Language Legacies Grant Recipients - 2007
Linda Lanz - Rice University
Inupiaq Revitalization and Documentation: Digital Resources for an Indigenous Community
To honor the legacy of linguist Bill Bright, the Endangered Language Fund, in conjunction with members of Bill's family, has created an award for a proposal that extends his research interests and work. These include areal interest in North and Central America as well as South Asia, and a broad range of topical interests. This year's Bill Bright award goes to Linda Lanz of Rice University for her project, Inupiaq Revitalization and Documentation: Digital Resources for an Indigenous Community. Inupiaq is a moribund Inuit Eskimo-Aleut language spoken by an estimated 3,000 people in northern Alaska. It will almost certainly become extinct within one or two generations unless significant revitalization efforts are made. Despite a good deal of documentation of Eskimo-Aleut languages in general, few works deal with Inupiaq; typically the language is omitted or treated as Inuktitut with a different name. This project will fill large gaps in the existing Inupiaq documentation, particularly morphophonology and morphosyntax. In addition, Ms. Lanz will work with community members to produce materials and linguistic documentation of the Malimiut dialect, which has often been ignored in favor of the better-described North Slope dialect. The research generated by this project will be used to create language revitalization resources for the Inupiaq speaker community.
Heather Souter - Camperville, Manitoba, Canada
Michif Video Memories: Documenting Language and Culture in Context
The Michif language came into existence in the early 19th century as a result of contact between Cree and Ojibwe speaking nations and French fur traders in the Red River Valley of Manitoba, Canada. The Metis, the offspring of these mixed unions, were identified as a new ethnic group as early as the first decade of the 1800s, and it is likely that their language, Michif, was born around this time. Emigration and dispersion of the Metis took place over the next century, and today the language is spoken by fewer than 1,000 people in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and North Dakota. Most of these speakers are over 70 years old, and the language is not being passed on to the younger generations. Ms. Souter, a member of the Manitoba Metis Association, will carry out a language and culture video documentation project to document traditional and daily activities carried out by Michif-speaking elders. She will produce a short documentary on the use of the language in cultural activities, and her work will be available to linguists and Metis community members.
Alejandra Vidal - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas, Argentina
Documenting Pilaga: Community Language Archiving in Formosa
The Pilaga people live near the Pilcomayo River in the Formosa province of northeastern Argentina. Their language, a member of the Guaycuru family, is spoken by between 4,000 and 6,000 people. Dr. Vidal will study Pilaga non-narrative discourse and generate audio/video documentation of language use. The project will record, videotape, transcribe, analyze, and distribute a corpus of data in digital form, covering a variety of genres and interactions. These data will give insight into the language as used naturally between speakers, instead of in the context of narration. The data will be archived and made available to linguists, community members, and language teachers in a variety of formats.
Heriberto Avelino - University of Toronto
Audiovisual Documentation of the Kiliwa Languag
The goal of this project is to create an audiovisual record of the Kiliwa language of Baja California, Mexico. The language is spoken by 5 people among the 54 identified as belonging to the Kiliwa ethnic group, which has seen the marginalization of their language intensified by deforestation of the already semi-desert area, climate change, a rapidly increasing migrant population, and cultural pressure from the dominant Mexican and U.S. media. The researcher will produce a collection of digital records in the form of video and audio recordings of oral texts of the language. The texts collected will preserve important cultural information and provide a window into the history and culture of the Kiliwa people and of the region. The documentation will also be available the community as a crucial element in the revitalization of the language.
Tsuyoshi Ono - University of Alberta
Digital Documentation of Ikema Language Use
This project will document the use of Ikema, a language spoken on a small island of the same name near Okinawa, Japan. Distant from mainland Japan, located only 180 miles from Taiwan, Ikema is an island with a decreasing population of about 750, comprising mostly elderly people. The youngest speakers of the language are over 60 years old. Ikema has been classified as a dialect of Japanese, but Dr. Ono believes it is a distinct language. People on the island still remember the hoogen fuda 'dialect placard' which they were forced to wear when they slipped into their own language. The project will generate recordings and documentation of the language as it is currently used, with both Ikema and Standard Japanese within conversations and sentences. Documenting this code-switching will help us understand the use of the language in a minority situation and highlight the daily use of the languages for the benefit of linguists and the Ikema speakers and their descendants.
