsiteu, in particular, are highly endangered and will be prioritized. In addition to producing standard documentary products, research will also be conducted into the role of multilingualism in language shift. Another result of the work will be an improved understanding of the overall linguistic situation of the understudied Bazou area where other endangered languages may remain to be discovered.
A DOCUMENTATION OF THE ZOK LANGUAGE (OTHERWISE KNOWN AS THE AGULIS DIALECT OF ARMENIAN)
Zok is a form of Armenian that is so divergent that it has been classified as a separate language. It was originally spoken in Nakhijevan (present-day Azerbaijan). The last Armenians of Nakhijevan were displaced by conflict in 1988. There are thought to be less than 1,000 remaining speakers of this dialect. This project will produce an audiovisual corpus of texts, a grammar, including information from previously unrecorded subdialects, and vocabulary lists. An online presence will be created in collaboration with the community, and material may be contributed to existing resources on the history and culture of the Armenians of Nakhijevan.
A CONVERSATIONAL DATABASE OF THE ARAPAHO LANGUAGE IN VIDEO FORMAT
Arapaho is one of a group of Algonquian languages spoken on the Great Plains, on the eastern seaboard, northeast and upper midwest of the US, and in eastern Canada in an area separate from the main speech area. The Arapaho language has changed rapidly over the centuries, and does not closely resemble other Algonquian languages in many ways.
The variety documented here is Northern Arapaho, as spoken on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, USA.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF CAPPADOCIAN (ASIA MINOR GREEK)
Cappadocian (also known as Asia Minor Greek) is a Greek-Turkish mixed language thought to have died in the 1960s until its rediscovery in 2005. According to our present knowledge, there are an estimated several hundreds of native speakers and possibly another several hundreds of semi-speakers living in three villages near Thessaloniki (Northern Greece) and Larissa (Central Greece). The project aims to provide, with the collaboration of local community members, as comprehensive as possible a documentation of present day spoken Cappodocian, including digital recordings of every type of language usage, annotated descriptions, a sociolinguistic survey and a comprehensive grammar and dictionary.
SIGNING IN A "DEAF FAMILY" - DOCUMENTATION OF MARDIN SIGN LANGUAGE, TURKEY
Mardin Sign Language exists in a unique setting, a group of ca.40 members of an extended family with a high incidence of hereditary deafness over five generations. "Dilsiz" is the Turkish word for "deaf", and the sign language is used by both deaf and hearing family members. The language originated in the town of Mardin in south-eastern Turkey, but users of the language now live in Istanbul and Izmir. Mardin Sign Language is undocumented and on the brink of extinction under the influence of Turkish Sign Language, the language of the urban deaf community in Turkey.
EXPANDING THE DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF HUPA
With fewer than five first-language speakers remaining, Hupa (Pacific Coast Athabaskan) is a critically endangered language traditionally spoken in Hoopa Valley in Northern California. Although Hupa morphophonology has been described, very little work has been done on syntax, semantics or discourse phenomena. Working with a fluent speaker, we propose to contribute to a complete description of the language by developing a multimedia text corpus and an integrated description of clause structure and interclausal relationships. The materials produced will be accessible through a simple web interface, suitable for use by language learners and linguistic researchers.
A PAN-DIALECTAL DOCUMENTATION OF LAZ (SOUTH CAUCASIAN)
Laz is a non-written South Caucasian language spoken in North-East Turkey. Estimates of the number of speakers vary widely between 33,000 and 250,000. Nonetheless, Laz is a highly endangered language, as young people do not speak it. Turkish is the language of education, administration and the media. The outcome will be a digital corpus of 50 hours of audio and video recordings, transcribed and translated into Turkish, out of which 5 hours will be provided with an interlinear gloss. Various genres will be documented. To this end, two fieldwork trips will be undertaken, totaling 11 months.
AN ARAPAHO ANALYTICAL DICTIONARY AND CONCORDANCE
Arapaho is one of a group of Algonquian languages spoken on the Great Plains, on the eastern seaboard, northeast and upper midwest of the US, and in eastern Canada in an area separate from the main speech area. The Arapaho language has changed rapidly over the centuries, and does not closely resemble other Algonquian languages in many ways.
The variety documented here is Northern Arapaho, as spoken on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, USA.
AN AUDIO-VISUAL DOCUMENTATION OF CHAMALAL, A LANGUAGE OF DAGESTAN (RUSSIA)
Chamalal (Nakh-Dagestanian, Andic) is an unwritten language spoken in the mountains between Chechnya and Dagestan (Russian Caucasus). This project will collect an audiovisual corpus of texts representing different speech genres and ethnographic knowledge with their respective transcriptions and translations. Linguistic descriptions will be published as a result, and literacy materials produced. The project will also emphasise capacity building of Chamalal speakers. They will be trained to carry out some of the recordings, the transcriptions of the texts, and creating literacy resources. In addition, language use will be promoted among the younger generations through initiatives in social media platforms.
CHIRAG DOCUMENTATION PROJECT
The project will document Chirag, an endangered language from the Dargwa branch of the East Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian) family, spoken in Daghestan, Russia (2100-2400 speakers). The main goal of the project is to collect a rich corpus of audio/video data from both traditional narratives and everyday communication. I propose to record about 110 hours of Chirag (spontaneous speech, lexical and grammatical elicitation), of which at least 25 hours of spontaneous speech will be transcribed, morphologically analyzed and translated to produce an annotated corpus of Chirag available on the internet.
DOCUMENTATION AND GRAMMATICAL DESCRIPTION OF CHECHEN INCLUDING THE CHEBERLOI DIALECT
The goal of this project is twofold: (a) to complete a reference grammar of Chechen (of which 20% is already drafted), which will be submitted as a PhD dissertation at the University of Leipzig; (b) as the empirical basis of this, to collect, transcribe, annotate, and publish an audio- visual corpus of Chechen. The focus of the grammar is on morphology and morphosyntax, especially on hitherto unknown structures in the evidentiality/mirativity system. The focus of the corpus will be on the speech of monolingual speakers who preserve structures that disappeared from speech of younger generations due to influence of Russian.
NATURAL DISCOURSE OF THE WARM SPRINGS LAST SPEAKER OF KIKSHT
Kiksht is a highly endangered language and this project is tries overcoming the enormous challenge of producing this context with only a few speakers. Based on ‘best practice’ documentation methods and by adapting an established indigenous language teaching method (Master-Apprentice Method by Hinton) the project team intends to develop a unique documentation methodology, which will contribute to both the documentation and language revitalization processes that the community urgently needs. By applying this methodology, community members can continue to capture quality documentation, empower speakers at all levels, and generate language materials.
DOCUMENTING CONVERSATION AND THE PRAGMATICS OF THE KIKSHT
This project will document conversation among several speakers of the highly endangered language: Kiksht. The project team will overcome the enormous challenge of producing a natural-discourse context with the few remaining speakers. The project team is currently running a pilot documentation project and has already initiated a distinctive methodology by recording staged, naturalistic conversations with the few remaining speakers. This project teams seeks to expand the documentation of the pilot project and supplement that initiative with transcriptions from old manuscripts to provide guidelines for recordings of these stories. Basing further research on the new recordings, the project team will re-visit a Kiksht grammar (Dyk, 1933; Millstein, 2002) to analyse pragmatic and sociolinguistic features of Kiksht. In addition, the team will use the data for the enhancement and creation of further teaching materials.
YAKIMA LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION AND GRAMMAR
Yakima (or Yakama) Sahaptin is a Penutian language spoken in central Washington State, USA. Only a handful of fluent speakers remain, although there is growing interest in teaching and preserving the language. The Yakima Language Documentation and Grammar project will result in a comprehensive grammar that will be a tool for community members working towards language preservation as well as for scholars. A variety of video and audio recordings covering different genre will inform the work and will provide a rich sampling of the actual sounds of the language as well as extended speech. Included with the grammar will be an audio CD so that individuals will have access to the sounds of the language and texts in their oral form, sample language lessons based on the grammar, and transcribed texts presented in both standard interlinear form and their complete Sahaptin form.
KALMYK/OIRAT; DEVELOPMENT OF TEACHING MATERIALS FOR KALMYK NATIONAL SCHOOLS; COMPARATIVE STUDIES OF KALMYK AND OIRAT
Over the last century the linguistic and cultural heritage of Kalmyks (a small nation in Russia) has been rapidly disappearing. The recent socio-linguistic studies indicate that the proportion of speakers fluent in Kalmyk did not exceed 6% among the young; about 98% of Kalmyk pupils entering school at the age of seven don't speak their mother tongue.
This project is in tune with the language revitalization program, initiated by the local government. The project’s goal is to restore the remaining knowledge of the language and use it for the development of teaching materials for national Kalmyk schools.
DOCUMENTATION OF UNDER-REPRESENTED GENRES OF PASSAMAQUODDY-MALISEET LINGUISTIC PRACTICE
Passamaquoddy-Maliseet is an Eastern Algonquian language with approximately 500 speakers (all forty years of age or older) located in and around several communities along the northern border of Maine (USA) and Canada. The primary output of the project will be an extensive set of annotated transcriptions of audio and video recordings, designed to be suitable as base material for second-language instruction as well as for a broad range of analytical work.
DOCUMENTING THE MONGOL URIANKHAI DIALECT AND CULTURE OF MONGOLIA
Uriankhai is a one of endangered Oirat language spoken in vast, but sparsely populated regions in Uvs, Khovd and Khuvsgul province of Mongolia. Estimates are that only small minority among the 26664 Uriankhai still speak the language, which is equal to only one percent of population of Mongolia. Due to the dominance of Kazak and Tuvan language in Bayan-Ulgii province, Khalkha language in Khovd province and Darkhad and Khalkha languages in Khuvsgul province Uriankhai of Oirat are disappearing rapidly. The documentation effort will focus on the language as occurring in a number of different culturally important situation types of nomadic life, also folk songs, poem, eulogy and fairy tales and thus capture those parts of Uriankhai language and culture that are disappearing most rapidly.
INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION IN GUERNSEY, CHANNEL ISLANDS
There are probably 2-300 (mainly elderly) fluent speakers of Dgernesiais, the indigenous language of Guernsey, Channel Islands, which is categorized by the 2009 UNESCO Atlas as ‘severely endangered’. Due to former negative ideologies (which contributed to endangerment) Dgernesiais has no separate ISO-639 code but is listed under French (fra).
A SOAS field trip in Spring 2009 recorded 50+ hours of native speakers, several in their 90’s. Funding is sought to transcribe, annotate and analyse these data and to undertake further documentation, especially of the related language variety of Sark, thought to have only 20 speakers.
DOCUMENTING THE DURVUD DIALECT OF OIRAT IN WESTERN MONGOLIA
Durvud is a dialect of Oirat in Western Mongolia a variety spoken in vast, but sparsely populated regions in western Mongolia such as Uvs, Khovd, and Bayan-Olgii. Due to the increasing dominance of Khalkha, Durvud and other varieties of Oirat are disappearing rapidly, and only a small minority among the 66706 ethnic Durvuds still speak the language. The documentation effort will focus on the language as occurring in a number of different culturally important situation types of nomadic life and thus capture those parts of Durvud language culture that are disappearing most rapidly.
DOCUMENTATION OF DIRGE SONGS AMONG THE URUAN PEOPLE IN NIGERIA
This project documents the dirge, a ritual funeral eulogy performed by elderly women and professionals at the death of a family or community member, and also during a catastrophic event, as practised among the Uruan people of Nigeria. Traditionally used at funerals, the dirge is rarely practised these days because of a shift to Western funeral customs and has become a highly endangered traditional art form.
Through observations, audiovisual recordings and interviews, we will build, analyse and archive a corpus on the dirge in Uruan, which will be accessible to both the language community and academic researchers.
DOCUMENTING LIBATION RITUALS IN KIONG, SOUTH-EASTERN NIGERIA
The project sets out to document the language of libation rituals in Kiong, a language with less than 100 speakers in Akamkpa and Odukpani local government areas of Cross River State, Nigeria. The project focuses on the Okoyong community in Odukpani where libation ritual is still practiced as a significant form of sacred communication that is quitessential to their culture and spirituality but which is daily put out of prominence and active use. The project aims to interview, record, transcribe and annotate audio and video materials to produce archival data that will benefit the Kiong community and the enlarged scientific community.
DOCUMENTATION OF ONGOTA
Ongota is the traditional language of a hunter-gatherer community in Ethiopia. It is being abandoned in favour of neighbouring Ts’amakko (Cushitic) and is only spoken by Ongota elders. The language defies classification and is considered an isolate. Investigating the origins of Ongota and its community will provide important insight into African linguistic diversity and history. The documentation of Ongota aims at the production, processing and archiving of video and audio recordings of the language. Part of the material will be properly annotated. Grammar and vocabulary will be left with the community. The applicant speaks Ts’amakko, the only possible contact language.
PLACING THE DEAD AND NURTURING THE LIVING: DOCUMENTATION OF HOUSE- CONSTRUCTION AND TERRACE FARMING IN ZARGULLA, AN ENDANGERED OMOTIC LANGUAGE
Zargulla (zay) is an endangered Omotic language spoken by c.a. 8000 speakers in south-west Ethiopia (62.60N 37.19E). Several Zargulla villages are characterized by terrace-farming and clusters of houses commemorating the dead in the higher parts of valleys, and residential areas in foothills and plateaus. The project will produce a linguistic and ethnographic documentation of this parallel and interactive spatial complex of farming and dwelling, which is endangered by socio-cultural changes. Its primary goal is to produce a multi-media digital corpus and a thematic dictionary on house-construction and terrace-farming, and, using these outputs, to study the grammar of space in Zargulla.
DOCUMENTATION OF THE YE'KWANA LANGUAGE IN THE CAURA BASIN
The Ye'kwana are a geographically extended group of about 6,000 people in the Amazonian region on the border between Venezuela and Brasil. Through still vital, the community is already being confronted by the feeling of losing parts of their cultural and linguistic traditions.
The primary aim of this fieldwork is to collect more data and complete the understanding of the existing corpus collected in previous visits to the Ye'kwana community in the Caura basin in Venezuela. The current project will help develop a grammatical description as one of the first steps toward a larger interdisciplinary documentation project.
PILOT PROJECT FOR KOEGU, A HIGHLY ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF THE LOWER OMO VALLEY, SOUTH WESTERN ETHIOPIA
Koegu is a highly endangered language spoken in the rift valley of south-western Ethiopia. The overall aim of this project is to do a survey on the last surviving speakers of Koegu living amongst the Kara, Bume, Mursi and Bodi and to assess the feasibility of a larger project. The specific objectives are to make a census of surviving speakers, collect basic ethnographic information and make multimedia recordings of people, events and ceremonies. Since the Koegu are amongst the last surviving hunter-gatherers in the region, the documentation will contribute to the preservation of the cultural heritage of the Koegu.
DOCUMENTATION OF EFFUTU
Effutu, is spoken in Winneba, a coastal town in the Central Region of Ghana, and other surrounding villages. Effutu is a severely under-documented Guang (Kwa) language, and this study aims at constructing a corpus of audio / video recordings and written texts, which will form the basis of my PhD thesis and be of use to the Effutu community for its ongoing literacy work, as well as for linguists and anthropologists of various backgrounds.
KARI'NJA DICTIONARY AND VIDEO DOCUMENTATION
This project will produce 3 short films documenting the Aretyry dialect of Kari’nja as well as cultural practices. Films will be recorded, edited, transcribed, translated, and subtitled. In addition, a 3,000 entry Kari’nja-Dutch-English dictionary with Sranan Tongo word list will be produced. These materials will serve the needs of the speech community for language materials in support of their newly-instituted formal revitalization program, as well as those of the academic community for descriptions of this under-documented language. This project has the full participation of speech community members who are valued partners in all aspects of the documentation endeavour.
A DOCUMENTATION OF BATI LANGUAGE AND ORAL TRADITIONS
The documentation of Bati language and oral traditions aims at creating a repository of language and cultural data representative of the five varieties spoken in the Bati Canton, in the Littoral region of Cameroon. Number of Bati speakers is estimated at 800. The resulting corpus will lay the empirical ground for cross-dialectal studies in linguistics and others fields in the humanities such as anthropology, which will better inform on the bi-vectorial dynamics of Bati language and identity, torn as they are, between the Mbam and the Basaa groups respectively.
COLLABORATIVE DOCUMENTATION OF PIAROA, A LANGUAGE OF THE VENEZUELAN AMAZON
This project focuses on the documentation of Piaroa, an indigenous language spoken in the Venezuelan Amazon, and serves to support ongoing community efforts towards preserving TEK and specialized speech genres. The project will result in a documentary corpus with audio and video recordings of culturally relevant communicative events and a collection of texts, both with potential to be mobilized in pedagogical materials creation. In addition to shedding light on aspects of the human language capacity, another important contribution of the project is the experience gained in working collaboratively with a native community on language documentation and preservation.