Viktoria Papp - Rice University
Northern Csango Language Documentation: Voice and Information Structure
Northern Csango, the closest relative of Hungarian, is a Finno-Ugric language spoken by fewer than 3,000 people in Northeastern Romania. Since settling east of the Carpathian Mountains around the 13th century, the Csangos have lived in Romania and have had little contact with Standard Hungarian. Their language has gone largely undocumented. Linguistically analyzable recordings have not been made, and the existing studies have not accounted for the differences in the dialects of Northern Csango. Ms. Papp has compiled extensive recordings and word lists from the language during previous field trips. The goal of this project is to work with a group of speakers to complete a grammar and a dictionary, and to continue recording and archiving stories and oral histories for community use.
Armik Mirzayan - University of Colorado at Boulder
Documenting the Wichita Language in Music
Wichita is a Caddoan language spoken by a fewer than five elderly people near Anadarko, Oklahoma. The language is extremely endangered, yet recordings of texts and singing made of now deceased speakers can be understood and repeated by these few living speakers. Most questions about grammar and the meaning of the forms can be resolved in this way, as long as there are fluent speakers still living. Mr. Mirzayan will visit the speakers of Wichita and use their understanding of the recorded texts and songs to help analyze the rich morphosyntactic structure of the language. The realm of music is one of the last cultural niches in which the Wichita language is heard and spoken frequently. The primary goal of this project, therefore, is to build a digital database of Wichita songs and music that contain as much of the usage of the Wichita language as possible. The material collected under this project will supplement existing video and audio archives of elicited and conversational Wichita (Rood and Mirzayan, 2000-2005), funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung's DoBeS project. The recordings of Wichita songs and texts will also be made available to the tribe.
Michael Hughes and Jule Gomez de Garcia - California State University, San Marcos
Linguistic Database of Men's Ixil Mayan Narratives
Ixil Mayan is spoken by around 70,000 people in the highlands of northern Guatemala. While the language is healthy among adult speakers, the presence of Spanish monolingual children in Ixil homes indicates a language shift pattern. Dr. Hughes will travel to Guatemala to collect video and audio documentation of Ixil Mayan narratives. The current Mayan Women's Literacy Project, which has compiled a number of transcriptions of natural conversation in Ixil Mayan with the assistance of a women's group in Nebaj, has resulted in a significant linguistic database of naturally occurring discourse among women. Dr. Hughes' project will complement the work of the Mayan Women's Literacy Project, funded by the U. S. National Science Foundation, by creating a database of men's discourse, which draws on a different range of vocabulary and grammatical structures. Ixil Mayan men may also observe different sociolinguistic norms and conversation styles, and it is important to make a record of these aspects of Ixil Mayan in order to describe the language fully.
Wilson de Lima Silva - University of Utah
Practical Language Material for Desano
Following on last year's successful ELF project in the same region, Wilson Silva will travel to the Upper Rio Negro region of Brazil to produce a booklet of traditional Desano stories. These stories will aid in the educational and revitalization programs being developed by the community members and FOIRN (Federacao das Organizacoes Indigenas do Rio Negro). Desano is an Eastern Tukanoan language spoken by a small number of people among the fewer than 1,600 who belong to the Desano ethnic group. FOIRN and Desano leaders report that the Desano people in Brazil generally speak only Tukano, instead of their own language, and that there are no speakers under the age of 25. The language materials will be based on stories collected in audio and video format from 6 communities in the Desano-speaking area. These materials will then be distributed in the communities for educational use.
Sarah Murray - Rutgers University
Dynamics of Cheyenne Discourse
The goal of this project is to investigate the semantics and pragmatics of two features of Cheyenne discourse: reflexivity/reciprocity and evidentiality. In both respects, Cheyenne has interesting structures that have not yet been thoroughly studied. The researcher will collect data from the speakers and produce 10 glossed and translated texts for purposes of analysis. According to the 2000 census data, Cheyenne is spoken by a combined population of nearly 1,600 people in Montana and Oklahoma, most of whom are older adults. The children of these communities do not currently learn the language. Ms. Murray's research will be made available to the communities, and her work will contribute to the theory of natural language semantics and pragmatics as well as to the revitalization of Cheyenne.