COMMUNITY-BASED DOCUMENTATION OF PIAROA TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE, WITH SPECIAL ATTENTION TO DIALECTAL AND INTERGENERATIONAL VARIATION
This project focuses on the documentation of Piaroa, an indigenous language spoken in the Venezuelan Amazon, and serves to support ongoing community efforts towards preserving TEK and specialized speech genres. The project will result in a documentary corpus of audiovisual recordings of culturally relevant communicative events and a bilingual dictionary, both with potential to be mobilized in community-led literacy efforts. In addition to shedding light on typologically-rare aspects of Piaroa grammar, two other important contributions of the project are the use of innovative documentation methodologies such as oral annotation and the focus on capturing dialectal and intergenerational variation.
DOCUMENTATION OF MURUT, BOOKAN
Murut, Bookan (bnb) is an Austronesian language spoken by an estimated 2,400 bnb speakers in the interior divisions of Sabah, Malaysia. The vitality status of bnb is classified as 7-shifting at risk of language shift, attrition, and death. This project proposes to document (audio and video) naturalistic and elicited recordings and images of artefacts demonstrating cultural-linguistic practices as well as create a database comprising metadata of different genres and text types in various contexts. The corpus will form a basis for lexicon establishment and morphosyntactic analyses made accessible to the community, linguists and a wider range of users.
DOCUMENTATION OF CAMEROON SIGN LANGUAGE (CAMSL)
Project Summary: This project aims to document and compare two languages: the rural sign language referred to here as Extreme North Cameroon Sign Language (ExNorthCamSL), which is used in and around the town of Maroua, and Cameroon Sign Language (CamSL) which is used in the rest of the country (Central, Littoral, North-West, South-West, and West regions). CamSL has been influenced by American Sign Language (ASL) and Langue des Signes Française (LSF, or French Sign Language) through educators and missionaries. The linguistics of both sign languages is undocumented (De Clerck, 2011). Approximately 150 signers use ExNorthCamSL, while an estimated 4,500 use CamSL.
DOCUMENTATION OF BABA'1, A BANTU LANGUAGE FROM THE GRASSFIELDS OF CAMEROON
Baba'1 is a non-written language spoken by a community of people in the village of Baba'1, in the Ndop plain, North West province of Cameroon. Work has started on the phonetics and phonology of the language and collecting audio and video data in July 2005. The community and especially the chief of the village and the school teacher are very much concerned with the preservation of their language and traditional stories, and they have supported the project. The field trip enables the collection of more systematic data from a wider variety of speakers and situations, and more cultural data.
MULTIMODAL DOCUMENTATION OF INTERACTIVE SPEECH IN KWAK’WALA
Kwak’wala (ISO 639 kwk), indigenous to Northern Vancouver Island and the surrounding areas, is one of 4 Northern Wakashan languages spoken in British Columbia. It is severely endangered, with less than 150 elderly speakers remaining. This project will capture three dialects of K?ak'?ala speech in as many contexts as possible, among as many different participants as possible, using audio, video, still images, and time-aligned annotated transcription. By focusing on spontaneous interactive speech, we contribute to the corpus of documentation begun by Franz Boas and George Hunt in the early 20th century. Project outputs will contribute to language revitalization efforts and scholarly linguistic research.
DOCUMENTING CONVERSATIONS IN TSUUT’INA
The project will provide an essential record of conversations in the highly endangered northern Dene language Tsuut'ina (srs) that will feature audio and video recordings of 8 hours of conversations with time-aligned textual documentation. We will record approximately half of the 30 fluent speakers of Tsuut'ina, who will self-represent their languages and contemporary culture through their choices of conversational topics. This documentation will facilitate analysis of conversational structure, the conversational construction of place and time, comparisons between Dene languages, and language learning by community members.
DOCUMENTATION OF ENDANGERED TUNGUSIC LANGUAGES OF KHABAROVSKIJ KRAJ
DOCUMENTATION OF ENDANGERED TUNGUSIC LANGUAGES OF KHABAROVSKIJ KRAJ
The project aims at the fullest possible documentation of three Tungusic languages: Negidal, Kur-Urmi and Ulcha.
The main objectives of the project are:
a) recording an extensive text corpus in Kur-Urmi, Negidal and Ulcha (for Ulcha – 20 hours of speech, for Kur-Urmi – 7,5 hours, for Negidal – 12 hours);
b) transcribing, analyzing and annotating the recorded texts;
c) recording sound files from older hand-written recordings;
d) attempts at collecting, transcribing and translating some existing archived texts in Negidal and possibly Kur-Urmi;
e) providing supplementary grammar notes in English;
f) providing databases of vocabulary sound files to go with the text corpora (about 2500 entries);
g) supplying text sound files with the transcription creeping line.
DOCUMENTATION OF NEGIDAL, A NEARLY EXTINCT NORTHERN TUNGUSIC LANGUAGE OF THE LOWER AMUR
This project focuses on the documentation of Negidal, a moribund Northern Tungusic language spoken on the Amgun' and Lower Amur rivers. It comprises two dialects, Upper and Lower Negidal, of which the Upper dialect is spoken by only a handful of women and the Lower dialect is no longer actively spoken.
We have constructed an extensive collection of annotated oral recordings from the Upper dialect. The bulk of these were made by a team of Russian linguists, to which we have added some recordings of more speakers, procedural texts, and legacy materials of speakers who passed away in the 1990s.
NORTHERN (MASSETT) HAIDA TOPONYMY AND GEOGRAPHIC KNOWLEDGE
The Haida language, spoken by the indigenous people of Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, Canada, has only about 30 remaining fluent speakers, almost all in their 70s and 80s. This project will document the knowledge of Massett (Northern) Haida place-names and related geographic and environmental information with remaining speakers of the language. Several speakers will work with the principal applicant to document place names and related knowledge through excursions and ground-truthing sessions. Traditional ecological and geographic knowledge that accompanies the names themselves will also be recorded. The information will be transcribed and analysed, and stored in the local archive at Old Massett, and made available in various edited print and audio-visual forms to learners of the language and Haida people.
THE GRANT AND REVITALIZATION OF TOFA: FIELDWORK WITH THE LAST SPEAKERS
The project is devoted to the the grant Tofa, a critically endangered South Siberian Turkic language spoken in three remote villages on the eastern Sayan mountains: Alygdzher, Nerha and Verkhnyaya Gutara, Nizhneudinsk region of Irkutsk Oblast. There are only 5 full speakers of Tofa and approximately 10 rememberers. The aim of the project is to document as much data as possible to create a corpus of Tofa language with the last speakers who are over 70 and develop an audio phrasebook and audio dictionary for the community to maintain their language and prevent the language loss.
DOCUMENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF HAISLA AND HENAAKSIALA (NORTH WAKASHAN) OF KITAMAAT VILLAGE, BRITISH COLUMBIA
Haisla and Henaaksiala, Northern Wakashan are language varieties (dialects) of Kitamaat Village, British Columbia. The project will concentrate on aspects of the language that have not been documented before - its use in a variety of cultural contexts such as conversation, oral traditions that are still alive, traditional and contemporary contexts of work, oratory at feasts, and more. A second aim is to check and amplify existing materials previously collected by Bach (from 1970 to the present). A third goal is to obtain accurate linguistic histories of each Haisla consultant who has been involved in any stage of the research in Kitamaat Village. The results will be published and made accessible in various forms, in consonance with the rights and privileges of community units (“clans”) and individuals.
COMPREHENSIVE DOCUMENTATION AND ARCHIVING OF TELEUT, EUSHTA-CHAT, AND MELETS CHULYM: THREE AREALLY ADJACENT CRITICALLY ENDANGERED TURKIC LANGUAGES OF SIBERIA.
The project is aimed at field documentation, creation of an electronic lexicon and interlinearized and annotated corpora of three poorly described and critically endangered Turkic languages native to South-Western Siberia in Russia: Bachat Teleut, Eushta-Chat (Tomsk Tatar), and Melets Chulym. The number of proficient native speakers of Teleut is under 250, of Eushta-Chat and Melets Chulym - fewer than 50 speakers each. Most of the speakers of the languages are over 50 years old. This is the last chance that these languages will likely have to be documented before the competent remaining speakers pass on or become impossible to work with due to advanced age. Among the objectives of the project is to perform a precise survey of the number of proficient and semi-speakers remaining, to assess the degree of language endangerment, the language's functional spheres and the sociolinguistic makeup of the communities, and to make preliminary analysis of the data with a view to developing pedagogical materials for the communities, in addition to descriptive, comparative, typological and areal studies.
DOCUMENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF THE ENDANGERED TELEUT LANGUAGE, SPOKEN IN SOUTH-WEST SIBERIA, KEMEROVO REGION, RUSSIA.
The project is aimed at field documentation, creation of an electronic lexicon and interlinearized/translated text corpus, and preliminary analysis of the endangered Bachatsky Teleut language, spoken in south-western Siberia in Russia. The number of proficient native speakers in Kemerovo region is reported to be approx. 100. Mostly they are people over 50 years old. The additional goal is to perform a more precise survey of the real number of proficient and semi-speakers left, and the degree of language endangerment (native tongue functional sphere and socio-linguistic makeup of the language community).
SEEING VOICES: DOCUMENTING THE GITSKAN NARRATIVE
Gitksanimx is the language spoken by the First Nations people who live in northwestern British Columbia, Canada. Gitksan is known to have different speech registers, manifested through a variety of sentence constructions and discourse particles that can distinguish the different functions of a narrative. The objective of this project is to establish a foundational body of video, audio and text documents conceptually and thematically centred on the narrative, specifically including the telling of stories and legends, the relaying of personal history, and the description of the events involved in modern day life.
DICTIONARY OF ARCHI (DAGHESTANIAN) WITH SOUND FILES AND CULTURAL MATERIALS
Our purpose is to create a dictionary of Archi, a highly endangered language spoken in one village of a remote mountain region in Daghestan. Archi is remarkable both for linguistic reasons, and in terms of its cultural setting. Its morphological system strains credibility by the size of its paradigms (Kibrik calculates that a verb can have 1,502,839 forms), and the stems tend to pattern irregularly. Speakers of Archi are almost exclusively first-language speakers, and intermarriage is rare. The culture of the Archi is one of the most distinctive and best-preserved cultures of Daghestan. There is still time to record some of its unique artefacts. Archi was studied in the 1970s and a fine grammatical description was produced (written by Kibrik, Kodzasov, Samedov and collaborators), but there is very little available on lexical material. We plan to produce dictionaries with pictures and soundfiles to meet the needs of speakers and the interests of linguists.
For more information, please see: http://www.surrey.ac.uk/LIS/SMG/
DIGITISATION AND ARCHIVING THE COLLECTION ON KORYAK, EVEN AND ITELMEN LANGUAGES AT THE FOUNDATION FOR SIBERIAN CULTURES
From 2000 until 2014, Erich Kasten and his local research partners had recorded Koryak, Even and Itelmen texts in Kamchatka. These were meant at the outset to investigate anthropological research questions and, at the given time, without the purpose to create a well-structured language repository. Over the years however, the text corpus has aggregated up to 119 hours local language recordings on video tapes. With this project the documented precious and often unique language data will be made discoverable and accessible for research as well as for community use - with positive effects for the perservation of the given endangered languages on Kamchatka.
ALEUT CONVERSATION CORPUS
The Aleut language, indigenous to the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands, Alaska, USA, is a branch of the Eskimo-Aleut language family. To preserve the manner and content of Aleut discourse, this project will record in audio, video and bilingual text, a major corpus of conversations and other language material deemed important by speakers and learners, on location, in a variety of seasonal settings, among the language’s last fluent 70-100 native speakers.
DOCUMENTATION OF ÖS: A TURKIC LANGUAGE OF SIBERIA
The Siberian Turkic language known to its speakers as Ös (the name they also call themselves and the river which they live along) is known to science as "Middle Chulym." Both the language and its people have been historically misidentified, misclassified and grouped together with neighbouring peoples from whom they are distinct. Now moribund with fewer than 50 speakers (all over the age of 50), Ös remains only minimally documented, and has not been recorded previously in any digital medium.
DOCUMENTING MICHIF VARIATION
Michif, the language of the Métis, is a contact language integrating French and Algonquian (Cree, Ojibwe) elements. Varieties are found in Canada (Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan) and the United States (North Dakota, Montana). With no comprehensive grammar of any variety and fewer than 1,000 elderly speakers, Michif is both under-described and highly endangered. Previous studies have primarily focused on varieties spoken in Manitoba, while neglecting those found elsewhere. In collaboration with Métis community members across western Canada, this project aims to provide a more comprehensive and permanent record in the form of a culturally and scientifically relevant corpus of spoken Michif.
DOCUMENTATION OF INGRIAN: COLLECTING AND ANALYZING FIELDWORK DATA AND DIGITIZING LEGACY MATERIALS
Ingrian is a Finnic language spoken in the Leningrad district of Russia (~150 speakers, average age is 80. The main goals of the project are: a) To collect a vast corpus of modern language data; b) To transcribe and annotate modern texts; c) To digitize and annotate legacy materials; d) To document the phonology, morphology and syntax of modern Ingrian; e) To compile a morphological dictionary and a grammar sketch for further use as a basis of community teaching materials; f) To compile a book of Ingrian texts.
MULTIMEDIA DOCUMENTATION OF THE ENDANGERED VASYUGAN AND ALEXANDROVO KHANTY DIALECTS OF TOMSK REGION IN SIBERIA
Field documentation of language data and meta information of two adjacent and related endangered dialects of Khanty in the Tomsk region of Russia: Vasyugan and Alexandrovo (under 100 speakers). Multimedia (video, audio, photo, graphic) data will be recorded and archived in unified, conventional and accessible formats based on DoBes recommendations, resulting in trilingual lexical database, annotated corpus, and preliminary raw-data description. 3 linguists experienced in the area and having the working knowledge of the language will conduct 2 field visits to reside in the communities (2 Vasyugan villages and 2 Alexandrovo Ob villages) documenting dialects in their natural functional environment.
DOCUMENTING THE ROYAL HONORIFIC LANGUAGE OF BAFUT, A GRASSFIELDS BANTU LANGUAGE OF NORTH WEST CAMEROON
The project documents the culturally rich but highly endangered system of Bafut royal honorifics. We will collect audio and video data on the use of honorifics in ancestral songs, palace ceremonies or conversations among and between non-royal and royal speakers to document who knows and uses the system, how and in which contexts it is used, how it is inherited, and how it varies across age groups, genders and royal and non-royal classes and what it reveals about the way of thinking. We will work with adults in ceremonies and interviews but also involve children, for example through quiz competitions.
MULTIMEDIA DOCUMENTATION OF BABANKI RITUAL SPEECH
Babanki is an endangered Grassfields language spoken in Babanki Tungo and Big Babanki, northwest of Cameroon. The language of rituals contains poetic forms, lexical items and grammatical structures not found in everyday Babanki speech. Unfortunately, these special speech forms are threatened by the strong influence of modernism and especially Christianity which have caused the number of people who still engage in ritual performances to drop drastically. Consequently, the Babanki cultural values inherent in the ritual performances are no longer cherished and transmitted to younger generations.
LAVAFLOW: LEGACY AUDIO VIDEO ARCHIVAL IN FOURTEEN LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD
Seven different researchers at LACITO, now retired, have in the course of their careers made precious field recordings, preserved only as tapes or cassettes. These pertain to 14 different endangered languages: Bafia, Vute, and Tikar in Cameroon (Guarisma); Kiamu in Kenya, Shimaore and Shingazidja in Mayotte, and Gbanzili in the Central African Republic (Rombi); Badaga in India (Pilot-Raichoor); Zenaga and Hassaniya in Mauritania (Taine-Cheikh); Yemeni Arabic in Yemen (Naïm); Volow in Vanuatu (Vienne); and Hamea and Xârâgurè in New Caledonia (Moyse-Faurie). This project will allow these audio recordings to be digitized, archived, and made accessible to the public.
CEQ WONG AND MAH MERI: THE DOCUMENTATION OF TWO ASLIAN LANGUAGES OF THE MALAY PENINSULA
Ceq Wong (Cheq Wong), spoken by under 500 inhabitants of Pahang State. The collection will consist of a comprehensive grammatical description, trilingual dictionary and text collection; Mah Meri, spoken by under 3000 inhabitants of the islands in straits south of Johor to Selangor coast. This collection will produce a shorter grammar, text collection and pan-dialect dictionary. Speakers of the Ceq Wong and Mah Meri languages on the islands in straits south of Johor to Selangor coast, Malaysia.
Language information. Ceq Wong (Cheq Wong) and Mah Meri are two Aslian languages of the Malay Peninsula.