Inupiaq Revitalization and Documentation: Digital Resources for an Indigenous Community
To honor the legacy of linguist Bill Bright, the Endangered Language Fund, in conjunction with members of Bill's family, has created an award for a proposal that extends his research interests and work. These include areal interest in North and Central America as well as South Asia, and a broad range of topical interests. This year's Bill Bright award goes to Linda Lanz of Rice University for her project, Inupiaq Revitalization and Documentation: Digital Resources for an Indigenous Community. Inupiaq is a moribund Inuit Eskimo-Aleut language spoken by an estimated 3,000 people in northern Alaska. It will almost certainly become extinct within one or two generations unless significant revitalization efforts are made. Despite a good deal of documentation of Eskimo-Aleut languages in general, few works deal with Inupiaq; typically the language is omitted or treated as Inuktitut with a different name. This project will fill large gaps in the existing Inupiaq documentation, particularly morphophonology and morphosyntax. In addition, Ms. Lanz will work with community members to produce materials and linguistic documentation of the Malimiut dialect, which has often been ignored in favor of the better-described North Slope dialect. The research generated by this project will be used to create language revitalization resources for the Inupiaq speaker community.
Heather Souter - Camperville, Manitoba, Canada
Michif Video Memories: Documenting Language and Culture in Context
The Michif language came into existence in the early 19th century as a result of contact between Cree and Ojibwe speaking nations and French fur traders in the Red River Valley of Manitoba, Canada. The Metis, the offspring of these mixed unions, were identified as a new ethnic group as early as the first decade of the 1800s, and it is likely that their language, Michif, was born around this time. Emigration and dispersion of the Metis took place over the next century, and today the language is spoken by fewer than 1,000 people in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and North Dakota. Most of these speakers are over 70 years old, and the language is not being passed on to the younger generations. Ms. Souter, a member of the Manitoba Metis Association, will carry out a language and culture video documentation project to document traditional and daily activities carried out by Michif-speaking elders. She will produce a short documentary on the use of the language in cultural activities, and her work will be available to linguists and Metis community members.
Alejandra Vidal - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas, Argentina
Documenting Pilaga: Community Language Archiving in Formosa
The Pilaga people live near the Pilcomayo River in the Formosa province of northeastern Argentina. Their language, a member of the Guaycuru family, is spoken by between 4,000 and 6,000 people. Dr. Vidal will study Pilaga non-narrative discourse and generate audio/video documentation of language use. The project will record, videotape, transcribe, analyze, and distribute a corpus of data in digital form, covering a variety of genres and interactions. These data will give insight into the language as used naturally between speakers, instead of in the context of narration. The data will be archived and made available to linguists, community members, and language teachers in a variety of formats.
Heriberto Avelino - University of Toronto
Audiovisual Documentation of the Kiliwa Languag
The goal of this project is to create an audiovisual record of the Kiliwa language of Baja California, Mexico. The language is spoken by 5 people among the 54 identified as belonging to the Kiliwa ethnic group, which has seen the marginalization of their language intensified by deforestation of the already semi-desert area, climate change, a rapidly increasing migrant population, and cultural pressure from the dominant Mexican and U.S. media. The researcher will produce a collection of digital records in the form of video and audio recordings of oral texts of the language. The texts collected will preserve important cultural information and provide a window into the history and culture of the Kiliwa people and of the region. The documentation will also be available the community as a crucial element in the revitalization of the language.
Tsuyoshi Ono - University of Alberta
Digital Documentation of Ikema Language Use
This project will document the use of Ikema, a language spoken on a small island of the same name near Okinawa, Japan. Distant from mainland Japan, located only 180 miles from Taiwan, Ikema is an island with a decreasing population of about 750, comprising mostly elderly people. The youngest speakers of the language are over 60 years old. Ikema has been classified as a dialect of Japanese, but Dr. Ono believes it is a distinct language. People on the island still remember the hoogen fuda 'dialect placard' which they were forced to wear when they slipped into their own language. The project will generate recordings and documentation of the language as it is currently used, with both Ikema and Standard Japanese within conversations and sentences. Documenting this code-switching will help us understand the use of the language in a minority situation and highlight the daily use of the languages for the benefit of linguists and the Ikema speakers and their descendants.