DOCUMENTATION OF BASKEET SONG, VERBAL ART AND CEREMONIAL LANGUAGE
Baskeet (bst) is a little known Omotic language spoken by about 60,000 speakers at the fringes of the Ethiopian highlands in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples' Region of Ethiopia. The project focuses on the linguistic and ethnographic documentation of endangered literary genres, namely songs, poems, prayers and ceremonial speech, which are being abandoned in the course of rapid socio-cultural changes. The project will, firstly, produce a multi-media documentation (text, audio, video) of these culturally emblematic endangered domains and, secondly, contribute to a longer-range project of an extensive documentation of Baskeet with a dictionary at its core.
DOCUMENTATION OF FISHING PRACTICES AMONG THE DWANG
This project proposes to document practices related to fishes (including catching, processing, marketing and consumption) among the Dwang communities who inhabit the south of the Volta Lake. Dwang belongs to the northern branch of the Central Guang branch of the Kwa family. Their traditional occupations are fishing and farming, although fishing by natives practically came to halt when a hydro-electric dam was built in 1966, creating the Volta Lake, which is the world’s largest reservoir by surface area. The reasons for the decline in fishing are not clear. The people insist that they haven’t lost their expressions related fishing activities.
LINGUISTIC AND ETHNOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTATION AIMED AT IDENTIFYING LOCI OF CULTURAL AND LINGUISTIC REPRODUCTION IN TWO COMMUNITIES SPEAKING ENDANGERED BANTOID LANGUAGES
Ajumbu and Mungbam are two neighboring endangered Bantoid languages spoken in Lower Fungom, one of the most linguistically diverse areas of the Cameroonian Grassfields. The documentation of oral histories and verbal art performances aims to gain insights on the social causes favoring the maintenance of small languages in highly multilingual environments. This project is expected to promote innovation in the methods and research tools used in the study of linguistic diversity and in developing initiatives aimed at language preservation in West Africa.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF THOK REEL – A FIELDWORK TRIP TO SOUTHERN SUDAN.
The project is concerned with documentation and description of Thok Reel – a minority language of Southern Sudan spoken by approximately 50,000 people known as Atuot (Lakes State, Yirol West; Latitude: 6.557, Longitude: 30.504). Thok Reel is under threat from increasing use of Dinka, a language spoken by approximately 1.5 million people. The documentation part will focus on documenting the oral history of the Atuot. The descriptive part will provide a descriptive analysis of morphosyntax.
TOWARDS THE DOCUMENTATION OF COMMUNICATIVE PRACTICES IN BUU: A PILOT PROJECT
Buu is a language spoken by no more than 200 people in Lower Fungom, one of the linguistically most diverse micro-areas of sub-Saharan Africa. This project aims to document Buu from the perspective of the actual communicative practices observed in the village by focusing on three different contexts. This is expected to not only allow me to document, albeit initially, Buu as a distinct language, but also to provide an opportunity to develop best practices to integrate ancestral-code and communicative-practices modes of documentation in one and the same project.
DOCUMENTATION OF UBANG GENDER DIGLOSSIA
Ubang [ISO 639-3 uba] is a Cross River, Bendi language spoken by 11,100 natives of Obudu, Cross-River State, Nigeria (SIL, 2013). It has an exotic gender-based diglossia whereby females and males use different words to refer to the same basic concept and thing. Ubang, however, is as endangered by diminishing number of speakers - due to occupational emigration and language contact, as by receding gender diglossia resulting from ceasing intergenerational transfer. This project aims to document Ubang's disappearing natural diglossic conversations, folktales and cultural rites of passage to be annotated, archived, analysed and reported as tonal grammar and cultural dictionary.
DOCUMENTING VUTE ETHNOBIOLOGICAL INVENTORIES
Wawa is a Mambiloid language spoken in the Adamawa Region of Cameroon. This project will focus on one of its four dialects, Mbenguedje, and aims to document ethnobiological inventories of the Mbenguedje Wawa and analyse lexical variation. With less than 500 speakers, Mbenguedje Wawa are shifting to other local languages and few children are competent in the language. The analysis of lexical variation will consider sociolinguistic factors and follow a social network approach to describe and investigate the multilingual, intense-contact setting.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF SIGN LANGUAGE IN CôTE D’IVOIRE
Like in several countries in West Africa, at least two sign
languages are used in Ivory Coast. American Sign Language (ASL) is used in Deaf education and by educated Deaf adults. Deaf people with no formal schooling use various forms of Ivorian Sign Language. ASL is spreading in the Ivorian Deaf community at the cost of Ivorian Sign Language or Langue des Signes de Côte d’Ivoire (LSCI). This project will carry out the documentation and analysis of LSCI. It will include a digital corpus that features a representative sample of signed discourse, a lexical database and a description and analysis of selected features of the language.
A DESCRIPTION AND DOCUMENTATION OF AVATIME
Avatime is an underdescribed and undocumented language spoken in the Volta region of Ghana. The language is threatened by the regional language Ewe, which is used in all domains except at home. We plan to gather audio and video recordings of different genres, out of which we will annotate at least four hours in detail. Other outcomes of our project will be a multilingual Avatime-Ewe-English wordlist, grammar notes and two MPhil theses on Avatime space, event representation and/or categorisation.
LINGUISTIC DOCUMENTATION OF PINGILAPESE LANGUAGE
Pingilapese is a language spoken by approximately 2,000 speakers mainly in the Federated States of Micronesia. To date there has been very little documentation of Pingilapese, apart from a brief grammar sketch by Good and Welley (1989). The language has no writing conventions and is in a fragile situation caused by the emigration of Pingilapese from their original homeland and by tremendous pressure from English (the national language) and Pohnpeian (the state language). From this project, practical materials - a description of the language and the literacy materials - will be developed.
GURAFERDAN SHEKO: LINGUISTIC TREASURES OF A FORGOTTEN DIALECT
The variety of Sheko spoken by an estimated nine thousand people in Guraferda, SW-Ethiopia, differs drastically from the main variety. However, an influx of settlers with a dominant language and culture accelerates changes in language use. This project aims to document the socio-linguistic context of Guraferdan Sheko and its endangered genres of speech. On the basis of the documentation, I will also investigate clause type marking, a typologically salient aspect of Omotic languages.
DOCUMENTATION OF NKAMI
Nkami is an undocumented language spoken in Amankwakrom in the Afram Plains, Ghana, by a few hundreds of speakers. Nkami competes with other major languages: Akan, Ewe and Anum in Amankwakrom and presently, young Nkamis first acquire Akan before Nkami. This situation puts Nkami in the domain of endangerment. Our objective therefore is to provide a lasting and multi-purpose corpus of data on the language that can serve different stakeholders: the Nkami people, linguists, historians, anthropologists and policymakers. The corpus would be used as basis for producing a grammatical description and a multilingual lexicon in the form of a dissertation.
ENDANGERED LANGUAGE SITUATION OF THE UPPER-LOZVA VOGULS IN IVDEL, NORTH-WEST SIBERIA, RUSSIA
Vogul (Mansi) language belongs to the Uralic family of languages. The Voguls used to have a dominant role in domesticating horses in the Uralic region in the first millennium BC and in fur hunting in the early middle ages. By today their traditional life has undergone repeated primitivisation, they speak Russian and Tartar. A small group of Vogul speakers live by the Upper-Lozva River near Ivdel.
According to the last census in Russia in 2002 the gradually appearing data is alarming, the number of Voguls is 11,000 and the number of Vogul speakers is only 3,000. It is obviously an endangered situation: if we can not stop the loss of the mother-language, the Voguls, it will be a dead language within 10 to 20 years.
The pilot project aims at investigating the degree and quantity of the knowledge of their native Vogul language and selecting the best native speakers for documenting the endangered remaining spoken Vogul.
LINGUISTIC FIELDWORK IN NORTHERN-URAL: A COMPREHENSIVE DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF UPPER-LOZVA MANSI LANGUAGE
The project aims to produce a collection of digital sound and video recordings of Vogul language (they call themselves Mansi) as the result of three field trips to the eastern part of the Northern-Ural Mountains (Ivdel district). A small number of taiga hunter speakers lives there, and they still speak their own native language. All recordings taken from different aspects of language usage will be transcribed and annotated in detail. This project also aims to provide a comprehensive documentation of Mansi, and a collection of texts that will cover a wide variety of genres in discourse contexts.
DOCUMENTATION OF KORYAK ETHNOPOETICS: STORIES FROM SPEAKERS OF NON-STANDARD VARIETIES OF KORYAK AND NYMYLAN KORYAK
Koryak (kpy, Kamchatka, Russia) has been ignored by contemporary linguists. We will capture a variety of genres, including conversation, songs, riddles & sayings, and descriptions of ritual and cosmology, but most of the material will be narratives. Transcriptions will include grammatical and ethnographic annotations for each genre and all of the narratives will be analysed following Dell Hymes’s method of ‘measured verse’ in his theory of ethnopoetics. This project will demonstrate the value of taking such analysis to a wide array of narratives, from myth to oral history to other kinds of stories.
COMPREHENSIVE DOCUMENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF TWO ENDANGERED SIBERIAN LANGUAGES: LEGACY DATA AND LAST SPEAKERS OF EASTERN KHANTY AND SOUTHERN SELKUP
Eastern Khanty and Southern Selkup are severely endangered, each numbers under 20 last proficient speakers. There is legacy data in Tomsk with limited access, which is to be improved as a result of the project. The languages are characterized by areal contact contiguity and they are ethnographically consistent, with the last traditional culture practitioners.
The cooperative proposal between the University of Zurich and Tomsk State Pedagogical University builds on extended research experience with the respective languages, and relevant documentation methodology.
The proposal pursues documentation and analysis of two endangered languages of Western Siberia, Russia in order to gain insight into local processes of area formation.
TYPOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF INUIT SIGN LANGUAGE (CANADA)
Inuit Sign Language is native to the culture of the Inuit of Nunavut, Canada’s Arctic territory. It is the primary language of about 50 deaf Inuit, and the secondary language of many of their relatives and friends. The few child speakers are expected to switch to American Sign Language when they start schooling in southern Canada. The research will be done in three communities, which are expected to be representative for the entire territory. They are Rankin Inlet (62°48N, 92°05W), Baker Lake (64°19N, 96°01W) and Taloyoak (69°32N, 93°32W). A request for an ISO-639 code has been made to the SIL.
DOCUMENTING CHUKCHI LANGUAGE: NARRATIVES AND POSSIBLE IMPULSES ON LOCAL ART TRADITIONS
The Chukchi language is considered to be endangered. This project will document approximately 20 hrs of Chukchi narratives that they can be easily used for later linguistic analysis, as well as for practical learning tools to sustain the Chukchi language in local communities. Previous fieldwork has shown that the transmission of Chukchi language to the youth can be made attractive to them, if this is carried out in combination with local art traditions. Therefore, particular attention will be given how motives of tales are expressed in local art work, such as in the specific Chukchi tradition of carving in walrus tusk.
DENE TEXT COLLECTION WITH A SPECIAL FOCUS ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE LANGUAGE AND THE LAND
The overall goal of the research is to begin work for my Ph.D. dissertation on the grammar of space. In order to do this I will work with an ongoing project in Déline,Canada to establish a multimedia dictionary database in Dene and English. In addition to working with the dictionary database and transcribing and analyzing existing material for spatial concepts further multimedia material focusing on stories connected to the land will be recorded. The focus on the land is connected to the current development of self-government in Déline.
THE PITE SAAMI DOCUMENTATION PROJECT
Pite Saami (also known as Arjeplog Saami) is one of around ten Saami languages (Finno-Ugric). It is spoken in the northern Swedish municipality of Arjeplog and has suffered severely under the dominance of North Germanic language and culture, resulting in its acute endangerment: there are currently only around 20 speakers in Sweden, and no speakers in adjacent Pite territory in Norway. In addition to recording Pite speech, the project aims to create a modern Pite-Swedish-Pite dictionary, an accompanying English word-list and a sketch grammar reflecting current Pite usage. The resulting data will also be used to complete a dissertation on morphophonological alternations in Pite Saami.
DOCUMENTATION AND LEXICOGRAPHY OF SEMI-NOMADIC AND SEDENTARY PITE SAAMI LIFESTYLES
The Pite Saami language, also known as Arjeplog Saami, is spoken by around 30 mostly elderly speakers from the Arjeplog municipality in Swedish Lapland. Due to the dominance of Swedish language, culture and politics in most aspects of everyday life, the Pite Saami language as well as traditional Pite Saami realms of experience are highly endangered. This project shall create a multimedia documentation of traditional ways of life of both semi-nomadic reindeer herders and sedentary Pite Saami families, and produce on-line lexical materials concerning these traditional realms.
TUNDRA NENETS GRAMMAR
Tundra Nenets belongs to the Samoyed branch of the Uralic language family. It is spoken by approximately 25,000 people in Arctic Russia and north-western Siberia.
The grammar of Tundra Nenets, especially its syntax, is not well documented, and no collection of glossed texts is available. The purpose of the project is to develop a book-length description of Tundra Nenets in a transparent and theory-neutral manner, augmented with annotated texts and a vocabulary.
DOCUMENTATION OF ENETS: DIGITIZATION AND ANALYSIS OF LEGACY FIELD MATERIALS AND FIELDWORK WITH LAST SPEAKERS
Enets is an almost extinct Northern Samoyedic language spoken on the Taimyr Peninsula, Siberia (about 30 speakers, all over 45). It will be devoted both to digitizing of legacy materials (manuscripts and tapes) of Soviet researchers of the 1930s-1990s and their analysis in the field, and to fieldwork with the last speakers, documenting the phonology and morphology of modern Enets. By documenting Enets at two temporal stages, we will track the structural changes attested in the language of the last speakers. We will also create a range of commnity materials designed for both speakers and semi-speakers.
DOCUMENTATION OF EHUEUN LANGUAGE AND RIVER WORSHIP
Ehueun, an Akoko-Edo, Edoid language is spoken by less than 14,000 Epinmi natives in Ondo, Nigeria (SIL, 2000). Though of rich cultural and linguistic relevance, the extinction of Ehueun is imminent as its few speakers are vigorously shifting to Yoruba and many have urban-migrated. The language has an exquisite sound system with voiceless approximants and plosive-nasal alternation. Its speakers worship Okute, the river goddess,via a guild of seven bands of masquerades, mediated by the aged.
DOCUMENTION OF ANIMERE, GHANA: A PILOT STUDY
Animere (ISO 639-3: anf) is a critically endangered Ghana-Togo Mountain language (Kwa, Niger-Congo) spoken north of the Volta Region, Ghana. A recent sociolinguistic survey of the language estimated that there were less than 30 speakers and that all but three of these speakers are over 40 years old. This project aims to provide a sample documentation and establish the feasibility of engaging in a full-scale language documentation of Animere. This project will also produce a thematic dictionary and a collection of varied naturally-occurring speech events in audio-visual format.
FARMING, FOOD AND YAM: LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL PRACTICES AMONG IKAAN SPEAKERS
DOCUMENTATION OF OSOSO LANGUAGE AND OVBIKO MAIDEN INITIATION RITE
Ososo (ISO 639-3 oso) is an Edoid language spoken by 19,000 indigents (Ethnologue, 2000) in Akoko-Edo Local Government area of Edo State, Nigeria. The language has an exquisite sound system enriched by lenis consonants. Due to migration and lack of documentation, the culture and language is endangered as the regular returns of the migrants every Christmas is forcing a gradual but steady shift from Ososo to English, evident in their discourse during data collection visits for my ongoing thesis. The project aims therefore to document their language and aspects of their cultural practices, especially the Ovbiko maiden initiation rite.
DOCUMENTING THE SHERBRO LANGUAGE AND CULTURE OF SIERRA LEONE
The Sherbro language, spoken on Sherbro Island and nearby coastal areas of Sierra Leone, is in rapid decline. Its speakers now number some 20,000 with its domains and functions decreasing. Sherbro speakers increasingly prefer the more widely spoken languages Mende, Krio, and Temne. In a few places, however, the language is used in daily interactions. One is within the Dema Chiefdom on the westernmost edge of the island. It is here the project will locate itself to fully document the language in grounded contexts and partner with the local community and university to produce materials valuable to these and scholarly communities.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF IKAAN, A LANGUAGE IN SOUTHERN NIGERIA
The project aims to produce a collection of annotated audio recordings of Ikaan, a Benue-Congo language spoken in Southern Nigeria. Ikaan is only sparsely described but a documentation and more thorough description have been initiated in 2006 with the help of a former ELDP grant.