Viktoria Papp - Rice University
Northern Csango Language Documentation: Voice and Information Structure
Northern Csango, the closest relative of Hungarian, is a Finno-Ugric language spoken by fewer than 3,000 people in Northeastern Romania. Since settling east of the Carpathian Mountains around the 13th century, the Csangos have lived in Romania and have had little contact with Standard Hungarian. Their language has gone largely undocumented. Linguistically analyzable recordings have not been made, and the existing studies have not accounted for the differences in the dialects of Northern Csango. Ms. Papp has compiled extensive recordings and word lists from the language during previous field trips. The goal of this project is to work with a group of speakers to complete a grammar and a dictionary, and to continue recording and archiving stories and oral histories for community use.
Armik Mirzayan - University of Colorado at Boulder
Documenting the Wichita Language in Music
Wichita is a Caddoan language spoken by a fewer than five elderly people near Anadarko, Oklahoma. The language is extremely endangered, yet recordings of texts and singing made of now deceased speakers can be understood and repeated by these few living speakers. Most questions about grammar and the meaning of the forms can be resolved in this way, as long as there are fluent speakers still living. Mr. Mirzayan will visit the speakers of Wichita and use their understanding of the recorded texts and songs to help analyze the rich morphosyntactic structure of the language. The realm of music is one of the last cultural niches in which the Wichita language is heard and spoken frequently. The primary goal of this project, therefore, is to build a digital database of Wichita songs and music that contain as much of the usage of the Wichita language as possible. The material collected under this project will supplement existing video and audio archives of elicited and conversational Wichita (Rood and Mirzayan, 2000-2005), funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung's DoBeS project. The recordings of Wichita songs and texts will also be made available to the tribe.
Michael Hughes and Jule Gomez de Garcia - California State University, San Marcos
Linguistic Database of Men's Ixil Mayan Narratives
Ixil Mayan is spoken by around 70,000 people in the highlands of northern Guatemala. While the language is healthy among adult speakers, the presence of Spanish monolingual children in Ixil homes indicates a language shift pattern. Dr. Hughes will travel to Guatemala to collect video and audio documentation of Ixil Mayan narratives. The current Mayan Women's Literacy Project, which has compiled a number of transcriptions of natural conversation in Ixil Mayan with the assistance of a women's group in Nebaj, has resulted in a significant linguistic database of naturally occurring discourse among women. Dr. Hughes' project will complement the work of the Mayan Women's Literacy Project, funded by the U. S. National Science Foundation, by creating a database of men's discourse, which draws on a different range of vocabulary and grammatical structures. Ixil Mayan men may also observe different sociolinguistic norms and conversation styles, and it is important to make a record of these aspects of Ixil Mayan in order to describe the language fully.
Wilson de Lima Silva - University of Utah
Practical Language Material for Desano
Following on last year's successful ELF project in the same region, Wilson Silva will travel to the Upper Rio Negro region of Brazil to produce a booklet of traditional Desano stories. These stories will aid in the educational and revitalization programs being developed by the community members and FOIRN (Federacao das Organizacoes Indigenas do Rio Negro). Desano is an Eastern Tukanoan language spoken by a small number of people among the fewer than 1,600 who belong to the Desano ethnic group. FOIRN and Desano leaders report that the Desano people in Brazil generally speak only Tukano, instead of their own language, and that there are no speakers under the age of 25. The language materials will be based on stories collected in audio and video format from 6 communities in the Desano-speaking area. These materials will then be distributed in the communities for educational use.
Sarah Murray - Rutgers University
Dynamics of Cheyenne Discourse
The goal of this project is to investigate the semantics and pragmatics of two features of Cheyenne discourse: reflexivity/reciprocity and evidentiality. In both respects, Cheyenne has interesting structures that have not yet been thoroughly studied. The researcher will collect data from the speakers and produce 10 glossed and translated texts for purposes of analysis. According to the 2000 census data, Cheyenne is spoken by a combined population of nearly 1,600 people in Montana and Oklahoma, most of whom are older adults. The children of these communities do not currently learn the language. Ms. Murray's research will be made available to the communities, and her work will contribute to the theory of natural language semantics and pragmatics as well as to the revitalization of Cheyenne.