All recordings will be transcribed and translated, with at least 10% of the recordings annotated in detail. The audio corpus will be supplemented by an Ikaan-Yoruba-English dictionary of around 2000-3000 words, a sketch grammar and linguistic descriptions and analyses of the Ikaan tonal system and the Ikaan numeral system.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF UKAAN, A LANGUAGE OF SOUTHERN NIGERIA
Ukaan is a Benue-Congo language spoken in Southern Nigeria, which is yet undocumented and only sparsely described. All recordings will be transcribed and translated, with at least 10% of the recordings annotated in detail. The text corpus will be supplemented by a sociolinguistic survey, a Ukaan-Yoruba-English dictionary of around 2-3000 words, a sketch grammar (including background information on language and speakers, interlinearised texts and a standard wordlist) and a description of the Ukaan tense, aspect and mood system. Finally, upon community request, an Ukaan story book will be published.
A COMPREHENSIVE DOCUMENTATION OF PANARE, A CARIBAN LANGUAGE OF VENEZUELA
Panare is a Cariban language spoken by most individuals in a group of 4,700 people who live in small villages scattered along the Guaniamo and Cuchivero river basins in Venezuela. This project aims at compiling a modern documentary corpus in collaboration with members of the community representing different variants of the language. It will involve the collection, annotation and archiving of new audiovisual recordings of a variety of speech genres and culturally important activities, in addition to the annotation of heritage materials collected mainly during the 1970s and 1980s, the training of community documenters, and a digital dictionary.
DOCUMENTING ORAL GENRES IN THE BOLGA DIALECT OF GURENE (NORTHERN GHANA)
The Bolgatanga dialect of Gurene (ISO 639-3: gur), a Gur language in northern Ghana is spoken by about 22,000 people. The Geographical reference of Bolgatanga is 100N 0048?W. Language standardization, modern life, and contact with English and Hausa is leading to loss of variation and disappearance of oral genres such as folktales, riddles, ritual texts, and other linguistic resources. It will serve as a resource to be exploited for my PhD thesis and for the community to re-energise the use of these genres in the socialization of children.
DOCUMENTATION OF THE BOGON (CALA) LANGUAGE
BogoN is a Gur language spoken by the Chala people in Ghana. The language is poorly documented and severely threatened with extinction. In all but one of the five locations in the Volta Region where the majority of the Chala reside, they find themselves in a minority situation. As a result, a large number of people of Chala ethnicity are not able to speak BogoN fluently. Fluent BogoN speakers probably number only several hundred.
DOCUMENTING KAM: NATURAL INTERACTION, MULTIMODALITY, AND COMMUNITY-DRIVEN ETHNOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTATION
Kam is a high-level Niger-Congo isolate, spoken by a small community of mountain dwelling farmer-fishermen in Central-Eastern Nigeria (ca. 5,000-15,000 speakers). This project has two aims. The first is to establish a corpus of language use in natural interaction, including multimodal communication, while exploring the role sand may play in speakers' gesture space. The second is to document ethnographically interesting texts and performances, focusing on traditional knowledge speakers wish to preserve. Throughout, but especially for the second aim of the project, it will rely on extensive collaboration with speakers from different generations, to strengthen the intergenerational transmission of such knowledge.
DOCUMENTATION AND GRAMMATICAL DESCRIPTION OF OPUUO
Opuuo (Shita) is a Koman language family and Nilo-Saharan phylum language. This language is spoken in western part of Ethiopian border in Gambela region and Ethio-South Sudan Border. It has 1,750 native speakers and only 999 leave in Gambella Region. Other speakers are distributed throughout the country. Opuuo is critically endangered language. The main objective of this project is therefore to document and describe the grammar of Opuuo. The outcome of the project will be sociolinguistic assessment of the language in both countries; audio, video and annotated texts; and description of grammar of the language.
DESCRIPTION AND DOCUMENTATION OF SEKPELE
Sekpele is a language spoken primarily by ten Likpe communities north-east of Hohoe (the district capital which is an Ewe community) in the central Volta Region of Ghana with an estimated population of 25000. Sekpele is one of the 14 Ghana Togo Mountain (GTM) that is under-documented, and this work aims at soliciting audio/video recordings and written text for archive as well as analysing some data for the description of Sekpele grammar for my PhD thesis.
VANISHING VOICES FROM GHANA'S 'MIDDLE BELT'
Nterato and Mpurare two cult languages still used in the Nawuri-speaking Balai community, one by women (Aleji) and another in prayers (name as yet unknown). All these languages are under linguistic and political pressure from Gonja and from cultural change. Historical relations among the communities are also a focus of interest. In each community the vitality of the language will be determined, and culturally significant texts will be documented, in the language where possible or in Gonja where it is not.
DOCUMENTATION OF AYERE, AN ENDANGERED AND UNDOCUMENTED MINORITY LANGUAGE OF THE NIGERIAN MIDDLE BELT
The purpose of this project is a documentation and description of Ayere, a minority language in Nigeria, which is highly threatened by Yoruba and mainly undocumented and undescribed. Work already existing on Ayere includes a word list and sketch vowel and consonant charts. The outcomes will be a short sociolinguistic description of Ayere, a sketch grammar, a trilingual dictionary Ayere-Yoruba-English of about 2,000 to 3,000 words and a collection of written and spoken language materials. These will be archived with ELAR as well as a local Nigerian archive. In the PhD thesis I will focus on the phonology of Ayere.
DOCUMENTATION OF SRI LANKA PORTUGUESE
Sri Lanka Portuguese is a Portuguese-lexified creole formed in the 16th century. Although once an important language of the island, it is now much reduced and rapidly contracting. It is spoken by the "Portuguese Burghers" of Eastern Sri Lanka, in and around the towns of Batticaloa and Trincomalee, in which Tamil is the dominant language. This project will document the language of the community as used in various different domains and its unique song, music and dance traditions, which constitute one of its most recognisable cultural features and had a deep impact on Sri Lankan culture as a whole.
DOCUMENTING THE KIM AND BOM LANGUAGES OF SIERRE LEONE (DKB)
The project documents two dying languages spoken in the coastal tidelands of south-eastern Sierra Leone. Only a few score speakers use Krim while even fewer know Bom; all are bilingual in Mende. The languages survive due to the remaining speakers' isolation in tiny fishing villages along a remote tidal estuary. Documentation of the language and culture will be achieved by means of multiple media, performed collaboratively with Krim and Bom people themselves. In addition, Western graduate students, as well as students and lecturers from the national university will be trained and will actively participate in the project. All materials will be digitised and archived locally and internationally. These products will form virtually the only documentation of the people and their language and could also provide the basis for any revitalisation efforts.
DOCUMENTATION OF GOEMAI
Goemai language is a West Chadic language spoken in Central Nigeria. The project will complie a corpus, a reference grammar, a dictionary and an annotated text corpus. The grammatical analysis will be set within the typological framework known as 'basic linguistic theory', thereby making it accessible to non-linguists as well as linguists of different theoretical backgrounds. The dictionary will include definitions (in English and the regional lingua franca Hausa), grammatical information, information on dialect variation and examples. The text corpus will contain recordings of a variety of genres and cultural contexts. All recordings will be annotated (providing transcriptions, grammatical information and translations), and the annotations will be linked to the time axis of digitised audio or video files. Furthermore, all data will be accompanied by metadata descriptions (detailing information about, e.g., the content), so as to make the structure of the corpus transparent to all interested parties.
JIRIM VOICES: DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF JIRIM LANGUAGE AND TRADITIONS
Jirim is an undocumented endangered language spoken by ca. 5,000-10,000 people in Taraba State, Nigeria. The project aims to comprehensively document the language and its cultural context. An extensive audio-visual corpus will be created, capturing various aspects of Jirim community life and language, ranging from daily activities to unique cultural traditions. Two endangered Jirim festivals will be organized and recorded to preserve them for future generations. The project will result in a grammar sketch, a practical orthography, a Jirim-Hausa-English dictionary, and a text collection.
DOCUMENTATION AND GRAMMATICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE SHABO LANGUAGE: A VERY ENDANGERED ISOLATE LANGUAGE OF SOUTHWESTERN ETHIOPIA
Shabo (also called Mikeyir, Mekeyer) is a language of Ethiopia spoken by about 600 (probably less) people around the Sheka Forest in Southwestern Ethiopia. The language is still used in some of the daily life domains, but only a few children of the ethnic group are acquiring it as their mother tongue. Moreover, since the Shabos are scattered amongst the Majangir and Shekkacho people, almost all of them are multilingual with the languages spoken by these groups.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF KUNA: A COMMUNITY-BASED APPROACH TO DOCUMENTATION AND GRAMMAR-WRITING.
This project is a response to the limited documentation and description available to the
community members of Kuna, a Chibchan language spoken mostly in the Panamanian-Colombian border area, with an estimated 44,100 speakers. It seeks to document instances of naturally occurring speech in Kuna and to process new and old recordings making them available to the community. In addition to the new material produced, the project will produce a comprehensive grammar of the language, with an emphasis on community interests of strengthening and revitalization.
THE SITI PILOT PROJECT: DESCRIPTION AND DOCUMENTATION OF AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF IVORY COAST
Siti is a definitively endangered language of Ivory Coast- which was claimed in 1981 to be spoken by 31 individuals. The first objective of this project is to report on the language's vitality and endangerment in Vonkoro (9.15871, -2.73688), the only Siti-speaking village remaining. As the bulk of the information available on the language is meager and approximately 90 years old, the project serves as an update of our current knowledge on the language.
VARIATION IN THE TMA SYSTEM OF BASTIMENTOS CREOLE ENGLISH, PANAMA.
This project aims, on the one hand, to compile a rich set of digitally recorded speech acts (audio and video), as well as texts and stills, reflecting sociocultural life typical of the 600 speakers of the Creole community of Bastimentos Island, Panama, Central America, whilst on the other hand, to provide a sketch grammar with an in-depth descriptive analysis of TMA markers and their permissible combinations, accounting for syntactic variables, sociolinguistic variation, pragmatic/stylistic information, and possible internal change independent of the creole continuum.
DOCUMENTATION OF LEN-MAMBILA
Len– Mambila (ISO 639-3 mzk) is a North-Bantoid language spoken in Bang, Taraba, Nigeria. It is a minority member of a continuum of languages with diminishing speakers (totaling 100,000) in pockets of remote villages. Due to war, migration and Fulani nomadic influence, Len speakers are shifting to Fulfulde, resulting in a progressive loss of cultural and linguistic heritage. Save for their use of fricative vowels, little is known about Len language and culture; and they do practice and exquisite but under-reported sister-exchange-marriage system. Hence, this project will holistically capture and archive linguistic and anthropological aspects of Len-Mambila for continuing scholarship.
DOCUMENTATION AND GRAMMATICAL DESCRIPTION OF KOMO
Komo is a Nilo-Saharan language in Ethiopia and Sudan spoken by about 11,000 people. People's movement due to resettlement program, instability, and contact with dominant languages is leading the loss of oral genres such as folktales, riddles, and other linguistic resources. It will serve the community to re-energise and maintain the use of these genres in the socialization of children and it will also serve as a resource to be exploited for my PhD thesis.
PALAWAN-TAGALOG-ENGLISH DICTIONARY
The aim of this project is to prepare a 3000 entries (citation forms) lexicon (vocabulary) of the Palawan language of Palawan Island, Philippines, as a preliminary stage to completing a 5000 to 10000 entries dictionary Palwan-Tagalog(Filipino)-English. There is no existing dictionary yet for the Palawan language which however has been the object of previous linguistic studies and publications. A 1200 entries vocabulary has been compiled so far by the author. The aims of the fieldtrips (to Palawan) and visits to Manila are 1. to expand the data base (lexicographical entries with Tagalog/English translations) to 3000, 2. to organize a team of collaborators and assistants for further expanding the data base and securing Tagalog (Filipino) translations for all entries, 3. to develop the lexicographic and linguistic aspects of data collecting and recording.
Naso (also known as Teribe) is a Chibchan language spoken in Panama, along the northern part of its border with Costa Rica, by an estimated 500 people. In this project, four teams of Naso culture specialists (verbal art, cultural traditions, botanical knowledge, and songs) will hold regular meetings to discuss and describe these different types of knowledge. These meetings will be documented and annotated by Naso technicians trained in documentation methods. The resulting ELAR archive of natural conversation, oratory, narratives, songs, and verbal art will be the basis of an Encyclopedia of Naso Culture by the Naso Language Committee.
DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION OF THE DZA LANGUAGE
Dza is an endangered language of the poorly known Bikwin-Jen group, spoken in Taraba and Adamawa states in Nigeria by an unknown number of speakers. This project aims to document Dza and produce a corpus (audio and video) of different genres of texts in the language. It is important to document this language now as storytelling, poetry, speech plays and other forms of verbal arts in the language are falling out of practice and not being transferred to children, as is increasingly the case of the language itself. The project also aims to produce a grammar and bilingual dictionaries (Dza – English and Dza – Hausa).
DOCUMENTING THE MORIBUND LANGUAGE MMANI, A SOUTHERN ATLANTIC LANGUAGE OF NIGER-CONGO
Mmani, once widely spoken in the coastal Samou region of Guinea (Conakry) and Sierra Leone is dying. Many other of the less widely spoken languages of the Atlantic Group (Niger-Congo) are under threat; the disappearance of Mmani is virtually certain. The few fluent speakers are all over fifty years old, and there are no monolingual Mmani speakers. Fieldwork began during July of 2000, when I and several colleagues from the Centre d’Étude des Langues Guinéennes (University of Conakry) spent a month in the field assessing the vitality of the language. This cooperation with CELG will continue and two younger scholars, one European and the other Guinean, will be trained in the field techniques of documenting a dying language.
DOCUMENTATION OF KUSHI, A CHADIC LANGUAGE OF NORTHERN NIGERIA
The projects aims at collecting a corpus of oral texts in Kushi (639-3 kuh, kush1236), a West Chadic language spoken in Nigeria on the north-eastern fringes of the Muri mountains. The language is spoken by about 11,000 people in the so-called 'Kushi village area'. In the last few decades the areal dominance of Hausa has been deeply affecting the intergenerational transmission of the language. This project follows a description-oriented fieldwork started in 2017.
A DOCUMENTATION PROJECT OF BAA, A LANGUAGE OF NIGERIA
Kwa (Baa) is an endangered minority language of eastern Nigeria, with very little previous description or documentation. The aim of this project is to create a representative corpus of primary data consisting of annotated texts (both audio and video), including interviews, conversations, songs, and narratives. A major part of this program is also the training of community members in documentation techniques. As part of a PhD project the corpus will be used as a tool in analysing the main features of the language, regarding morphosyntax and discourse.
WESTERN ACIPA DOCUMENTATION AND DESCRIPTION
Western Acipa is a West Kainji language spoken in northwest Nigeria. The language is undescribed apart from a 228-item wordlist published in 1995.
All recordings will be transcribed, and at least five hours' worth will be annotated in detail. These texts will be supplemented by an electronic lexicon of approximately 2-3000 words,a sketch of the phonology and grammar, and a description of the Western Acipa noun class system.
CICIPU DOCUMENTATION: FIVE FESTIVALS OF THE ACIPU PEOPLE
This project aims to augment an existing corpus of the Cicipu language, spoken by approximately 20,000 people in northwest Nigeria (ISO 639-3 awc, co-ordinates roughly 11.0 N, 5.6 E). The project will concentrate on the five major Acipu festivals held on Korisino mountain. Data collected will include songs, speeches, interviews with participants, descriptions of the festivals, and discussion of the symbolism involved and implications for those who take part. A major part of the project is the training of two community members in documentation techniques, in order to provide the language community with a certain amount of self-sufficiency with respect to language documentation.
SAKUN (SUKUR) LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION PROJECT
The Sakun (Sukur)is an endangered and undocumented language of the Mandara mountains, Nigeria.
Sakun is spoken by approximately 15,000 people. Since the enlistment of Sukur in 1999 as a
UNESCO Cultural Landscape, the increased contact following infrastructure development has
caused Sakun to give way to Hausa in a number of domains.
Working with local stakeholders, this project will assemble a corpus that captures a broad
range of cultural practices identified as important by the community, and provide the
foundation for a grammar, dictionary and pedagogical materials to support the community’s
own efforts at language maintenance.
DOCUMENTING LEMO, A DIALECT OF BAI SPOKEN IN THE NUJIANG VALLEY OF YUNNAN PROVINCE, CHINA
Lemo is considered a Northern Branch of the Bai language. It is spoken by 12,000 people in the Nujiang Valley of the Yunnan Province in China. Lemo culture and language faces a decline due to the encroachment of Lisu and Mandarin Chinese. The current project aims at working with the Language Community to document its language in its dynamic daily uses and cultural performances. It will produce a working orthography, a language learning manual, partially annotated digital audio and video materials that represent the cultural and linguistic practices, a dictionary, and a sketch grammar.